By Saida Fazal
ARTICLE (May 14 2009): One could not agree more with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani when he told the National Assembly on Monday that the Taliban fighting the state in Swat are "terrorists who have no religion". And that they are enemies of the country "following some foreign agenda [and] want to conquer this country." Aside from challenging the writ of the state both the Fata and Swat Taliban have been committing gruesome brutalities against ordinary people.
Which is what changed the popular public stance from 'it is their war' to 'it has now become our war'. Still, some continued to make a distinction between the Swat and Fata Taliban until the former started beheading people, pulling bodies of their opponents out of graves to hang them in Mingora's main public square, and handing out their own brand of dark justice. It is debatable whether the beheadings or the public lashing of a teenaged girl proved to be the turning point that swayed public opinion against the Swat Taliban.
But after they rejected the peace deal and went ahead to take over control of Buner and Shangla, it was clear to everyone that their agenda was different from the one their leader Sufi Mohammad stated it to be. It was an armed rebellion against the state that had to be crushed.
But the problem is that the Zardari government is pushing a 'foreign agenda' of its own. Some people are already making the argument that it rushed into the Swat operation at the American urging. In fact, Americans are waiting with bated breath the outcome of the fighting.
US CentCom chief General David Petraeus said as much while discussing the Swat operation in a Fox News programme last Sunday. Said he, "the next few weeks would be very important, and to a degree pivotal in the future for Pakistan." Who decides the future of Pakistan?
Let us face it, Pakistan is a rentier state which worries more about watching the interests of the renter than the peace and progress of its people. In the 1960s, America's U-2 planes used to fly out of a base at Badabir near Peshawar to spy on the Soviet Union until the Soviets downed one of them and designated Pakistan as a hostile country.
From 1979 till the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan a decade later, General Ziaul Haq's regime executed America's biggest proxy war ever against its communist rival. After 9/11 General Pervez Musharraf (Retd) made this country a partner in America's war in Afghanistan - a relationship the present government has continued on Washington's terms.
It has repeatedly demonstrated its eagerness to outdo even General Musharraf in wanting to win America's favour, even if that meant treading on sensitive territory such as when it made an hurried announcement about 'reform' of the ISI prior to the Prime Minister's official visit to the US. It is another matter though that it had to soon retract the announcement with a lot of egg on its face.
During his own recent visit to Washington, President Zardari kept telling his hosts, 'we stand with you, we stand with the world' in this war, as if this nation was a perpetrator rather than a victim of what is happening in Afghanistan, as a consequence of which thousands of Pakistanis, soldiers and civilians alike, have been killed and maimed.
Going by the government's own claims, the country has also suffered economic losses worth $35 billion over the seven-year period it adopted the war against the Afghan Taliban as its own. Yet, the image it has painted of itself is that of a beggar who is extremely grateful to Washington to get the crumbs of $1.9 billion aid for the next fiscal year, and 1.5 billion annually over the next four years for services rendered and losses incurred in aid of America's Afghan war.
Our accidental president showed a shocking level of willingness to go along with whatever the US wanted in an interview he gave CNN's Wolf Blitzer during his recent US visit. The interviewer had the temerity to say that Admiral Mullen "doesn't even know, and he is the top US military officer, where Pakistan's military nuclear components are spread around".
As if this was not outrageous enough he asked the question, "is that information you're willing to share with the United States?" Even Blitzer must have been utterly stunned to hear the answer: "I don't think so. I think it's on a need-to-know basis information."
The obvious follow-up question was, "but don't you think the United States should need to know something as critical as that?" After the earlier answer it should not be difficult to guess this one: "If it comes up we might, and I might not share it with them, it depends." If this is what he is willing to say in public, it is not hard to imagine what goes on behind the scenes.
No wonder the drone attacks have gone on relentlessly. Until a week ago, as per US's own admissions, these lethal machines had killed some 700 civilians and only 14 militants it wanted to target. That these 14 too did not include any high 'value target' is obvious from the fact that they remain unidentified. And yet the issue did not figure prominently in the discussions Zardari and his entourage had with their hosts in Washington.
As long as the lives lost are Pakistani, America will go on doing what it does unless our government decides the issue is compelling enough to take a stand. It could tell the Americans it won't extend its help to their war - renamed by the Obama administration as Overseas Contingency Operation - unless the killings of innocent Pakistanis stop, and expect the US to listen.
In fact, where it comes to protecting certain interests the powers-that-be have taken a firm stand, like in the case of ISI 'reform' issue; or when the US opposed the Swat deal; and years ago, when the US wanted Islamabad to 'cap' and 'freeze' its nuclear programme. All these examples show that when our rulers think their core interests are at stake, they are capable of going against the US's wishes, and get their way, too.
Normally, they have no qualms about letting the Americans order them around. Admiral Mullen spends half of his time in Pakistan - presumably, engaged in activities other than R&R - and half in his own country. Richard Boucher has been micro managing our internal affairs so frequently that his name is almost a household name here. And of course, Ambassador Anne Paterson is always here to manage things on a day-to-day basis. President Obama has now gifted Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to our rulers to fawn and fuss over.
The US has its own objectives that sometimes might be in confluence and, most of the time, in conflict with ours. Besides, it has the choice to get up and leave when the going gets bad. We have no option but to face the forces of retrogression the war in Afghanistan has unleashed on this country.
In order for the ongoing operation in Swat and Fata to be successful, it must be owned and fully backed by the people. All must support the troops at this decisive moment. For that to happen the plan for the fighting must be seen as made-in-Pakistan, not in America. War is another name for death and destruction. It must be avoided if there is a choice, and fought when it becomes a necessity - to be so determined by the people who have to face its consequences.
