M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Pakistan's chief of army
staff, General Parvez Ashfaq Kayani, is a master at the strategy of starting a
fire and then volunteering to put it out in exchange for concessions. Yet he
was taken aback when President Asif Ali Zardari declined to enter the noose of
imprisonment being prepared for him by the expected return to office of
dismissed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Zardari has refused to reinstate Chaudhry,
ousted by his predecessor Gen. Pervez Musharraf, despite urgings from Prime
Minister Yousuf Gilani – who was functioning in tandem with Kayani in wanting a
more pliant head of state than Zardari.
Since then, Kayani has been working at
undermining his nominal superior, ensuring a steady diet of negative media
reports about Zardari, and ensuring backroom backing for those champions of
Punjabi supremacy in Pakistan, the Sharif brothers. The conspirators meet
outside Pakistan, usually in locations in the Middle East, to fine-tune their
plans to ensure the removal of Zardari and the return to center stage of Kayani
ally Nawaz Sharif.
Of concern to democracies about this
Pakistani soap opera is the backing that Kayani has given to the Taliban and
its parasite, al-Qaida. It is no accident that NATO has failed to prevent this
group of louts from retaking one-third of Afghanistan and moving into the rest.
U.S. backing for Kayani has ensured that
the Pakistan military's double-faced policy of secretly helping the Taliban
while publicly backing NATO continues. Now that the Clinton team is back in
office, courtesy of President Barack Obama, the United States is returning to
the 1994-96 policy of backing the Taliban.
Meanwhile the Taliban has separated into
"moderate" and "hard" elements, the distinction being as
illusory in practice as the 1893 Durand Line that sliced “Pashtunistan” into
two parts, with the north belonging to Afghanistan and the south coming under
British, and now Pakistani, rule.
Kinship and opium link these presumed two
segments of the Taliban together in a tight embrace, with the "hard"
section benefitting militarily from the concessions now being showered by a
panicky NATO on the "soft" Taliban.
Behind both is the Pakistan army, which has
acquired a fleet of around 2,000 nondescript vehicles to transport goods and
personnel across the so-called international border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan. The money for such operations comes from the opium trade as well
as from Middle Eastern benefactors. Each time a NATO general comes calling, a
few of these vehicles are seized, only to be quickly replaced with others
bought from within the country.
Asif Ali Zardari may not be a suitable
candidate for a seminary, but his family is almost entirely Sufi, in contrast
to the hard-line ideology of the relatives of Ashfaq Kayani. The new president
of Pakistan is aware that his personal and political survival depends on
ensuring that the jihad cohort of Pakistan's officer corps is replaced. He
needs army officers with a more syncretic and moderate background, such as
represented Pakistan's culture till the 1970s.
Of the present 33 lieutenant-generals in
the Pakistan army, 17 are jihadist, including all 11 favorites of Kayani, who
is scheduled to retire on Nov. 28, 2010. Before that, 11 lieutenant-generals
will retire, and Kayani wants to ensure that he retains the sole power to name
their replacements. It is certain he will favor those in league with the
Taliban and in agreement with his strategy of using a newly Talibanized
Afghanistan to destabilize the object of his hatred, India.
Fortunately for Kayani, the current U.S.
administration seems to be even more gullible than the previous one, which
facilitated the escape of key al-Qaida and Taliban leaders from the northern
Afghan city of Kunduz in 2001, and gave nearly US$3 billion to the Pakistan
army to distribute among "moderate" Pashtuns. The money went to the
Taliban and funded its revival.
Kayani has ensured that several of the
"freedom fighter" camps in Pakistan-held Kashmir have been shifted to
the Swat Valley, one of numerous gifts delivered by a grateful Taliban to the
Pakistan army in exchange for the sanctuary it has been given in the valley.
Several hundred "fighters" of the
kind that terrorized Mumbai during Nov. 26-28, 2008, are being trained in these
camps by serving officers of the military. Of these fighters, a large number
are Indian nationals, many recruited from the Middle East.
It was not a coincidence that recent terror
attempts, such as the failed 2007 attack on Glasgow Airport, included Indian
nationals. Kayani is intent on ensuring that India is identified by the
international community as a breeding ground for terrorists, similar to
Pakistan. Nepal and Bangladesh are the other South Asian states whose nationals
are being trained by elements of the military.
Since the Mumbai fiasco, when
communications equipment and explosives used by the terrorists were traced back
to the Pakistan military, it has been careful to create firewalls to mask its
involvement in the training of jihadis.
Kayani is hopeful that most of Afghanistan
will return to the control of his allies within the next two years, so that he
and his successors can then concentrate on their declared objective of
"avenging the 1971 breakup of Pakistan" by creating chaos in India.
Kayani and most of his generals are
India-centric, and are uneasy at the fact that the Taliban see not their
subcontinental neighbor but the United States as the principal enemy.
Assistance given to weaken India may therefore end up being used against the
United States – a factor that Obama needs to keep in mind.
A single mass terror attack on the United
States could take away the entire "feel good" factor visible in the
coming to power of a young, charismatic president in the mould of John
Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Obama needs to take control of policy away
from the Clintonites and ensure that the civilian government in Pakistan is
empowered to de-jihadize the Pakistan army. He needs to see that the Taliban is
defeated on the field and its numerous backers in Pakistan and the Middle East
are sanctioned and prosecuted as war criminals. Otherwise, the freedom from
attack that his country has enjoyed since 9/11 may not last for long.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
No comments:
Post a Comment