By Wajid Naeemuddin
ARTICLE (May 14 2009): It worked like a charm. President Obama and each member of the team under him, as in a well directed and choreographed play by Shakespeare, played their respective roles to perfection, making their entries and exits with perfect timing!
Softening of the Pakistani President by undiplomatic, uncharacteristic and unusually harsh statements by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mike Mullen and David Petraeus, castigating his government before his visit to America, were followed by "damage limiting" statements to ensure that the visit would go ahead as planned, notwithstanding.
The President was cowed down enough not to breathe a word (at least to the knowledge of the media) about oppression and rampant killing in Kashmir or diversion of Pakistani waters by India or sabotage activities in Balochistan and elsewhere in Pakistan by India and others.
The President also forgot to talk about atrocities committed by Israel (with tacit American support) against Muslims in Palestine, in Lebanon and most recently in Gaza, or American genocide in Iraq on patently false premises, as among the underlying causes of hatred for America among Muslims and of acts of violence against its interests across the globe.
Our President, on the other hand, could not find words strong enough to praise America for its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan! Just listen to this report in the press: President Zardari urged the US, "the world's oldest and most powerful democracy" to nurture democracies in other countries.
"We thank the United States for its support for democracy (meaning NRO?-Spotlight), for security in Pakistan and look forward to further support," he said. Mr Zardari said that as the United States was making progress after seven years of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan will too.
HEAVENS FORBID! Here was our President praising America's aggression in Iraq which every one (including most Americans) knows and acknowledges was based on the mother of all lies (that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam had links with al Qaeda) and resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead or seriously disabled for life!
THE GAME PLAN: The reasons for Obama's pre-visit tirade against President Zardari's government, as well as the results of the American game plan, started becoming clear while our president was still in America.
Zardari rushed into what is likely to become a commitment to allow India transit facility through this unfortunate country via Wagah-Khyber to Kabul in Afghanistan (and from there God knows to where else) thus bringing to near close (and a disastrous close at that) a subject which was pending our insistence for several decades now, that India settle other issues (Kashmir as the main one and more recently water theft as well) before this matter could be taken up. In one fell swoop, that stand has gone down the drain! Just consider the enormity of this capitulation!
We have been accusing India of fomenting trouble in Balochistan. We have been asking India why it is necessary for it to open so many consulate offices along our border with Afghanistan implying that the purpose can be no other than infiltrating our territory and carrying out sabotage activities through its agents and plants?
Is it not tragically ironic that we are now well on the way to grant a facility to India, using which, it can send resources through Pakistan which could be used against Pakistan itself! And what about the impact on our trade with Afghanistan? Will not India, with its vast industrial infrastructure, get into the position of being able to undercut our exports - present and potential - to Afghanistan and beyond with much greater ease?
And how about the transit agreement, at some point in the future, opening the door to an alternate or additional supply route from India to American and Nato forces in Afghanistan which might effectively neutralize a leverage of sorts we have in dealing with America.
That will create an a formidable grouping (Afghanistan, India, America, and Nato) with a stake in keeping the proposed route open under all circumstances whatever Pakistan's interest might be at any particular point in time in the matter. It was Secretary of State Hilary Clinton who made the first announcement about the transit MoU and waxed eloquent in its praise.
"This is an historic event. This agreement has been on the anvil for 43 years without resolution". She also extolled the benefits the agreement would bestow on Pakistan. Will it be considered a flight of runaway imagination to say that one day India (backed by America) might ask us to allow its goods in transit (maybe eventually including supplies to American and Nato troops in Afghanistan) through Pakistan to be protected by Indian or American troops through our country?
Will our government be able to take all factors into consideration, the nuances in the fine print and nitty gritty of the agreement, assuming we will be eventually pressured into signing one notwithstanding all the above? Probably not! President Zardari was aware what was coming during his visit and could have armed himself with proposals from the parliament and the opposition parties as a hedge against being pressured into accepting American diktat not in our interest.
Doubts arise because apparently President Zardari went for this long planned visit to America without any brainstorming with his own party, or with ML(N) or any of his other allies in various governments in the country. Did the cabinet deliberate the matter? Was a think tank engaged in the exercise? We do not know.
Probably these steps were not taken. We know for sure, however, that the Parliament was not in the picture because no discussion on the matter took place. President Zardari probably wanted a "free hand" in entering into an agreement with America, unfettered by what others in Pakistan may have wanted.
The President thus chose to walk into the lion's den without any such protective gear and came back badly mauled, whatever he himself or our man in America, His Excellency Hussain Haqqani (or as some people quip "America's man in America") might say. Who will pick up the pieces?
The internal war: nearly over or merely starting? We are now in the thick of internal military action in most of the Malakand Division after transferring part of our army from the eastern borders with India to the internal "front" just as we were told to do by big brother. The Swat peace agreement is no more.
The first announcement of this was made not by our president, or prime minister or foreign minister but by a beaming and delighted Richard Holbrooke, the American special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan (not by the way, India). In the process we have created the largest ever number of internal refugees in the world - now exceeding one million and going up by the hour.
Their misery must be seen to be imagined. The government could not be unaware that this would since its own actions started the process. Why was it unprepared to the extent it was unprepared? The war is not just against Mehsud of Tehrike Taliban who struck deep in Lahore and Islamabad to kill our trainee policemen and frontier constabulary men and against whom warrants of arrest were issued a couple of days ago (by the way why did it take us so long to do this).
The war is not against this or that group but against Taliban and sundry Tribals: full stop. One wonders about Mehsud. He threatens to attack the White House and is not afraid of giving long interviews to foreign media without any apparent worry that the call could be traced and his location pinpointed! He comes in handy for the Americans to press us to go all out in fighting the Tribals.
American forces which use the drones to have a dozen or so "terrorists" for breakfast each day have not been able to do any harm to Mehsud despite his direct threats to their President. It is hardly surprising therefore that Mehsud is suspected to be an American plant!
Our failure to distinguish among the Taliban and Tribals, between saboteurs and agents of foreign powers (USA for one most likely) and just religious zealots, between criminals and kidnappers hiding behind the Taliban visage and just plain religious enthusiasts, may shortly land us into a war of attrition which could drag on and be a constant strain on our army and financial resources.
It is strange that while America has been talking about entering into dialogue in Afghanistan with the moderate elements among the Taliban, we, much closer at home, are not able to find any such elements among our own Taliban and therefore unable to isolate the really bad from merely the misguided. We do not stop to think why President Karzai of Afghanistan has been crying hoarse for months now about the need to talk to some of the Taliban with a view to inducting them into some power sharing arrangement?
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE NIZAM-E-ADL NOW? The big question is what happens to the Nizam-e-Adl now. Will it be further improved and implemented so that the people of the area finally get what they have been yearning for, for decades now, or in yet another act of pleasing the Americans the reform will also be snuffed in bud?
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