Pakistan and the “AfPak” strategy

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/pakistan-and-the-afpak-strategy

Shaun Gregory

The Pakistani army and state are seeking to find space for their own strategic interests in the region amid increasing pressure from the United States, says Shaun Gregory.

28 - 05 - 2009

The shape of the United States's new "AfPak" strategy is now clear. For Washington, the most serious problems posed by Afghanistan and Pakistan - the Taliban, al-Qaida, and associated tribal militants - arise from the Pashtun regions of both countries. Behind the rhetoric, the decision has therefore been taken to contain the violence to these areas. Shaun Gregory is professor in the department of peace studies at the University of Bradford, northern England, and head of the Pakistan Security Research Unit there. He is the author of Pakistan: Securing the Insecure State (Routledge, 2008)

The car-bombing targeted against police and intelligence headquarters in Lahore on 27 May 2009 which killed at least twenty-four people - the latest in a series of attacks on the city, including on Sri Lanka's cricket-team and a police academy in March - shows how difficult the task will be. This larger strategic effort in turn has three parts:

* using military force to push back and weaken the insurgents to the point they can be contained by the Afghan and Pakistan armies

* stepping up nation-building efforts to win the battle for people's hearts and minds

* empowering the respective state structures to manage their own affairs consistent with western interests.

On the Afghan side of the border the implementation of this policy is led by the United States. The combination of the military "surge" by Nato and the International Security Assistance force (Isaf), and the estimated 500,000 foreigners present in Afghanistan in nation-building roles, holds out the prospect of meaningful progress.

On the Pakistan side, however, the United States exists at one remove. The endemic insecurity revealed by the Lahore bomb (responsibility for which is claimed by Hakimullah Mehsud of the "Pakistan Taliban") indicates the scale of its task. Washington is reliant on implementing policy through the blunt tool of the Pakistan army - an army which does not share the US or Nato's strategic objectives for Afghanistan. On the contrary: for Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban remain the only players in the region able to advance its objectives: realising the end of the Hamid Karzai regime, forcing a significantly pro-Pakistan element into the Afghan government, and reversing (and in due course eliminating) growing Indian influence in Afghanistan.

The United States has therefore applied huge economic and military-aid pressure to push Pakistan's president (Asif Ali Zardari) and its chief-of-army-staff (General Ashfaq Kiyani) towards meaningful military operations in Pakistan's Pashtun areas - operations Zardari and Kiyani are now selling as an unambiguous commitment to rooting out the terrorists and militants. The central question which consequently arises is whether this does signal the decisive shift in Pakistani thinking that the US and western governments have been pressing for.

The lesson of Bajaur

A part of the answer to this can be found in the ruins of Bajaur, the northernmost agency of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). In the wake of the Marriott Hotel bomb-attack in Islamabad in September 2008, the Pakistani army launched military operations in Bajaur: the first serious and large-scale operations in the FATA.

The army, fearing casualties and uncertain of the loyalties of some of its soldiers, used air-strikes, helicopter-gunships, and artillery to pound militants' positions and to raze many villages and towns to the ground. In late February 2009, after more than five months of fighting, Major-General Tariq Khan helicoptered journalists to one such flattened town; there he declared that the Taliban had been defeated in Bajaur and that the rest of the FATA would be in Pakistan's hands by the end of 2009. Western diplomats, anxious to support Pakistani actions, heralded the holding of Bajaur as an important signal to militants elsewhere in the FATA and as a base from which the Pakistan army could expand operations against militant strongholds elsewhere in the agency (see "Has AfPak strategy led to civil war in Pakistan?", Times of India, 24 May 2009).

By late May 2009, three months later, the Pakistan military, from a few heavily fortified bases, continues to claim that it is winning its campaign. But in reality the army has not taken the offensive into other parts of the FATA; it has singularly failed to hold Bajaur; and the Taliban is back in de facto control of the agency.

The real measure of what has been achieved is the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced from the region by the fighting. They have paid the price of this army "success" with the destruction of their homes, businesses, schools and clinics; as a result many of them feel as much antipathy to the Pakistan army as they do to the Taliban. Moreover, in these three months Mullah Fazlullah's Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi (TNSM, a core part of the Pakistan Taliban) has consolidated its hold of the Swat district in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP); forced a "peace deal" with the Zardari government; and moved outwards from Swat into the Buner and Dir districts, thus moving closer to Islamabad and to the strategically important Karakoram highway (see Patrick Cockburn, "Where the Taliban roam", Independent, 6 May 2009).

These developments - an affront to the Pakistani state, and a threat to Chinese interests which flow along the Karakoram, and the source of intense US pressure - combined to force Islamabad once again to act. The military operations now unfolding in Buner, Dir and Swat bear all the hallmarks of the Bajaur operation: air-strikes, helicopter-gunships and artillery dominate; villages and towns are being destroyed; and the United Nations estimates that more than 1.3 million people are fleeing the violence.

When taken together with all those previously displaced in the FATA and NWFP, at least 2 million internally-displaced persons (IDPs) may be in search of shelter, clean water and food. A relatively small number of inadequate camps has been put together by the Pakistani state and the UN to deal with them; much more is needed.

Two key decisions

Against this background Pakistan is steadily approaching two critical moments of decision.

The first is that President Zardari has committed Pakistan to extending these military operations into the FATA. In particular this will mean incursions into North and South Waziristan, the stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP, another section of the Pakistan Taliban) and the base of Jalalluddin's Haqqani's "Afghan Taliban" network. This is also the area widely considered as "Al-Qaida Central". If this happens, it would signal a seismic shift in Pakistan's role in the "war on terror" and an equally seismic shift in its relationship with the Afghan Taliban (see "The Pakistan army and the Afghanistan war", 25 November 2008).

