To Pakistan' Army Time To Ditch America

[dr.umer]

To Pakistan' Army Time To Ditch America ​

11 Oct 2008

Now is the time to disavow the American empire at whose altar we've knelt all these years. America is distracted by the financial crisis and the presidential election. Bush, Cheney and the neo-con war party would have dearly liked to bomb Iran. The opportunity for them to do so, if it ever existed, has gone. Iranian defiance (as opposed to our defeatism) has been vindicated. If we break loose from America's embrace and renegotiate our terms of friendship with it America will gnash its teeth. Economic pain it can also inflict but how much worse can our economic situation get? How much deeper can we plunge?

There is no end to the ironies which afflict our increasingly caught-in-a-bind republic. George Bush, sure to be commemorated as one of the greatest disasters to reside in the White House, may be about to depart into the pages of history or into well-deserved oblivion. But in one country on the face of the earth his policies will live on: Pakistan which in the 61 years of its existence has yet to learn to think for itself.

There may be second thoughts in the United States itself about the way the Washington-led coalition circus is stuck in Afghanistan and making no headway there despite seven years of toil, effort, sweat and money. The commander of British forces in Afghanistan may have brought himself to say that military means alone could not solve the Afghan problem. But among what passes for the Pakistani leadership there is nothing resembling second thoughts.

President Asif Zardari, democracy's ultimate gift to this confused and now increasingly demoralized land, lets no opportunity go by without insisting that the so-called war on terror – a nomenclature we have adopted with a zeal not even to be found in Washington – is not just America's war but ours too. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani parrots much the same theme. The army too is sold on the same song.

Each act of terrorism – and such are the wages of this conflict that after seven years of being hooked to Washington's war chariot terrorism instead of being licked is on the rise in Pakistan---is used to bolster the contention that this is now our war. No questions are asked as to how we got into this mess in the first place.

If this is our war then General Pervez Musharraf should still be president of Pakistan. There should be no reason to hate him because his outstanding legacy, the thing for which he will always be remembered, was how he jumped into America's lap post-Sep 11, giving birth to the legend – to which Pakistan's confused English-speaking liberati still subscribe – that Pakistan was saved. That if Pakistan had hesitated and not swung so decisively to America's side it would have been made a Tora Bora of, and bombed into the stone age. It was this mental cowardice – and the ambition of benefiting from America's largesse – which set Pakistan on the path leading eventually to the nightmare our army and people now face in the tribal areas.

This is brilliant firefighting. First set things on fire, create conditions which give rise to extremism and militancy, and then announce that extremism represents the greatest threat to national security and must be eliminated.

Most Pakistanis have no taste for the Taliban brand of Islam: the Sharia, or somebody's mutilated understanding of Sharia, imposed at gunpoint. Why is it then that among ordinary Pakistanis (as opposed to the English-spouting liberati) there is not much support for the 'war on terror'? Because most Pakistanis, despite revulsion against the Kalashnikov, consider this to be America's war, and consider the Pakistani leadership and the Pakistan army as playing America's game.

A Dawn editorial (and this was yesterday) has these pearls of wisdom to offer: "What is at stake is our future. Pakistan cannot be allowed to become a theocratic state, for that would nullify (Jinnah's)…values." A fine sentiment – but which misses the point completely. Our role as American ally, or American satellite which is nearer the truth, is what has led to the rise of Talibanism in the tribal areas. Talibanism is not the disease itself. It is a reaction to, or a consequence of, our decision to blindly side with America in Sept 2001.

There was no Al Qaeda or militant Islam in Iraq prior to the American invasion. The American occupation gave birth to a resistance which, as was only to be expected in a Muslim country, acquired an Islamic colouring and spoke in an Islamic idiom. To each his own beliefs and iconography. Christian soldiers in western armies still make the sign of the cross, or at least some of them would do. So nothing amazing if in moments of stress or danger a Muslim, whether warrior or not, and even if not devout in the faith, should invoke Allah's name or seek inspiration from Ali. And this has nothing to do with being a Shia or a Sunni.

Should we expect the Taliban to quote Marx or Guevara? If they are up in arms against a foreign power and what they take to be its local collaborators they will use the idiom which comes most naturally to them: the language of Islam even if their interpretation of Islam may leave something to be desired.

