Dawn, March 3, 2006
US alliance: more trouble than it’s worth
By Ayaz Amir
THE United States does something silly to Pakistan. In dealing with it, all our latent insecurities come to the surface, making us behave in a manner at once foolish and needlessly obsequious.
In more senses than one, George Bush is an embattled president, his invasion of Iraq, which was supposed to change the colour of the Middle East, gone irretrievably sour. There are not many places in the world where a visit by him would be sought out or particularly welcomed. Yet Pakistan’s military government, embattled in its own way, is rolling out the red carpet for him.
What Pakistan’s generals will get for their pains — and you don’t have to be a genius to figure this out — will be words of praise in public for the sentry duty they have been performing in aid of the US since September 11 but sharp words in private about not doing enough to seal the Pakistan-Afghan border and catch the top guns of Al Qaeda. As a sop to our feelings, we can also expect to hear double-edged words, meaning nothing, about Kashmir.
The US will do, can do, nothing about Kashmir. Why can’t we get this into our simple heads?
And why are we finding it so difficult to understand that Pakistan-American and Indo-American ties are on different levels altogether? The Cold War long over and the struggle against world communism having disappeared down some historical black hole, the terms of South Asian engagement have changed. It no longer makes sense for the US to view both countries through the same spectacles.
It looks at Pakistan through the mirror of ‘terrorism’ and what Pakistan can do to address American concerns regarding this single issue and India through the prism of a ‘strategic relationship’.
We can pout at this disparity or try to understand it. India is on the march economically and its democracy is an established fact. We are behind on both counts — our economy beholden to American largesse and our democracy under lock and key in a military guardroom.
Blow its trumpet as loudly as our military government may, facts are stubborn things and will not go away. We settled for sentry wages post-September 11 — about 700 million dollars a year, as part of a five-year package — and having done that, it is doubtful if the Americans think they owe us anything further by way of gratitude.
Far from that, their concerns are turning in a different direction, delivering broad and hard-to-ignore hints that Pakistan is not doing enough in the fight against Al Qaeda.
Pressured by the US, our army is deployed in Waziristan, fighting the wrong war and in the process suffering unwarranted casualties. Yet the Americans are not satisfied. They won’t risk their own soldiers in Afghanistan. But they want the Pakistan army to do more, obviously feeling they are not getting enough of a return on their investment. And Pakistan’s generals are finding it hard to resist this pressure.
Such Karzai-apologists as friend Ahmed Rashid are adroitly parroting this new American line. Writing in the Washington Post, as a curtain-raiser to Bush’s visit to Pakistan, he suggests that Osama bin Laden is now hiding in Pakistan’s Pashtun belt which he describes as “...now considered to be Al Qaeda Central and one of the world’s most dangerous regions.”
“Bin Laden’s new friendship zone,” he goes on to say, “stretches nearly 2,000 miles along Pakistan’s Pashtun belt — from Chitral in the Northern Areas... down to Zhob on the Balochistan border.” Not a passing word about the inadequacy of America’s puppet regime in Kabul, the failure of Afghan reconstruction or the fact that Afghanistan is again the world’s largest poppy producer. The responsibility for Afghan turmoil put squarely on Pakistan’s shoulders.
The writer even lends credence to the absurd charge that Ayman Al-Zawahiri was in Damadola, Bajaur Agency, when a Predator missile killed 18 people, including women and children. “Al-Zawahiri appears to have a busy social calendar in Pakistan’s Pashtun belt. US missiles narrowly missed him at a dinner party held in his honour on Jan 13.”
No wonder Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen Musharraf, is on the defensive, trying to convince his western interlocutors (prior to the Bush visit he gave several interviews) that the Pakistan Army was committed to fighting Al Qaeda and that Mullah Omar was not in Pakistan. “I’m 200 percent sure he’s in Afghanistan.”
Furthermore, “I have been telling Karzai and the United States, ‘Let us fence the border and let us mine it.’ Today I say it again.
