Ominous Silence

Recently the Parliamentary Committee on National Security decided to take Pakistan’s foreign policy to the floor of representatives and argue and debate relatively au courant terms of engagement with USA. While the opposition did sneer at the fact that these recommendations are not binding,non-state actors aka DPC,JI and Al- Zawahiri warned against re-opening NATO supply routes and announced that they won’t shirk from ‘spilling blood’ if the Parliament does give in to US pressure,the fact that for the first time national security and foreign policy was going to be debated and discussed instead of dictated was laudable,with millions of dollars riding on the big question of how far we are willing to go.

Yet the big question was relegated to the back burner at the fourth sitting of the joint session. While questions riddling the common man may not be big enough for our high handed politicians to address,recent developments in the country marked by an escalation of violence that doesn’t have Taliban written all over it is serious enough to have everything else take the back seat.

Karachi’s turf wars and ‘day of mourning’ turned into days of mourning for many families torn asunder in the ANP- MQM crossfire. Grievances festered to the point that henchmen came out to burn effigies of their bosses/representatives and demanded a ‘Swat like’ military operation in the pestilent localities of Lyari,Katti Pahari,North Nazimabad,Benaras,Shah Faisal,Korangi,Malir and Kasba which is in flames today. Rehman Malik splutters out condemnation and vows vengeance every time this happens,yet his faux crackdown did little than tweak whiskers the last time. They’re back,bigger,stronger and armed to their teeth,playing out the aftermath of post Soviet-Afghan war like it happened yesterday. The complicated politics of Karachi will not disentangle on its own like our government hopes it will. Even the top echelons are playing favorites in this cat eat mouse game. Maybe a stringent de-weaponisation crack down is what Karachi needs. Take the lion’s teeth away and it can only meow.

Sind’s epicenter might be a festering pustule,but is Punjab safe from the epidemic? Mass hysteria over endless hours of load shedding,ensued right after Punjab had come to terms with the fact that gas and CNG were relics of past glory. The government’s economic policy clearly isn’t geared towards bolstering the industrial sector as Faisalabad learnt last year;it isn’t agro or livestock oriented as one quarter of Pakistan thrust under the poverty line,that tries to forage for scraps to eat will tell you. A country that hasn’t yet experienced the organic shift from agricultural to manufacturing sectors can’t possibly have a thriving service sector either,it’s easier to picture our economy as a formless entity floating aimlessly in space towards a black hole.

Two provinces down,the third,the biggest in terms of land mass and smallest in terms of population has fingers crossed for balkanization of the region. The level of intrigue and mystique surrounding the third province is interminable. News of bounty being announced for the death of Punjabis straying in Balochistan filters out now and then and people are gripped with fear. The media and other political parties,with PTI at the fore of it have endless capacity and breath to waste on spewing criticism at the government and every preceding government in the past,reinforcing the point that balkanization might indeed be the best solution. Give the Sardars their barren play ground. A province where every provincial assembly member is given an amount set in millions for development in their constituency,but still posts an abysmal income per capita of USD 183 (PKR- 16287) per year cannot blame the federal government for the insurgency and having an ‘apathetic’ attitude towards the province. Not when the Sardars are known for smuggling weaponry worth millions from across the border and run a thriving black market with the parliament’s blessings.

KP once the adorned bride of the country is now the easiest target for terrorist activity,planting seeds of anarchy and home to the largest population of displaced people in the country. It is a province of diametrically conflicting facets where development has taken a back seat because drone attacks and military operations trying to weed out terrorists must rip the place apart first. The Northern Province has seen traumatic times in the past decade,from earth quakes,to floods,to mass terror and ensuing military operations. They have killed and been killed a thousand times over to the point where the peaceful stalemate of Kashmir is an enviable situation compared to Pakistan.

An ominous silence hangs like noxious fumes in the country poisoning corrupting and suffusing the air with mass hopelessness. Will this state of chaos lead to an ultimate implosion removing Pakistan from the equation,may be a revolution along the lines of Arab Spring which can only lead to more instability and is an unlikely possibility as it requires Pakistani’s to first and foremost unite. Building a state requires a skeleton of institutions,the sinew and muscle is later augmented by nurturing the body around the skeleton. What we need is not verbal diarrhea from political parties that have the ability of infusing hope in the populace or promises of rooting out corruption in nine days by politicians creating demigod like personas. It begs merit and sincerity to the people of the country. It requires the level of even headedness and authority that Lee Kwan Yew and Mahathir Mohammed displayed when their countries hit rock bottom. More importantly we the people need to realize we cannot be played against each other to fill some elusive character’s coffers or play out their fantastical ideologies. Pakistan isn’t a lost cause,not yet,not by a long shot. Our external affairs can take a back seat for the moment,we cannot act like jilted lovers and have no one to blame but ourselves,let’s take on the responsibility for slaying these self created dragons ourselves too.

