| War on Terror | |
| 24 Jul 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
| India at War: Mission Kabul must first target ISI | |
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By Inder Malhotra
SEVERAL significant developments — of which Senator Barack Obama's visit to Kabul is only one - have turned the spotlight on the 'Arc of Crisis' that extends from Iraq to Pakistan, via Iran and Afghanistan. Only one of these, the meeting on the Iranian nuclear issue at Geneva, at which a senior United States official came face to face with an Iranian delegation for the first time in nearly three decades, is positive, though the glimmer of hope it exudes is faint.
To be sure, Washington maintains that Douglas Burns, the US under-secretary of state, was at the meeting "only to listen," not to participate in the negotiations, hitherto left to the European Union and Iran, with the other four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany joining them. Yet there is no doubt that there has been a major change in American policy of not countenancing any contact with Iran until Tehran "suspended" nuclear enrichment, a condition unacceptable to the Iranians. Both sides have described Saturday's talks as "constructive" and agreed to "continue their interaction". America's presence at future meetings is not ruled out.
Since a quick breakthrough is clearly impossible, the continuation of talks may not seem great shakes. But, in fact, it is vitally significant. The US has obviously given up the folly of mounting a military attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure or of letting Israel do so. It was not purely coincidental that Iran, by test-firing medium and long-range missiles, had demonstrated its capacity to retaliate.
It is the Afghan-Pakistan border, especially Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), that is the nerve-centre of mounting trouble for not just America and NATO but also this country. The writ of the Pakistan government doesn't run there. The Taliban and Al Qaeda, enjoying sanctuaries and support from tribal chiefs, are able to launch the kind of suicidal attacks they did at the Indian embassy recently. Earlier, they had fought a pitched battle in an Afghan village with American and Afghan troops in which nine American soldiers were killed. Last month, more American troops were killed in Afghanistan than ever before. In fact, the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan is more than their fatal casualties in Iraq during the same month.
No wonder then that the Americans are at last willing to "investigate" Afghan President Hamid Karzai's lament that almost all suicide attacks (73 this year so far, against 137 in the whole of 2007) in his country are the handiwork of the Taliban, resurgent the second time around because of the sanctuaries they enjoy and the support they get in Pakistan's FATA, with the ISI's connivance. Whether the Bush administration would make any "determination" at all is anybody's guess. More important, Obama has once again asked for an augmentation of American troops in Afghanistan by at least 10,000. He is cognizant of the repeated warnings of American military commanders that the war on terror cannot be won until jihadi sanctuaries in Pakistan are eliminated.
This can be done either by Pakistan on its own or by the US, unilaterally, something America often threatens to do. Consequently, the situation is getting worse because of Pakistan's duplicity on the one hand, and America's dual and confused policy on the other. In the fist place, the US overlooked that while Pakistan was giving it some help in combating Al Qaeda, it was simultaneously assisting the defeated Taliban to regroup, reorganize and rearm. After discovering its grievous mistake, it began remonstrating with General Musharraf in private but went on praising him in public as a "key ally" in the fight against terror. The General was happy to hunt with the American hound and run with the jihadi hare. Today he is not in power, and the elected government is at odds with itself because of acute differences between the Pakistan People's Party-led cabinet and its coalition partner, Nawaz Sharif's Mulsim League(N). The Army also does not want to get mired in operations in tribal lands where tribal chiefs are ruling the roost and the Taliban and Al Qaeda have a free run of the place.
On completing 100 days in power, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani made the pro forma declaration that his government was "committed" to the war on terror, but would not tolerate any military action by a foreign power on its soil. The US and its Pakistani allies are thus locked in an impasse. It seems many Pakistanis believe that sooner or later the US would get tired in Afghanistan and quit, just as the Russians had done in 1989. But they don't perceive the difference in the two situations. The Russians had no reason to expect that the victors in the anti-Soviet jihad would blast bombs in Moscow or St. Petersburg. The Americans are painfully conscious that a precipitate withdrawal from Afghanistan would be disastrous for them as well as for the region. Today's jihadis apparently feel that having defeated one superpower in the past, they can defeat the surviving superpower too. If not brought to heel, they are bound to carry terrorism to the United States and Europe. What impact will all this have on US-Pakistan relations, including the billion-dollar-a-year US aid Islamabad gets as a reward for joining the war on terrorism, ought to be obvious.
The peril to this country should be even more obvious. As Ahmed Rashid, unquestionably the best expert on Afghanistan, says, Pakistan, especially its intelligence agencies, hate India's growing influence in Afghanistan. They would go to any length to harm both Afghanistan and India. Any number of Pakistani terrorist groups wedded to jihad, are working in close concert with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, under the tutelage of the ISI more often than not. They have been active in this country, especially Kashmir, in the past, and of late have stepped up their activities in Kashmir almost on a daily basis. Worse is bound to follow unless essential counter-measures are taken. National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan's warning of "retaliation" came not a day too soon. What needs to be watched is how his words would be translated into action.
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3:14 AM
Sultan Shahin
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