Re: Why does Pakistan still support Taliban?
Lest we in Pakistan saw the Musharraf-Singh Havana meeting as the start of the stalled dialogue process between Pakistan and India, the diatribes coming out from New Delhi post this meeting should make it clear how wrong we were – yet again!
** India is simply not interested in any serious conflict resolution dialogue and continues to use the opportunity for point scoring – both internally and abroad. In fact, there seems to be a new belligerency in New Delhi’s tone, with accusations against Pakistan and its ISI coming out fast and furious. **
** With such an approach, it hardly seems likely that there can be any rational dialogue with the Indians – unless we take dialogue to mean succumbing to Indian demands on how to “resolve” the outstanding conflicts. Perhaps that is what India is seeking to do with its aggressive rhetoric and accusations.**
Nor is India alone in this. It seems our conciliatory tone has been mistaken for an inherent psychological weakness, with all and sundry attacking the country and its institutions. The British have had the temerity to suggest we dismantle the ISI when it is their intelligence setup that has been hand in glove with internationally illegal activities such as aiding and abetting renditions and secret CIA abduction flights – to name just a few.
And what of the CIA itself? Surely if any agency deserves to be dismantled it is this institution which has had a consistent record of political murders and instigation of regime changes abroad even much before 9/11 – and which now seems to have carte blanche to do as it wishes across the globe.
** This is not to write in defense of our intelligence agency which is under fire, although it is only fair to point out a simple fact that this agency does not have an independent identity or structure since it comprises serving officers from the three services, who rotate through regular postings. So it is an integral part of the military bureaucracy and thus cannot function independently of this bureaucracy, although it may be a powerful segment of that setup. This may not fit the imagines of Pakistan’s detractors but this is the reality on the ground. **
In any case, the purpose presently is primarily to point out that the self-appointed guardians of political morality – that is, the US and UK have a far worse record so they should lead by example and dismantle their agencies guilty of all kinds of illegal and often murderous activities. In fact, the British officer who sought to write an “academic” discourse should first have focused on his own country’s intelligence setups before having the gall to suggest we dismantle ours. Perhaps he has forgotten that British imperialism is a thing of the distant past – recollection of which requires sending British troops as far away as the Malvinas (The Falklands to imperialists).
** As for the British government’s claims that their officer was simply doing an academic exercise, this seems to be a new approach to political interventionism with British and American establishment people writing “academic” discourses on how to restructure Muslim states and societies (recall “Blood Borders”) and what institutions should be dismantled in these countries.** There is a pattern emerging here that needs to be noted, especially since the British government has now taken upon itself to penalize even the thought processes of its Muslim citizens.
Coming back to the controversial work of Western intelligence agencies, why even that consistently high-moral-ground-adopting country, Canada, has now been found guilty of sending its own citizen to Syria to face imprisonment and torture for over a year simply because he was a Muslim of Syrian origin and suspected of having friends who had links with some Al Qaeda suspects. But of course the Canadians attempted to use the US to indulge in this mischief hoping to remain untainted. But the truth does surface eventually and this present Canadian government, obsessively loyal to the US, is now under fire domestically. That is why we should realize that detentions outside of the purview of the law and forced disappearances cause fear and eventually hatred within our own societies.
After all, the state has a whole body of law within which it can protect national interest and its citizens also from terrorism and other crimes – as well as to bring the guilty to book.
** Unfortunately, even as the state is tough on its own citizens here, it seems to have allowed itself to become the whipping boy for all the West’s failures in the war on terror. **Clearly, the assumption that the British would fare well in Afghanistan simply because historically they had had experience in that country, was an absurdity to begin with. Not only had the British never fared particularly well in that region unless they made deals, the new generations in the British Army certainly have no experience in that region to fall back on. Hence they are suffering severe losses, which they should have anticipated.
** Meanwhile, it is indeed an irony that after the US and British media, as well as the US government, subjected Pakistan to scathing criticism for its “deal” with its own tribal citizens, the British military has struck a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, in the face of their military failures.** Let us wait and see if the US media and politicians will be equally abusive of the British government and its military for making a deal with the Taliban. More rationally of course, this is a beginning which Pakistan has been suggesting for a while – that is, there is a real need to distinguish between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Should we now tell the British, “Told you so?”
Meanwhile, India continues to suffer from an “accuse Pakistan” disease so their accusations have almost no credibility here – the anti-Pakistan refrain is to be expected whenever something goes wrong in India. But look at Hamid Karzai. With almost no real power and a country which is still full of foreign military forces who take no orders from the Afghans, he has not only sustained an irrational bellicosity towards Pakistan – to which we are showing too much tolerance – he has also sought to interfere in our internal affairs. This he has done by declaring that he will restore the monthly stipend to our nationals – the FATA elders. This is the “revival of the old Kabul policy”. Well, if he is going to be openly hostile towards Pakistan, is it not time for us to make him aware of the limitations of his political sphere of action? We also need to begin fencing our international border with Afghanistan, wherever physically possible. Of course, given the US control over Afghanistan presently, clearly Mr.Karzai cannot be making his statements without support from the US.
