Archive for February, 2008
An Indian in every Pakistani by Shireen M Mazari
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
|
Share on Facebook
Lack of formal education and sheer ignorance does not by definition imply an innate sense of stupidity. On the other hand, formal education in itself is no guarantee of an intelligent and rational human being – just look at the American leaders over the years! As for mental stability, that has little to do with formal education or education of any sort whatsoever. What is true is that leaders who are intelligent and not overwhelmed by a sense of their own greatness and the autocratic “I”, realise their limitations and seek guidance. That is why while many commentators attribute President Zardari’s bizarre pronouncements very charitably to a lack of information or knowledge, the reality is that there is an ominous design in it all. After all, he is surrounded by not only his sycophants but also the whole state machinery with its bureaucrats, intelligence networks and so on. So why do statements that damage the nation in the long run continue to pour forth from the present leadership? Does no one dare to advise the president, or does he see himself as all-knowing even as he is all-powerful? Or is the reality that his advice is actually linked to a US agenda targeting Pakistan? Whatever the case, let us see if a pattern can be traced in all his shenanigans, at least in the realm of foreign and security policies where he has managed to reduce us to a collective absurdity and a vile joke.
First, there is suddenly a furore over a truncated map of Pakistan that is only now being examined by a wider Pakistani audience. But the reality is that the map first appeared in the US Armed Forces Journal in July 2006, written by a retired US intelligence officer, Ralph Peters and entitled, “Blood Borders”. Some of us had pointed out at that time that this was now part of the US agenda for the so-called “Greater or Broader Middle East Project”, but at that time few paid notice. This has been part of the problem here in Pakistan – we never see far enough ahead and now the US design is in the midst of being operationalised and we have a leadership that has come with a seeming commitment to aid this nefarious US design of destabilising Pakistan through increasing military incursions through the tribal belt and moving beyond – and we have already had that with the US attacks on Bannu – and multiple efforts to eventually roll back our nuclear capability.
Now let us look at our own leadership’s antics. No one from the presidency has forcefully refuted US media claims that in September this year President Zardari gave the US a nod to continue predator attacks against Pakistan. Meanwhile, we had the “absurdity” of the president claiming that the US had not violated Pakistan’s sovereignty since only aerial attacks were being conducted! Then we had the farce of the parliamentary consensus resolution on terrorism which demanded the government take action against the predator attacks. The government has so far not moved an iota on any of the substantive demands of this resolution. Instead, to make us look even more ridiculous than we already were looking, our leadership hopes that Obama will stop the attacks. Have they looked up Obama’s statements and his potential secretary of state’s viewpoints?
From any rational perspective, given the manner in which the US is behaving it is now a hostile if not an enemy state for us, but we have that strange minister of defence continuing to state that if the US stays here for three decades it will be good for Pakistan! Does he think we will survive in any viable form after three decades of bombings by the US and the retaliatory lethal and non-discriminatory suicide attacks against this nation? But then so many of the present leadership, in keeping with past tradition, have homes and rich setups abroad. So what do they care?
Parallel to our continuous conceding of ground to the US, we are also now complying with the US agenda of establishing India as the regional hegemon. If we see no threat from India and we want a nuclear-free zone in South Asia, eventually we may have a declaration by this president that he hates nukes and we will renounce ours unilaterally – that is unless the US has created enough instability to seek a UN Security Council intervention regarding control of our nuclear assets! Yes, it may seen far-fetched to some, but look how so many unthinkable developments have hit us in a short space of time – beginning right from the present occupant of the presidency itself.
So when President Zardari offers a “no-first use” (NFU) of nuclear weapons to India, there is a design behind it – a US design. The problem is we have short memories and have forgotten that India has actually reneged on its limited NFU declaration it had made earlier in its overt nuclear life! When India declared its strategic doctrine and stated its intent of using nuclear strikes against any WMD threat from anywhere, it effectively adopted a “first use” doctrine similar to that of the US.
As for Pakistan, given our limited conventional capability, we cannot afford to remove the ambivalence we are maintaining regarding NFU. In this we are no different from the much mightier NATO. Is it not time for our security managers and strategists to inform the president that one does not bandy about NFU offers whimsically or because one hates the idea of nuclear weapons. No one loves nukes and no one loves war – apart from Mr Bush and the neocons – but there are realities that need to be considered; and one does not bandy about strategic doctrines simply as appeasement tools. Our declared posture of nuclear weapons as weapons of last resort and a deliberate ambivalence on NFU must not be compromised.
