The plan Obama unveiled last week for Years 9 and 10 of the war in Afghanistan left a basic question begging for an answer: If Al Qaeda is the threat, and Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, why send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan?
In his address Tuesday night, Obama mentioned Pakistan and the Pakistanis some 25 times, and called Pakistan and Afghanistan collectively “the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda.”
But he might have had an easier time explaining what he was really proposing had he set the national boundaries aside and told Americans that the additional soldiers and marines were being sent to another land altogether: Pashtunistan.
That land is not on any map, but it’s where leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban both hide. It straddles 1,000 miles of the 1,600-mile Afghan-Pakistani border. It is inhabited by the ethnic Pashtuns, a fiercely independent people that number 12 million on the Afghan side and 27 million on the Pakistani side. They have a language (Pashto), an elaborate traditional code of legal and moral conduct (Pashtunwali), a habit of crossing the largely unmarked border at will, and a centuries-long history of foreign interventions that ended badly for the foreigners.
Whether Obama will have better luck there than Bush, the Soviet Politburo and British prime ministers back to the early 19th century remains to be seen. But it is there that the war will be fought, because it is there that the Taliban were spawned and where they now regroup, attack and find shelter, for themselves and their Qaeda guests.
Today, the enemies of the United States are nearly all in Pashtunistan, an aspirational name coined long ago by advocates of an independent Pashtun homeland. From bases in the Pakistani part of it — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas toward the north and Baluchistan province in the south — Afghan Taliban leaders, who are Pashtuns, have plotted attacks against Afghanistan. It is also from the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan that Qaeda militants have plotted terrorism against the West.
And the essential strategic problem for the Americans has been this: their enemy, so far, has been able to draw advantage from the border between the two nation-states by ignoring it, and the Americans have so far been hindered because they must respect it.
That is because Pakistan and Afghanistan care deeply about their sovereign rights on either side of the line, but the Pashtuns themselves have never paid the boundary much regard since it was drawn by a British diplomat, Mortimer Durand, in 1893.
And that has enormously complicated the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban can plan an attack from Pakistan and execute it in Afghanistan. Their fighters — or Al Qaeda’s leaders — can slip across the border to flee, or to rejoin the battle. At the same time, the Americans can fight openly only in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan, and the Taliban know it.
That has been changing all year, however, and it is about to change even more, as the Americans gear up for an intensified war on both sides of the line simultaneously. The dispatch of 30,000 additional Americans to the Afghan side of the border will occur simultaneously with more intensive missile strikes from drone aircraft and Pakistani army offensives on the other side.
Ever since Osama bin Laden escaped American forces in December 2001, crossing the mountains of Tora Bora from Afghanistan into Pakistan, American strategists have spoken of a “hammer and anvil” strategy to crush the militants. Until now, the border has proven so porous, and Pakistani governments so squeamish about a fight, that the American hammer in Afghanistan was pounding Taliban fighters there against a Pakistani pillow, not an anvil.
Now, Obama’s added troops are likely to be concentrated in the Taliban stronghold in Helmand and Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and near Khost in the east. At the same time, the president has approved a major intensification of drone strikes in Pakistan, even as the Pakistani army continues a campaign against the militants launched this fall in South Waziristan, following on a counterattack that swept militants last spring from the Swat Valley.
For years, in fact, Pakistani intelligence has played a double game with Islamist extremists, nurturing them as a force to use against Pakistan’s archrival India in the disputed territory of Kashmir and helping create the Taliban as a buffer against Indian influence in Afghanistan.
But as the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s later turned on their American benefactors, so some militants in Pakistan have begun attacking the state that once encouraged them. Many in the Pakistani elite were stunned by the emergence in 2007 of the Pakistani Taliban and by the subsequent campaign of terrorist attacks against Pakistan’s power structure, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, suicide bombings in cities and an attack on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October.
These slaughters has changed the attitude of many Pakistanis, including government officials, about the wisdom of tolerating radical groups. And since last year, Pakistan has offered quiet but crucial support for the C.I.A.’s use of missile-firing drones, including intelligence on militants’ whereabouts.
