(http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm)
With Pakistan willing, what’s America’s problem?
By Ayaz Amir
The welcome mat laid out for Prime Minister Jamali in the White House had little to do with America’s love for Pak democracy and everything with the Bush administration’s desperation.
No US president has time for first the president and then the prime minister of a begging-bowl country. So if President Bush met Gen Musharraf in New York and then took time out for Jamali in Washington, there had to be a purpose to it, especially in a land where free lunches are considered a bad investment.
The key to all this bonhomie lies - you’ve guessed it - in Iraq. The Iraq mess is not just another international disaster. It’s getting to be another Vietnam, that too in a compressed timeframe. The almost daily toll of American lives and the billions of dollars (87 to be exact) the US Congress is being asked to cough up to sustain this holy mess now threatens Bush’s re-election bid. This mess continues in present form and the next US president will not be George W. Bush.
This is the spectre haunting the Bush White House. And the only quick-fix answer to it lies in sending foreign troops to police Iraq. To ease the burden on American GIs who were eager for a quick triumph but who hadn’t the faintest idea that the Iraqi sense of a ticker-tape welcome might take the shape of rocket-propelled grenades, the favourite weapon of the Iraqi resistance.
India is off the hook, there being no sign at the moment of Indian readiness to rush to America’s rescue in Iraq, Secretary of State Powell admitting as much. Had it only been up to the Vajpayee/Advani government, things might have been different. But Indian public opinion is proving difficult. This leaves the other prime candidates, Turkey and, well, Pakistan.
The Turks are tough negotiators and will drive a hard bargain. Pakistan, however, is a soft target and the very soul of generosity. In fact, always has been, as far as the US is concerned, the soul of generosity: doing backbreaking and perilous duty for illegal immigrants’ wages.
It’s another matter the US has never appreciated this, has always turned its back on Pakistan when the dirty work was over. Which still hasn’t stopped Pakistan from rushing to carry America’s burden whenever higher duty has called. What price such selflessness?
You name it and Pakistan has been there. A member of anti-communist alliances in the 1950s, helping fly Henry Kissinger to China in 1971, helping the CIA defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and becoming a launching pad for America’s war on Afghanistan in 2001.
If the US had any lingering sense of honour or gratitude, it would make Pakistan the 51st state of the American Union (and thereby end forever the angst of Pakistan’s chattering classes).
Any wonder then if it’s Pakistan, more than any other country in the world, the Bush White House is working on to get mercenary troops for Iraq? President Musharraf has been on board from the start. All he’s asked for is a fig-leaf which the US is now going about procuring in the shape of a new UN resolution. What remains is to soften Pakistan public opinion and to drum up visible political support for a dubious proposition. Hence the welcome mat put out for Jamali.
Did Jamali bring up other subjects with Bush? Say, the growing arms imbalance with India, Kashmir, or the dim prospects of an India-Pakistan dialogue? Gimme a break. The only flying object on the Bush radar screen at the moment is Iraq and Bush’s re-election bid. Between now and December 2004 nothing in the world matters except these twin objectives: pacifying Iraq and making sure Bush stays in the White House for four more years.
How does Kashmir or any other arcane subject - anything not immediately relevant sounding arcane to American ears - figure in this equation?
Who would have thought Pakistan would be a factor in a US presidential election? But the furies be praised, it’s come to this, Musharraf and Jamali becoming bit players in Bush’s re-election strategy. If they play ball, Bush’s chances suddenly look brighter.
What’s more, Musharraf and Jamali lead a country (if the constitutional mess in Pakistan can be dignified by the name of leadership) which, guided by a quaint sense of chivalry, has always prided itself on performing the most stupendous tasks on the cheap.
Here’s the latest sample of this generosity. Pakistan’s defence secretary, Lt Gen (rtd) Hamid Nawaz Khan, returns from an arms-buying trip to Washington and breathlessly declares a “breakthrough” in arms sales. What does it amount to? A squadron or so of F-16s from Belgium - to be paid for in cash on the table. And a few other items of weaponry to be bought out of the aid package the US has thought fit to reward Pakistan with for its services in Afghanistan and cooperation in the “war against terrorism”.
Nothing to beat Lt Gen Hamid Nawaz Khan’s own words, however. According to Dawn’s report of a press conference addressed by him to highlight the achievements of his Washington trip: “He said the US officials had offered that if Pakistan sent troops to Iraq, then they would show ‘great leniency’ in the sale of equipment to it.”
Furthermore: “In reply to a question what Islamabad had been given in return for extending cooperation to Washington, he said Pakistan had got security and elaborated ‘the Indians would have done the same to Pakistan what Northern Alliance had done to the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan’.”
In other words, we have it from the country’s highest defence official that America’s biggest gift to Pakistan was security and that but for the US, India would have destroyed Pakistan post-September 11. This is mind-boggling stuff.
If it took the US to foil Indian designs and save Pakistan from destruction, of what use our huge army and nuclear pretensions? Pre-1965 we used to say the defence of East Pakistan lay in West Pakistan. In the light of the defence secretary’s statement, Pakistan’s defence now lies in Washington. Welcome to this brave new world.
How do some guys become lieutenant-generals in the Pak army? And what special skills does it take to become defence secretary? The ways of the Lord may be inscrutable but some of the workings of the Islamic Republic are truly baffling.
Just to refresh minds about what we are getting from the US: a three billion dollar package spread over five years. Which is about 600 million dollars annually, half of this amount as economic assistance and the other half for military sales. That’s about it. What’s more, Congress has to approve this package every year. And if we send troops to Iraq, all we can count on is “great leniency” in the matter of arms sales. That’s about it again. No special package as in Turkey’s case. Chances are the American officials dealing with Pakistan will be the most dumbfounded at this cheap bargain.
Gen Musharraf has needlessly complicated matters for himself. He needn’t have gone for the referendum. He did. He needn’t have queered the electoral pitch only for the mullahs of the MMA to score a big hit. He did. He needn’t have alienated the PPP, his natural ally under the circumstances.
Now Benazir Bhutto has thrown not an olive branch at him but an olive bombshell. Speaking to newsmen in Washington (ah, the coincidence of it, Jamali in Washington and she there too), she has said, in effect, that the PPP was prepared to make up with Musharraf provided he was also ready to make up with the PPP. Musharraf would have to be tone deaf not to catch this.
In words that would be music to American ears she also said Pakistan should send troops to Iraq, the first Pakistani politician of note to say this unequivocally. Musharraf, the PPP and the Q League make a fantastic coalition. It would put an end to Musharraf’s constitutional troubles. It would also be the safest ticket for sending Pak troops to Iraq.
Any fears that the troops themselves would be unwilling janisarries? Forget it. If GHQ were to announce that only volunteers would be sent to Iraq, there’d be such a stampede GHQ wouldn’t know how to handle it. Principles and honour are fine but extra dollars are tangible property.
As for Musharraf’s uniform and the MMA demand that he shed it by end 2004, this is dangerous witchcraft. With Bush’s re-election hanging in the balance, there’s a real possibility of someone else stepping into the White House, someone who starts re-evaluating Iraq and the whole circus of the ‘war on terror’. Musharraf will then need to hold on to whatever he has.
So unless he’s keen to expose himself to the elements, he’ll have to stick to his uniform, every patriarch’s favourite body-armour as winter approaches.