Let us mine their entire border. Let us fence it. It’s not difficult.” Not difficult? Facing a hostile population, the army deployed in Waziristan is not overly keen to move out of its protected positions. And Gen Musharraf thinks it’s easy to fence and mine the border.
In fact, he is laying himself open to the charge that he’s protesting too much. Far from this doing him any good, he only seems to strain the credulity of his listeners. Pakistan can deploy its entire half-million-man army along the Pakistan-Afghan border (and destabilize the whole of Pakistan in the process) but that won’t stop the growing fighting in Afghanistan. Nor help catch Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Mullah Omar.
When Aimal Kasi was nabbed by the CIA from Dera Ghazi Khan, an American lawyer connected with the indictment brought against Kasi famously said that in Pakistan people were ready to sell their grandmothers for a few thousand dollars. The reward put on bin Laden’s head is 27 million dollars, that on Al-Zawahiri’s 25 million. That’s a lot of money and a lot of grandmothers. If bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri are in Pakistan, by all accounts one of the most CIA-penetrated countries in the world, someone should have turned them in by now.
The truth perhaps is more prosaic. Pakistan is being made a scapegoat of and we should know what to expect. The more trouble there is in Afghanistan, the greater the temptation to kick some more Pakistani backside.
Gen Musharraf therefore deserves national sympathy. Having hitched his star to America’s wagon he has to listen to American nonsense and give unnecessary explanations to every American/western reporter who happens to interview him.
He would be better off if he were to ration his time and grant less media interviews. But perhaps he is convinced of his persuasive powers. A sense of infallibility is one of the occupational hazards of long-term stay in office and Gen Musharraf has been around for some time.
Anyhow, Pakistan will be under a double siege today, Islamabad sealed because of Bush’s visit and the country as a whole shut down in response to the MMA’s call for a nation-wide strike in protest against the Danish cartoons. If the strike is successful, all the signs suggesting that it will be, hosts and guests alike, hiding their embarrassment as best they can, will have to put up a brave face.
As most people understand by now, this protest is no longer confined to the issue of the cartoons. It has acquired distinct anti-government and anti-American overtones, something even the corps commanders’ conference held on Tuesday perforce had to recognize.
A communique issued at its conclusion said: “Unfortunately some with malicious intent have created a law and order problem and a situation of insecurity for foreign investors. Those who have indulged in violence causing loss of life and property of their brethren and exploited this situation for personal agendas are actually indulging in an unethical and criminal act and we shall deal with them sternly.” Language can’t get more convoluted than this but let’s leave it at that.
Not since 1977 when at the height of the anti-Bhutto agitation the three service chiefs, including Gen Ziaul Haq, issued a statement in support of Bhutto has anything like this come from the army. Whether this statement impresses anyone or not, it indicates a degree of nervousness in the corridors of power. For if all had been well in that quarter, there would have been no need to take out this insurance policy. The statement is unfortunate. It shouldn’t have been issued.
(The more relevant question is: who is responsible to deal “sternly” with lawless elements, the government or the corps commanders? And then we are trying to convince the world of our democratic credentials.)
We need a mature, sensible relationship with it, not a client-patron relationship harmful to our self-image and demeaning to our self-respect.
Needless sucking up is as senseless as the cultivation of needless animosity. We should avoid both extremes. We haven’t been able to apply the doctrine of “enlightened moderation” to anything else but we could start by applying it to our American connection.
We don’t need to get into an American-fuelled arms race in the sub-continent. We need F-16s like we need a hole in our head. Our problems are internal, stemming from our failure to create a stable political order. No one can help us in this regard, least of all the US. This is one problem we have to solve on our own.
Tailpiece: The so-called operation in North Waziristan killing ‘45 alleged Al Qaeda militants’ is particularly ill-timed because it strengthens the impression that such incidents take place whenever a US dignitary is expected in Pakistan or a Pakistani high-up is about to visit the US. This attack has further inflamed feelings already running high in that sensitive region.
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