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| War on Terror | |
| 02 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
| ZARDARI HAS FAILED TO TAME ISI | |
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By Najam Sethi
The PPP Government's recent attempt to club the ISI with the IB and make both "accountable" to the unelected advisor to the interior ministry, Rehman Malik, was very clumsy. But it is neither surprising nor insignificant. Consider the choice of Malik for the job.
Malik was Benazir Bhutto's business partner and chief political advisor in negotiations with President Pervez Musharraf and the Bush administration during 2005- 07, and also after she returned to Pakistan. Since Zardari was stationed in New York for much of this time, he was out of the loop in London, Dubai and Washington. Accordingly, after Bhutto's demise, Malik became quite indispensable to Zardari for the sake of maintaining continuity with the key players. This explains why he is currently not just Zardari's chief of internal security and core interlocutor with the same set of players with whom he interacted during Bhutto's time — President Pervez Musharraf, COAS General Ashfaq Kayani ( then DG- ISI) and current DGISI General Nadeem Taj ( who assumed charge of political negotiations with Bhutto after General Kayani became army chief) — but also his point man for the " war on terror" in which he is constantly liaising with key US military and civilian officials, many of whom are also from the same pool of players during Bhutto's time in exile.
Zardari's ostensible reason for clubbing IB and ISI under Rehman's control together is "better coordination" of law and order and the war on terror. But this is really a euphemism for making the IB more efficient and simultaneously "taming" the ISI and " bringing it into line". In the PPP's two previous stints in power, despite handpicked men to lead it, the IB had failed to warn Bhutto of her impending sacking at the hands of two presidents, a "hostile" one in Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1990 and a "friendly" one in Farooq Leghari in 1996. In fact, the ISI's role on both occasions was anti- prime minister. Under DG General Hameed Gul, it actually destabilised and then tried to overthrow her in 1989 and then helped rig the general elections to make Nawaz Sharif prime minister, while under DG General Naseem Rana in 1996, it became a handmaiden of the army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, when he approved her sacking by Leghari. So, notwithstanding the ISI's non- interference in the general elections in 2008, which returned the PPP to power, Zardari's obsession and fear of the ISI is not unjustified. Indeed, even before her assassination, Bhutto had pointed the finger at " rogue elements" in the ISI and said they were out to get her.
Three new factors have now reinforced Zardari's compulsion to retool the ISI and bring it under civilian control. The first has to do with the PPP's strategic foreign policy perceptions that are different from the national security imperative of the ISI. In short, the PPP is a civilian party that wants liberal and secular policies at home and peace with its neighbours, especially India, while the ISI is predominantly a military institution ( 70 per cent of its staff comes from the military) which takes its ideological inspiration from the military and continues to molly- coddle religious parties and groups in the military's quest for " containing" India and " securing" Afghanistan. This issue dates back to 1989 when the ISI labelled Bhutto a "national security risk" for attempting to smoke the peace pipe with Rajiv Gandhi while today it is opposed to the PPP government's policy of visa and trade liberalisation with India without acceptable trade- offs on Kashmir, Siachen and other outstanding disputes.
The second factor is related to President Musharraf's political fate in the new civilian dispensation. The current DG, General Nadeem Taj, has served directly under President Musharraf since before the 1999 coup and was swiftly promoted and then handpicked by him for this job. Zardari obviously feels that when the civilian coalition tries to heave President Musharraf out of office, as it is now threatening to do, the ISI may be used by President Musharraf to thwart the government instead of lending a hand to it as required by law. Hence the government's "need" to get on with the job of taking the ISI in hand and retooling it. The third factor relates to the US intervention in Afghanistan. The ISI perceives a significant role for the Afghan Taliban in any political dispensation in Afghanistan as an integral element of the military's national security doctrine of both "securing" Afghanistan on its western border and " containing" India on its eastern border. The Indian role in President Hamid Karzai's Afghanistan assumes strategic significance in this context, no less than the American intervention which is aimed at eliminating the Taliban. The PPP, however, is less unsympathetic to the American goal because the blowback of "assetising the Taliban" is hugely destabilising for Pakistan's internal stability which is of direct relevance to the government. Without controlling the ISI, no government can expect to articulate and implement its own independent foreign policy.
