Pakistan Admits Taliban Resurgence

Thursday, August 16, 2007

By Bill Hemmer, Fox's America’s News Room

August 14, 2007

Bill Hemmer: There is a significant admission from the leader of Pakistan this week. He now admits the Taliban is regrouping in his country only to launch attacks in neighboring Afghanistan. Meanwhile, my next guest says that ending the Al Qaeda safe haven in Pakistan is essential. Easier said than done. Let’s ask him. Tim Roemer, former member of the 9/11 Commission and a Congressman from Indiana. Tim, good morning to you.

Tim Roemer: Hi Bill.

Hemmer: What do you read into why Pervez Musharraf is admitting this now?

Roemer: Well, I think he is receiving some significant pressure from the United States, finally, after many years of not ratcheting up the leverage, the statecraft, and the public diplomacy to make him admit this. He is also receiving pressure from Afghanistan. I was glad to see him publicly say that he has a problem in Pakistan. And most of all, I think Bill, is that we see problems radiating for not just the United States, not only for our troops in Afghanistan, but for Great Britain coming out of Pakistan.

Hemmer: I see. Let’s get back to that point in a moment here. It could be that Musharraf is telling the world “listen, I’m under some heat back here. There could be an election this fall that may see me lose power.” Do you want that, him telling the world we’ve got big issues now, Tim?

Roemer: Well, the point here is that the United States needs to use all of its statecraft and diplomacy to let Musharraf know that there are several things he needs to be doing, not just one thing. We need to make sure that Musharraf is doing all that he can to help us root out Al Qaeda and Taliban in Waziristan and these Northwest Provinces. Two, the United States needs to make sure that Musharraf knows that democracy and movement toward elections, hopefully Musharraf not trying to run the military and be President, is a good thing in the long term. And three that we need to continue to see progress on human rights and other areas, nuclear nonproliferation cooperation. We can do three or four things at the same time. It doesn’t need to be just one thing.

Hemmer: Let’s talk about ending this safe haven for Al Qaeda then. You say that’s essential. How in the world do you pull that off? Twenty thousand foot mountains, villages up and down that entire valley that can see you coming before you get there.

Roemer: It’s certainly not an easy task and its one where the first step, I think, needs to be military to military cooperation between the United States and the Pakistanis so that we have the kind of special operations forces, cooperation which we’re sharing information and intelligence is essential. If the United States gets actionable intelligence that we know where Osama Bin Laden or Zawahiri are or that some kind of terrorist threat is coming out of Pakistan in this area, I think we need to do something about it.

Hemmer: I’m assuming that some of that cooperation is happening, though, don’t you think Tim?

Roemer: Not enough of it, Bill.

Hemmer: You don’t think so?

Roemer: I don’t think enough of that is happening and there’s not that cooperation that we need to see. If you look back at these plots that came out of Pakistan, Bill, we saw problems on the 7-7 plot in Great Britain, the liquid explosives plot that was last summer, that Secretary Chertoff said was a direct threat to the United States. All these M&A are from training camps in Pakistan. Those are not only threats for Afghanistan that Musharraf now has publicly admitted for the first time yesterday; those are threats to one of our closest allies Great Britain and Great Britain has a VISA policy with us that allows people into our country fairly quickly. So if Great Britain has this problem coming from the training camps in Pakistan, we have the problem.

Hemmer: You tied it all together. Tim Roemer, thank you for your time, we’ll speak again, ok. Good to have you on today.

Roemer: Thanks Bill.

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