In conducting large-scale military operations against the TTP and al-Qaida and its associates in North and South Waziristan, the Pakistan army would be making a move it has singularly failed to make in the eight years of the "war on terror". It would also confound the widely disseminated view that the army has neither the capability nor the motivation to act against these groups. This notion has, arguably, already been punctured by the air-lifting of Pakistani commandos to the Peochar valley in Swat, reportedly to surround the leadership of Mullah Fazlullah's TNSM.

Many analysts of Pakistan have been dumbfounded to see confirmation that the Pakistan army and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency both knows exactly where these leaders are, and also has the means - without extensive US counterinsurgency training or re-equipment, which are not yet in place - to move against these groups. It begs the question why they did not do so years earlier.

Perhaps even more important, Pakistani army/ISI operations in the "Waziris" will inevitably mean confrontation with the Haqqani network - the Afghan Taliban group widely understood to have the closest links with the Pakistan army through the ISI. It is also known to be the group - in the person of Jalalluddin's son Sirajuddin - which carried out the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul on 7 July 2008. The Pakistani military cannot engage this group without the volte-face revision of its Afghan strategy.

The second critical (and interrelated) decision Pakistan faces - now being played out behind the scenes - is Pakistan's delayed private answer to the request being made by the United States to expand the US's unmanned "drone" operations into the Pashtun areas of northern Balochistan (to the south of the FATA and the NWFP). This area serves as a refuge for the Haqqani network, the TTP, and perhaps al-Qaida - a place of retreat in the event of any potential operations in the Waziris; but northern Balochistan is also the route of one of Nato's key logistic supply-lines.

Even more significant, the region is also the base of Mullah Omar and the Quetta shura - the "safe haven" from which Omar and the Afghan Taliban leadership have planned and organised the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan (with the tolerance or support of the Pakistan army and ISI, depending on the interpretation of the evidence).

A decision to expand the drone strikes into northern Balochistan (from where, at the CIA base at Shamsi, the drones in fact already mainly operate) would in effect give the United States freedom of the skies over the region. This would directly imperil the Quetta shura and the Afghan Taliban, who presently operate with impunity from this area.

Thus, if the Pakistanis do grant the US the right to extend the range of the drone strikes - even after allowing for the civilian casualties that often ensue, and the danger that the move would be widely seen as a further capitulation of Pakistani sovereignty to the United States - the results could be significant: enhancing US military effectiveness, allowing Nato to better protect its supply-lines, and weakening the Afghan Taliban (though, again, at the cost of Pakistan's own Afghan strategy).

In a vice

Pakistan cannot postpone indefinitely the two "crunch" moments: it must decide whether to expand its military operations into the rest of the FATA (above all in to the Waziris) and whether to allow the expansion of US drone operations into northern Balochistan. In this sense the dynamics unfolding in Buner, Dir and Swat - where things are not all going the Pakistan army's way despite its up-beat rhetoric - are simply the overture to the main performance the United States has come to require of the Pakistanis as their contribution to the "AfPak" strategy (see Anatol Lieven, "Pakistan's American problem", 6 May 2009).

This is undoubtedly a difficult period for the Pakistan army and ISI (whose own building felt the effects of the Lahore blast on 27 May). The Taliban's return to strength in Afghanistan, a weakening in Nato's resolve, and the element of desperation in the US "surge" strategy (in the sense that there will be few options if it fails) together have huge implications for the Pakistani army's calculus: the thinking in army headquarters must be that Pakistani objectives in Afghanistan are within reach only if US pressure can be borne, the Afghan Taliban can be protected, and the Pakistan Taliban contained.

In this tight position, the Pakistani army may - just - glimpse open sea. If the humanitarian situation were to deteriorate too severely in the FATA/NWFP, and international pressure for a cessation of the Pakistani assault grew as a result, this could provide a context for Pakistan to argue that it can no longer prosecute the war. This could in turn allowing it to ease the pressure from the US and abandon the commitment to an assault on North and South Waziristan.

Asif Ali Zardari and the Pakistani army could face unpopularity for precipitating a deeper humanitarian crisis in the FATA/NWFP at the US's behest - but this very situation could create space for them to continue to decline the expansion of US drone-strikes into northern Balochistan. The more the fragile political agreement in Pakistan in support of counterinsurgency operations frays, the more likely would be such an outcome. The Lahore bombing is another grenade launched into this delicate political and security picture. Pakistan's state will continue to play its reduced hand amid urgent and pressing circumstances.

A new world order

http://www.dawn.com/2008/10/13/ed.htm

By Rakesh Mani
IT is clear that we face unprecedented times. Unprecedented because there is no direct precedent, no past for what we see. The world is totally oriented towards the future. And whoever still dwells in the past doesn�t understand the future because the past is of full of prejudices, of commitments. It arrests us.

Today, the extent and pace of fundamental change is extraordinary. We wake up every morning to a new world. I like to think that the conflicts and crises we see raging are a sign that the world, as we know it, is pregnant and going through a painful labour. What we see and hear are the labour pains. Who knows how long this tortuous labour will last, but we can be sure that what emerges from this delivery will be a tomorrow that is profoundly different from today.

And it is for this tomorrow that we must endeavour, and devote our intellectual energies to dealing with the prospect of a very different future.

Modern society hinges not on the experience of the past but on risk-taking for the future. But all the expertise of the world hinges on what has happened, not what may happen. So perhaps it is more important to imagine than to remember. What are memories anyway? We barely remember that which was not right or not easy, but remember clearly all that was agreeable. Remembering is, in a way, conveniently forgetting.