What the NATO attack exposes

By Mosharraf Zaidi

During the process that lead to President Barack Obama’s announcement of a surge in Afghanistan last year, Pakistan’s role in the situation in Afghanistan became of a greater importance than any other single factor. From the perspective of both the US military and its civilian leadership, the “safe haven” that Al-Qaeda enjoys in FATA represents a danger to American lives. Bob Woodward’s new book about the process that led to the surge is called “Obama’s Wars”. In it, the reader can almost hear US officials speak about Pakistan, in graphic detail. It is an exciting read, and something to experience for every Pakistani interested in the country’s future and its relationship to the rest of the world.

The NATO attack on an FC post at 5:25 am on September 30 that killed three Pakistani paramilitary soldiers needs to be seen in the context of the Afghanistan surge and US government’s approach to its war in Afghanistan. Since Obama hit the reset button in his speech at West Point on December 1, 2009, the war in Afghanistan is layered upon a foundation of US national security “truths” about which there is virtual consensus in Washington DC.

This first of these is that the “new” war is between Al-Qaeda and the United States – the Kandahari Taliban are a sideshow. The second is that Pakistan’s tribal areas (FATA) are now the primary theatre of war between Al-Qaeda and the US. The clandestine operations of the American intelligence community, lead by the CIA, and the US military’s so-called “black ops”, or covert actions, conducted by the Joint Special Operations Command are the central instruments of America’s war on Al-Qaeda – wherever that war may take America. Right now, it takes them to FATA, over, and over, and over again. For US policy makers, this is a no-brainer. If Al-Qaeda is in FATA, then so is the United States, right behind them, chasing them, hounding them, and killing them.

Pakistani hypernationalists will often spew weak, unsubstantiated and ridiculous things to rail at the imperialism of the US war effort. But what most Pakistanis, hypernationalist or not, have little to say about, is how this problem can be solved without proactive American action. To put it more kindly, and as it is likely framed in for-the-record discussions between Gen Kayani and Gen Patraeus – how can threats from Al-Qaeda and its allies in FATA, be eliminated, without America help?

To hear some folks tell it, Pakistan is virtually doing everything it possibly can, given the limitations imposed on this country by its financial situation, by the poor credibility of a an elite seen to be corrupt and disloyal to the concerns of the average Pakistani, and by the politics of waging war on one’s own territory and people.

Exhibit A for these folks is the commitment demonstrated by the Pakistani military’s repeated operations in FATA. Indeed, these operations may be vital to Pakistani national security. The simplistic notion that war operations in FATA undertaken by the Pakistani military are being conducted to please America ignore the fundamental reality posed by Al-Qaeda, and indeed by the motley crew of alphabet soup groups like the LeT, SSP, JeM and others. We don’t have to cheerlead America’s war to understand the implications of the war that terrorists are trying to take to the rest of the world. Simply put, any international action by these groups, whether in India, or the United States or elsewhere, will produce retaliation – a prospect that puts the national security of Pakistan in grave, grave danger. Military operations in FATA however do not inspire confidence, because they are not anchored in a coherent strategy or plan of any kind.

Pakistan has to deal with threats to its internal security, such as those posed by the TTP and their ilk. It also has to deal with threats to its national security from outside – including the threat of retaliation if a terrorist group based in Pakistan successfully attacked another country, or indeed even the threat of conspiracies hatched by other countries.

Right now, Pakistan has no strategy that adequately addresses these twin threats – both of which find fertile soil in FATA. The internal governance mechanisms to deal with security, like anti-terror legislation, police reform, decentralization, or intelligence triangulation have barely moved an inch while all hell has broken loose since mid 2007. Not surprising, given the lack of a counterterrorism strategy. The external governance mechanisms have a long record of failure in resolving security issues – from the compromised neutrality of the UN system, to the impotence of SAARC, and indeed, credibility-starved OIC. Even if they worked, Pakistan’s schizophrenic foreign policy regime would probably have dried the pool of any sympathy out there for Pakistan.

