(I had prepared this paper for presentation at a conference being
organised by the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC on May 14, 2009, to which
I had been invited. I have had to cancel my participation due to unforeseen
circumstances )
Shortly after the commando action ordered by the then Pakistan President Pervez
Musharraf into the Lal Masjid in Islamabad in the beginning of July, 2007, I had
received a message from one of my readers asking: "Pakistan on the boil or
on the brink?" Both, I replied and wrote an article [Pakistan:
Iraq in the Making] on the wave of Pashtun anger, which had started sweeping
across the Pashtun belt after the commando raid.
I wrote in that article: "Pakistan is on the brink of a destabilising
situation. It brings Iraq to one's mind, but it is not yet Iraq. It can turn
into an Iraq-like situation at least in the Pashtun belt if Musharraf and his
American backers do not conduct themselves with restraint and wisdom."
The post-Lal Masjid raid Pashtun anger, which caused death and destruction right
across Pakistan, gave birth to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and triggered
the assassination of Benazir Bhutto at Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007, had
recently shown some signs of subsiding following some conciliatory steps taken
by the government of Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani such as facilitating the
release on bail of those arrested during the raid and allotment of land outside
the mosque for re-starting the two madrasas attached to the mosque before the
raid. These madrasas had catered to the requirements of the children of many
poor Pashtun families from the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and
the Malakand Division of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), including
Swat, which is presently under the effective control of Maulana Fazlullah of the
Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM).
If the US were wise, it would have taken the initiative in funding the
establishment of well-equipped schools with facilities for boarding and lodging
located outside the tribal belt for the children of internally displaced Pashtun
families from the FATA and the Malakand Division, who have been forced to leave
their villages due to the fighting between the TNSM and the TTP on the one side
and the security forces on the other.
But wisdom has not been a defining characteristic of the US policy in Pakistan.
Billions of US dollars have been earmarked for the security forces and for other
projects with a long gestation period meant for the benefit of the civilians.
But hardly any money has been earmarked for providing humanitarian relief to the
internally-displaced persons from the tribal belt and for looking after their
children. A new crop of suicide and non-suicide terrorists has started coming
out of these internally-displaced Pashtuns and providing a surge to the forces
of the TNSM and the TTP.
The Pashtun anger is the root cause of the mushrooming Taliban organisations
right across the Pashtun belt. There are Talibans and Talibans. There are as
many Talibans as there are tribal chiefs. Instead of trying to understand the
Pashtun anger and to mitigate it, President Barack Obama, his advisers and aides
have been fueling it further through their insensitive and thoughtless
statements and comments, which tend to project the Pashtuns as a whole as
accomplices of Al Qaeda, paint an apocalyptic characterisation of the
developments in the Pashtun belt and unnecessarily over-stress the role of the
security forces in dealing with the violence resulting from the Pashtun anger.
Unless and until the Pashtun anger is understood, addressed and mitigated, the
spread of the Taliban virus cannot be arrested and reversed. The most important
role in this regard has to be that of the progressive Pashtun politicians of the
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan. There are many progressive
Pashtun leaders. Let us not forget that the leftist movement in Pakistan and
Afghanistan had its strongest roots in the Pashtun belt. Neither the Obama
Administration nor its predecessor administration of George Bush has had time
for the Pashtun leaders of the Pashtun soil.
The entire focus of the US administration and the US think tanks has been on the
Islamabad-based leaders--political and military-- many of whom enjoy very little
credibility in the eyes of the Pakistani people in general and the Pashtuns in
particular. Whatever little credibility they might have enjoyed, has been
weakened, if not destroyed, by the unthinking statements and comments coming out
of Obama and his advisers. The limited credibility, which President Asif Ali
Zardari enjoyed, has been irreparably damaged by Obama's negative remarks on
Pakistan's civilian leadership during his interactions with the media on his
completing 100 days in office. The subsequent damage control exercise by Richard
Holbrooke, his special envoy for the Af-Pak region, who praised Pakistan's
civilian leadership, could not repair the damage.
Of Pakistan's mainstream leaders, Nawaz Sharif enjoyed a high level of
credibility among the Punjabis and the Pashtuns. This was because of his
independent line on the way American influence, according to him, has distorted
Pakistan's handling of the situation in the tribal belt. His call for a re-think
on the way Pakistan has been uncritically supporting the US operations added to
his popularity. He projected himself as a man who can stand up to US pressure.
Pakistan needs more such leaders who are seen by its people as not amenable to
US pressure and as capable of taking an independent line suited to Pakistan's
national interests.
Comments, reports and articles in the US media projecting Nawaz Sharif as a
leader with whom the US can do business and as a possible alternative to Zardari,
have damaged his credibility as a man capable of independent thinking and new
ideas as to how to deal with the cancer of terrorism. Both Zardari and President
Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan have created a negative image of themselves in the
eyes of their respective people by the manner in which they responded to the
American summons to go to Washington DC to discuss their counter-terrorism
policy and co-operation.
The statements and comments of Obama and his advisers praising the Pakistan Army
in general and Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), in
particular have created suspicions of a new American game to reinforce the role
of the Army even at the cost of further weakening the democratic forces in
Pakistan. The repeated comments of Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs
of Staff, highlighting his personal equation with Kayani and praising Kayani's
positive response to American concerns on the ground situation have had the
unintended effect of making him seen by a growing number of people not only in
the Pakistani civil society, but also even in the armed forces as America's man
in the GHQ.
Political and military leaders who are seen by the people of Pakistan as
carrying out the American diktats cannot succeed in winning the support of their
people for their policies. The plethora of statements and comments on Pakistan's
internal situation coming from the Obama Administration without any concerns
about their impact on the minds of the Pakistani people are going to add to the
difficulties of any government in Islamabad in adopting a counter-terrorism and
counter-Taliban strategy, which would be seen as motivated by the interests of
Pakistan and not of the US.
Obama and his advisers have been conducting themselves as if they are still in
the midst of their election campaign and not as the new rulers of the US already
in office, who have to be careful about their public comments. The internal
security situation in Pakistan arising from the activities of the Pakistani
Taliban is alarming, but this cannot detract from the fact that how the Taliban
is handled in the Pashtun belt is an internal affair of Pakistan. Others such as
the US can give it discreet advice and whatever help it needs in dealing with
the situation, but they should not give the impression that they are back-seat
driving Pakistan's internal security management.
Dealing with the difficult situation in Pakistan at this critical time in its
history requires a lot of intelligence, sensitivity and discretion. These
qualities have been in short supply in the Obama Administration.
B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
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