Peace is indeed in our destiny. The question is how long it will take and how many victims it will claim. The history of land is besmirched with red; people have been fighting for centuries to either defend their lands or to extend them. But the minute the world�s focus shifted from land to science, what was there to fight about any more?

Armies cannot conquer wisdom. Customs cannot inspect a scientist�s thoughts. All that is vital for tomorrow is uncontrolled and free, making land and borders increasingly irrelevant. In countries today, it is of greater consequence to have more engineers per square kilometre than to have an extra square kilometre.

And our problems today, are they between nations � Arabs and Jews, India and Pakistan? Or instead a battle of generations, between an old age and a new age? The terrorists protest the influence of the new age, which they believe endangers their tradition. They consider modernity their enemy but, sooner or later, they will have to bend.

Yet opposing modernity and change is still protest, not terror. The problem begins when one tries to kill the future. As the opponents of modernity will soon discover, nobody can stop the future. One cannot continue to live by archaic traditions. Take attitudes toward women: if women lack equal rights, a nation will only be half a nation. Not only do you lose the women, you lose the children too because an uneducated woman cannot educate her children. This is a clash between generations, not nations. And I�m hopeful for the future, because today�s young are largely free from the shackles of the prejudice that encumbers the old.

Terror does not have a future, because terror has neither message nor vision. What hope or promise can it provide to the people? Terrorists fear the further development of the new age, but how long can they cling to the past and their outdated traditions? Progress will not cease and people will soon tire of them, that much is inevitable.

Grievances and protests have to be managed through dialogue. Traditional battles over land are inertia from the past and prolonging them is senseless. But war unifies nations, while peace divides them and gives rise to arguments about the price.

Yes, negotiations are difficult and peace is expensive but nothing is wiser than making a moral choice. The future is always in a minority, so to be accepted and popular go praise the past. If you want to serve the future, however, don�t be afraid of belonging to a minority.

Governments and administrations are becoming old, staid bureaucracies. They represent, all over, a fading age. The world of tomorrow will centre on global corporations that are devoid of armies. They will be based on creativity and goodwill and around countries that will form into geographic clusters.

Perhaps we can envision South Asia as one economic bloc. A common people sharing a common market, currency and heritage, with divisions having broken down in the face of economic cooperation.

I see tomorrow�s people living on two foundations: the heritage of our culture and values, and our skill with modernity. It�s an educational challenge, but the balance between authority and freedom is overwhelmingly in favour of freedom.

Today everything is global: the war on terror, global warming, the environment, financial markets, media. Governments and borders too will go global. This is the delivery we shall witness in our lifetimes. This is the future.

Rakesh Mani is a New York-based writer.

rakesh.mani@gmail.com

FEER(5/1) Time To Get Tough With Pakistan

   (From THE FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW)
  By Jeff M. Smith 

Back in 2007, commentators were sounding the alarm that Pakistan was approaching a precipice. A lot has changed in two years. Pakistan's problems then -- protesters clogging the streets of Islamabad demanding President Musharraf's resignation, and sporadic Taliban raids on coalition forces in Afghanistan -- were but a glimpse of the danger ahead. No one could have imagined the speed and intensity with which the Taliban and their allies have since spread east from their sanctuary in the Hindu Kush mountains to threaten an invasion of the Pakistani capital.

Pakistan's deepening disorder coincides with the release of the Obama administration's new "Af-Pak" strategy. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama's "new" approach is wholly inadequate -- at least as regards Pakistan. Its drafters have attempted to approach an intractable problem by marginally improving a strategy -- providing billions of dollars of aid -- that has proved ineffective for the better part of seven years. Part of this dissonance may be attributed to an insufficient appreciation of the gravity of the threat. Part is due to a poor understanding of the strategic priorities of the Pakistani state itself. After all, in the words of United States' Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, "If Afghanistan had the best government on earth, a drug-free culture and no corruption it would still be unstable if the situation in Pakistan remained as today."

Everyone is familiar with Pakistan's combustible mix of nuclear weapons, underhanded intelligence services and terrorist safe-havens. It's long been clear that al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban have been using Pakistani territory as a safe-haven to conduct attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan. But it was not until recently, with the rise of the Pakistani Taliban or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a young and zealous new army of Pakistani Pashtuns formed in 2005, that the Pakistani state has come under threat, presenting the U.S. with a foreign-policy challenge with no peer. The TTP has swarmed out of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and the "settled" valleys of Pakistan's east.

Former foot-soldiers from the Afghan civil war of the 1990s, they have invaded the Swat Valley and Buner Province (60 miles from Islamabad) in recent weeks, bringing them within reach of the Punjab-Pakistan's political, cultural and economic heartland, and the domain of its nuclear-weapons arsenal. A brazen attack on a police compound outside Lahore in March, only 20 miles from the Indian border, demonstrated that there is no limit to their reach within Pakistan. Analysts are particularly concerned that their eastward march could bring them in contact with the Kashmiri insurgent groups that operate out of Pakistan's northeast, such as Lashkar e-Taiba, infamous perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Islamabad's response to this "mortal" threat has been tepid -- and impotent to date. Several military offensives by the army have been repelled or ineffective (several thousand Pakistani soldiers have been killed) and a series of ill-conceived peace deals have only provided the Taliban more land and breathing space. Only the government has honored them. A series of tribal lashkars or local militias formed to oppose the Taliban have failed. The TTP have overturned the traditional tribal hierarchy, beheading tribal elders and granting mullahs unprecedented authority (in Pashtun culture, mullahs historically occupy the bottom of the social ladder). The group has destroyed centuries-old Sufi shrines, symbols of the moderate form of Islam traditionally practiced in Pakistan. They have declared open season on girls' schools and government sympathizers and jeopardized NATO's favored supply route to Afghanistan, where three quarters of the coalition's supplies pass.