High and dry, with an uncontrollably angry enemy within, and lots of enemies outside, Pakistanis must be careful before remonstrating too strongly against NATO’s aggression in FATA. Pakistan is conducting military operations and aerial bombardment itself. Pakistan gave the US fly-by rights, and access to airfields long ago. Simply put, the American war in Af-Pak does not exist without strong, concerted, deliberate and assiduous Pakistani efforts. Indeed, Pakistani government officials last year were among the most ardent supporters of Obama’s Afghan surge. Simply put, Pakistan has repeatedly welcomed and enabled the US war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan knows exactly where the center of gravity for this war lies. The fact that NATO was behind the trigger last week is a technicality. Yet acting against terrorists should not be controversial, it should be unquestionably job number one. Those terrorists are sworn to killing innocent people – and they have fulfilled that promise over, and over, and over again.

That is why opposition to America’s continued presence in Afghanistan, to drone attacks in FATA, and to what is going to become much more frequent US visits to FATA across the Durand Line needs to do better than burn flags and fabricate conspiracy theories. Any opposition that is motivated by emotions should be solemnly rejected.

Genuine opposition must be based on rule of law, both domestic and international, on the rights of Pakistani citizens, both Pakhtuns and all others, and on the need for clarity, accountability, and transparency in public policy – here in Pakistan and elsewhere. To mount serious opposition, notwithstanding mistakes and violations by other parties, Pakistanis and their friends need to be able to articulate compelling answers to two critical questions that Pakistanis should have been asking their military and political elite all along. First, what is the plan to protect Pakistani lives and property from attacks by terrorists on Pakistani soil? Second, what is the plan to restrict the operations of known terrorist groups who plan to attack other countries? Sadly, thus far, there is no Pakistani plan.

It should be exceedingly clear that countries that have no plans of their own, are going to have plans made for them. Blocking NATO supply routes is not a counterterrorism strategy, and it cannot be how national security should work in a country of 180 million people. It is cheap theatrics. The problems in FATA weaken internal Pakistani security and are a Pakistani national security problem. The life and death struggles of Pakistan’s brave soldiers – including the three FC soldiers killed by NATO – and its resilient people deserves much better than these cheap reactive theatrics.

No method to the madness

State of Pakistan

By Yousuf Nazar

More than one trillion dollars and nine years later the alleged and self-confessed master mind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has not been convicted. Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zahwari, and Mullah Omar have not been caught, dead or alive; the Talibans instead of being eliminated are set to take over Kabul again, and Pakistan which hardly had a Taliban presence on September 11, 2001 has been rocked by bomb blasts and has had its worst year of violence since 2001. And Americans still cannot see what the problem is?

But then if their policies had a bit of wisdom, we never would have had Vietnam, Cambodia would not have been ruined, Shah of Iran would never have been allowed to suppress dissent, Afghanistan would not have been abandoned after 1989, and a just settlement of the Palestine conflict would have been achieved. It is easy to forget lessons of history in the confusion and noise of day-to-day reporting and in the age of 30 second sound bites of electronic media.

And it is ok for much over-rated Newsweek and its editor to declare Pakistan as the most dangerous country and the home of Al Qaeda and confess, without much regret or shame, three years later that Al Qaeda is not really that deadly a threat.

I would like to believe this sensational bit of journalism had little to do with the fact that Newsweek magazine had been making losses for years. As of 2003, worldwide circulation was more than 4 million, including 2.7 million in the U.S; however as of 2010 it is down to 1.5 million. The financial results for 2009 as reported by the Washington Post showed that advertising revenue for Newsweek was down 37% in 2009 and the magazine division reported an operating loss for 2009 of $29.3 million compared to a loss of $16 million in 2008. During the magazine’s first quarter of 2010, it lost nearly $11 million. By May 2010, Newsweek was said to be up for sale. The magazine was sold to audio pioneer Sidney Harman for just $1 on August 2, 2010.

Fareed Zakaria, then a Newsweek columnist and editor of Newsweek International, attended a secret meeting on November 29, 2001 with a dozen policy makers, Middle East experts and members of influential policy research organizations to produce a report for President George W. Bush and his cabinet outlining a strategy for dealing with Afghanistan and the Middle East in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. The meeting was held at the request of Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense. The unusual presence of journalists at such a strategy meeting was revealed in Bob Woodward’s 2006 book State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III.

