Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

0 Frontline Pakistan
the past. The lifting of sanctions and direct economic support from the
USA helped ease Pakistan’s financial difficulties. For Pakistan, it was
almost a return to the 1980s when massive western aid had poured
into the country following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Pakistan was repaid handsomely as a consequence of its role as
the frontline state in the US war on terror.The World Bank, the IMF
and numerous other donors were back to help out Pakistan. Even
USAID, which had pulled out almost a decade ago after the USA
enforced nuclear-related sanctions in 1990, returned to Pakistan. 33 .
Another consequence of 9/11 was the huge increase in remittances,
particularly from Pakistanis living in the USA. All those factors led to a
turnaround for the Pakistani economy, which had been in dire straits
before General Musharraf’s volte-face on Pakistan’s policy towards
Afghanistan. 34
While General Musharraf provided the US-led coalition with active
support in the war in Afghanistan, the break with the constituency that
backed the conservative Taliban had yet to come, exposing a paradox
in his policy. He tried to walk the fence; combating al-Qaeda while
seeking to avoid direct confrontation with the Taliban remnants and
Islamic militants. Pakistan rejected repeated requests by Washington
to allow US combat troops to be deployed in the tribal areas, saying
their presence would provoke the fiercely independent population.
‘We don’t want the American forces to operate over here as they are
doing in Afghanistan,’ said a senior military official. 35 Pakistani military
authorities also refused to let US officials make direct contact with
local tribal leaders. ‘The Americans want to distribute money to the
tribal chiefs as they did in Afghanistan,’ said the official. ‘We don’t
want them to breach our sovereignty.’ The issue remained a constant
cause of friction between Islamabad and Washington. US officials
would often accuse their ally of not doing enough.
However, the CIA and FBI operated freely in the country. There
were also a limited number of US military personnel assisting Pakistani
forces involved in the hunt for al-Qaeda fugitives. As the operation
proceeded, Pakistani officials said that the number of American
personnel involved in the search operations was not more than a dozen
and that they were just helping Pakistani troops with communication
and intelligence. But the involvement of even a limited number of
American personnel in raids became a politically sensitive issue. As
was becoming increasingly clear to Musharraf, the benefits of the US
embrace came with a heavy price tag.