Their successes have created ample breathing space for al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban to conduct operations with impunity: Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik recently broke with official denials and admitted that "10,000 foreign militants" had taken refuge in the tribal areas. Perhaps most worryingly, the TTP's young and zealous chief, Baitullah Mehsud, has threatened to take his jihad to the steps of the White House in an attack that will "amaze everyone in the world." Meanwhile, the Taliban has solidified its relationship with al Qaeda. What was once an uneasy truce has been transformed into an enduring partnership. Local Taliban commanders now jockey to host bin Laden in their newly liberated territory in Pakistan. "Like a brother [al Qaeda] can stay anywhere they want," announced Taliban spokesman Muslim Kahn from Swat Valley. "We will help them and protect them."

Several government leaders in the NWFP, headed by the secular Pashtun Awami National Party (ANP), have either capitulated to the TTP, taken to hiding or fled the country. The rest have been brutally murdered. Once thought of as a potential secular bulwark against the Taliban, the ANP is a defeated force. The acting ANP president, Haji Adeel, laments: "Our children were killed. The government had lost its writ. Schools [were] burnt and infrastructure destroyed . . . we [have] suffered great losses." Islamabad, however, insists the "peace deals" are working.

Finally, a dark shadow hangs over the slow disintegration of Pakistan. For apathy and negligence are not the military's only sins in this sad story. Insurmountable evidence points to complicity in the Taliban's resurgence from Pakistan's army and the directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The army chief of staff has been overheard referring to specific Taliban commanders as "strategic assets." The U.S. has intercepted calls from ISI officials tipping off Taliban militants to American tactics and air-strikes. Hamid Gul, former chief of the ISI, proudly roots on the Taliban from the sidelines.

Secretary of state Hillary Clinton has rightly charged the Pakistan government with "basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists." The question is, why? Why has Pakistan refused to take this existential challenge seriously? And why has the army maintained links to the Taliban and refused to confront them with force? We are familiar with the historic links between the Pakistan and the Taliban; the U.S. helped fostered them in the Afghan-Soviet war. But why now, when the Taliban have set their sights on their own patrons and brutally murdered thousands of Pakistani civilians and officers, would Pakistan resist confronting this terrorist menace?

It is certainly not due to a lack of capability, as Pakistani officials regularly claim. It's true that Pakistan has a 1,800-mile militarized border with a neighbor against which it has fought three wars. And defending this border does demand a great deal of the military's resources. However, Pakistan has the sixth largest army in the world, complete with advanced U.S. weapons systems and aircraft, nuclear arms, and a million men in active duty and reserve. It is not incapable of preparing a counterinsurgency campaign; it is unwilling. In any event, capability shortfalls can be filled with money, materials and training -- all of which the U.S. can provide in abundance. But the military has refused to devote sufficient troops or resources away from the "Hindu menace" to fight "America's war" against its Muslim countrymen, even if it costs them their country.

Thus, the lack of will is Pakistan's true deficiency and it derives from an ill-conceived and poorly understood strategic calculation. The Pakistani military is motivated to support -- or neglect confronting -- the Taliban by several fears. Analysts initially clung to the notion that Pakistan, fearing an Indian invasion from the east, looked upon Afghanistan as a source of crucial "strategic depth"; a friendly territory ideal both for guarding a strategic retreat and for launching a countervailing insurgency. As the Taliban have vividly demonstrated, Afghanistan's mountainous territory provides the ideal setting for asymmetric warfare.

However, the strategic depth motivation is but one of many. Pakistan's second impetus for maintaining links with the Taliban is history. History tells the military leadership that the U.S. will eventually leave Afghanistan and that neighboring powers and their proxies will rush to fill the vacuum, as they did after the Soviet-Afghan war. Pakistan wants to ensure that its proxy, the Taliban, is in an advantaged position vis-a-vis the Afghan allies of India, Iran, or Central Asia and Russia.

But Pakistan would appear to bear a heavy cost just to maintain a geopolitical edge in desolate Afghanistan. Indeed, the calculation only comes into focus when one understands that Pakistan fears Kabul as much as it does New Delhi. A strong government in Kabul poses a unique set of challenges for Pakistan. Foremost, it could challenge the Durand Line, the de facto Af-Pak border imposed by the British on a weak Afghan ruler in 1893. Subsequent governments in Kabul have refused to recognize the Durand Line and an assertive Afghan government could breathe life into old territorial claims.

A challenge to the line is also a symbol for the much bigger claim that Pakistan fears most: a bid for loyalty of the Pashtuns. Since independence Pakistan has battled sporadic claims from the Pashtun community to either join Afghanistan or establish their own independent "Pashtunistan." Islamabad views this ethnic nationalism as an existential challenge; a threat to the territorial integrity and basic foundation of its state. Of course, Pakistan is hypersensitive to ethnic nationalism, having lost half its land mass (now Bangladesh) in a traumatic 1971 war ignited by Bengali nationalism. Ever since, Islamabad has made it a national priority to maintain either a friendly government in Kabul (such as the Taliban) or to ensure Kabul was too weak to court the Pashtuns. For decades, the perpetually unstable Afghanistan obliged. With a strong Kabul, that situation might change. No less importantly, Pakistan fears an unfriendly government in Kabul will strongly ally with India. Islamabad is convinced New Delhi is working to encircle and destroy it.