Still, Pakistan is deeply divided, conditioned for decades to focus its security concerns on India. Popular opinion runs strongly against the United States. And Obama administration officials say they have not yet won Islamabad’s support for major elements of the new war strategy.
Most significantly, Pakistan has yet to agree to go after the leaders of the Afghan Taliban, or to permit American drones to hunt them in the province of Baluchistan, across the border from their former Afghani base in Kandahar. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the cleric to whom even Mr. bin Laden has pledged fealty, operates now from near the Pakistani city of Quetta, as he helps oversee the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.
And history offers unnerving precedent for the Americans. In Waziristan, the patch of Pakistan where the Central Intelligence Agency now kills militants with missiles fired from drones, the British conducted what may have been history’s first counterinsurgency air campaign, bombing from biplanes between 1919 and 1925.
In the shifting American policies We see an echo of the British experience; the British found themselves caught for decades in a cycle of rebellion, brutal suppression, payoffs for tribal leaders, and then a period of peace followed by a new rebellion.
Given the realistic time limits to American involvement,the best possible outcome may be modest- to force the Taliban to come to terms and allow the U.S. an exit.
But even the prospect of an exit has hazards for the United States. The long Pashtun experience with war has taught them to favor those who look like winners, which is why the Taliban’s successes in the last few years have lured fighters to their side.
In other words, the fate of Obama’s surge depends a lot on the hearts and minds of the Pashtuns — and who seems a winner.
A Taliban victory could give Al Qaeda not just a physical haven but a philosophical victory with profound consequences. The lesson of the Taliban’s revival for Al Qaeda is that time and will are on their side, that with a Western defeat they could regain their strength and achieve a major strategic victory. Rolling back the Taliban is now necessary, even if not sufficient, to the ultimate defeat of Al Qaeda.
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Showing posts with label Taliban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taliban. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 15
Monday, October 12
Way out from Af-Pak Strategy
THE KEY to getting out of Afghanistan without turning Kabul over to the Taliban lies in replacing the failed US “Af-Pak’’ strategy with a new regional approach in which India, Iran, Russia, and China - all opposed to a Taliban takeover - join with the United States and NATO in stabilizing the country.
The “Af-Pak’’ strategy is based on the false premise that Pakistan and the United States are both opposed to Islamist influence in Afghanistan. In reality, Pakistan has long supported the Taliban insurgents there for what it considers a compelling strategic reason: to counter the influence of India in Kabul.
Despite this, the United States continues to give military aid and $800 million in annual cash subsidies to the Pakistan Army, supposedly for the express purpose of fighting the Taliban.
Until this pretense is ended, the United States will remain mired in a stalemate with Pakistan-supplied Taliban fighters. Equally important, Islamabad will be increasingly emboldened to demand the exclusion of Indian influence from Afghanistan as the price for cooperation there. Given India’s strong opposition to Islamist forces, this would directly conflict with US interests and goals.
Defenders of aid to Pakistan argue that its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, has given the CIA valuable information about Al Qaeda. Another compelling reason for US reluctance to threaten a cutoff of subsidies and aid is that Islamabad could counter by denying transit through Pakistan to supply US forces in Afghanistan.
“With one hand, they threaten to prevent you from prosecuting the war unless you pay them off,’’ Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, said. “With the other, they help the Taliban to make sure that the war keeps going on and the aid keeps flowing.’’
To escape from this trap, the United States should make three policy changes:
First, the administration should make clear that it recognizes the right of India, as the preeminent South Asian power, to be a major player in Kabul. The spokesman of the Pakistan armed forces, Major General Athar Abbas, criticizing the “overinvolvement of Indians in Afghanistan’’ in a July CNN interview, specifically warned against any Indian role in training the Afghan Army. But such a role could be a valuable supplement to the current faltering US-NATO training efforts. Indian aid to Kabul has so far been limited to $1.2 billion in economic aid.
Second, the Obama administration should seek Pakistan’s help in negotiating peace agreements with local Taliban factions, following up earlier Saudi Arabian initiatives. To get Taliban participation, such agreements would have to include a timetable for phased withdrawal of most US forces from all but the major cities and highways of Afghanistan.
