War on terror loses ground

The co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, said, "The similarities between Afghanistan before Sept. 11 and Pakistan today are striking and deeply worrisome.

"At what point do you say we cannot tolerate this anymore?"

Despite the apparent parallels, there are key differences. Before Sept. 11 Afghanistan was diplomatically isolated and ruled by the harshly fundamentalist Taliban movement, but Pakistan has a democratically elected government generally friendly to the West.

New partners

Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani, who will meet with President Bush at the White House on Monday, and other senior officials say Pakistan already has made great sacrifices in confronting the militants, who use the country's tribal areas as a springboard for attacks in Pakistan and on Western troops in Afghanistan.

Gillani, who took office in March, has pledged more action against Islamic militants, but also has warned that his government would not tolerate foreign troops. As a matter of policy, the Pakistani government does not publicly acknowledge the presence of U.S. covert operatives.

For now, U.S. strategy centers on two components. Over the long term, the administration has committed billions of dollars to aiding Pakistan and improving its military's capabilities.

In the short term, the pursuit of Al Qaeda is centered on pressuring Pakistan to be more aggressive, using U.S. Special Forces teams and Predator unmanned aircraft to carry out airstrikes, and hoping that the few dozen CIA operatives working the region can eventually close in on Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in the area.

CIA operatives stationed in spartan compounds across the tribal region provide U.S. funding, equipment and intelligence to their Pakistani counterparts. But officials say it is a struggle to persuade the Pakistanis to act.

On some CIA bases, "it's just well known that nothing is going to be done," said the former CIA case officer who served in the region.

"We'd be like, 'What about this guy? What about that guy? Can we get surveillance? How about targeting him?' " the former officer said. "We'd propose things and [Pakistani officials] would never get back to us."

In other locations, kernels of cooperation have led to occasional arrests or missile strikes on suspected Al Qaeda compounds. But the successes have been fleeting, and the mission unfulfilled.