WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON - U.S. efforts to shrink al-Qaida and Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan have stalled, enabling militants to step up planning of terrorist strikes against the United States and cross-border attacks into Afghanistan unhindered, according to U.S. officials.
Despite billions of dollars in aid, largely to the Pakistani military, the United States has watched from the sidelines as Pakistan has concluded peace deals with tribal leaders and extremists in Pakistan that have resulted in increased attacks against U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan, U.S. officials say.
U.S. officials have been unsuccessful in getting the Pakistani army to move against the extremists.
The resulting stalemate, senior officials say, raises the risk of an attack on the United States from Pakistan's extremist sanctuaries.
"If we get struck, I think the origins and planning will come from there," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday. "Clearly, the planning is taking place."
Mullen said the situation in Pakistan, with food and fuel shortages and power outages, is "deteriorating rapidly." But he acknowledged that there is little that the United States can do other than to be patient.
"There is no simple answer," he told defense reporters. "And yet, that [need for] patience runs you right up against the threat, and that really defines the problem," said Mullen, who recently returned from his third trip to Pakistan in five months.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan, the world's second-largest Muslim nation, has had turbulent relations with the United States. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, agreed to support the U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. But popular support for U.S. policies fell steeply, and Musharraf was forced to step down as army chief of staff in November.
Since the spring elections, a coalition government has struggled with economic and security crises. In the resulting power vacuum, the influence and reach of extremists in Pakistan have grown.
A senior Pentagon official, on a visit to Pakistan a year ago, said he was "stunned by the increasing Talibanization" of the country as Islamic extremism spread from the border regions into mainstream Pakistan.
"The situation is extremely dire," said Ahmed Rashid, a veteran Pakistani journalist and author of a new book on the region, Descent into Chaos.