If Pakistan's valleys are overrun with Taliban, and its military beholden to a destructive strategic paradigm, Pakistan's political space has been infected by an even more insidious disease. The country's mainstream political discourse all too often displays the same allergy to self-criticism and affection for denial, spin and ignorance made famous on the Arab street. When the Taliban level a marketplace full of innocent Pakistanis, an unconscionable number of Pakistanis -- in the media and in the market -- are inclined to finger America, India or Israel. Proud claims of responsibility from the Taliban are ignored or conveniently excluded from the nightly news. The less hysterical commentators, meanwhile, portray the casualties as victims of "America's war," and the public buys it.

The rot runs deep. A 2008 poll by Terror Free Tomorrow revealed that a majority of Pakistanis (52%) blame the U.S. for the Taliban's suicidal campaign against their country. Only 15% actually blamed the militants. Pakistani people, while still broadly moderate (they abhor attacks on civilians and strongly support democracy) have been so inculcated with religious, nationalist, and anti-Indian/American sentiment that they present themselves as easy prey. This phenomenon lies at the core of Pakistan's crippling inertia. It makes political leaders that try to cooperate with America, warm to India, criticize foolhardy peace deals, or rally support against the Taliban unpopular. It stunts the natural outrage that Pakistanis should have directed at their leaders by now.

A lack of political courage is not the politicians only sin. Part of the reason the Taliban has marched so easily into the villages of the east is that they claim to offer something the government has consistently neglected to provide its people: order and justice. The people of the NWFP do not want Taliban-style sharia law (they voted overwhelmingly for secular parties in the latest election), but they are distraught by the corruption of officials, the lack of authority and the ineptness of the judicial system.

The military is equally culpable. Listen to an address from Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani to the top military brass and you will strain to hear the Taliban or al Qaeda mentioned once. What you will get in abundance, however, are vague and ominous warnings about "foreign threats," "those who seek to weaken our state" and the need to "safeguard our borders at all costs." It takes a seasoned analyst to decipher whether these ambiguous warnings refer to the U.S. or the Taliban; India or al Qaeda. His audience draws their own conclusions.

The only voices of reason emerge from distant corners of Pakistan's courageous and liberal media. Unfortunately, the random injections of sanity have proved inadequate to substantively affect the debate. Among the major political parties only Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), a regional party in Sindh, have raised serious alarm over the Talibanization of the country. The former coalition allies of President Pervez Musharraf, with a tainted history of their own, have at least insisted they will never accept the Talibanization of their country and have criticized Pakistan's leaders for appeasement.

In sharp contrast, the silence of the two mainstream political parties, the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has been breathtaking. They are too busy engaged in petty political squabbles or too fearful of raising the Islamists' ire to bring attention to the systematic destruction of their country. Their strategy to-date has been to ignore the problem. President Asif Ali Zardari, the most outspoken voice against extremism, has been politically neutered; a "pawn" of the U.S. Meanwhile, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, undoubtedly the country's most popular national politician, was forced after months of silence to comment on the Taliban's spreading invasion. His bold prescription? "We've got to avoid that situation." His tactics? Engage in dialogue with militants.

Politically, the Obama administration has made great strides toward recognizing the magnitude of the challenges in Pakistan. Unfortunately, this has not yet translated to the policy realm. The core of Mr. Obama's new strategy is to attach strict conditionality to the substantial military and civilian aid the U.S. provides Pakistan each year. If the arrangement ensures that aid is actually directed toward antiterrorism programs and productive civilian projects (it has not in the past), President Obama can claim a victory.

In the grand picture, however, accounting for aid is a small battle in a large war. As we have seen, the military's problems are not primarily material; they are psychological. On the civilian side, aid destined for the FATA may, in time, incrementally alleviate the misery of the average Pakistani, but economic needs have never driven the spread of the Taliban and al Qaeda's ideology. The motivations and goals of these movements are religious, political and ideological, not economic. They wish to repel the crusaders, punish the apostates, and bring Pakistan and the world under the rule of God's law, the sharia.

Aid in this case is a hammer without a nail. Not that the Pakistani state doesn't require financial assistance; its economy is in dire straits and cannot be allowed to collapse. But as a tool to motivate the army or confront the jihadists, aid simply will not suffice. And in fact, rather than granting the Obama administration new leverage, the aid package is already generating a backlash within Pakistan. Officials in Islamabad have balked at the demand for accountability, insisting they will not accept aid with any restrictions. Prime Minister Yousef Gilani has said "aid with strings attached would fail to generate the desired goodwill and results in Pakistan."

Notably, one area where a focused and substantive aid package could provide utility is in education. The most worrying aspect of the rise of the Taliban is not Washington's flagging efforts to patch each new wound, but their inability to halt the poison spreading unseen from within. Within Pakistan today there are perhaps more radical preachers staffing more madrassas and poisoning more young minds than at any time or place in history.

If Washington is to reverse Pakistan's descent into chaos, it will have to change the military's strategic calculation and generate better performance out of Pakistan's political leadership. Diplomatic and monetary incentives have failed, so the Obama administration must be prepared to broaden its policy horizons. It can begin with juicier carrots.

