How will US President Obama tackle his toughest foreign policy challenge: the deadly triangle of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, asks Graham Usher in Islamabad Richard -- the American diplomat known as "bulldozer" for the way he bludgeoned Bosnia to peace in 1995 -- landed in Islamabad 9 February as United States President Barack Obama's "special envoy" to Pakistan and Afghanistan: two countries, says the new president, that will top his foreign policy agenda. It's not hard to see why. Seven years since the Taliban was driven from power the Islamist movement has re-established a presence in 70 per cent of Afghanistan, and control in parts. And nuclear-armed Pakistan, partly due to this resurgence, teeters on the edge of collapse: its North West frontier overrun by Islamic militants, including an indigenous Taliban and a reinvigorated Al-Qaeda. "Pakistan's situation is dire," told an International Security Conference in Munich 8 February. He also admitted he had "never seen anything like the mess we have inherited" in Afghanistan. "It is like no other problem we have confronted, and in my view it's going to be much tougher than Iraq." Aides say the "single hardest challenge" Barack- will have to tackle are Taliban and Al-Qaeda "sanctuaries" in Pakistan's unconquerable tribal areas on the Afghan border: according to NATO and the CIA these are the main tributaries for the flow of Taliban into Afghanistan and where the "next 9/11" is likely being plotted. From Islamabad, will go to Kabul and Delhi. The purpose of all three stops is to gather testimony so that Obama can put together a "strategic review" of US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan ahead of a NATO summit in April. But Pakistanis have already seen change and continuity in the new president's approach. One is a penchant for military force. In Afghanistan this means an increase in US troops to retake and hold territory lost to insurgents. In Pakistan it means a continuation of George Bush's controversial "drone" policy: missiles from CIA pilot-less aircraft fired at alleged Al-Qaeda and Taliban "targets" in the tribal areas. "Both president Bush and President Obama have made clear we will go after Al-Qaeda wherever Al-Qaeda is," said US Defense Secretary Robert Gates 27 January. Asked whether the Pakistan government had been informed about this, "yes", he said. On 23 January -- three days after Obama's inauguration -- two US missiles struck Pakistan's Waziristan tribal areas. Of the 22 killed eight were "foreign fighters", said US sources, a code for Al-Qaeda. But the others included a pro-government tribal leader and his family. The mixed toll shows why the drones have become the bloodiest thorn in Pakistan-US relations. The Pentagon says the hits kill "high-value" Al-Qaeda men, disrupting plans for attacks in Europe, Africa and North America. The Pakistani army says every civilian also killed hardens a local sentiment that already sees America as a greater threat to Pakistan than either the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. "Our strategy aims at separating the tribes from the militants. The drone attacks push them together," says a Pakistan military official. In November Pakistan Prime Minister Youssef Raza Gilani "hoped" Obama would end the "counterproductive" drone policy. The signs are the president may augment them with ground operations into the tribal areas if Pakistan "fails to take action" against Taliban and Al-Qaeda. This would almost certainly mean confrontation with the Pakistan army. As may Obama's new aid policy. Under Bush, US-Pakistan relations were military to military: of the $7 billion dispatched to Pakistan 75 per cent went to the army. Obama will continue military aid but "condition" it on the Pakistan army fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda rather than modernising its forces for a war with India. New American aid -- $7.5 billion over five years -- will instead go to the civilian government to reward democracy, strengthen institutions and, above all, "help Pakistan stabilise the tribal areas", Taliban's main recruitment ground. The problem is very few Pakistanis believe the government -- corrupt, effete and inept -- can deliver such governance. In less than a year in office it has seen large swathes of the country fall to the Taliban, including the settled area of Swat where militants are not only fighting the state but have set up their own "emirate" with courts, militia and bans on female education. The Pakistan army is battling to retake Swat. But it may be reluctant to go full-throttle against erstwhile allies like the Afghan Taliban until it discerns American policy toward India and especially Kashmir: the divided Himalayan state claimed by both countries and cause of two of their three wars. Prior to his election Obama was sensitive to that link. "We should try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that Pakistan can stay focussed... not on India but on those militants [on the border]," he said last year. too has said the administration would take "more of a regional approach" to Afghanistan. But since inauguration both men have backpedaled. Stung by the attacks in Mumbai last November -- and convinced Pakistan was involved -- India told Obama it would boycott if his brief were to include Kashmir. It buttressed the threat by a lobbying effort in Washington of near Israeli proportions. And it worked. "Kashmir is not going to be part of Ambassador 's portfolio," said a State Department spokesman last week. The news was met with a groan in Islamabad. Most analysts believe the army will only give up its covert support to the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups when it deems them a greater threat to Pakistan's existence than India. And that cannot happen as long as its conflict with India simmers over Kashmir. In abandoning that link Obama risks repeating the other colossal foreign policy failure of the Bush administration, said Pakistan's Dawn newspaper on 1 February. "Expecting harmony between India and Pakistan without a Kashmir settlement is like hoping for Middle East peace without an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza."
