The move comes after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented the Pakistanis with the US list of most-wanted terrorism targets, US and Pakistani officials said. The list includes some groups the Pakistanis have been reluctant to attack, US officials said.
It’s one of a host of confidence-building measures meant to restore trust blown on both sides after US forces tracked down and killed Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden during a secret raid in Pakistan last month.
But it also amounts to a new test of loyalty for both sides. The Pakistanis say the US has failed to share its best intelligence, instead running numerous unilateral spying operations on its soil. US officials say they need to see the Pakistanis target militants they’ve long sheltered, including the Haqqani network, which operates with impunity in the Pakistani tribal areas while attacking US troops in Afghanistan.
A series of high-level US visits has aimed to take the edge off. Marc Grossman, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell met with intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha last month. Last week, the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, held a day of intensive meetings with top Pakistani military and civilian officials.
After that outreach, Pakistan allowed the CIA to re-examine the Bin Laden compound last Friday. Pakistan also returned the tail section of a US stealth Black Hawk helicopter that broke off when the SEALs blew up the aircraft to destroy its secret noise- and radar-deadening technology. The CIA has also shared some information gleaned from the raid, and Pakistan has reciprocated, US and Pakistani officials said.
The investigative team will be made up mainly of intelligence officers from both nations, according to two US officials and one Pakistani official. It would draw in part on any intelligence emerging from the CIA’s analysis of computer and written files gathered by the Navy SEALs who raided Bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, as well as Pakistani intelligence gleaned from interrogations of those who frequented or lived near the Bin Laden compound, the officials said.
The formation of the team marks a return to the counterterrorism cooperation that has led to major takedowns of Al-Qaeda militants, like the joint arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003.
The joint intelligence team will go after five top targets, including Al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri, a possible Bin Laden successor, and Al-Qaeda operations chief Atiya Abdel Rahman, as well as Taleban leader like Mulla Omar, all of whom US intelligence officials believe are hiding in Pakistan, one US official said.
Another target is Siraj Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani tribe in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. Allied with the Taleban and Al-Qaeda, the Haqqanis are behind some of the deadliest attacks against US troops and Afghan civilians in Afghanistan. US intelligence officials say their top commanders live openly in the Pakistani city of Miran Shah, close to a Pakistani Army outpost.
Pakistani officials say the US has never provided them accurate intelligence as to the Haqqani leadership’s location. Pakistani officials also argue that as the Haqqani network has been careful never to attack the Pakistani government, there is no reason to attack them.
One official said a final target on this preliminary list is Ilyas Kashmiri, leader of a group called Harakat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami, which the State Department blames for several attacks in India and Pakistan, including a 2006 suicide bombing against the US consulate in Karachi that killed four people. A second US official confirmed that the Pakistanis and Americans have agreed to go after a handful of militants as a confidence-building measure, but the official would not confirm the specific names on the list.
Pakistani officials say those five have always been top targets, but they also did not confirm that the new agreement specifically names them as joint targets.
IBoth sides disputed media reports that Pakistan had completely shut down joint intelligence centers it operates with the Americans following the Bin Laden raid.
Two of the five “intelligence fusion centers” where the US shares satellite, drone and other intelligence with the Pakistanis were mothballed last fall, long before either the Davis or Bin Laden controversies, the Pakistani official and another US official say. It was part of the fallout of the public embarrassment of the WikiLeaks cables disclosures, which revealed a closer US-Pakistani military relationship than publicly acknowledged by Pakistan. Two other fusion centers, plus smaller intelligence-sharing facilities, remain operational, both sides say, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The high-value target team is expected to use any intelligence found at the Bin Laden compound in the hunt, although a month after the raid analysts have found nothing “actionable,” a term describing intelligence that leads to a strike or operation against a new Al-Qaeda target, two US officials say. The CIA-led teams have gotten through more than 60 percent of the computer files and written material taken from the compound so far.