Recognizing what Pakistan wants and fears from Afghanistan is the key to generating a change in its policy toward the Taliban. Thus, engaging Kabul and Islamabad in a constructive dialogue about long-neglected issues, such as the Durand Line and Pashtun nationalism, could go a way toward allaying the army's fears about a strong Afghanistan. For Pakistan to truly abandon the Taliban and its allies it must view Afghanistan as a partner rather than a threat. Guarantees from Kabul that it will not challenge Pakistan's territorial borders, legally or subversively, could reap substantial benefits. The U.S. should also press for a complimentary dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad to craft an arrangement where both sides agree to a level of transparency about their activities in Afghanistan. Both processes would require intensive engagement and involvement from the U.S., but at the moment Washington should have no higher priority. Several other incentives, if implemented carefully, could also help entice Pakistan: access to more advanced military equipment, the expansion of military-to-military and cultural exchanges, and easing restrictions on crosscountry travel.

Sharpening America's stick will prove more challenging; it's not a policy familiar to Washington, and it's unclear how Pakistan will respond. Drastic times, however, call for drastic measures. If the Pakistani military continues to demonstrate a lack of will in confronting the Taliban and hunting down al Qaeda, America should threaten to cut off aid. All of it. The army is concerned most with regime survival and the vulnerabilities exposed by the global economic crisis quickly become points of leverage for a patron. There is a precedent: America imposed sharp sanctions on Pakistan in the 1990s for testing a nuclear weapon, a sin easily eclipsed today by its acquiescence in the rise of the Taliban.

America should be prepared to expand the use of the unmanned aerial drones within Pakistan. President Obama is, wisely, planning to do that anyway, but it should be clear to Pakistan that sovereignty is as much a responsibility as a right. If the army refuses to confront the enemies of America, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. will -- wherever they are. Likewise, if Pakistan continues to hamper efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, the U.S. should make clear that it will seek assistance from those that are willing to help. And the only U.S. ally with the will and capability to contribute sufficient troops and equipment is India. Nothing would make Pakistan more uncomfortable. But Pakistan in part supports the Taliban because it fears Indian influence in Afghanistan. America should reverse that calculation: supporting the Taliban will invite Indian influence while the Taliban's fall would forestall the need for Indian assistance.

Finally, America should make clear it will pursue, legally or militarily, anyone aiding or abetting the Taliban or al Qaeda -- regardless of affiliation. Washington's "look the other way" approach to the ISI's double dealing has lost its entertainment value. Instead, the U.S. needs to impress upon Pakistan that it is not, and will never be, America's adversary, but that anyone supporting extremism, whether draped in a turban or sporting shiny stars on his shoulder will be treated as an enemy.

For the past 60 years, one image has haunted U.S. policy makers above all others: the possibility of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of fanatics with the intent to use them. For the first time, ever, that specter skirts perilously close to being a reality.

---

Mr. Smith is a research fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.

Survival without military & mullah

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/16-survival-without-military-and-mullah-hs-07

On March 24 The Washington Post quoted a Centcom adviser as saying that Pakistan could collapse within six months and if that happened it would ‘dwarf all the crises in the world today’. The comment caused some disgust but not much alarm.

But then just eight weeks later, Prime Minister Gilani told parliament that the military campaign in Swat was launched not under US pressure but for ‘the survival of the country’. The Centcom adviser and the prime minister both were thus on the same grid regarding the threat to the existence of the country — only their perceptions of the outcome differed.

If the adviser is proven right, the collapse is just 19 weeks away. For the conclusion of the military campaign on which the prime minister has staked the survival of the country he is prepared to set no date. The Centcom forecast of imminent extinction is gloomy indeed. But the prime minister’s hope for survival pinned on a military victory hardly dispels the gloom. And to admit that only the military can save Pakistan from falling apart is a troubling thought. The high and still mounting cost in human terms however is enough to fill every citizen with shame and grief even if it does not give rise to apprehensions of a second secession.

After the East Pakistan experience no assurance really holds. Physical distance was then blamed for the defeat. Geography admittedly went against Pakistan. The commanders blamed the ‘logistics’ more than the widespread popular resentment and India’s armed intervention. But it was known from the very birth of the idea to its culmination that Pakistan would not be a consolidated or homogenous state. Reliance was placed, almost entirely, on a common religion to unite diverse races and regions into a single nation-state.

When after the last-minute rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan by Pundit Nehru (that plan was to keep India together with a centre administering only defence, foreign affairs and communications) partition became inevitable, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a great Muslim and a greater exponent of India’s unity, stuck to his conviction that it was ‘one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can unite areas which are geographically, economically, linguistically and culturally different. It is true that Islam sought to establish a society which transcends racial, linguistic, economic and political frontiers. History has however proved that after the first few decades or at the most after the first century, Islam was not able to unite all the Muslim countries on the basis of Islam alone.’

Ironically, at that very time Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a staunch opponent of partition, turned into a supporter hoping that Pakistan would not last and the seceding provinces would one day return to the fold of Mother India. The thrust of Azad’s argument against partition was that two areas separated by 1,000 miles could not form one viable country by ‘religious affinity’ alone. Perhaps he would have been less strident in his opposition if Pakistan were to be one compact area as it is today with lingual and cultural differences smoothly merging into each other.

However in the present situation of insurgency in vast swathes and ethnic discontent and religious strife all over, Azad’s view that a common religion alone does not make a viable state has since won many adherents. If it were to be so, the military would not have been in action as it is now in Malakand division and was in Balochistan more than once. Nor would there have been recurring martial laws and sectarian mayhem.

For national cohesion Pakistan’s successive civil and military regimes have relied, besides the bond of Islam, on passion for Kashmir, hatred of India, friendship with China, aid from America and, when the chips are down, on the armed forces. All these props are now falling apart. The Islamic sentiment, in the current conflict, is being invoked by the Barelvi group in support of the armed forces and by the Deobandis to justify militancy.