As for the idea of a South Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ), it is the Indians who have always rejected the idea, just as they rejected the zero missile idea and now with India acquiring Missile Defence from the US, we cannot continue to support notions that we floated before May 1998. Of course, if the Indians had conceded to a NWFZ and renounced their grandiose nuclear weapon programmes, their fears regarding China (or so their pretext goes) could easily have been handled in a protocol attached to the treaty similar to the protocols attached to and an integral part of the Latin American NWFZ treaty – the Tlatelolco Treaty. But all that was in the past – as was the no-war pact which Pakistan kept pushing for with India. Now all that is truly feasible in the nuclear domain with India is joint nuclear power generation and an ongoing strategic dialogue to maintain the nuclear balance. But then that is not part of the nuclear agenda of the US. The US continues to seek a rollback of Pakistan’s nuclear programme as part of its long-term negative agenda towards Pakistan.
As for the new, more so-called informed US media on Pakistan, it is high time they realised that our suspicions and hostility towards the US have nothing to do with illiteracy or Talibanisation – Jane Perlez’s analysis notwithstanding. Instead, it has everything to do with US policies towards Pakistan. It is that simple. But our greater issue is with our leadership that seems to be hand in glove with the US. After all, we can certainly counter the predator or the impending grim “Reaper” attacks now on the cards. When will our missiles prove their worth? Or, if our military feels insecure with a direct military response, how about more simple actions easier to accomplish? Here are some suggestions: halt the transit logistic supplies; suspend high-level diplomatic relations; opt out of the trilateral commission; reduce the number of US personnel in Pakistan; take back all the bases. That should be enough to send a resolute message of Pakistani intent to the US and its NATO allies.
Finally, Mr President, I have searched intensely within myself to discover a little Indian within my Baloch, Punjabi, Seraiki and Pathan heritage, but all I see is an intense Pakistani, born in the sovereign state of Pakistan. For me India is as foreign a country as any other. Sorry Mr President, but you are wrong on this count too.
State and people still out of sync by Shireen M Mazari
Print This Post
| Email This Post
|
Share on Facebook
So the president has finally become aware of Indian duplicity and hostile intent towards Pakistan. Deeply rooted in its revisionist historical mindset, India is certainly not going to alter its approach towards Pakistan simply because of the presumed “charm offensive” the president feels he can turn on to right all ills the country faces! In fact, it is the Indians who yet again managed to trap our leadership into conceding all manner of political (on Kashmir) declaratory compromises and trade concessions while they continue to undermine us with water strangulation and baseless charges of cross-LOC infiltration.
Our present leaders would do well to study the water disputes India continues to have with its other neighbours, despite the India-tilted bilateral agreements these neighbours were made to ink. Our seemingly lethargic approach to taking up the waters issue with India has sent the wrong signals to this bullying neighbour – or were they the intended signals, given how our new national security adviser (who has come full circle from being a GoP military bureaucrat to being American neo con Shireen Taher-Kheli’s employee to again being a GoP appointee) has not allowed the serious Chenab water strangulation by India disrupt his misplaced bonhomie with Indian leaders in New Delhi!
Meanwhile, the state seems to be coming up with increasingly dysfunctional behaviour on the issue of terrorism. With no clear cut political policy of its own, its military is being compelled to fight bush fires and holding actions in a vacuum. The idea of building a national consensus through a threadbare briefing and discussion in Parliament seems to have come undone with many Parliamentarians complaining about the inadequacies of the briefings – the operational ones being little different to those given to many other sets of people including journalists. Of course, here one is equally at a loss to understand the PML–N logic of not asking pertinent questions because the briefings were unsatisfactory Logic would suggest that truly comprehensive and satisfactory briefings would throw up little in the form of questions while an unsatisfactory briefing would be all the more reason to ask probing questions. But what does logic have to do with our political leaders.
Clearly, the major starting point for any comprehensive information on Pakistan’s post-9/11 anti-terrorism policy has to be the deal made with the US – what actually was and is presently being conceded to, to the Americans, and what are the quid pro quos. Without this basic starting point how can parliamentarians come to rational decisions which would be necessary to formulate a consensus policy? Or was the idea to hold these parliamentary briefings simply to get the elected reps to okay our continuing concessions to the US? If that was the intent, let us hope the elected reps will, for once, not allow themselves to be taken for granted or steamrolled on what is a critical national priority. Incidentally, can one ask why the government and the military have suddenly gone silent, after Zardari’s return from the US, on the increasing US incursions into Pakistan and the killing of innocent tribal people almost on a daily basis? Is this yet another ground we have conceded to the Americans?
As a result of our concessions to the US and the damage the latter has done to this country and its people, the sad fact is that unless the government of Pakistan is able to create space between itself and the US, it will not be able to have a credible policy for tackling its terrorism and extremism problem; and without this credibility no policy will be effective. It is not about accepting or not accepting the war on terror as “our war”; it is about fighting this menace effectively, which can only be done with the support of the people since the terrorists and extremists – barring the foreign elements – spring from the people themselves. And while on the subject of foreigners, let the people be informed about the US citizen recently caught in the tribal area with suspicious maps on his computer. He is probably one of the many undercover US personnel roaming all over the northern and western parts of this country from Warsak onwards.
