US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived Monday on an unannounced visit to Pakistan and reportedly plans to visit a school where Taliban gunmen last month killed 150 people in the country’s worst ever militant attack.
“We heard you are planning to visit Peshawar and the school,” Sartaj Aziz, the national security adviser to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told Kerry shortly after he arrived for an unannounced two-day visit.
There was no immediate State Department confirmation of Kerry’s trip to the insurgency-wracked city, which would be the first by a high-ranking American official since Speaker John Boehner went in 2011.
The December 16 raid on the Army Public School prompted a bout of national soul-searching even in a country accustomed to high levels of violence.
Kerry at the time along with President Barack Obama led global condemnation, calling the attack “gut-wrenching”.
Last week’s Islamist attacks in Paris have further sharpened the global focus on militant extremism.
A senior State Department official said Kerry would chair annual strategic talks between the two countries during the visit.
“The secretary’s engagement will be very critical to advancing our shared fight against militant extremism,” the official, who asked to remain anonymous, said. Kerry will also meet Prime Minister Sharif, according to a statement.
Schools across Pakistan, including the one in Peshawar, reopened on Monday after an extended break following the December massacre, as students and parents expressed defiance and apprehension at returning.
There have been a series of Pakistani airstrikes in the restive northwest, a hiding place for different regional militant groups, in the wake of the attack which Islamabad has described as its equivalent of the September 11, 2001 assault.
The State Department official said there was an “intensifying conversation on Pakistani counter-terrorism operations in North Waziristan and elsewhere” following the attack.
While there has been good cooperation in the fight against Al-Qaeda militants, the US wants to “ensure that actions are met with a real and sustained effort to constrain the ability” of other groups such as the Haqqani Network, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — who were responsible the school attack — and the Afghan Taliban.
A weekend online video purportedly showed dozens of former militants of the Pakistani Taliban pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group, which has seized a swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria.
The video raised the spectre of the IS group tapping support within Pakistan and Afghanistan, two nations with dozens of militant groups.
Washington has pressed Islamabad for years to wipe out the militant sanctuaries in lawless tribal areas such as North Waziristan, which have been used to launch attacks on NATO forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Many believe Pakistan’s security services see the Haqqanis as an “asset” and maintain close links with them. One senior US official once described them as a “veritable arm” of the country’s ISI spy agency.
– ‘Credit due’ –
“We’ll be talking about the elimination and not distinguishing between any terrorist groups,” the official said.
“It’s obviously no secret that the US has pushed Pakistan to do far more on counter-terrorism.”
“But I also think that the government of Pakistan deserves credit for moving pretty decisively both after Peshawar and in the actions it has undertaken in North Waziristan,” the official said.
Kerry also wanted to discuss ways to improve Afghan-Pakistani ties as well as reconciliation efforts with Taliban militants in each country.
Recent violence along the border in Kashmir between India and Pakistan would also be high on the agenda.
Kerry arrived after a short visit to India, where he attended an investment conference in the western state of Gujarat alongside new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.