Passion for Kashmir is giving way to realism and hostility for India to envy for its democracy and spectacular economic growth. China no longer feels compelled to pamper Pakistan as it mends fences with India and Russia. And, finally, the sectarian colour given to the campaign against the Swat militants is sure to persuade the military commanders to tell the government to solve political problems politically and seek a fresh mandate from the people if it cannot.

Henceforth no party in Pakistan, it seems, would be able to win at the polls nor perpetuate itself in office by exploiting religious sentiments, nor by leaning on America or China, nor by inciting hatred against India nor by summoning the armed forces to its aid. Every political party shall have to rely on the support of the people at large and of the state institutions and the provinces by sharing benefits and responsibility with them. Most crucial is the place of the provinces in the federal power structure. At present, they are no more than subordinate units of the centre.

The imperial rulers and Indian statesmen led by Jinnah and Nehru had agreed in 1946 (though Nehru later retracted) that India could be held together by a central government exercising control only on defence, foreign affairs and communications. The stresses caused by global conflicts and the economy would now require the centre to have some more functions. The arch confederalist Mumtaz Bhutto is prepared to cede currency to the centre as well. Dr Mubashir Hasan’s independent commission is inclined to cede foreign trade, income tax, citizenship and immigration too.

Transfer of powers from the centre to the provinces is bound to be a troublesome exercise but is necessary to keep the country united which, we have learnt to our cost, religion, America and the army no longer can.

In the new dispensation, for the tribal areas and Balochistan the state should be more suzerain than sovereign in the conventional sense. That was the imperial way of working when things were better and, as a political agent in the 1960s, this writer can testify it worked even after independence. The all-important question of provincial autonomy however has to be settled first.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com

Analysis: Blast from the past —Rasul Bakhsh Rais

Here you have it. A convenient white wash job.
You have an erudite, articulate scholar at his best, spinning a "angle" favored by the Pakistanis..In the fog of war, there are several versions of truth. The charitable will call the article by Rasul Bakhsh Rais, the Pakistani version of truth..

Here is an alternate version of the Truth.
The message is given from the word go.. USA considered Communism to be the bigger evil than Islamization. USA backed by Pakistan armed and supported an Islamist insurgency with no serious consideration to the long-term consequences of the militarisation and empowerment of the multi-national Muslim groups that came to dominate the Afghan jihad.Islamist insurgency

The question one needs to ask Pakistan is who made the choice to support the Islamists. Although the US wanted to have some say in the distribution of aid to the Afghan rebels, Zia's Pakistan was adamant that they would be the decision maker as to which rebel army needed support, based on "being closer to the action". The Afghan rebels were a motley crew. You had the Monarchists supporting Daud, the Jamiat-e Islami (led by Ahmed Shah Massoud), which had a communitarian ideology based on Islamic law but was also considered moderately progressive. Supporting the nationalist parties in Afghanistan was not in Pakistan's interest as it did not want Afghanistan to stabilize and ask uncomfortable questions about the validity of the Durand Line ( the current border between Afghanistan and Pakistan which is disputed by Afghanistan.) From Pakistan's perspective, it made sense to back Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the Hezb-e-Islami a hardcore Islamic party who would back Pakistan's aims.

Only when Gulbuddin turnout to be utterly incompetent, was when Pakistan supported the Taliban in Kandahar and sent them arms and support which allowed them to conquer Afghanistan.

For a period of seven years since their origin, Pakistan's government had been the Taliban's main sponsor. It provided military equipment, recruiting assistance, training and tactical advice that enabled the band of village mullahs and their adherents to take control of Afghanistan. Officially Pakistan denied it was supporting the Taliban, but its support was substantial -- one year's aid (1997/1998) was an estimated US$30 million in wheat, diesel, petroleum and kerosene fuel, and other supplies. The Taliban's influence in its neighbour Pakistan was deep. Its "unprecedented access" among Pakistan's lobbies and interest groups enabled it "to play off one lobby against another and extend their influence in Pakistan even further. At times they would defy" even the powerful ISI.

Closely tied with JUI party in Pakistan, the Taliban received manpower from Madrasahs in Pakistan’s border region. After a request for help from Mullah Omar in 1997, Maulana Samiul Haq shut down his 2500+ student madrassa and "sent his entire student" body hundreds of miles away to fight alongside the Taliban. The next year, the same religious leader helped persuade 12 madrassas in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province to shut down for one month and send 8000 students to provide reinforcements for the Taliban army in Afghanistan. The Taliban returned the favor, helping spread its ideology to parts of Pakistan. By 1998 some groups "along the Pashtun belt" were banning TV and videos, imposing Sharia punishments "such as stoning and amputation in defiance of the legal system, killing Pakistani Shia and forcing people, particularly women to adapt to the Taliban dress code and way of life." In December 1998 the Tehrik-i-Tuleba or Movement of Taliban in the Orakzai Agency ignored Pakistan’s legal process and publicly executed a murderer in front of 2000 spectators Taliban-style. They also promised to implement Taliban-style justice and ban TV, music and videos.In Quetta, Pashtun pro-Taliban groups "burned down cinema houses, shot video shop owners, smashed satellite dishes and drove women off the streets". In Kashmir Afghan Arabs from Afghanistan attempted to impose a "Wahhabi style dress code" banning jeans and jackets. "On 15 February 1999, they shot and wounded three Kashmiri cable television operators for relaying Western satellite broadcasts." As of early 2007, Taliban influence in Pakistan continues in conjunction with the Taliban insurgency. Citing a suicide bombing of a restaurant in Peshwar in retaliation for the arrest of a relative of Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, the Associated Press states "... in Pakistan's frontier regions, ... scores of people have been executed over the past two or three years apparently for being too aligned with the Pakistani government or America — allies in the U.S.-led war on terrorism."