Third, local peace agreements should be linked to a larger peace process negotiated at regional conferences attended by India, Iran, Russia, and China, in addition to the United States, NATO, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
India feels encircled by ISI-supported Islamist forces operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Shi’ite-majority Iran opposes the Sunni Taliban, and China, facing an Islamist uprising in Sinkiang, is increasingly wary of Taliban rule in Kabul. Bringing these nations into Afghan affairs would offset Pakistani support for the Taliban so that its influence remains confined to its strongholds in the ethnically Pashtun south and east and it does not become dominant in Kabul.
A peace process that leads to a phased withdrawal of most US forces would end the dependence of the United States on Pakistani supply lines. It would then be possible, at last, for the United States to use its enormous aid leverage in Islamabad effectively.
If the Al Qaeda leadership is still in Pakistan, and if ISI provides actionable intelligence that facilitates its destruction, then the existing US payoffs to the army should continue. But if Al Qaeda is no longer centered in Pakistan, as some suspect, or if ISI is unable to provide actionable intelligence, then the United States should restrict its aid to Islamabad to large-scale economic assistance focused on development and education. Maintaining friendly ties with Pakistan as a major Third World country and a nuclear weapons state should continue to be a US priority. But the tail should no longer wag the dog.
Source: Boston - Selig S. Harrison, author of “Out of Afghanistan’’ and “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,’’ is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy
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The “Af-Pak’’ strategy is based on the false premise that Pakistan and the United States are both opposed to Islamist influence in Afghanistan. In reality, Pakistan has long supported the Taliban insurgents there for what it considers a compelling strategic reason: to counter the influence of India in Kabul.
Despite this, the United States continues to give military aid and $800 million in annual cash subsidies to the Pakistan Army, supposedly for the express purpose of fighting the Taliban.
Until this pretense is ended, the United States will remain mired in a stalemate with Pakistan-supplied Taliban fighters. Equally important, Islamabad will be increasingly emboldened to demand the exclusion of Indian influence from Afghanistan as the price for cooperation there. Given India’s strong opposition to Islamist forces, this would directly conflict with US interests and goals.
Defenders of aid to Pakistan argue that its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, has given the CIA valuable information about Al Qaeda. Another compelling reason for US reluctance to threaten a cutoff of subsidies and aid is that Islamabad could counter by denying transit through Pakistan to supply US forces in Afghanistan.
“With one hand, they threaten to prevent you from prosecuting the war unless you pay them off,’’ Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, said. “With the other, they help the Taliban to make sure that the war keeps going on and the aid keeps flowing.’’
To escape from this trap, the United States should make three policy changes:
First, the administration should make clear that it recognizes the right of India, as the preeminent South Asian power, to be a major player in Kabul. The spokesman of the Pakistan armed forces, Major General Athar Abbas, criticizing the “overinvolvement of Indians in Afghanistan’’ in a July CNN interview, specifically warned against any Indian role in training the Afghan Army. But such a role could be a valuable supplement to the current faltering US-NATO training efforts. Indian aid to Kabul has so far been limited to $1.2 billion in economic aid.
Second, the Obama administration should seek Pakistan’s help in negotiating peace agreements with local Taliban factions, following up earlier Saudi Arabian initiatives. To get Taliban participation, such agreements would have to include a timetable for phased withdrawal of most US forces from all but the major cities and highways of Afghanistan.
Third, local peace agreements should be linked to a larger peace process negotiated at regional conferences attended by India, Iran, Russia, and China, in addition to the United States, NATO, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
India feels encircled by ISI-supported Islamist forces operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Shi’ite-majority Iran opposes the Sunni Taliban, and China, facing an Islamist uprising in Sinkiang, is increasingly wary of Taliban rule in Kabul. Bringing these nations into Afghan affairs would offset Pakistani support for the Taliban so that its influence remains confined to its strongholds in the ethnically Pashtun south and east and it does not become dominant in Kabul.
A peace process that leads to a phased withdrawal of most US forces would end the dependence of the United States on Pakistani supply lines. It would then be possible, at last, for the United States to use its enormous aid leverage in Islamabad effectively.