In the May 9, 2005, issue of Newsweek, an article by reporter Michael Isikoff stated that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay “in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur’an down a toilet. The magazine later revealed that the anonymous source behind the allegation could not confirm that the book-flushing was actually under investigation, and retracted the story under heavy criticism. But the damage had been done.

Yet, some make so much of the trash that is published in magazines like Newsweek and ignore the counsel of experienced and mature hands like Dr. Brzezinski.

The U.S. military and intelligence budgets have crossed all decent and reasonable limits. The intelligence budget alone has gone up by more than 250% since 2001 to $75 billion and the defenders of U.S. madness in Afghanistan and Pakistan do not see the irony of a mad campaign that has not achieved anything and destroyed much, including American credibility and standing in the world.

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the foremost foreign policy experts in the U.S., who started the American involvement in Afghanistan in 1978-1979 as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, warned the U.S. government about the potentially disastrous consequences of its foreign policy in a testimony before the U.S. senate foreign relations committee on February 1, 2007. “If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”

He dismissed the fears about Al Qaeda saying: “A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD’s in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the “decisive ideological struggle” of our time.”

Dr. Brzezinski warned: ” Vague and inflammatory talk about “a new strategic context” which is based on “clarity” and which prompts “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world.”

He added: “One should note here also that practically no country in the world shares the Manichean delusions that the Administration so passionately articulates. The result is growing political isolation of, and pervasive popular antagonism toward the U.S. global posture. “

One consequence of the bloody military and covert operations is that the control of many aspects slips out of the hands of the politicians and away from Congressional oversight. Guantanamo Bay is one such example. Dozens were kept under detention without any trial and then released without much explanation. Abdullah Mahsud was one.. captured in December 2001 and released in May 2004.

Dissent was stifled with the neo-fascist rhetoric of “either you are with us or against us”, and thus giving the press little choice but to accept the official story line without much questioning or reasoning. The psychology of fear was used to pursue a Middle East policy that had everything to do with oil and little to do with terrorism as has been acknowledged by eminent figures such as General (rtd) Wesley Clarke, former supreme commander of NATO, Bill Clinton’s economic adviser Jeff Sachs, and the former FED chairman Alan Greenspan.

The latest casualty of the U.S. military and intelligence establishment’s what Brzezinski called a “mythical narrative” is Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. She may or may not have been involved with Al Qaeda. I do not know. No court ever charged her with any terrorist act. So all that noise is irrelevant in so far it relates to her sentencing by a U.S. court for 86 years on charges of committing a crime in Afghanistan as a Pakistani citizen. If the U.S. defense and intelligence establishment wanted to delay the case and avoid provocation, which it knew it would cause in Pakistan, it could have easily delayed the trial as it did in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for reasons that remain obscure.

I won’t speculate on the motives for carrying on this trial at this time lest some naïve or biased readers accuse me of a conspiracy theory but the repercussions are obvious. It is a clear provocation even if that was not the intent. It is mystifying that while on one hand, the U.S. gives $405 million for aid for the floods; but it increases the frequency of drone strikes which for sure are going to destroy any good will it would have hoped to generate. Are they so stupid? But then even $10 billion is a small sum in the big power games when the total cost of the War on Terror is coming to over a trillion dollars according to the official figures and more than $2 trillion according to independent U.S. economists.

I quoted Dr. Brzezinski at length to make the points that some of us make but are dismissed as anti-Americanism. I worked for an American bank for 20 years. I have nothing against Americans. But their establishment’s Middle East and Central Asian policies are wrong, short-sighted, counter-productive and ultimately self-defeating. There is no method to their madness but only one way to prevent more harm than they have already caused, belated though it might be. They should get the hell out of Afghanistan and Pakistan and stop supporting or manipulating their puppets, be it in civvies or muftis. The world would be a better place if President Obama can focus on the ailing U.S. economy, which is not only in a long term decline but is not recovering well, and put an end to all costly overt and covert misadventures overseas.

Pakistan in Ten Years: The Optimistic View

THE HUFFINGTON POST

This past week, Foreign Policy listed Pakistan as # 10 on its list of failed states. Factors receiving particularly high scores were factionalized politics, group cleavage, security apparatus and foreign intervention. Not everyone agrees. Christine Fair, at Georgetown, gives a more positive view, emphasizing recent moves toward a relaxation of the military’s role in government and increased democratization.

