General Bluster

While the details of the many 'disclosures' in GeneralPervez Musharraf's book, In the Line of Fire, will be discussed adnauseam over the coming months (just as, at one time, Ayub Khan's fabricationsin his autobiographical Friends not Masters were discussed, and thenquickly forgotten), one thing is already and abundantly clear: Gen Musharraf hasnow been demonstrated to be an inveterate, compulsive and unashamed liar. This,of course, is not news to those who have watched Pakistan and its leader throughthe clear eye of realism over the past seven years. The Indian and globaldiscourse has, however, been dominated by the many who have tended to grant theGeneral extraordinary latitude, and others who were seduced into believing hisevery past falsehood. Since many of Gen Musharraf's lies have been exposed inhis own narrative now, his positions can be expected to attract a greatermeasure of scepticism in future.

There is, in fact, significant and mounting evidence that the extraordinarylicence that Pakistan and its dictator have long enjoyed is approaching, if notan end, at least some measure of curtailment. Recent reports from UK suggestthat opinion within the security establishment is becoming increasingly hostileto Pakistan, and an internal document has accused Pakistan's ISI of supportingthe Al Qaeda and Taliban. The document suggested, further, that the ISI shouldbe dismantled and that Gen Musharraf himself should resign.

Pakistan's continuing role in supporting and sponsoring terrorism has beenwidely acknowledged by a range of Western sources, including officials,particularly among those who are directly connected or familiar withdevelopments on the ground— including the leaders of the US-led militaryalliance forces deployed in Afghanistan. It is useful to recall that, asrecently as September 21, 2006, Marine General James Jones, NATO's top militarycommander in Afghanistan, became the latest in a string of US officials toconfirm that the Taliban leadership was directing the Afghan insurgency fromQuetta in Pakistan. Nevertheless, most Western Governments try to studiouslylook the other way, and Gen Musharraf continues to receive pats on the back fromPresident Bush and the State Department.

India's leaders have also shown themselves to be periodically susceptible tothis selective blindness, and have only recently reclassified Pakistan as a'victim' rather than a perpetrator of terrorism. Only an occasional leader, likeAfghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, has remained steadfast in his insistencethat Pakistan is an essential part, indeed core, of the problem of terrorism,and not any part of a possible solution.

The world's tolerance of Pakistani terrorism is,indeed, astonishing in view of enormous and direct evidence of Pakistanimischief in some of the worst incidents of terrorism, as well as networks andconspiracies for terrorism targeting the West, in the recent past. Indeed, alisting of the Pakistani "Footprints of Terror" appears endless, andincludes almost every major terrorist attack on targets in the West since andafter 9/11.  A look at just a handful of the recent 'footprints' isedifying, with the conspiracy for the multiple hijacks in UK leading thelisting. 

Just over the last six months, 

• a Pakistan-born architect has been sentenced to 20 years in jail in Australia for plotting a bombing campaign; 
• US intelligence agencies have told a US Court that Pakistan is still running a terrorist training camp at Balakot in the NWFP;
• Afghan officials captured two Pakistanis who were part of a 20 member team that entered the country to carry out suicide attacks, after two members of the group were killed when they detonated a car bomb in the southern Zabul province; 
• a federal jury in the US convicted a Maryland man of Pakistani origin, Ali Asad Chandia on charges of providing material support to the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba; 
• police arrested 17 persons of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin in Canada for conspiring to launch terrorist attacks in Southern Ontario; 
• a Pakistani-American, Hamid Hayat, was found guilty of providing 'material support' to terrorists and training in Pakistan as a terrorist, for planned attacks in the US; 
• a Pakistani immigrant, Shahawar Matin Siraj, was indicted for conspiring to bomb one of New York city's busiest subway stations; 
• a Pakistani man, Muhamed Abid Afridi, was sentenced by a US court to nearly five years in prison for his role in a plot to obtain and sell Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, etc. etc. etc...

The principal argument for the continuing Western, andparticularly US, support to Pakistan and to Gen Musharraf personally, is thespecious reasoning that Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda and the Taliban cannot beneutralised without Pakistani assistance. The fact, on the contrary, is thatthey cannot be neutralised because they continue to enjoy significant Pakistanisupport and assistance, and a very substantial freedom of operation on Pakistanisoil. Gen Musharraf has repeatedly held up the example of the 600-plus 'Al Qaedaterrorists' that he has handed over to US custody as evidence of his good faith.

The reality, however, is that most of these are low-value targets, and thefew who had a significant position or presence in the Al Qaeda were onlyarrested by Pakistani forces when they were left with little choice, as Westernintelligence agencies had provided specific and detailed intelligence on theirlocation. Pakistan's 'cooperation' in the 'Global war on terror' has been bothreluctant and meagre. Pakistan seeks constantly to keep the instrumentalities ofterrorism— the various terrorist groups operating on and from its soil—alive in the long-term expectation that, eventually, US and Western enthusiasmfor and commitments in the region will wane, creating the space for arestoration of Pakistan's strategic over-reach through terrorism across Southand Central Asia.

It is high time that the US and the world called thePakistani bluff, and demanded that the country and its leadership fulfil itscommitments to neutralise terrorism from its soil, and engage in internationalrelations in accordance with contemporary and civilised norms, and not throughthe instruments of terror. Failing this, Pakistan would need to be completelyde-militarised, left only with weapons to fight terrorism and crime. GenMusharraf has admitted that he executed his U-turn on Afghan policy because MrRichard Armitage threatened to 'bomb Pakistan into the Stone Age' (though thishas been denied by Mr Armitage, and subsequently by the ever-lying Gen Musharraf).This— and this alone— is the kind of choice that will force Pakistan and GenMusharraf into abandoning their long-cherished enterprise of internationalterrorism.

K.P.S. Gill is a former Punjab DGP and is currently advisor to theChhattisgarh government on Naxalite affairs. This piece first appeared in the Pioneer