President Barack Obama is considering expanding the American covert war in Pakistan far beyond the tribal areas to strike at a different centre of Taliban power in Balochistan, from where top leaders of the outfit are orchestrating attacks into southern Afghanistan.
Two high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to include a major insurgent sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta, 'The New York Times' reported today.
Mullah Muhammad Omar, who led the Taliban government that was ousted in the American-led invasion in 2001, has operated with near impunity out of the region for years, along with many of his deputies, the paper said.
The extensive missile strikes being carried out by Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones have until now been limited to the tribal areas, and have never been extended into Balochistan, a sprawling province that is under the authority of the central government, and which abuts the parts of southern Afghanistan. Fear, the paper said, remains within the American government that extending the raids would worsen tensions.
Pakistan complains that the strikes violate its sovereignty.
But some American officials were quoted as saying that the missile strikes in the tribal areas have forced some leaders of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to flee south toward Quetta, making them more vulnerable.
In separate reports, groups led by both Gen. David H Petraeus, commander of American forces in the region, and Lt. Gen. Douglas E Lute, top White House official on Afghanistan, have recommended expanding American operations outside the tribal areas if Pakistan cannot root out the strengthening insurgency, the Times said.
Many of Obama's advisers, it said, are also urging him to sustain orders issued last summer by President George W Bush to continue Predator drone attacks against a wider range of targets in the tribal areas. They also are recommending preserving the option to conduct cross border ground action, using CIA and Special Operations commandos, as was done in September.
Bush's orders also named as targets a wide variety of insurgents seeking to topple Pakistan's government. Obama has said little in public about how broadly he wants to pursue those groups, the paper said. "It is fair to say that there is wide agreement to sustain and continue these covert programs," one senior administration official told the paper.
"One of the foundations on which the recommendations to the president will be based is that we've got to sustain the disruption of the safe havens."
