Militant groups in Pakistan to continue taking advantage of safe havens: US intelligence report

Report barely mentions India's nuclear program

United States Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats painted a bleak picture for South Asia in 2019, citing elections in Afghanistan and India, Taliban attacks and what he called "Pakistan’s recalcitrance in dealing with militant groups".

While presenting a non-classified threat assessment report before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he outlined significant global threats that the US will face during the year.

The intelligence director predicted that in 2019, “militant groups in Pakistan will continue to take advantage of their safe haven there to plan and conduct attacks in neighbouring countries and possibly beyond.” The oft-repeated accusation has been categorically denied by the country's civilian and military leadership.

The report goes on to allege that Pakistan continues to provide safe havens to terrorists "to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan, including against US interests”, while also accusing Islamabad of "using some groups as policy tools and confronting only the militant groups that directly threaten Pakistan".

It further claims that Pakistan's "narrow approach to counter-terrorism cooperation [...] almost certainly will frustrate US counter-terrorism efforts against the Taliban".

It is pertinent to note, that the report and the subsequent comments come at a time when Pakistan is aiding talks between the US and the Afghan Taliban so that a political solution can be found, to what has now become a 17-year long war.

Pakistan’s nuclear programme also got a glaring mention in Coats’ remarks, who said: “We remain concerned about Pakistan's continued development control of nuclear weapons." There was no mention of India’s nuclear assets or the country's programmes except a brief mention of the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, INS Arihant, launched last year.

Reasons such as cross-border terrorism, firing across the Line of Control (LoC), divisive national elections in India, and Islamabad’s perception of its position with the United States relative to India, Coats claimed “will contribute to strained India-Pakistan relations at least through May 2019, the deadline for the Indian election, and probably beyond.”