Pakistan sowed the strategy of Islamization of the Afghan Freedom Struggle. Small wonder Pakistan is now reaping the whirlwind of its support strategy, as the Taliban virus spreads thru its veins.


Now read on for the " Pakistani Truth"

analysis: Blast from the past —Rasul Bakhsh Rais

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\05\12\story_12-5-2009_pg3_2

What is happening in the borderlands of Pakistan is blowback from the policies that we pursued in the second wave of the Cold War as an American ally and a front-line state against the former Soviet Union. According to American strategic thinking at that time, communists were the greatest enemies of humanity and a primary threat to the stability of the global system.

Islamists from all over the world were encouraged, trained, financed and supported in the war against the Soviets. The United States and Pakistan gave no serious consideration to the long-term consequences of supporting an Islamist insurgency and effects of the militarisation and empowerment of the multi-national Muslim groups that came to dominate the Afghan jihad.

The history of this conflict cannot be forgotten. We continue to deal with its repercussions in FATA and other areas of Pakistan and around the world. And it is for this reason that quite a few leaders and commentators in Pakistan questioned our support to the US-led war on terror. These questions were not about the morality or legality of the required actions, but how dangerous and difficult it would be to comply with an unending list of unreasonable American demands.

Even after close cooperation with the US, American leaders have continued to doubt our commitment and sincerity as an ally, and continually point fingers at us for the resurrection of the Taliban insurgency. Given this attitude, would the Americans have accepted and respected our neutrality? Not really.

In national fury and frustration, the Americans lost sight of some bitter realities of asymmetric conflict. The lessons learnt from Vietnam and the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan did not figure prominently in their assessments. They had a new enemy now — political, militant Islam; more immediately visible in the form of Al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors. They conveniently forgot about the long patch of Afghan history during which they had aligned themselves with these very Islamist forces. Hence this new adversary had its genesis in America’s own anti-communist strategy, and also in the many wrongs that it had committed against the Arabs and Palestinians in support of Israel.

Pakistan and the world understood the American reasons for going after the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. There was hardly any international outcry against the American invasion to oust them from power; rather there was great support for the military operation against the Taliban within and outside the region. There was, and still is, vast support for rebuilding Afghanistan as a secure, stable and peaceful nation.

But the degree of that support and goodwill for the US-led coalition is dwindling fast. Plenty of time, money and policy focus have been wasted on the wrong priorities, with greater focus on war than on the reconstruction of Afghan economy and state institutions.

The initial policy — winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans — has ended up in a mess that has generated widespread anti-American sentiment not only in Afghanistan but also across the Durand Line. This is clearly a loss for the US as it has failed to create a favourable impression and lost support among the local population.

Something has gone terribly wrong in the American approach to Afghanistan. US policymakers are not examining the failures and weaknesses of their framework. The ethnic lopsidedness of the power structure they have created in Afghanistan has alienated majority of the Pashtuns; their focus has remained keeping the Taliban on the Pakistani side of the border out of the conflict.

It has not been an easy for Pakistan to prevent Taliban movement into Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban also frequently enter our troubled zones along the border. These groups are bound by ethnic, religious and historical linkages, especially against foreign forces.

Pakistan’s border areas have been greatly influenced by the three cycles of war in the region: the war against the Soviets, the Afghan civil war and then the post-9/11 American-led occupation.

In this latest war, the US, in its efforts to sanitise Afghanistan of terrorists, tasked Pakistan to effectively control the border, and flush out Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan primarily employed the same strategy in the border regions that the US applied across the border, including a larger military presence (in some areas for the first time ever), capture of foreign and Pakistani terrorists, and military operations against militant hideouts.

Perhaps the successful stabilisation of Afghanistan would have positively contributed to Pakistani efforts in effectively controlling and governing the border. But contrary to their expectations, the US and its coalition partners faced tough resistance, which has been growing in ferocity every year.

One major flaw in the American strategy has been heavy reliance on guns and bombs, which is the same mistake that the Soviets had committed. By relying on the military component and not employing reconciliation tactics, the Americans have shown that they have learned nothing from Afghanistan’s history.

For Pakistan, this was not a controversial policy because its forces have often taken action against their own people and territory, something that runs against popular sentiment. The political and security costs of these operations have been horrendous. Not only has Pakistan lost over two thousand security personnel, but the entire Pashtun region, as deep as Swat, has been destabilised. Many Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border have become alienated and drifted back towards supporting the Taliban insurgency.

Pakistan attempted to reverse this trend by singing a peace accord with the tribes in Waziristan in September 2006, and then again with the Taliban in Swat in 2008 after elected governments took over. The deal promised peace and stability in return for cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of Pakistani forces. The Taliban, though, had other designs; they used peace agreements more as pauses to regroup and reorganise than to reintegrate into society peacefully.

There were many critics of the peace deals with the Taliban inside and outside Pakistan, but the elected provincial and federal governments wanted to give the strategy a chance. This was interpreted as surrender and a weakening of Pakistan’s resolve to stay the course in the war on terror. Subsequent events have proved the critics right.

This time around, public opinion has turned against the Taliban both in the insurgency-hit areas and in rest of the country. Another positive sign is that the major political parties are on the same page; there is growing realisation in the country that we cannot surrender anything to the armed groups or allow the Taliban to threaten the local population.

Winning this war remains a major challenge for the entire nation. With the evolving political consensus, we need to mobilise the society in support of national efforts to stabilise the country.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk