About time someone stood up:)
Shireen M Mazari
"The writer is Director General of the
Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad
It seems that Pakistan’s strange tolerance of abuse heaped on it from external sources continues to make it a favourite whipping boy for all and sundry. The US, in its growing frustration in Afghanistan and its erroneous policy of sidelining the Pushtuns, continues to face armed challenge in that country. As the challenge continues from a new coalescing of Pushtuns of various hues, Pakistan is accused baselessly of harbouring or lending support to the so-called terrorists. This accusation ignores the massive help Pakistan has given to the US at multiple levels, which has allowed the latter to capture many of the al-Qaeda members.
Instead, what has the US done in relation to Pakistan? It continues to call on Pakistan to “do more” for the war on terrorism, but allows India to have access to state-of-the-art weapon systems that directly destabilise the strategic balance in South Asia. It constantly pressurises Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir and the so-called “cross-border infiltrations” but it refuses to ask India why it is so loathe to have international observers along the LoC for monitoring purposes to establish the veracity or otherwise of Indian accusations against Pakistan. The State Department and US NGOs are quick to condemn human rights abuses in Pakistan by non-state actors, but there is a strange silence on the Gujarat massacres in which the Modi government has been found culpable.
The latest absurdity of the US policy in South Asia has come from Ms Christina Rocca on her visit to India where she obviously was vulnerable to Indian charms and made an unwarranted remark, once again attacking Pakistan on the LoC infiltration issue. Why she felt the need to do so in India can only be conjectured, but her silence on Gujarat — rather her efforts to defend the Modi government earlier on 20 March 2003, before the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee — was revealing of the great level of tolerance the US has for Indian abuse of human rights and other shenanigans. Perhaps the Indian Supreme Court’s strong censure of the Modi government may awaken a greater sense of fair play in Ms Rocca. But then Condoleeza Rice also defended the record of the BJP government when she was asked by the Indian newspaper The Hindu why the US had “not been more forthcoming in its criticism” of the Gujarat massacre. Her response was that the BJP government was “leading India well, and it will do the right thing.”
Nor is this all the affront Pakistan has to suffer while it acts as a frontline state once again for the US — this time in its war on terrorism. US intelligence documents, produced by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), declassified in a censored version last week, accuse Pakistan of helping al-Qaeda in the early nineties. In fact, they try to delink Pakistan from the ISI and accuse the latter of helping al-Qaeda! As one Afghan watcher, Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, told AFP, this report is “hilarious”. According to him, “when the jihad was going on (against the Soviets), US airlines used to offer 50 percent rebate to Arabs who would volunteer to participate in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan.” The US obviously feels that it can whitewash its own role in the encouragement of bin Laden and the Taliban by simply lashing out at Pakistan once again and the ISI in particular because these are easy targets — given our penchant for accepting abuse from outsiders with a totally inexplicable equanimity. It would be far more useful for the US to come clean on its own role in the creation and support of bin Laden’s network and the Taliban’s rise to power. After all, Mr Khalilzad himself was negotiating with the Taliban on behalf of UNOCOL (which, according to some sources, was provided the relevant data by the CIA) on the pipeline issue at one time when the US saw nothing drastically wrong with the Taliban.
Nor is this all the abuse being heaped on Pakistan by the US and some of its allies. Individual Pakistanis are constantly being accused of clandestine weapons and spares purchases and often the Pakistan government is accused of being an abettor in such transactions. Yet, there is no censure of India despite the fact that India was in league with the Saddam regime for years in terms of scientific cooperation. Nor has the US made a noise about the FBI’s capture of a group of Indians, led by Hemant Lakhani, who were selling 50 shoulder-held Russian surface-to-air missiles — the Igla — to be used against a commercial airliner. Imagine how the American and European press would have gone to town if this group of arms merchants were Muslims — especially Pakistani!
Connections would have been made to officialdom and the state of Pakistan would have somehow been found guilty and censured! But because Mr Lakhani happens to be Indian, there is an acceptable degree of silence on this count.
Worse still, as Iran’s nuclear programme has come under international scrutiny, once again Pakistan is being targeted as a supplier of uranium enrichment technology to Tehran! This is truly absurd since the CIA itself, in a report to Congress last year, named Russia, China, North Korea and Europe as the mainstay of Iran’s nuclear development. Pakistan, during the period in question, was having an extremely troubled relationship with Iran. But Pakistan’s big neighbour and the US’s strategic ally, India was developing extremely cooperative relations with Iran on all fronts. And we need to remember that India and Russia have a long history of nuclear and missile cooperation — and that Russia has been the main developer of Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programmes. In any event, India has a pilot enrichment plant at Trombay as well as an uranium enrichment facility at Mysore — both based on gas centrifuge technology. India also has an agreement with Iran for collaboration in the field of science and technology. In fact, in the early 90s there were rumours that India had also offered to give Iran a Candu type reactor. So if any state could have helped Iran on uranium enrichment, the evidence points to India. But can the US muster the will to challenge India on this count, instead of, as usual, targeting Pakistan.
Of course, Iran would not have become a party to the NPT if it had nuclear weapons ambitions to start off with — after all, when Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran, his government cancelled a number of contracts for nuclear reactors and rolled back on Iran’s nuclear programme. So what has driven the Iranian state to change this policy — if it has changed? Also, if Iran is going the uranium enrichment route, it could also acquire the basic knowledge from open publications such as a 1983 SIPRI publication on uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons proliferation which had detailed information and pictures as well. Perhaps it is time the IAEA became true to its own agenda and seriously examined the Israeli nuclear programme which has no checks on it. The revelations would make for interesting reading — especially within the context of states that helped Israel acquire its clandestine nuclear capability.
As for Pakistan, it is time to be more aggressive in countering all manner of absurd allegations levelled against the state. As has been stated earlier in these columns, enough is enough. If we are to be allies in the war on terrorism, there must be an end to accusations and suspicions. Otherwise, it may be time to hold back. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain — especially our sense of national dignity. We are no more or less responsible for the ills of the world today than other states — and certainly not as guilty as the major players, both regionally and globally. As for asserting our national dignity — this is essential if we are to function effectively within the comity of nations today.