Pakistan Warns U.S. on Afghan Role
Alliance With Anti-Taliban Forces Could Bring 'Disaster,' Official Says

By Molly Moore and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 26, 2001; Page A16

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 25 -- Pakistan warned the United States today against forging an alliance with rebels fighting the Taliban movement in northern Afghanistan, signaling the first public rift between Washington and Islamabad as plans move ahead for a possible attack on Afghanistan.

In a statement clearly intended to warn the Bush administration not to adopt an Afghan strategy based on toppling the Taliban and replacing it with a rebel coalition known as the Northern Alliance, Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar told reporters: "We must not make the blunder of trying to foist a government on the people of Afghanistan.

"We fear that any such decision on the part of foreign powers to give assistance to one side or the other in Afghanistan is a recipe for great disaster for the people of Afghanistan," Sattar added.

The warning threw into high relief the obstacles facing the United States as it attempts to build support here for military action in Afghanistan, a country long splintered by ethnic divisions and meddlesome neighbors.

In Pakistan's military leadership, there is strong resistance to any moves by the United States that would dislodge the Taliban. Pakistan provided much of the money and military assistance that supported the Taliban in their campaign to conquer most of Afghanistan in 1994-96. The Taliban is composed mostly of members of the Pashtun ethnic group, the largest in Afghanistan and dominant in northwestern Pakistan.

Pakistan has continued to support Taliban efforts to defeat the Northern Alliance, a loose collection of Afghan warlords from other ethnic groups. The rebels include some elements of the Afghan government that the Taliban toppled in 1996.

The military's reservations came even as Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has pledged overall support for the United States in its confrontation with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive who is chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. President Bush has demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden and has ordered military preparations for a possible strike if they do not.

Pakistani military officials are particularly angry, sources said, that the United States reportedly is making military and diplomatic contacts with the Northern Alliance, because the militias have been funded and armed by Pakistan's bitter rival, India, as well as Iran and Russia, both of which Pakistan views as competing influences in Afghanistan.

Leaders of the alliance have offered to assist the United States in dislodging the extremist Islamic militia from Afghanistan, a proposal U.S. officials are debating.

In a televised speech Thursday night, President Bush called on the Taliban to surrender bin Laden and other terrorists "or share in their fate."

Bush, answering questions in Washington today, said the United States was not interested in engaging in "nation-building" but was more concerned with fighting terrorism. "And the best way to do that," he said, "is to ask for the cooperation of citizens within Afghanistan who may be tired of having the Taliban in place or tired of having Osama bin Laden, people from foreign soils, in their own land willing to finance this repressive government."

However, officials from the United States, United Nations and European Union have begun exploring the possibility of creating a temporary Afghan government that could include the northern militias, as well as other leaders inside the country and in exile, should the Taliban be toppled.

Pakistani officials here said U.S. authorities have told them any assistance Washington gave to the Northern Alliance would be limited and said the United States has no intention of replacing the Taliban with the militias. But that has not appeased Pakistani military officials, according to government authorities.

"Pakistan's military strategy cannot afford a hostile government in Afghanistan that will force us to make crucial realignments in troop deployments," said retired Lt. Gen. Salahuddin Tirmizi, a former corps commander. "Even a semblance of the Northern Alliance's dominance over Afghanistan would make us uncomfortable."

Pakistan today remained the last country to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's legitimate government after Saudi Arabia severed its ties with the Taliban. The Saudi decision came just days after the United Arab Emirates broke relations with the Taliban, further isolating it even among Islamic states. Sattar said today that his government will not break diplomatic ties with the Taliban, even though the United States has urged it to do so.

Saudi officials issued a statement blaming the Taliban for turning Afghanistan into a center for terrorists and acknowledging that Saudis were among those participating in "criminal acts" around the world. Bin Laden, the estranged son of a Saudi billionaire, has continued to draw both financial support and manpower from Saudi Arabia, according to intelligence reports.

A four-member U.S. team headed by Air Force Brig. Gen. Kevin Chilton, the Pentagon's director of planning for the Near East and South Asia, is in Islamabad discussing details of Washington's requests to Pakistan for assistance in launching military action into Afghanistan. But Pakistan's military is raising concerns over some issues.

"Things from the U.S. side on the diplomatic front are not moving the way we initially expected them to move," said a senior Pakistani official familiar with the discussions. "As for crucial operational decisions that relate to Afghanistan, there seems to be some confusion in Washington." U.S. officials declined to comment on the discussions.

In addition to Sattar's comments at a news conference, Pakistani military officials privately expressed concern that the United States will raise the issue of the Kashmir border dispute between India and Pakistan. Militant Pakistani Islamic groups, with the approval of the military, are deeply involved in supporting Muslim guerrillas fighting Indian security forces in the portion of Kashmir that India controls.

The Pakistani military leadership, most of whom are Muslims, sympathize and have close associations with some of the country's most radical religious groups.

Two Pakistani organizations with links to the Taliban and guerrillas in Kashmir were on the list of organizations whose financial assets President Bush said Monday would frozen in the United States because of connections to terrorism.

One was Harkat ul-Mujaheddin, one of Pakistan's most militant religious groups. Before changing its name from Harkat ul-Ansar several months ago, the group had been designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. When the Harkat ul-Ansar was implicated in a 1997 plot to stage an Islamic revolution in Pakistan, a dozen military officers, including two generals, were arrested and court-martialed for involvement. The two generals were later pardoned.

The second Pakistani group on the list was Al-Rashid Trust, described by its officials as a charitable organization that supports a bakery project that distributes 300,000 pieces of flatbread a day inside Afghanistan. The trust is believed to be associated with Lashkar-i-Taiba, one of the most active organizations involved in the fighting in Kashmir.

In contrast with the reservations of many of Musharraf's general officers, most of his civilian advisers argued that any U.S. efforts to dislodge the Taliban from Afghanistan would ease Pakistan's internal political problems by reducing the influence exerted by radical religious groups, some with close links to the Taliban.

"This is an opportunity to call the bluff of the radical religious parties," said a retired military officer who continues to serve as an adviser to Musharraf. "The country was in a state of drift toward the radical elements."

Musharraf has grown increasingly frustrated with the Taliban in recent months for harboring terrorists sought by Pakistan in connection with bombings and other attacks inside the country, according to some advisers. This year Pakistan has recorded about 75 bomb attacks in busy city markets, buses and other locations that have killed more than 750 people.

Khan reported from Karachi. Correspondent Howard Schneider in Cairo contributed to this report.