Such issues were apparently discussed by Zardari with a couple of key aides about three months ago when the question of the appointment of a new DG- IB cropped up. The fact that a serving Grade 20 officer was promoted to a Grade 22 job and appointed DG- IB, instead of any known senior loyalist or professional from the police or bureaucracy, suggested that real leadership in the agency would be eventually exercised by someone else outside it. Much the same sort of political experience and compulsion lies behind the recent attempt to drag the ISI into the Interior Ministry. Of course, that is easier said than done, as we have seen. In fact, it is doubtful whether even a change of ISI command at the behest of the Prime Minister can impact on the fundamental outlook of the ISI in the short term. Nawaz Sharif, it may be recalled, handpicked General Javed Nasir to head the ISI in 1991- 93 and General Ziauddin Butt in 1999, but neither could save him from being ousted on both occasions.
Despite formally "reporting" to the Prime Minister, for all intents and purposes the ISI is a military institution wedded to the military's institutional outlook on national security and politics. All the military officers in it look to the army chief and not the Prime Minister or Defence Minister for their promotions and careers. Of course, this is very different from the position of reputed spook agencies in established democracies like the USA, UK, Israel and India where the military and all agencies are under effective civilian control.
But Pakistan is not such a democracy. Therefore, while it is absolutely correct to insist on civilian supremacy over the military in theory, in practice any attempt by our civilian leaders to change this umbilical relationship without a prior reform of the civil- military equation in the country is likely to rebound on them, as we have just seen. This imbalance is the result of 60 years of bad and irresponsible politics and can't be undone by snapping one's fingers. Far better, therefore, for the civilians to establish their credentials for responsible democracy and functional governance first over a period of time before embarking upon any overt anti- military adventure in the country. Certainly, such dim- witted administrative moves as the one we have just seen only serve to discredit the civilians instead of strengthening them in the eyes of the people and the media.
Najam Sethi is Editor in Chief, The Friday Times/ Daily Times/ Daily Aajkal Copyright Permission www.mailtoday.in |
Islam and the West 02 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com Will Bush Bully Maliki Into Backing Off a Withdrawal Timeline -- Again?
By Gareth Porter, IPS News.
Posted July 31, 2008.
Now is not the first time the Iraqi Prime Minister sought a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. Tools
WASHINGTON, Jul 28 (IPS) -- Many official and unofficial proponents of a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq are dismissing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's demand for a U.S. timeline for withdrawal as political posturing, assuming that he will abandon it under pressure.
But that demand was foreshadowed by an episode in June 2006 in which al-Maliki circulated a draft policy calling for negotiation of just such a withdrawal timetable and the George W. Bush administration had to intervene to force the prime minister to drop it.
The context of al-Maliki's earlier advocacy of a timetable for withdrawal was the serious Iraqi effort to negotiate an agreement with seven major Sunni armed groups that had begun under his predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari in early 2006. The main Sunni demand in those talks had been for a timetable for full withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Under the spur of those negotiations, al-Jaafari and Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaei had developed a plan for taking over security in all 18 provinces of Iraq from the United States by the end of 2007. During his first week as prime minister in late May, al-Maliki referred twice publicly to that plan.
At the same time al-Maliki began working on a draft "national reconciliation plan", which was in effect a road map to final agreement with the Sunni armed groups. The Sunday Times of London, which obtained a copy of the draft, reported Jun. 23, 2006 that it included the following language:
"We must agree on a time schedule to pull out the troops from Iraq, while at the same time building up the Iraqi forces that will guarantee Iraqi security, and this must be supported by a United Nations Security Council decision."
That formula, linking a withdrawal timetable with the build-up of Iraqi forces, was consistent with the position taken by Sunni armed groups in their previous talks with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, which was that the timetable for withdrawal would be "linked to the timescale necessary to rebuild Iraq's armed forces and security services". One of the Sunni commanders who had negotiated with Khalilzad described the resistance position in those words to the London-based Arabic-language Alsharq al Awsat in May 2006.