So is Pakistan a failed state, or on its way out of the morass in which it presently finds itself? This is the first of two posts. In this one, I want to mention three reasons that I see for optimism in Pakistan – the second post will describe some reasons for pessimism, although even mentioning such a topic has the feel of applying for a contract to truck coals to Newcastle.

Any discussion of Pakistan’s political future should start with Balochistan. Balochistan is the central focal point for many of Pakistan’s problems, including some that might seem unrelated. In truth, Balochistan may be Pakistan’s biggest problem of all, and it is one to which I am not sure American observers pay nearly enough attention. Balochistan is the largest province in Pakistan, comprising more tan 40% of the nation’s total land area. It is also the poorest, and the most sparsely populated, with only 8 million people … and enormous wealth in natural gas, copper, and other minerals. The country’s hold over the province has been challenged literally since its inception: in the 1947 partition, Balochistan was not included in the new state of Pakistan. A few months later, Balochistan joined Pakistan through a referendum. Deepening on whom you ask, that referendum was fair and transparent or manipulated by the Pakistani Army. What is uncontested is that within a very few years, an established pattern of the national government withdrawing mineral wealth and putting nothing back into the province in the way of investment had resulted in enough resentment to give rise to an organized separatist movement. Since that time there have been five separatist campaigns (including the present one, dated from 2005), of which the most important of these was in the 1970s. The conflict lasted four years, and was ended when the Pakistani government led by Sulfiqar Ali Bhutto, initiated a brutal military campaign with the direct assistance of Iran (the precise extent and nature of that assistance is the subject of dispute, like almost everything else in this story.)

Balochistan’s continuing separatist movement is a festering problem for Pakistan. For one thing, the Pakistani government and many Pakistanis are convinced that India is providing support to the movement, through a series of consular offices along the Iranian-Baloch border and by more direct means such as training and the provision of equipment through RAW, India’s intelligence service. These claims are not only a staple of Pakistani politics, they are a central element in Pakistan-India relations, and a complicating factor in the effort to secure Pakistan’s cooperation in combating the Taliaban and other jihadist groups.

The most significant assertion of Indian involvement was made during a meeting of the non-aligned states in Sharlm-el-sheikh in 2009. At that meeting, the Pakistani government announced that it had delivered a dossier of evidence to its Indian counterparts, and at various times Pakistani government and military spokesmen have made dark statements about photographs and captured operatives. But none of this supposed evidence has ever been made public. One can also turn to the equally non-specific October 2009 allegations by Major General Salim Nawaz, inspector general of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force in Balochistan, or this statement in March 2010 by Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik claiming “solid evidence” in the form of the discovery that Balochi separatists were found to have weapons manufactured in India. These allegations are invariably the response to calls for greater cooperation in clamping down on the groups responsible for the “11/26″ attacks in Mumbai, for example.

And these are only the respectable, government-issued conspiracy theories; in the popular press the stories become lurid, indeed, involving allegations of Indian, British, American, and Israeli support for the separatists (as well as foreign sources for all terrorist activities in Pakistan, generally.) What is certainly true is that leading figures in the separatist movement have said that they would welcome assistance from India, most notably in a 2009 interview of Bramadagh Bugti, a Bugti tribal leader and primarily leading figure in the separatist movement. There was also a statement by a leader of the Balochi movement in exile (in the United States) explicitly calling on India to assist the cause. Of course, the fact that such assistance was requested does not mean that it was forthcoming – one might even think that the repeated calls for aid indicate the absence of that very aid. Moreover, the fact that Balochi separatists might seek outside assistance, including assistance from India, is hardly surprising. In general, separatist movements will accept assistance from anyone, and given Iran’s track record and Afghanistan’s current condition it is difficult to think where else the Balochis might turn.

This background is how we get to the present situation in which Taliban and Al Qaeda influence in Balochistan is said to be growing. Tha main city of Balochistan is Quetta, which is widely regarded as one of the primary command and control centers for Taliban forces fighting in Afghanistan; their support draws on both Pashtun tribal ties and anti-Pakistani government attitudes. The U.S. has been pressuring Pakistan to send its army into Balochistan. One reason the Pakistani government resists the idea is that they recognize that such a move would not simply be a matter of moving into friendly territory to find the enemy, it would be an invasion of a separatist province in order to go after a sub-group within that larger population. It is understandable, perhaps, that the Pakistani government is not inclined to undertake such an operation.

