Is Musharraf Walking Into A US Trap?

Grim as the situation might seem today for the Taliban,Pakistani dictator Musharraf and the Pakistani nation have much more to lose inthe coming conflict. Pakistan had little choice but to cooperate when Uncle Samcame knocking a couple of days after the WTC and Pentagon attacks. The decisionMusharraf had to make must have torn at his and his nation’s heart. Forseparating the Taliban and the Bin Laden-led terrorist network from Pakistan isakin to separating a child from its mother.

Pakistan had given birth to the Taliban and carefullynurtured it with military and logistical support for the last several years.Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies were heavily involved in BinLaden’s network of big and small terror groups that are active in Jammu andKashmir state of India, Chechnya, Bosnia, Philippines, and numerous otherterrorist hotspots.

With tens of thousands of Pakistanis graduating from thenation’s madrassas every year, and fanning out to spread Bin Laden’s messagethrough words or bombs, Pakistan has a massive human investment in the jehadenterprise. The ISI manages Pakistan’s jehadi groups that collaborate with AlQaida. In fact one of the main reasons that the US deemed Pakistani helpnecessary was this very proximity of ISI to Al Qaida. ISI is the only agencythat can possibly know with some degree of certainty the whereabouts of BinLaden and other Al Qaida leaders.

It was thus of very little surprise that Pakistan’sstreets exploded this week with fury against the US and Musharraf’s offer ofcooperation. While Musharraf claimed only 15% of Pakistanis sided with theTaliban in the current standoff, a Gallup poll conducted the same day peggedthat number at 67%. Such a number is not unexpected, given that Pakistaniauthorities have spent the last two decades propagating Islamic fundamentalismand nurturing the forces of jehad around the world.

Once the attacks against the Taliban start, the situationin Pakistan is likely to take a turn for the worse. Pakistani generals andintelligence officials, who owe allegiance to the ‘Islamic jehad’ movement,are unlikely to sit idly through those attacks. As protests mount, the jehadisbattle security forces in the streets and attack bases being used by the US, thetemptation will be great for one of several generals to overthrow Musharraf.

The US is making clear that strikes on Bin Laden and theTaliban will only be the beginning of a long campaign. That may mean subsequentattacks on terrorist centers in other countries, including Pakistan. This factis not lost on Pakistan’s jehad leaders, or the military authorities thatcollaborate with them. In such an eventuality, continuance of the violence inKashmir will become ever more difficult once Pakistan’s terrorist groups areneutralized.

It is this violence that has kept tempers from subsidingin Jammu and Kashmir state of India, and has prevented the Indian governmentfrom taking measures to bring normalcy to that state. A peaceful and prosperousJammu and Kashmir will be easier to wean away from the jehadi stranglehold thatit is trapped inside. Kashmir is by far the main national obsession of Pakistan,and giving it up will be too steep a price for prostituting itself to the US.

There is no doubt that the US administration is aware ofthe dangers of its "you are either a friend or a foe" policy. There aredangers in the Mid-East, and of friendly nations such as Saudi Arabia and Egyptturning against the US during this "infinite" campaign. However, theimmediate danger is of Pakistan exploding in civil war. Jane’s Defensepublication details this threat and calls the potential consequences"catastrophic". The question is why then has the US not been subtle in itspressure on Pakistan. Could it be that the US is leading Musharraf on a path tohis own destruction?

There are prior examples of the US utilizing an unsavorydictatorship for its own short-term interests, and having to clean up the messlater. Saddam Hussein was supported by the US administration as a counter toIran up to 1990, and a blind eye was turned to his misadventures, including thedepredations he wreaked on his own people. Noriega of Panama was similarlyenlisted in the US war against communism, until he became an embarrassment withhis close links to drugs. In both cases, the US had to use force to neutralizeits own creations.

In the case of Pakistan, the US has created a problem ofa larger magnitude. Pakistan has over a dozen of the most dangerous terroristgroups in the world, and has nuclear weapons to back them up. As long ascitizens inside US borders were unaffected, the US looked the other way whilethese groups killed and maimed in Jammu and Kashmir for over 12 years.

But September 11 changed the US outlook. It is impossibleto believe that the US does not realize the severity of the threat from withinPakistan. It is very likely that US defense officials are working on plans toneutralize both the terrorist centers in Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal. CNNreports that India has provided the US with information on Pakistani terroristcamps. Indeed the buildup of hundreds of attack planes and several carriergroups appears to be an overkill against Afghanistan, which is described asbeing devoid of targets, and with its terrorist camps already emptied out.

An open attack on Pakistan by the US, however, will belooked upon as a "betrayal", especially by other Islamic states that havebeen wooed by the US. Then how could the US justify action to remove thelong-term Pakistani threat? A civil war, which Pakistan is being pushed towardsby US pressure, would provide just such an opportunity. Once a coup happens, theUS could cite an imminent threat of Indo-Pakistan nuclear war, and use acombination of air strikes and commando operations against extreme Islamicelements in the Pakistani military. Such operations would include securing andremoval of the 25+ Pakistani nuclear-capable missiles. These missiles arecrucial for any Pakistani first strike threat, given that they would arrive attargets in Indian cities in minutes. The only other Pakistani means of nucleardelivery are F-16s. These could be destroyed in a sudden and massive strike attheir air bases, and those that manage to take off towards India intercepted bya combination of US and Indian fighters.

Such a course of events does not preclude the possibilitythat some of the missiles will evade US action. The London Times reportsrecently that these missiles are normally kept unassembled, with the nuclear tipkept in a separate location, and suggests that Islamic extremists who take overin a potential coup would not have the technical capability of assembling andusing them. This report neglects the fact that these same Islamic extremistshave close contacts with the Pakistani military. If these elements can convincethe military to carry out a coup, they can surely convince them to arm themissiles.

Thus despite the immediate dangers, the long-termprospects of such a scenario are more positive. A Pakistan devoid of its nuclearweapons will no longer threaten its neighbors with export of jehad. If asignificant portion of the extremist elements in Pakistan’s military isneutralized, deprogramming the jehad mentality of Pakistani institutions couldbe facilitated. As a new political order is established in Pakistan more in tunewith improving the lot of its people rather than spreading jehad around theworld, the global terrorist threat will subside and contribute greatly towardsthe new US war on terrorists.

The authors are expatriate Kashmiri Pandits located inthe United States and head the executive board of Kashmir News Network, whichmanages many Kashmiri websites including: www.ikashmir.org,www.kashmiri-pandit.org, www.panunkashmir.org,www.kashmirherald.com, www.kashmirnews.org