So what are government and General Headquarters trying to sell? In 1988 (Feb 29) Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, then ISI head, gave an in-camera briefing to parliament. His purpose was to sell and extol the virtues of the then Afghan jihad whose leading spearman, in defiance of common sense, Pakistan had chosen to become. Ten years later another in-camera briefing of parliament seeks to justify and sell another holy war, the 'war on terror'.

This war is tearing Pakistan apart. It is kindling fires all over the country. Tribesmen who guarded our western marches all these years have turned bitter and hostile. The army was a symbol of respect and authority. More than 100,000 troops are now deployed in that inhospitable terrain and the situation far from improving gets more difficult by the day. At the height of the Kashmir insurgency a couple of thousand guerrilla fighters at the most tied down 4-500,000 Indian troops. But ignoring the lessons of Kashmir the army thinks it will get the better of the Taliban insurgency who have more fighters than the Kashmiris ever had.

The army's Achilles' heel is its American connection and as long as that remains there is no winning this war or pacifying the tribal areas. This doesn't mean going to war with America, as the liberati tend to distort the argument. It means repudiating the written and unwritten agreements concluded with America in 2001, including the five year military-cum-economic aid package concluded at the time. What good has this package done us? What peaks of economic glory have we scaled with its help?

So now is the time to disavow the American empire at whose altar we've knelt all these years. America is distracted by the financial crisis and the presidential election. Bush, Cheney and the neo-con war party would have dearly liked to bomb Iran. The opportunity for them to do so, if it ever existed, has gone. Iranian defiance (as opposed to our cravenness) has been vindicated. If we break loose from America's embrace and renegotiate our terms of friendship with it America will gnash its teeth. Economic pain it can also inflict but how much worse can our economic situation get? How much deeper can we plunge?

Who knows in the very act of breaking the mental shackles which bind us to the US we might discover the freedom and self-respect we have always fantasized about but never achieved. It's quite possible that the moment we announce our dissociation from America's war aims the fever of extremism from Swat to Waziristan will subside. It won't immediately disappear but it will become amenable to treatment.

But to move towards any kind of national salvation we will need leaders whose minds are free. Musharraf looked more his own man than the present leadership and that's saying a lot. Zardari says the world is a safer place because of Bush. Mental kowtowing can't be carried much further than this.

About the in-camera session I am not supposed to say anything although heaven knows no mighty secrets were divulged. The question-answer session the next morning was largely wasted because the kind of pointed and informed questions that should have been asked were not asked. As the principal opposition party it was up to the PML-N to do most of the probing but living up to its reputation as the Permanent Walkout or Naraaz (angry) Party, it announced that the briefing not being comprehensive enough its members would not ask questions, a puzzling standpoint to say the least.

An hour or so into the question-answer session which was being handled by the director-general military operations (now promoted as the DG ISI), the army chief, with a slightly bemused expression on his face, went away. Had he other matters to attend to or had he had enough for the day?

 

[Munir]

for Bush 911 came as a miracle. Right on time to ditch any negative thoughts about economy or failed policies... It gave him sweeping powers and another few years to control mother earth. Another war would be another way to remove attention from the failed capitalism.

 

[IceCold]

Yes we should ditch the US but the point is who going to do it? The present regime, Dont even think about it. Infact they are more in the US pocket then any army general ever was. Its because of the US they get into the power at the first place and it will be the US in the end where they will run back once their government is gone.

Bottom line is until we cant get rid of the fedual system placed within the self proclaimed forces of democracy, we cant expect much to happen out side and that is exactly what happened all these sixty plus years. We need to set our house in order before we can expect the world to get in order for us.

I think India's example should be kept in mind in this aspect as well. There is no harm in adopting something positive even out of your enemy.

 

[batmannow]

Yes we should ditch the US but the point is who going to do it? The present regime, Dont even think about it. Infact they are more in the US pocket then any army general ever was. Its because of the US they get into the power at the first place and it will be the US in the end where they will run back once their government is gone.

Bottom line is until we cant get rid of the fedual system placed within the self proclaimed forces of democracy, we cant expect much to happen out side and that is exactly what happened all these sixty plus years. We need to set our house in order before we can expect the world to get in order for us.

I think India's example should be kept in mind in this aspect as well. There is no harm in adopting something positive even out of your enemy.