So what’s the good news? The good news is that, instead of launching what would undoubtedly be a bloody and destructive military campaign, the government of Pakistan may finally be paying serious attention to Balochistani complaints. Tie 2010-2011 national government allocates twice as much money for Balochi development as was in this year’s budget, with emphases on roads and schools. With Chinese assistance, Pakistan is building a modern port at Gwadar (in Balochistan). And the much-discussed plan for a natural gas pipeline from Iran into Pakistan would further spur development in the region. A network of affordable private schools is emerging,
prominently featuring the City Schools system whose efforts in Balochistan are directed by a retired Brigadier General of the Pakistani Army.

None of this is likely to provide any comfort for American forces or policymakers in the short term. In the medium term, however, perhaps there are signs that the government of Pakistan, after 60 years, is finally going to make some kind of serious effort to persuade Balochis that they have some reason to want to be part of the country. If that were possible, it would be a very good thing, and the mere fact that the current government – I might say even the current government – is undertaking a serious program of development in the province is a reason for optimism. And in the long run, American and American-supported Afghanistan’s interests are at stake here, as well. An awful lot of observers – myself included – believe that any stable outcome will include areas of Taliban control in Afghanistan, for example. The key in that scenario is to separate the Taliban from Al Qaeda and similar jihadist groups. By the same token, the key to any long-term stability in Balochistan – with all its ramifications – lies in creating a sufficient incentive for the people of Balochistan to want to be part of a stable Pakistan rather than seeing their only hope in separation achieved by force of arms with any help that they can get. “Hearts and minds” is a tired phrase, but a government that cannot capture the hearts and minds of the residents of its own largest province has a serious problem. The Pakistani government’s moves toward addressing that problem are a very good sign. There is no guarantee of success – this may be too little, too late after 50 years of accumulated resentment – but as a policy direction, I repeat, it is a very good sign.

Another reason for optimism regards relations with India. The Pakistani government, and Pakistanis generally, are showing signs of finally becoming exhausted by the strain of making every policy, budgetary decision, and political conversation in terms of fearing India. True, as recently as 1965 Indian and Pakistani forces fought pitched battles within the city limits of Lahore (after Pakistan’s disastrous attempt to infiltrate Kashmir). The Lahore Museum features a piece of a fuselage from an Indian plane and a display of rifles in use in the 1960s, along with a frankly bewildering assortment of other things (the museum deserves a description in a separate post.) But 1965 was 45 years ago: to put that in perspective, that’s like looking at World War II in 1990. This is not to say that there are not genuine conflicts between India and Pakistan. The Kashmir issue is real, and it is partly about control over water sources, as is the conflict over Siachen glacier. Presently, high-level meetings are currently underway between Pakistani and Indian government ministers. As usual, Pakistan is accusing India of involvement in Balochistan and India is denying the claim, while India is claiming that Pakistan has been slow to move against the perpetrators of the Bombay attacks. Which brings us back to where we started, but a more productive attitude toward Balochistan could easily point toward a more productive attitude in dealing with India. Which in turn improves the willingness and ability of Pakistan’s government to crack down on non-Balochi extremist groups, and so on. It’s a logjam, but that means that progress in one key place could loosen the mass and break the logs apart into separate, manageable problems.

What other reasons could there be for optimism? The initial, tentative, early appearance of something like political maturity might be an answer. Psychologically this is a remarkably young country (again, that museum exhibit sticks in my mind — it included both ancient artifacts from the Indus Valley civilization and … a collection of all of Pakistan’s stamps with their first day covers.) It is discomfiting to use anthropomorphic terms like “psychology” about a nation, but in Pakistan one gets a palpable sense that even the elites are working this out as they go along with nothing to build on from the past.

One place this shows up is in the country’s politics. In the past, I have been repeatedly told, the members of the elite class (that’s not my term, that’s the universally employed term among Pakistanis) did not pay much attention to politics and almost never voted. Explanations vary: antidemocratic attitudes, a sense of futility, a sense that as long as they were doing all right nothing else mattered. But in general, goes the wisdom of local political scientists, the best educated, wealthiest, most established elements of civil society treated politics as something best left to others.

