http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JA08Df03.htmlJan 8, 2008
Pakistanis see US as greatest threat
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Amid reports that the administration of US President George W Bush is considering aggressive covert actions against armed Islamist forces in western Pakistan, a new survey released here Monday suggested that such an effort would be opposed by an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis themselves.
The survey, which was funded by the quasi-governmental US Institute of Peace and designed by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, also found that a strong majority of Pakistanis consider the US military presence in Asia and neighboring Afghanistan a much more critical threat to theircountry than al-Qaeda or Pakistan's own Taliban movement in the tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan.
Only five 5% of respondents said the Pakistani government should permit US or other foreign troops to enter Pakistan to pursue or capture al-Qaeda fighters, compared to a whopping 80% who said such actions should not be permitted, according to the poll, which was based on in-depth interviews of more than 900 Pakistanis in 19 cities in mid-September
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On Sunday, the New York Times ran a front-page article regarding a White House meeting on Friday in which top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, reportedly debated pressing Musharraf and his new military leadership to permit the Central Intelligence Agency and US Special Operations Forces to carry out more aggressive covert operations against selected targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the quasi-autonomous tribal areas that have come become increasingly dominated by the Pakistani Taliban who have more recently extended their influence into the North-West Frontier Province. The US currently has about 50 soldiers in Pakistan acting primarily in an advisory and intelligence capacity.
While some administration officials reportedly believe that recent events have persuaded Musharraf and the army that they need such assistance to curb the growing Taliban-al-Qaeda threat, regional specialists both in and outside the administration have argued that such an intervention risked further destabilizing the country by triggering what the Times called "a tremendous backlash" against the US and any government that was seen as its accomplice.