If the Al Qaeda leadership is still in Pakistan, and if ISI provides actionable intelligence that facilitates its destruction, then the existing US payoffs to the army should continue. But if Al Qaeda is no longer centered in Pakistan, as some suspect, or if ISI is unable to provide actionable intelligence, then the United States should restrict its aid to Islamabad to large-scale economic assistance focused on development and education. Maintaining friendly ties with Pakistan as a major Third World country and a nuclear weapons state should continue to be a US priority. But the tail should no longer wag the dog.
Source: Boston - Selig S. Harrison, author of “Out of Afghanistan’’ and “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,’’ is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy
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Sunday, June 7
Will Pakistan be able to save itself from itself ?
It was in November 1994 that the first group of Taliban emerged in Kandahar to take control of the city. By the end of the month this mysterious group had taken control of Lashkargah and Helmand provinces as well.
Less than two years later, aided by an eager Pakistani establishment and various other Pashtun groups it supported, the Taliban captured Kabul on September 26, 1996, and in another show of brutality hanged President Najibullah. Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Masood retreated and the Pakistanis presumed they had attained strategic depth.
Fifteen years later, the Taliban, be they Afghans sitting in Quetta or the Pakistani Taliban with total control in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and partial control in many parts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), only confirms that the Pakistani state has retreated from parts of its own territory.
Terrorist attacks attributed to the Taliban have been common even in Punjab province. If the latest reports are to be believed, the Taliban have entered southern and western Punjab with assistance from groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), who have been the Inter-Services Intelligence’s (ISI) favourites.
Pakistan’s best known sociologist and political thinker, Dr Eqbal Ahmad, had anticipated this in his essay, What After Strategic Depth (Dawn, August 23, 1998). In a very perceptive analysis, he had said: "The costs of Islamabad’s Afghan policy have been augmenting since 1980 when Muhammad Zia-ul Haq proudly declared Pakistan a ‘frontline state’ in the Cold War. Those costs — already unbearable in proliferation of guns, heroin and armed fanatics — are likely now to multiply in myriad ways".
He had added: "The domestic costs of Pakistan’s friendly proximity to the Taliban are incalculable and potentially catastrophic... More importantly, the Taliban is the most retrograde political movement in the history of Islam". Today, that elusive strategic depth seems to have become Pakistan’s obscurantist black hole.
Others had given similar warnings. Jessica Stern ended her essay, Pakistan’s Jihad Culture (Foreign Affairs, November-December 2000), with this caution: "...Pakistan must recognise the militant groups for what they are ...dangerous gangs whose resources and reach continue to grow, threatening to destabilise the entire region. Pakistan’s continued support of religious-militant groups suggests that it does not recognise its own susceptibility to the culture of violence it has helped create. It should think again". Pakistan did get that chance after September 11, 2001; but its khaki grandees assumed that duplicity would help them win in the end.
Dr Hassan-Askari Rizvi, another one of Pakistan’s well-known defence and political analysts, had a few questions in an article, Military and Islamic Militancy (Daily Times, May 31, 2004). He asked: "How far has Islamic militancy penetrated the Army? Do some senior officers share the Taliban-type Islamic worldview and support Islamic militancy? Is there any threat of a coup led by an Islamist general? Another set of concerns pertain to the safety and security of nuclear weapons and fissile and radioactive material, against the backdrop of the recent disclosure about nuclear leakages from Khan Research Laboratory. Previously, most analysts dismissed these concerns on the assumption that Islamic extremists have not been able to penetrate the military".
Dr Rizvi made another very ominous but after ignored observation he wrote: "The long years of ISI-directed Islamic militancy were bound to have implications for Pakistani society and the military. In the case of the Army, its personnel were directly exposed to Islamic militancy and propaganda by Islamic groups in support of militancy, and a genuinely Islamic order for Pakistan. The Pakistani state openly identified with Islamic orthodoxy and militancy and it became fashionable to publicly support the militant groups engaged in insurgency in Kashmir".
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy (The Saudi-isation of Pakistan) and Rubina Saigol (Myths versus Facts about Fundamentalism) are two other Pakistanis who, in recent weeks, have been brave and forthright enough to express their concern about Pakistan’s future in their aforementioned articles.
Dr Hoodbhoy’s worry is that "in the long term we will have to see how the larger political battle works out between those who want an Islamic theocratic state and those who want a modern Islamic republic".