Meanwhile, if there was any doubt at all about the US hostile intent towards Pakistan, the verbose Mullen’s latest pronouncements should clarify these lingering doubts. By declaring US intent of involving the Indians militarily in Afghanistan as part of the US strategy, the US is deliberately upping the ante for Pakistan in terms of its immediate security parameters. First it was the Indo-US nuclear deal, which will liberate Indian unsafeguarded fuel for the manufacture of additional nuclear weapons; and now Pakistan may confront Indian troops on its Western border also. US intent on involving the Indian military in Afghanistan has been on the cards for some time now and I had discovered this when in New Delhi in February 2008, when, at a conference, a US Defence Department person stated that the US saw the Indian military as the only effective military for the US’s Afghanistan strategy. On my return I had not only written about this development but also spoken to government officials on this count. Presumably our civil and military bureaucracy chose to ignore such information.
Worse still, even to the more brazen statement of intent expressed by Mullen, no one from our officialdom or political leadership has given a response. One really has to wonder why! Perhaps some elected member of parliament could ask this question also when the briefings resume.
As if the continuing hostile US intent was not enough, the British through their media are now trying to once again undermine our intelligence organisations by declaring that the Taliban they had killed was actually a Pakistani army officer of the ISI, no less. Now how did they come to the following conclusions: One, that the man they killed was a Taliban, given how the ordinary Pukhtun differs little in physical appearance from a “Taliban”? Did he have the word Taliban imprinted on his forehead or did he carry some Taliban ID? If he was a Pakistani army officer, did he wear his uniform under a “Taliban” uniform? Or did he have Pak army/ISI IDs on him which would be absurd if he was undercover? Or do the Brits think they are above reproach or question on their assertions?
No. These are simply the deliberately nonsensical British and American media claims targeting Pakistan. As the US moves into phase two (identified in this column last week) of its Pakistan agenda, which involves seeking direct access into Pakistan on the ground, by making Pakistan the main “war zone” in the fight against terrorism, the Brits are aiding this agenda by undermining our strategic institutions. We need to be clear about our own interests and agendas as well as those of the US and its allies, including India. Most important of all, we need to take our people into confidence and have policies that are in consonance with the wishes of the people.
Our tragedy has been that be it in the brief interludes of democracy or the longer periods of dictatorship (both civil and military), the people have been simply cast aside or short-shrifted. Most recently, and most glaringly, this has happened in case of the judicial issue. It has also happened in the case of the missing persons issue and the continuing and disturbing unanswered questions regarding the Dr Aafia case; and it has continued to happen on the issue of terrorism and extremism. Perhaps if the rulers would move more in tune to the wishes of the people, and give a little more credence to the intelligence and commitment of the people, instead of looking longingly towards an increasingly hostile US, we would be more able to control and better shape our country’s future destiny.
The nation needs answers to move on by Shireen M Mazari
Print This Post
| Email This Post
|
Share on Facebook
This 14th August comes at a defining moment for Pakistan’s future political direction and at the centre is the figure of an increasingly beleaguered President Musharraf. Why is it that rulers of developing states never understand the costs of looking to Washington for their political power and survival – despite the glaring examples of the Shah of Iran and Marcos? In the process the whole nation suffers the repercussions far beyond the leaders’ period in power. Had President Musharraf listened to the voice of the nation, the judicial crisis may have been turned around, if not averted, and democracy would have had a less wrenching restart. Perhaps even more critical, the hatred and polarisation that has undermined the nation may well have been avoided and, certainly, the heavy price for going the US way on its misguided war on terror could have been averted.
But such are the yearned for “could-have-beens”, as we confront the harsh realities of what has actually come to pass today. The president faces impeachment and there is a vengeful cry for blood – such is the hatred and polarisation prevalent within the nation today. Will Musharraf face up to the charges and respond, or will he be persuaded to resign and take the so-called “honourable” way out? The latter in fact would be an admission of guilt in the present circumstances and it would also deprive the nation of ever learning the truth of all the deals brokered with the US and other external and internal stake holders. Perhaps, equally critical, there would be no guarantee that such a route would ensure that there would be no prosecution in the future – the Pinochet case being a crucial example. Worse still, it will allow the present and future political rulers to continue to use the Musharraf regime as the source of all national ills.
