May 23, 2002 | permalink
When I was an intern at The Washington Post, the foreign editor was Jim Hoagland, a Francophile who treated me well, perhaps because I lived in Paris for a year and he assumed I loved the French as much as he did (I did not). Hoagland is now the Post’s principal foreign affairs columnist, and his columns are filled with hard information and strong analysis; he doesn’t try to be cute or fancy, just useful. His column today is an example; the Bush Administration, he reports, has concluded that Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf is not living up to his anti-terrorism promises:
After internal debate, the U.S. intelligence community now accepts that Musharraf allowed the 50 to 60 guerrilla camps in Kashmir that harbor some 3,000 fighters to come back to life in mid-March after two months of quiescence. Two other Musharraf promises—to prevent cross-border terrorism from Pakistan or Pakistani-controlled territory, and to dismantle permanently Pakistan’s Islamic fundamentalist organizations that preach violence—have also withered as American attention has been focused on the Middle East.
“The debate about what is going on has been settled,” says one U.S. official involved in the contentious discussions here about Musharraf’s abandoned pledge to cut off help and training that his intelligence services and military give to terrorists in Kashmir and India. “The rate of infiltration into Indian-occupied Kashmir is above the rate of a year ago. What is still being debated is Musharraf’s intention. Is he unable or unwilling to prevent what is happening? And what do we do about either case?”