Ms Saigol pointed out what we in India have been saying for some time: "The reign of terror had Pakistan’s official support, while the rest of the world remained incredulous. The policy of ‘bleeding India with a thousand cuts’... had state sponsorship. Going into Afghanistan in return for dollars was also a state decision".
Pakistan is still playing the same game, only for more dollars. It continues to raise different bogies in order to win American sympathy. But judging from some recent remarks from Washington, Pakistan’s Indian bogey does not seem to be selling well any longer.
Now that Nizam-e-Adl has officially been promulgated in Swat for implementation of Taliban-style Sharia, it is going to be exceedingly difficult for the state to prevent similar demands from other parts or to describe the Taliban as "anti-state". They have been legitimised. The NWFP governor had claimed that the state had responded to the aspirations of the people.
Responding to the people’s aspirations is laudable, but in this case the government of Pakistan signed a deal with an insurgent force it had not defeated or even overpowered. It was pure appeasement.
Pakistan’s so-called civil society, which had campaigned for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry (who had been deposed by Pervez Musharraf) has all but disappeared, and many of its members are quietly looking for safe havens abroad.
The mainstream political parties, except for the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), have acquiesced in the Nizam-e-Adl.
The Pakistan Army, the strongest force in Pakistan today, did not intervene to prevent what could be a cascading effect.
The point, therefore, is whether what happened in Fata NWFP and in Malakand, is an unimpeded march of the Taliban, just a march of folly by the state or an elaborate policy of cultivating hatred that has become a scourge visiting its creators.
Questions will always be raised whether the Pakistan Army was unable, unwilling or complicit in all this. If the Pakistan Army does not reassert itself soon enough, the Taliban, along with elements of the Punjabi LeT and JeM jihadis in their ranks, will become unstoppable. The Taliban’s vacation of Buner was almost as smooth as the takeover; they remain active in the hills of northern Pakistan. They could move into Gilgit and Baltistan.
One should be prepared for renewed efforts to infiltrate terrorists into India as the Pakistani establishment scurries to try and remain relevant in Kashmir.
The Pakistan Army’s future course of action will thus depend on whether or not it is convinced that it must take action against its surrogates, both among the Pashtuns and Punjabis; and if this action will cause multiple ruptures within the Army. The third factor, of course, is the amount of pressure the United States is able to sustain on the Pakistan Army.
Can Pakistan manage to save itself from itself?
Source : Asian Age 29th April 2009
Read more!
Less than two years later, aided by an eager Pakistani establishment and various other Pashtun groups it supported, the Taliban captured Kabul on September 26, 1996, and in another show of brutality hanged President Najibullah. Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Masood retreated and the Pakistanis presumed they had attained strategic depth.
Fifteen years later, the Taliban, be they Afghans sitting in Quetta or the Pakistani Taliban with total control in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and partial control in many parts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), only confirms that the Pakistani state has retreated from parts of its own territory.
Terrorist attacks attributed to the Taliban have been common even in Punjab province. If the latest reports are to be believed, the Taliban have entered southern and western Punjab with assistance from groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), who have been the Inter-Services Intelligence’s (ISI) favourites.
Pakistan’s best known sociologist and political thinker, Dr Eqbal Ahmad, had anticipated this in his essay, What After Strategic Depth (Dawn, August 23, 1998). In a very perceptive analysis, he had said: "The costs of Islamabad’s Afghan policy have been augmenting since 1980 when Muhammad Zia-ul Haq proudly declared Pakistan a ‘frontline state’ in the Cold War. Those costs — already unbearable in proliferation of guns, heroin and armed fanatics — are likely now to multiply in myriad ways".
He had added: "The domestic costs of Pakistan’s friendly proximity to the Taliban are incalculable and potentially catastrophic... More importantly, the Taliban is the most retrograde political movement in the history of Islam". Today, that elusive strategic depth seems to have become Pakistan’s obscurantist black hole.
Others had given similar warnings. Jessica Stern ended her essay, Pakistan’s Jihad Culture (Foreign Affairs, November-December 2000), with this caution: "...Pakistan must recognise the militant groups for what they are ...dangerous gangs whose resources and reach continue to grow, threatening to destabilise the entire region. Pakistan’s continued support of religious-militant groups suggests that it does not recognise its own susceptibility to the culture of violence it has helped create. It should think again". Pakistan did get that chance after September 11, 2001; but its khaki grandees assumed that duplicity would help them win in the end.