The Iraqi government draft was already completed when Bush arrived in Baghdad June 13 without any previous consultation with al-Maliki, giving the Iraqi leader five minutes' notice that Bush would be meeting him in person rather than by videoconference.
The al-Maliki cabinet sought to persuade Bush to go along with the withdrawal provision of the document. In his press conference upon returning, Bush conceded that Iraqi cabinet members in the meeting had repeatedly brought up the issue of reconciliation with the Sunni insurgents.
In fact, after Bush had left, Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, said he had asked Bush to agree to a timetable for withdrawal of all foreign forces. Then President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, released a statement of support for that request.
Nevertheless, Bush signalled his rejection of the Iraqi initiative in his June 14 press conference, deceitfully attributing his own rejection of a timetable to the Iraqi government. "And the willingness of some to say that if we're in power we'll withdraw on a set timetable concerns people in Iraq," Bush declared.
When the final version of the plan was released to the public June 25, the offending withdrawal timetable provision had disappeared. Bush was insisting that the al-Maliki government embrace the idea of a "conditions-based" U.S. troop withdrawal. Khalilzad gave an interview with Newsweek the week the final reconciliation plan was made public in which he referred to a "conditions-driven roadmap".
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius further revealed in a June 28 column that Khalilzad had told him that Gen. George Casey, then commander of the Multi-National Force -- Iraq, was going to meet with al-Maliki about the formation of a "joint U.S.-Iraqi committee" to decide on "the conditions related to a road map for an ultimate withdrawal of U.S. troops". Thus al-Maliki was being forced to agree to a negotiating body that symbolized a humiliating dictation by the occupying power to a client government.
The heavy pressure that had obviously been applied to al-Maliki on the issue during and after the Bush visit was resented by al-Maliki and al-Rubaie. The Iraqi rancor over that pressure was evident in the op-ed piece by al-Rubaei published in the Washington Post a week after Bush's visit.
Although the article did not refer directly to al-Maliki's reconciliation plan and its offer to negotiate a timetable for withdrawal, the very first line implied that the issue was uppermost in the Iraqi prime minister's mind. "There has been much talk about a withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops from Iraq," wrote al-Rubaie, "but no defined timeline has yet been set."
Al-Rubaei declared "Iraq's ambition to have full control of the country by the end of 2008". Although few readers understood the import of that statement, it was an indication that the al-Maliki regime was prepared to negotiate complete withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of 2008.
Then the national security adviser indicated that the government already had its own targets for the first two phases of foreign troop withdrawal: withdrawal of more than 30,000 troops to under 100,000 foreign troops by the end of 2006 and withdrawal of "most of the remaining troops" -- i.e., to less than 50,000 troops -- by end of the 2007.
The author explained why the "removal" of foreign troops was so important to the Iraqi government: it would "remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the resistance in the first place"; it would also "allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbours that have to date been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance …" Finally, al-Rubaie asserted, it would "legitimize the Iraqi government in the eyes of its own people."
He also took a carefully-worded shot at the Bush administration's actions in overruling the centrepiece of Iraq's reconciliation policy. "While Iraq is trying to gain independence from the United States," he wrote, "some influential foreign figures" were still "trying to spoon-feed our government and take a very proactive role in many key decisions."
The 2006 episode left a lasting imprint on both the Bush and al-Maliki regimes, which is still very much in evidence in the present conflict over a withdrawal timetable. The Bush White House continues to act as though it is confident that al-Maliki can be pressured to back down as he was forced to do before. And at least some of al-Maliki's determination to stand up to Bush in 2008 is related to the bitterness that he and al-Rubaie, among others, still feel over the way Bush humiliated them in 2006.
It appears that Bush is making the usual dominant power mistake in relations to al-Maliki. He may have been a pushover in mid-2006, but the circumstances have changed, in Iraq, in the U.S.-Iraq-Iran relations and in the United States. The al-Maliki regime now has much greater purchase to defy Bush than it had two years ago.
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Asadullah Syed
9:04 AM
Sultan Shahin
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