Islamabad key to deadly puzzle

Greg Sheridan
The centre is Pakistan. The source, the solution, the villains, the heroes, the beginning, and perhaps the end, of this latest terrorist challenge to civilised life all come from Pakistan. Most of the young men alleged to be at the centre of the terrorist plot are British-born of Pakistani origin. They co-ordinated their actions with terrorist groups in Pakistan. Al-Qa'ida itself established its terrorist training camps, and plotted and controlled the attack on New York's twin towers, under the patronage of the Pakistan-backed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Lashkar-e-Toiba, the al-Qa'ida-affiliated terrorist group that has made attempts to kill Australians on the Australian mainland, is Pakistan-based.

And yet it was intelligence co-operation from Pakistani authorities that enabled the British to foil this latest terror plot. Pakistan is the pivotal nation. It is the only Muslim nation that undoubtedly possesses nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency has testified that the father of the Pakistan bomb, AQKhan, passed nuclear warhead designs to Iran. Recently, Pakistan's military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, has lost a lot of credit in Washington because elements of Pakistan's notorious Inter Services Intelligence agency are involved with the resurgence of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, a resurgence that directly threatens Australian soldiers about to be deployed there. And yet John Howard declared last year: "Pakistan is a key ally for Australia in the war on terror and has played a pivotal role in efforts to dismantle global terrorist networks such as al-Qa'ida." So is Pakistan friend or foe, part of the problem or part of the solution? The answer, of course, is that it is both.

As EMForster might have put it, Pakistan is both a mystery and a muddle. Its Government has undoubtedly taken some real action against terrorists. After 9/11, it abandoned the Taliban in Afghanistan and assisted the US military in destroying that government. This year, it has arrested more than 1000 extremists. It is slowly implementing plans to force its 15,000 Islamist schools to register with the Government and implement a national curriculum. Its Government is monitoring the sermons preached in mosques at Friday prayers. It has sent its army into its wild northern tribal provinces to re-establish Government control in areas that have long given sanctuary to both Taliban and al-Qa'ida figures alike. Howard's words were, in fact, part of a Washington-led effort to keep Pakistan in the camp of the good guys. But the evidence that the Pakistani Government is spreading its bets on terrorism is overwhelming. It continues to support Kashmiri and other Islamist terrorism against India. This support cannot be isolated from the wider war on terror. LeT began as a Kashmiri group but has become one of the most violent and formidable of terrorist groups.

Pakistan was slow to outlaw LeT and when it finally did so the LeT leaders were not arrested. LeT front charities, outlawed in the US and declared by the UN to be terrorist organisations, operate with impunity in Pakistan. Moreover, while Musharraf has made a strategic play with the West, he either cannot or will not influence his own society in that direction. Pakistani education remains replete with attacks on the West, Jews, Hindus and Christians. Pakistani Islam was traditionally moderate. Its Islamist parties never received many votes. But Musharraf has all but destroyed the traditional, secular, democratic parties of Pakistan and he himself relies increasingly, in Pakistan's tame-cat parliament, on the overtly Islamist parties. Pakistani society has moved in a more radical Islamist direction at the same time as its Government has apparently moved towards the West.

The army remains committed to the exercise of state power and has a well-established succession plan should anything happen to Musharraf. But at the junior and middle levels, certainly up to the ranks of the colonels, there is an increasing Islamisation of the Pakistani army. Terrorists have tried to assassinate Musharraf. That surely establishes that he is their enemy. But he was a pivotal figure in the army during the days that it created the Taliban and sponsored all manner of murderous terrorists aimed at India. Musharraf has promised a return to democracy, but given no sign of vacating power. His own political identity is as multi-faceted, as confused and perhaps as fluid as Pakistan's itself. It is much better for the West to have Pakistan as a friend than an enemy. But how good a friend is itin reality? Why is it that so many terrorists, and so much terrorist ideology, and so much terrorist capability, ultimately comes from Pakistan? It's a mystery, and a muddle, and a deadly, deadly puzzle.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20100568-601,00.html