** A****ll in all, it is time Pakistan adopted a more resolute approach with clear red lines of what it will tolerate from our allies and adversaries. The accommodation and tolerance of abuse of the Pakistani state and its institutions from outside should end even as the state develops a more accommodative approach to its own citizens. As for the foreign media and political NGOs funded from abroad, on this count let us follow the Indian example of zero access and zero tolerance for these respectively. After all, enough is enough. **
http://www.pakistanlink.com/Commentary/2006/Oct06/13/01.HTM
The US intent towards Pakistan has now become completely unambiguous and it is a threatening and hostile design the US is unfurling in the context of its frontline ally in the war on terror. **F****or the US, it is of no significance that this country’s leader has put his life on the line for the erroneous military-centric strategy the US continues to dictate in the war against terror; or that some innocent citizens of Pakistan have paid with their lives for this cause, while others have had their kith and kin disappear to feed America’s insatiable appetite for punishing “Muslim extremists”. **
** The more Pakistan and its leadership have sacrificed in order to deliver Al Qaeda to the US and be the most committed ally in the war against terror, the more abuse has been hurled at it from the US – both the political elites and the media – and its Afghan puppet, Hamid Karzai.** After all, surrounded by foreign forces it is hard to assume that Karzai’s diatribe against Pakistan has come without the acquiescence, if not actual goading, of the Americans.
** Through all this, Pakistan has shown an overly tolerant attitude. However, now it is abundantly clear that there is a larger plan to target the only Muslim nuclear state in terms of its strategic assets.** A clear pattern can be discerned by all but those who deliberately want to keep their blinkers on. Post-9/11, there has been an attempt to undermine the Pakistani state and society. We had the whole A.Q. Khan affair and despite our going the extra mile by penalising him, handing over old centrifuges to the IAEA and going public with all our export controls and National Command Authority, for the US the nuclear issue is a constant stick with which to beat Pakistan ad nauseam. Conveniently, India’s damaging proliferation record is forgotten despite repeated publications in the press.
Add to the proliferation issue the publication of an article in the US Armed Forces Journal outlining a proposal to break up strong Muslim states like Pakistan, and one should have seen where the US was headed vis-a-vis Pakistan. And alongside, there was the constant refrain that Islamabad can do more in terms of the war on terror. Thus we saw the US ingress into Pakistani territory bombing civilians while claiming to be targeting the Al Qaeda leadership. With a resurgent resistance from a growing Pashtun force, the US, NATO and the Karzai government have found it convenient to lay the blame on Pakistan for their failures, instead of reassessing their own erroneous strategies and tactics.
Now the US has effectively moved to threaten Pakistan directly. In the second week of January, the Democrats in the House of Representatives put forward a bill providing recommendations for the implementation of the recommendations presented by the 9/11 Commission. Without following procedural niceties, the bill was passed by the House on January 12. The section on Pakistan (1442) effectively takes Pakistan-US relations back to the Pressler days with limitations placed on US security assistance to Pakistan, which would now require a Presidential waiver or certification regarding certain conditionalities relating to Pakistan. Amongst the conditionalities, the President would have to certify that the Government of Pakistan was preventing the Taliban from operating in “areas under its sovereign control” including specifically Chaman, Quetta, FATA and the NWFP.** One can see how some fifth columnists among us having been feeding the US often concocted information that they feel the US wants to hear.**
Nor is this all. The US president has to still certify, even in the wake of the NPT-breaking India-US nuclear deal, that Pakistan is curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology. Yet more conditionalities include Pakistan dealing effectively with “Islamic extremism” and setting up “secular public schools”. So the US effectively wants Pakistan to suppress its Islamic identity or else be denied a US presidential certification or waiver for American assistance.
What is interesting is that the language used in this bill is similar to the language used by John Negroponte, now Condoleezza Rice’s deputy, in testimony that he gave before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Jan. 11. His accusation that Pakistan is a “major source of Islamic extremism” and a safe haven for Taliban and “the home for some top terrorist leaders” seems to have been almost lifted from the text of the bill passed by the House.
But he puts the US threat most clearly when he states that: “Eliminating the safe haven that the Taliban and other extremists have found in Pakistan’s tribal areas is not sufficient to end the insurgency in Afghanistan but it is necessary.” And who will do this eliminating? Obviously this is a statement of intent by the US to ingress militarily into Pakistan through the border with Afghanistan. There is no ambiguity in this formulation of the threat since arrogance tends to have an element of clarity to it.
The threat is further heightened because as in the bill, Negroponte also raised the proliferation issue alongside the “extremists” problem. He declared that “Pakistan was a major source of nuclear proliferation until our efforts disrupted the A.Q. Khan’s network”. So he is building a raison d’etre that since it was the US which intervened in Pakistan to deal the blow to the A.Q. Khan network, it could do so again. As he put it: “We are watching several states for nuclear weapons aspirations, in part because of reporting of past contact with A.Q. Khan and his network when it was active.” Again, the language is similar to the conditionality in the bill which says: “Pakistan’s maintenance of a network for the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies would be inconsistent with Pakistan being considered an ally of the US.” Who in Pakistan thought this issue would go away if we adopted an overzealous confessional approach? And no word on the known Indian links to nuclear programmes of Iran and Saddam.
** In fact, on India it is clear that present US policy-makers approve of Indian interventions in other South Asian states. **Very approvingly, Negroponte declares that “New Delhi seeks to play a role in fostering democracy in the region, especially in Nepal and Bangladesh and will continue to be a reliable ally against global terrorism.” And we thought we were that ally!
The point is that by now we should accept that the US intent towards us is threatening and overall negative. And there is a pattern to it all -– the bill, followed by the Negroponte statement and then by Major-General Benjamin Freakley’s accusations against Pakistan from Kabul -– all coincide thereby playing to a certain strategy. But the reality is that the US does need us in the war against terror in Afghanistan so we have leverage on that count for the moment. Why are we then not using it?
At what stage of the US threat’s materialisation will we begin to use our counter-leverage? Have we become so overwhelmed by a psychological confidence deficit that we cannot take such a step? If that is the case, then the threatening design laid out in various US analyses that preceded the Congressional bill, the bill itself and John Negroponte’s statement against Pakistan, will begin to unfold.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=39130