That may be changing. It seems there is only now a generation coming onto the stage that realizes that a national identity cannot be based solely on being the enemy of India, nor on the forcible suppression of large segments of the country, nor can “government” be reduced to a military force and some minor bureaucrats if the state and its economy are to have a hope of survival There seems to be growing awareness of the need to grow up and become a real country. More Pakistanis then ever before, I think, recognize that the generals’ wars have brought neither victory nor stability, and whatever is the precise relationship between the ISI and the Haqqani network, the idea of maintaining jihadist groups as “lashkers” (tribal warriors) for use in future Pakistan-India conflicts seems to be finally wearing out its welcome, as well.

In general, moreover, there are rumblings that significant numbers of Pakistanis may finally have had their fill of autocrats and kleptocrats, and especially of dynasties. I have literally been unable to find anyone with anything positive to say about Zardari, but what is more striking is that I have been almost unable to find anyone with anything positive to say about any past or present political leader. I have spoken with college students, faculty members, journalists, drivers, tour guides, shop owners, lawyers, self-proclaimed Muslim fundamentalists who want to see shariy’a imposed on all Pakistan and with self-proclaimed liberal secularists – the unanimity is truly striking. “Mr. 10% was the name for the last term,” one driver told me, “now it should be Mr. 50%.” A spirited discussion ensued: is the right number 50%, or 80%, or perhaps 90%?

Against this backdrop of total and well-earned cynicism there is slowly beginning to emerge a sense that new and different forms of politics are needed. A newly formed party, “Mustaqbal” (the Future”) claims to be made up of non-politicians, businessmen and community leaders and other civil society figures disgusted with the existing system and determined to find another way. The party is brand new (it has yet to field its first candidates), and some of its key policy positions are only available in Urdu. In an interview posted on-line, the party’s leader Chairman Nudeem Qureshi called for an end to military operations by the Pakistan government against forces inside Pakistan. Not a view designed to endear him to NATO, to be sure, and Qureshi seemed to be dodging some tough questions in the interview. But the idea of a new generation of political figures whose concerns are specifically about Pakistan’s internal affairs and who are eager to disassociate themselves from corruption, control by the military, and foreign entanglements could be yet another good sign. Whether this particular party is the real thing, or whether it goes anywhere, is of course a matter for speculation.

In the optimistic version, where might that leave Pakistan in ten years? With NATO forces gone and Afghanistan stabilized by a division between Taliban and other forces, expanding economic development in Balochistan, a restoration of stability and a withdrawal of Army forces – and an end to martial law – in other areas of the country, an emerging political leadership committed to the creation of stable civil society by delivering goods and services to underserved areas, cooperation with India in anti-terrorism operations, water distribution, and development, improved energy resources by way of importation for Iran, expanded commercial relations with China, and the 90,000-strong network of private schools expanded to 200,000 strong … Nothing is going to make the problems go away, but it is quite possible to imagine a situation ten years from now far better than the present one. If only because it could hardly be worse.

This is not only just speculation, and not only just one view, it is only one speculative view based on views collected in one city. It may be a lot easier to be optimistic in Lahore, I suspect, than in other parts of the country

“Might is Right” – is it?

By Dr Haider Mehdi

In the Urdu language, the saying is “Jis ki lathi us ki bhains” (Might is Right). Some apologists even call it the use of “Smart Power”.

A school of thought in the West, mostly subscribed to by neocons, diehard reactionaries and racists, claim “Might is Right” and take a historical and moral stand on the issue.

The fact of the matter is that in philosophical and operational terms, the US-Western foreign policy doctrine and political-diplomatic conduct towards Third World nations have always been based on the conceptual notion and consistent application of “Might is Right”. The question that needs to be asked in the context of international politics and a “rules-based” global system of interstate relations is: Is “Might is Right” right? History tells us that this is how the US-West have been behaving historically.

The overall Western perspective on Muslim culture is that if you don’t think and behave like us (meaning adopt Western values) then you are doomed, and we (the West) will use force (translated as “Might is Right”) to transform your cultures. That is precisely Huntington’s conceptual view on The Clash of the Civilisations thesis.

This outlook, incidentally, has formed the basic fundamentals of the American-Western foreign policy doctrine and the ongoing attempts to transform indigenous cultures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and nearly in every Muslim country – purely subjecting them through “Might is Right” and unleashing military force under the pretext of the “war on terrorism”.

