A very apt and thought-provoking editorial that all the red-blooded patriots should read.
Editorial: Learning from Musharraf?](http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\05\25\story_25-5-2007_pg3_1)
Talking to a foreign newspaper President General Pervez Musharraf has said that “Pakistan was the only country that had a military, political, developmental and administrative strategy to defeat extremism”, and that the West should “come and learn from us”. He added that “talks with the Taliban and other opposition may be necessary to bring stability to Afghanistan”. He said a number of other things too that must be carefully noted.
General Musharraf said that although Pakistan gave the Taliban diplomatic recognition, it did not create them. He also claimed that his “policy” towards the Taliban was worth following, achieved mostly through talking to the local powerbrokers. He insisted that the policy was successful in the tribal areas of Pakistan that are subject to Talibanisation. Perhaps unnecessarily, he also lambasted the West in general for its wrong-headedness on Afghanistan and invited it to accept his diagnosis of the problem.
But anyone who looks at the political landscape of Pakistan would be shocked by the “disconnect” achieved by General Musharraf between the reality and his own perception of it. He said Pakistan had a successful multi-pronged policy, but he should have added that it had no political consensus in the country on whose behalf he was speaking. His policy on dealing with the Taliban presents no scintillating example for the world to follow. If it was extremism he says he is fighting, then it has only increased since he began to talk about it. His assessment that the West knows nothing about the situation in the region is rash in the extreme and based on ignorance.
The American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq is similar in some ways. In both cases the forces they had attacked were isolated with the help of the other less dominant forces. Although the facts on the ground in Afghanistan were different from Iraq in many ways, it is easy to see that the Sunnis of Iraq and the Pushtun of Afghanistan could not be left out of the loop of negotiation and adjustment. The difference, to put it briefly, was that the Sunnis in Iraq were a minority suppressing a majority while the Taliban belonged to the majority ethnic population of Afghanistan.
There is no doubt that the ISAF-NATO forces in Afghanistan have to talk to the alienated Pushtuns at some point. If the Americans are delaying taking President Musharraf’s advice it is only because they have a Pushtun-led government in place whose election and prior acceptance by the Afghan people has been acknowledged by the world. The Kabul government is in trouble for various indigenous reasons, like a near total lack of familiarity with modern governance, and the attacks from across the Durand Line by the Taliban guerrillas in coordination with Al Qaeda. The situation is radically different from the one prevailing in Iraq.
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President Musharraf’s suggestion that ISAF-NATO should talk to the Taliban is greatly influenced by Pakistan’s own experience of “talking” to the Taliban and their acolytes in Pakistan’s tribal areas. One has to be completely enslaved to President Musharraf’s way of thinking to believe that he has achieved success through the “deals” he has made in Waziristan. **If this is “talking” then Kabul should be ready to lose territory as Pakistan has in the form of the “Islamic Republic” created by the Taliban in Waziristan.
** It is difficult to convince anyone in Pakistan that the country has lost territory by following the policy of President Musharraf. Unfortunately, state indoctrination convinces the Pakistanis of loss of territory on the Siachen glacier in the east more easily than the real territorial loss through the destruction of the writ of the state in the west. This policy has a corollary too which will make any military strategist quake in his shoes: the creeping Talibanisation in the settled areas whose waves are now washing up against the ramparts of Islamabad.**
** The genesis of the Taliban may be bedimmed by uncertain detail but Pakistan’s support to them in pursuit of its “death-wish” policy of strategic depth cannot be denied. In fact, in the fullness of time, more details in this regard will only serve to indict the military leaders who nurtured and promoted the Taliban. Much before “strategic depth” came to grief, these military leaders allowed the city of Karachi to be taken over repeatedly by the local “Taliban” trained in the seminaries there. Pakistan could not “deal” with the Taliban; it could only surrender to them. The seminaries that trained the Taliban leaders of Kandahar and prepared their minds were in Pakistan.**
How has General Musharraf dealt with his own situation? Has he talked to the political forces in Pakistan in his own case before recommending talks with the Taliban to the Americans? If Mr Karzai was extracted from the Pushtuns to set up the post-invasion government in Afghanistan, President Musharraf extracted the Muslim League government out of the old Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif to rule Pakistan. The other mainstream party that was in the field was the PPP. After the PMLQ was able to form a government after the 2002 election, the PPP and PMLN became the two mainstream parties in opposition. Has General Musharraf talked to them?
General Musharraf in fact did something that has distorted Pakistan’s politics and therefore its political future. He got together with the clerical alliance of the MMA and amended the Constitution to debar the top leaders of the two mainstream parties from taking part in elections. But after eight years in power, General Musharraf is virtually helpless in the face of political developments in Pakistan. The political forces he sought to weaken and destroy have shown resilience and are now well set to win the 2007 election if it is held fair and square, after which Pakistan will face a payback moment, all thanks to General Musharraf’s policy of “excluding” the political actors from national politics.
General Musharraf’s rule in Pakistan is fast becoming a cautionary tale. It began well and aroused a lot of hope for democracy in the country, but then declined into chaos simply because he refused to set right some of the flaws of governance that had made their appearance early in his tenure. Under the circumstances one can hardly recommend that his advice should be heeded. *