Dr Hassan-Askari Rizvi, another one of Pakistan’s well-known defence and political analysts, had a few questions in an article, Military and Islamic Militancy (Daily Times, May 31, 2004). He asked: "How far has Islamic militancy penetrated the Army? Do some senior officers share the Taliban-type Islamic worldview and support Islamic militancy? Is there any threat of a coup led by an Islamist general? Another set of concerns pertain to the safety and security of nuclear weapons and fissile and radioactive material, against the backdrop of the recent disclosure about nuclear leakages from Khan Research Laboratory. Previously, most analysts dismissed these concerns on the assumption that Islamic extremists have not been able to penetrate the military".
Dr Rizvi made another very ominous but after ignored observation he wrote: "The long years of ISI-directed Islamic militancy were bound to have implications for Pakistani society and the military. In the case of the Army, its personnel were directly exposed to Islamic militancy and propaganda by Islamic groups in support of militancy, and a genuinely Islamic order for Pakistan. The Pakistani state openly identified with Islamic orthodoxy and militancy and it became fashionable to publicly support the militant groups engaged in insurgency in Kashmir".
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy (The Saudi-isation of Pakistan) and Rubina Saigol (Myths versus Facts about Fundamentalism) are two other Pakistanis who, in recent weeks, have been brave and forthright enough to express their concern about Pakistan’s future in their aforementioned articles.
Dr Hoodbhoy’s worry is that "in the long term we will have to see how the larger political battle works out between those who want an Islamic theocratic state and those who want a modern Islamic republic".
Ms Saigol pointed out what we in India have been saying for some time: "The reign of terror had Pakistan’s official support, while the rest of the world remained incredulous. The policy of ‘bleeding India with a thousand cuts’... had state sponsorship. Going into Afghanistan in return for dollars was also a state decision".
Pakistan is still playing the same game, only for more dollars. It continues to raise different bogies in order to win American sympathy. But judging from some recent remarks from Washington, Pakistan’s Indian bogey does not seem to be selling well any longer.
Now that Nizam-e-Adl has officially been promulgated in Swat for implementation of Taliban-style Sharia, it is going to be exceedingly difficult for the state to prevent similar demands from other parts or to describe the Taliban as "anti-state". They have been legitimised. The NWFP governor had claimed that the state had responded to the aspirations of the people.
Responding to the people’s aspirations is laudable, but in this case the government of Pakistan signed a deal with an insurgent force it had not defeated or even overpowered. It was pure appeasement.
Pakistan’s so-called civil society, which had campaigned for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry (who had been deposed by Pervez Musharraf) has all but disappeared, and many of its members are quietly looking for safe havens abroad.
The mainstream political parties, except for the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), have acquiesced in the Nizam-e-Adl.
The Pakistan Army, the strongest force in Pakistan today, did not intervene to prevent what could be a cascading effect.
The point, therefore, is whether what happened in Fata NWFP and in Malakand, is an unimpeded march of the Taliban, just a march of folly by the state or an elaborate policy of cultivating hatred that has become a scourge visiting its creators.
Questions will always be raised whether the Pakistan Army was unable, unwilling or complicit in all this. If the Pakistan Army does not reassert itself soon enough, the Taliban, along with elements of the Punjabi LeT and JeM jihadis in their ranks, will become unstoppable. The Taliban’s vacation of Buner was almost as smooth as the takeover; they remain active in the hills of northern Pakistan. They could move into Gilgit and Baltistan.
One should be prepared for renewed efforts to infiltrate terrorists into India as the Pakistani establishment scurries to try and remain relevant in Kashmir.
The Pakistan Army’s future course of action will thus depend on whether or not it is convinced that it must take action against its surrogates, both among the Pashtuns and Punjabis; and if this action will cause multiple ruptures within the Army. The third factor, of course, is the amount of pressure the United States is able to sustain on the Pakistan Army.
Can Pakistan manage to save itself from itself?
Source : Asian Age 29th April 2009
Read more!
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