Mullen upbeat on Pakistan, militants

The chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, echoed the administration’s new review of regional policy, contending that efforts to beat back the insurgency inside Afghanistan would fail without better local and central governing and a healthier domestic economy. But a meeting with Afghan reporters demonstrated the popular opinion here that Pakistan remains the most significant hurdle to victory over the insurgency inside Afghanistan.

“To make the kind of progress we need to make in Afghanistan, progress in Pakistan is equally critical,’’ Mullen said. And he assured his audience that he had made clear to senior Pakistani military officials his “strong desire to see more action taken against these places and to root out the terrorists.’’

He said that he had weighed Pakistani military gains against insurgent and terrorist cells over the past two years, and that “it is very possible that the Pakistan military can achieve the goal, as well, which shuts down those safe havens.’’

Although Mullen expressed confidence in Pakistan’s ability to clamp down on insurgents within its borders, many analysts are posing a thornier question: How committed is it to doing so? During his tour of the region, Mullen urged “strategic patience’’ with Pakistan and said its leaders understood the threat to their own legitimacy from the domestic insurgency.

Mullen’s comments, a day after President Obama released a one-year review of the new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, were some of the strongest on the shortcomings of Afghanistan’s government since the administration abandoned its get-tough approach with President Hamid Karzai in the spring, having concluded that sharp public critiques did more harm than good.

Obama came into office last year vowing to distance himself from Karzai, who, in the view of some members of his administration, had a relationship with President George W. Bush that was too cozy. For more than a year, the Obama administration exhorted Karzai on corruption. As a result, the Afghan leader went on a series of public rants against the West and threatened to join the Taliban, leading the Obama administration to soften its strategy.

Speaking to US journalists traveling with Mullen, General David H. Petraeus, the senior US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said Afghan and alliance forces “have arrested the momentum of the Taliban in many areas of the country and reversed it in some, but by no means all.’’ He also cautioned that “progress is fragile and reversible. It must be solidified.’’

The US ambassador to Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, agreed that the existence of insurgent and terrorist safe havens in Pakistan “makes delivery of peace and stability here in Afghanistan very difficult.’’

Although Eikenberry said the administration intended to make good on its pledge to begin reducing US troop levels by July, if conditions warrant, he went out of his way to underscore that the United States and NATO would not waver in their commitment to the mission through 2014, when NATO has called for security duties to be taken over by the Afghan government.