Dear IceCold; sir
thanks a lot , that you made exactly 100% picture of the crunnt situation, but this a good thread.

 

[Munir]

Indian nespaper:

Why Zardari said what America wanted to hear
12 Oct 2008, 0201 hrs IST, M J Akbar

No passport has yet been devised that can take one easily across the borderline of fear. Pakistan used to fear annihilation by India; now it fears hegemony. India used to fear invasion across the Line of Control in Kashmir; now it fears the export of terror.

One nation's freedom-fighter can, of course, be a neighbour's terrorist. Pakistan may sincerely want peace with India, but it still has not reconciled itself to peace in Kashmir. Politicians, bureaucrats and generals sitting across a walnut table are not the only ones who determine the management of visceral fear. The street also has a say, the Pakistani street being a less than melodious orchestra of mohalla, madrassa and media.

Might I offer a suggestion for the new kid on the block, Asif Zardari, once "Mr Ten Percent" and now the honourable President of Pakistan. The next time he feels inclined towards discussing Kashmir in an interview, he should outsource the interview to his spokesman. It will save him the bother of claiming he has been misquoted or misunderstood.

Is there any rational explanation for what Zardari definitely told the Wall Street Journal - that those who had picked up the gun and bomb in Kashmir were terrorists, and that India has never been a threat to Pakistan?

Part of the reason lies in the fact that he was speaking to a conservative American paper. Zardari obviously shares one trait with India's Prime Minister, who in September offered the true love of every Indian to George Bush, the most hated president since polls began to measure such sentiments. Zardari was telling a Republican paper what he thought the White House wanted to hear. But this is useful only if it meshes into a larger framework.

Washington is reorienting its policy towards the entire region between Kabul and Delhi, and the basic foundations are being repositioned for a new architecture. At the centre of this shift is recognition that the failing war against Afghanistan was deeply flawed by an error of judgement. It should have been against al-Qaida, fountainhead of terrorism, and not against Taliban, government of the Afghan nation. The determined Taliban have not only turned the flow of battle, but have emerged as champions of Afghan nationalism and good governance, compared to the utter corruption and incompetence of the Hamid Karzai regime. The British commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, admitted in the first week of October that absolute military victory was impossible and that if the Taliban were prepared to sit across the table this "insurgency" could be concluded.

He was only making public a process that had already begun. Between September 24 and 27, King Abdullah hosted a dialogue between 11 Taliban delegates, two Afghan officials, a representative of Gulbuddin Hekmetyar and three others. The talks had the official backing of the British government, and the unofficial support of the United States. America and Britain are talking to those they went to war against after 9/11 in the belief that they were "terrorists". Their rhetoric still describes the Taliban thus.

It is clear that US and UK are trying to declare victory before they get out of a war they cannot win. But since America cannot be defeated by "terrorists", the Taliban will have to be redefined.

The Taliban are delighted to play ball. Mullah Mohammad Omar has conveyed, through his representatives at the Saudi talks, that Taliban was no longer allied with al-Qaida.

Pakistan has repeatedly been told by Washington to disassociate itself from terrorists, a tactic that has become second nature to the ISI. If Taliban can walk away from Osama bin Laden, then Pakistan should be prepared to abandon Kashmiri terrorists.

In an ideal Anglo-American scenario, the security gap left behind by departing Nato forces would be filled by an informal, if difficult, alliance between India and Pakistan. This cannot happen as long as Kashmir remains a source of conflict. Hence, a new arrangement for the region needs a resolution of Kashmir. This process cannot begin unless Islamabad decides that Kashmiri militants are not freedom-fighters. Once this happens, the status of Kashmir can be negotiated as long as the governments in Delhi and Islamabad are amenable to American "advice".

In an interesting twist of fate, Pakistan has now more to fear from terrorists on its west than from India. Pessimists have even begun to talk, albeit in hushed tones, of the possibility of a second partition of Pakistan, with the Frontier becoming a virtually independent region, under the control of Taliban-inspired Pushtun theocrats. It is only such a context that makes some sense of Zardari's assertion that the real threat to Pakistan is not from India. He is right, of course: India has never had any desire for any Pakistan territory, preferring to let Pakistan stew in the contradictions of its own politico-ideological concoction.