The question that needs to be asked is: If the West is not willing to accommodate or understand minor cultural differences, then how are they going to comprehend cultural imperatives that are rooted in history, cognitive development and implicit value systems? In the context of the Pak-Afghan “war on terror,” how is the West going to come to grips with the Pashtun heritage that the killing of anyone is a religiously forbidden act – but when the next of kin or an innocent human being is killed by an enemy, then revenge becomes a sacrosanct duty.

What I am doing here is seeking answers to fundamental human questions when a nation is under a brutal, merciless and destructive foreign occupation – both against human life and its cultural values.

No one in the print media and on television programmes except an odd one, here or there, in Pakistan seems to be asking the fundamental question: Why is the US-NATO in Afghanistan? Why is the Pakistan army being forced into a war against its own people and its neighbours, the Afghan people? In general, the Pakistani media is so busy in “owning” the “terrorism war” as its own that it has completely lost its bearings on the essential issue.

The new British Prime Minister, David Cameron, in his recent visit to Afghanistan, said the following to Britain’s armed forces at Camp Bastion: “This is not a war of choice, it is a war of necessity.

This is not a war of occupation, it is a war of obligation.” The PM insinuated that most of the 9/11 hijackers had been trained in Afghanistan, and the British military mission was vital for Britain’s internal security (meaning the streets of London and elsewhere.)

The fact of the matter is that there is not a shred of truth in Cameron’s statement. Simon Jenkins, in a recent piece in Guardian News & Media, wrote: “Yet Fox’s belief – like Gordon Brown’s – that British soldiers are fighting ‘to keep the streets of Britain safe’ is equally absurd. There has never been a shred of evidence that the Taliban wants to conquer Britain, any more than did Saddam Hussain.”

Also, there is no question of “nation building” in present day Afghanistan. Moreover, 77 percent of Britons now reject the Afghan war. Yet the irony is that George W. Bush’s era of lies continues to resonate in the New Britain of David Cameron and in the “we can change” America of Barack Obama.

The simple truth is that the US-Britain-NATO charade of internal security concerns, nation building, democratic development, and the war of obligation are fabricated notions under the pretext of the “war on terror” and are aimed at the extension and expansion of Western capitalism, military-political hegemony and future control of natural resources in Afghanistan (estimated at one trillion dollars) and beyond, implemented by a rigid demagogic foreign policy doctrine rooted in the precise Western belief that “Might is Right”.

It is the love of ‘control’ and ‘power’ over weak nations (read it as collective psychological-mental-illness), greed and a merciless egocentric attitude in the West that nothing matters as long as their objectives are met. Human life is meaningless (put a label on it – Taliban – and they are no longer human beings), cultural contexts are irrelevant (because they interfere with the realisation of their objectives) and the use of force (Might is Right) is legitimate (because they have it and others don’t).

Western capitalism cannot resolve the colossal problems of the Third World masses. Former President Clinton’s testimony before the Senate last March is an admission, as well as a warning, that his agriculture policies caused an incredible amount of job losses, insurmountable damage to agricultural infrastructure, massive migration of rural population to urban centres, alarming destruction of community life and irreparable setbacks to socio-economic justice and the wellbeing of the people in Latin America (in other words, American capitalism has failed repeatedly). But that is how capitalism works. Consider the present calamitous behaviour of BP in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill debacle.

People have short memories: “As horrible as the Gulf spill has been, what happened in the Amazon was worse,” wrote Bob Herbert in a recent article in the New York Times News Service: “for many years indigenous people from a formerly pristine region of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador have been trying to get relief from an American company, Texaco (which later merged with Chevron), for what has been described as the largest oil-related environmental catastrophe ever….Much of that area has been horribly polluted.

The lives and culture of the local inhabitants, who fished in the intricate waterways and cultivated the land as their ancestors had done for generations, have been upended in ways that have led to widespread misery.”

The human misery unleashed by the US-Britain-NATO military on Iraqis and Afghanis and its drone attacks on Pakistan’s territory is no less calamitous and catastrophic than what US-Western capitalism has inherently been doing in other parts of the world – they did not stop there and they will not stop here now!

But the US-Britain-NATO is doomed to fail in Afghanistan. Here is a cultural imperative: Might is not Right! The killing of innocents must be revenged as a sacrosanct duty!

American-Britain-NATO can go on fighting for a hundred years…and this war will not end!

That is what history has taught us….Hasn’t it?
“Jis ki lathi us ki bhains” is an outdated concept – incompatible with the present day human civilisation!!

I wish someone would tell this to the West’s reactionary capitalist demagogues!