Rethinking Islam with Sultan Shahin

War on Terror
18 Oct 2010, NewAgeIslam.Com
Pak A catch- 22 In Obama’s War

General Jim Jones, the National Security Advisor who resigned recently, is quoted as telling President Asif Zardari: “If, God forbid, Shahzad’s SUV had blown up in Times Square, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The president [ Obama] would be forced to do things that Pakistan would not like… No one will be able to stop the response and consequences.

This is not a threat, just a statement of political fact.” Apparently, in such an event, the US has drawn up plans to bomb 150 “terrorist centres” in Pakistan. -- By Najam Sethi

Pak A catch- 22 In Obama’s War

By Najam Sethi

BOB Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars has created a stir in Pakistan. Its message is loud and clear: the US- Pak “strategic relationship” could get unstuck or even unravel dangerously if the American mission in Afghanistan is thwarted, or if there is a terrorist strike in the US whose footsteps can be traced to Pakistan.

General Jim Jones, the National Security Advisor who resigned recently, is quoted as telling President Asif Zardari: “If, God forbid, Shahzad’s SUV had blown up in Times Square, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The president [ Obama] would be forced to do things that Pakistan would not like… No one will be able to stop the response and consequences.

This is not a threat, just a statement of political fact.” Apparently, in such an event, the US has drawn up plans to bomb 150 “terrorist centres” in Pakistan.

Considering the Pakistani response to the recent cross border incident when US choppers strayed into Waziristan and accidentally shot down three Pakistani paratroopers — nearly 100 NATO container- trucks were burnt down and the supply line from Karachi to Afghanistan ( which indispensably accounts for 75 per cent of all American supplies to its troops in Afghanistan) was shut down for ten days in Pakistan — the blowback of an American attack on Pakistan would be cataclysmic for the region.

President Obama says: “Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan. We're in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That's why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border. .. These are the three core elements of our strategy: a military effort to create the conditions for a transition; a civilian surge that reinforces positive action; and an effective partnership with Pakistan.” But this should be supplemented by the prevailing view in the American intelligence community noted by Woodward: “ The consensus inside the intelligence community was that Afghanistan would not get straightened out until there was a stable relationship between Pakistan and India. A more mature and less combustible relationship between the two long time adversaries was more important than building Afghanistan”. Apparently, General Jones thought that “[ General Ashfaq ] Kayani had the power to deliver, but he refused to do much.

Nobody could tell him otherwise. The bottom line was depressing: This had been a charade.” Indeed, when he told General Kayani the clock was starting to tick, “ Kayani would not budge very much. He had other concerns. ‘ I’ll be the first to admit, I’m India- centric,’ said General Kayani. It may be noted for the record that General Kayani has seized control over foreign policy from the Zardari government and has reversed former President General Pervez Musharraf’s normalisation process with India. Indeed, far from searching for out- of- the box solutions to Kashmir like his predecessor, General Kayani has ordered the foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, to revert to Pakistan’s old UN position of a plebiscite on Kashmir.

More critically, he has committed Pakistan to an arms race with India by announcing that “ it is India’s military capability and not its intentions at any time that matter in the final analysis”.

FINALLY, according to Woodward, “General Jones and his staff debated whether they should worry more about Pakistan or Afghanistan. Several members of his staff said the chief problem was Pakistan — Zardari’s political vulnerability, the continuing dominance of the country’s military- intelligence complex, its nuclear weapons, the persistent presence of Al- Qaeda training camps in the ungoverned regions, and the possibility of a misstep with the CIA drone attacks that could dramatically shift the political calculus.” So there we have it.

The US is losing the war in Afghanistan and increasingly alleging that the Pakistan army’s obsession with India, its dysfunctional civilian government and its anti- American society are standing in the way. The irony is that all three elements of state and society in Pakistan are desperately hooked on US aid and hardware.

Any major disruption in this “ strategic relationship” by witting or unwitting state or non- state actors on either side could unleash havoc in Pakistan by triggering civil unrest, separatism and foreign intervention.

In a recent article titled “ Pakistan is not America’s Enemy”, Ryan Crocker, the former US ambassador to Pakistan, whose career ended on a high note after a stint in Iraq, perceptively commented on President Obama’s view that the “ cancer is in Pakistan”. He suggests four steps to improve the deteriorating US- Pak relationship: “ First, the U. S. should appreciate Pakistan's challenges and support its government in dealing with them… Second, the U. S. should not carry out cross- border military actions… Third, with Pakistan's government ( as with Afghanistan's), the US must be private in its criticism and public in its support… Fourth, any talks between the U. S. or Afghanistan and the Taliban must be transparent to the Pakistanis.” This is as good as it can get. Mr Crocker concludes: “The U. S. can better work with Pakistan if we improve our understanding of history: Given its rivalry with India and its organic disunity, which dates back to its founding, Pakistan fears for its basic survival. The country has always had a difficult relationship with Afghanistan, not least because in the 19th century the British deliberately drew the Pakistani- Afghan border, the so- called Durand Line, in order to divide the Pashtun people.

Today Pashtuns make up Afghanistan's largest community, but there are more Pashtuns in Pakistan.” The two critical words for Pakistan’s consideration are “ organic disunity” and “ fear for its basic survival”. The first is palpable enough: the nation, state and society are more fissured today than ever before. But the second factor is a consequence of the first factor rather than a cause of it.

THE irony is that if fear of India was a real and relevant factor in the early years of Pakistan, since the 1960s, it has been religiously “ manufactured” and “ consciously imagined” by the Pakistan army as a dominant element of the national security narrative in Pakistan.

Herein lies the basic fallacy at the heart of the Af- Pak debate in which it is claimed that “ Pakistan's insecurity vis- a- vis India compels it to stake a major role in Afghanistan.” In fact, it is the Pakistan army's Corporate and Political Ambitions that propagate India as a “ security threat” rather than the other way round! That is why an assertion of civilian supremacy over the military — through good governance, accountability and democracy rather than whimsical autocracy— would set Pakistan right in more ways than one.

The writer is the editor of the Friday Times

Source: Mail Today

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