For Zardari, this would mean burial of the strategic legacy of another man he should hate with passion, General Zia-ul Haq, who led the coup against his father-in-law, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and later hanged him. Zia convinced his country that what had been impossible through conventional war could be achieved through unconventional means. It was an attractive proposition in the 1980s: Punjab seemed utterly vulnerable and it was obvious that India could not hold on to Kashmir if it lost Punjab. Zia, a packed package of craft, laid siege to India through terrorists, even as he wooed its opinion-maker elite with time, double-talk, carpets and silver teapots in the hope they would find rational arguments for abandoning the defence of Indian unity. Two decades later, elitist knees continue to wobble far too quickly in Delhi.

Zardari's first serious attempt to test the elasticity of Pakistan's thinking has rebounded: the elastic has snapped back sharply enough to loosen a molar or two. He could not recognize the power of the Pakistani street because he has never worked on it. He has usurped the authority of the prime minister and turned the office of the president, which he reached through an indirect election, into the centre of power. It was a constitutional coup, aided by a sycophantic political party and a fragile polity. But bribes and bullying will not alter the Pakistani's most durable article of faith, that Kashmir belongs to Pakistan.

One presumes Zardari has learnt a primary lesson: sometimes it is easier to get into office than to sit in it.

The American argument can be beguiling to Islamabad, that when a final prospect of peace is offered, the Indian elite will accept the compromises in geography necessary to make a Kashmir deal palatable to Pakistan. A trial run has already been established in the nuclear pact, where vital commitments have been sacrificed by Delhi and ignored by most of the Indian elite, whether in Parliament or press. Mediocre leaders have an almost incurable urge to "enter history" through a single triumph, even if this means tweaking the national interest here or there. Zardari seems to have bought into the American dream for South Asia.

But nations are not chess pieces which can be arbitrarily rearranged through clever moves. Rulers might dream of turning a pawn into a queen; in real life, kings end up as pawns much more easily.

 

[Vinod2070]

^^ A bit confusing article. Not sure where Mr. Akbar stands with respect to the issues raised.

The praise for the Taliban is again something contrary to their record. He has conveniently ignored the massive oppression of women, genocide of Hazaras, public executions in Football grounds, public floggings et al. Besides of course their making Afghanistan the hub of international terror.

Not even their biggest supporter can accuse them of being models of good governance, though may be the current corrupt lot have outclasses them in bad governance.

 

[Kasrkin]

I disagree with the first article a bit. Pakistan needs to fight this war that much is without doubt. But why is it such a problem if we use all the help that the Americans can give us to win it? We could do with all the extra money they can give us as far as rebuilding those areas, bringing extra development and opportunity is concerned. Not to mention we could very well use this as an excuse to modernize our military at a relatively cheap cost and catch up with India without raising too many eyebrows.

It really makes no sense, on the one hand the author acknowledges that this war needs to be fought, but on the other hands he suggests breaking ties with a powerful ally who would undoubtedly have no choice but to support us and could easily be used to look out for Pakistan’s interest at least in the short term. As long as we are fighting along side the Americans, there is no way they will let India mess around in our eastern border in case we withdraw to face them. Even from a tactical point of view, we are fighting the same enemy and the only credible military force on that side of the border is the US and NATO, pretending they don’t exist and trying to go it alone without substantial coordination will only makes things 10 times tougher for us and for them.

And while they can always afford to call it a day and run, that same luxury is not available to us as this is our home and these are our people that are dying and will keep dying if order is not restored and traitors and criminals and insurrectionists are not brought to account. These rebels are a car drive away from Islamabad, not Washington or Brussels, so we as a responsible Nation that wishes to prosper have no choice but to take a more proactive role in winning this fight.

I don’t like the USA anymore than this guy, they are selfish and cannot be trusted, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use them just like they so often use others. This whole situation is their mess, no doubt, because they failed to conduct a proper invasion in 2001 and let these exiles just walk into our unguarded tribal areas. But we are where we are, and playing rhetorical blame games about the past won’t save lives. Coming up with the best and reasonable solutions with the options and constrictions we have will be the best course of action. And that reality is that we cannot afford to fight this war alone, I have no doubt that even if we do fight this war alone we will win it, but that doesn’t mean we can afford it, the cost maybe far too high for our nation’s security as we already have other more serious security concerns to worry about.

Also even if we were to break our ties with the US, do you seriously think the drone attacks into our territory will stop or get worse?