On the other hand, if President Musharraf chooses to take on the impeachment charges and respond, perhaps the nation would finally know what were the quid pro quos in terms of US-Pakistan cooperation in the US-led war on terror; what compelled the NRO and what exactly it comprised; what led to the Saudi intervention in the political roadmap that begun unfurling after the NRO; and, whether the US was instrumental in bolstering Musharraf’s rigid and untenable stance on the judicial crisis? Perhaps the nation will also know what happened to all the “disappeared” people and why so many Pakistanis were condemned without any evidence, let alone a trial, to torture first at the hands of their own agencies and then at the hands of the Americans. Many returnees of Guantanamo continue to be hounded in Pakistan and are compelled to remain silent rather than reveal the sufferings at the hands of their tormentors. Is it any wonder that Dr Afia is not prepared to say anything to even our diplomats? It is these issues that need to be revealed to the people of Pakistan at a time when the present major coalition partner also has deep US links.
It is not without design that the Ron Suskind revelations have come about at this time, given the close link between Suskind and the CIA. Nor is it simply a coincidence that the CIA-US diatribes against the ISI have come now – probably as a result of the latter now finding it difficult to continue supporting some of the highly questionable US policy goals in this region – including the deliberate destabilisation of the settled areas of Pukhtunkhwa. If we can learn the deals the US made with the Musharraf regime, we may be able to recognise the hidden agenda the US has with the new set up, given the intensive links between the US and the Haqqani-Malik-Durrani trio. Even on the Dr Afia issue, where all political parties stood together in the National Assembly, the PPP stood alone in evading the real issue while Mrs Haqqani chose to show that as long as our diplomats, under Haqqani’s able guidance of course, provided Dr Afia with a Holy Quran and halal food, there should be no cause for concern!
Incidentally, if one thought the energy issue was relevant only to Iraq in terms of the US invasion, one should remember that there are major uranium deposits in the Afghan mountains as well as in Helmund province. Perhaps Pakistanis also need to know that there are suspected uranium deposits in Swat and Balochistan and undoubtedly US advanced satellite imagery would have given them that information. Perhaps that is why so many US commentators think and write, quite erroneously, that Pakistan’s major nuclear installations are in Pukhtunkhwa province! In any event, we should be aware of the reasons why the US wishes to see certain regions of Pakistan destabilised – but the question is why are our leaders taking the bait? If the US was serious about stopping the flow of militants from Pakistan into Afghanistan across the international border, then why was it so opposed to the fencing of that border – something the Pakistani state was keen on undertaking and a strategy the US itself has used to prevent infiltration of illegal migrants from Mexico along the US-Mexico border?
Unfortunately, the reality for Pakistan is that, at the end of the day, it is confronting a two-headed terrorism monster: the US and the Al Qaeda-extremist militancy. Only if we create space between ourselves and the US (since we cannot fight the super power directly) will our multi-pronged policy be successfully operationalised, and have national credibility, against the Al Qaeda-extremist militancy.
It is in the backdrop of the dangerous US-India agenda for the region – with Karzai simply a convenient mouthpiece – that we have to cope with the domestic political crisis and the impeachment issue. There are those who feel impeachment would leave a deep wound on the nation so the president should adopt a “dignified” retreat. However, the time for a dignified retreat was over a long time ago and the nation has a right to know whether the charges are valid or not, just as it is time to reveal the wheeling and dealing behind the NRO and with the US.
Equally, given the grave nature of allegations regarding the US Coalition Support Fund being levelled by Zardari – with little hard evidence but a lot of histrionics so far – President Musharraf must respond in a clear and unequivocal fashion. Earlier such allegations were being made against the institution of the army, with a clearly male fide intent, until it was clarified that the money went to the treasury not to the army directly!
For the first time the opportunity has been presented for the nation to be informed directly about how our rulers make decisions and deals. Especially knowing more about the notorious NRO would help us understand why certain institutions are being weakened today in Pakistan and why our relations with our steadfast ally China are being undermined. That is why a rational impeachment process will perhaps achieve a democratic culture for the nation that is truly accountable and responsive. To leave it halfway would mean allowing mud raking and blame games to continue on and on. This is what will be debilitating for the nation in the long run – especially since it will allow an increasingly enemy-like US to find enough space in our political contours to impose its agenda of eventual restructuring and denuclearisation of Pakistan. Let there be no mistake on that count at least.
Finally, let our new leaders not play into our external detractors’ hands unwittingly through internal preoccupations or ignorance – our foreign minister really needs to know that the Berlin Wall was an artificial construct put up by a post-war occupier of a defeated Germany which had already been split by the victors of World War II, and this has no relevancy for relations between the two sovereign states of Pakistan and India, both created in 1947. So far that is what is happening as witnessed by the increased violence by Indian forces in Occupied Kashmir, or calls by Karzai and NATO for more direct US/NATO military intervention into Pakistan. Or is there a design in this neglect?
