MANIPAL, India, March 10 (UPI) -- Say
this for Pakistan's army -- its aftershave works. It seems to reduce to blobs of
helpless jelly the critical faculties of U.S. "experts" on Pakistan
within the CIA, the State Department and the Department of Defense.
Since the jihadization of the military by
Pakistan's former president Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the 1970s, the officer
corps has continued as a force multiplier for the numerous terror groups
headquartered in urban and rural communities across the country.
Except for Jehangir Karamat, the former
chief of army staff who accepted his 1998 dismissal by Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif, no chief of army staff since Zia-ul-Haq (1976-1988) has paid heed to
the elected civilian government of Pakistan in matters considered by the
military to be within its purview.
These include the portfolios of defense,
interior, foreign affairs and now the prime minister's office, as well as
subjects such as assistance to terror organizations and the nuclear deterrent.
Such an arrangement has had the tacit acquiescence of every North Atlantic
Treaty Organization country -- including those that specialize in delivering
sermons on democracy and human rights.
Despite the armed forces' control over
areas considered key to the functioning of government in any major country,
both India and the United Kingdom are enthusiastic in insisting that Pakistan
remain within "value-based" forums like the Commonwealth. They also
back every loan application Pakistan makes to the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, despite the kleptomania of its higher echelons.
Admittedly, this trait of Pakistan is shared with many countries in the world,
including India.
As for the United States, no country has lavished more treasure on Pakistan -- not even the two runners-up in the "Santa Claus" sweepstakes, Saudi Arabia and China.
As for the United States, no country has lavished more treasure on Pakistan -- not even the two runners-up in the "Santa Claus" sweepstakes, Saudi Arabia and China.
The generals in Islamabad have found a new
champion in U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who seems eager to funnel billions
of U.S. taxpayers' dollars to a state whose key functions are controlled by
accessories of Jihad International.
U.S. President Barack Obama has made a
few comments about ensuring that the Pakistani military withdraws from jihad
and from governance. However, Obama now seems to be following the lead of
former U.S. President Bill Clinton, whose tenure saw a sharp rise in the
influence of jihadists within the Pakistani military, helped along by
complaisant U.S. envoys. It was during the Clinton presidency that Saudi Arabia
and the United States helped the Pakistani army set up the Taliban.
Sometimes hindsight produces clarity of
vision, but in the case of Pakistan, the United States has seemed almost blind
throughout four decades of involvement in the country.
Since 2005, Pakistan's army has been
using its multiple and credulous contacts within the U.S. policy and academic
establishments to press its line of engagement with the "good Taliban."
These are the people who believe women should neither study nor work, except in
the house, and that minorities have the same "rights" as Jews did in
Nazi Germany.
By surrendering the Swat Valley to the
Taliban, the army in Pakistan has created a safe haven for al-Qaida to continue
its mission of converting the entire country into a safe haven for terrorists,
as Afghanistan was under the Taliban.
Expert at managing the media, Pakistan's
military under Gen. Ashfaq Kayani -- an officer in the social and ideological
mold of his hero Zia-ul-Haq -- has ensured a steady flow of reports in the
Western media pointing out the obvious: that President Asif Ali Zardari is a
playboy known to have made money through means other than saving a percentage
of his official salary.
What such commentaries fail to consider
is that Zardari is a Sufi, whose family has been bred in the syncretic and
moderate traditions of that philosophy, and that he has sought to delink the
Pakistani establishment from the terror networks that operate today in the
country with near impunity.
With his prime minister, defense
minister, interior minister and foreign minister taking orders from Kayani
rather than from himself, Zardari has found his authority ebbing away. Despite
Zardari's recent decision to endorse the army-sponsored deal with the so-called
moderate Taliban in Swat, the embattled president is likely to be confronted by
a slew of charges that Kayani hopes will force his resignation.
Instead, it is Kayani's head that should
roll. Under his watch Pakistan has abandoned even the pretense of fighting the
Taliban and other terror networks -- a charade that former President Pervez
Musharraf maintained to the military's great advantage.
Pakistan's current president needs to
appoint an army chief of his choice. He needs to ensure, through amendments to
the law, that this appointee behaves not as an overlord but as a professional
soldier, based on the U.S. model. Subsequently, jihadist elements should be
ruthlessly winnowed out of the Pakistani army's officer corps, and the special
privileges given to jihadists since the 1970s should be withdrawn in stages.
Such surgery may seem drastic, but unless
it is carried out, Pakistan will continue its descent into Talibanization. The
bold and the beautiful in the country's urban centers will be swallowed up the
way their counterparts in Afghanistan were during the 1990s.
Kerry is wrong. Pakistan needs major
surgery and not coddling. Unless the civilian government headed by Zardari is
empowered by the international community to conduct such an operation, and
unless Nawaz Sharif is warned away from his current flirtation with the
military brass and their terrorist associates, within five years Kerry will
need to convene a series of Senate hearings on "why Pakistan failed."
Although his ignorance of ground
realities in Pakistan is appalling, Kerry is regrettably hardly alone.
Practically all of the NATO "experts" on Pakistan are as blind to the
looming future as they were in the previous decade about the real nature of the
Taliban.
The civilized world is already in a war,
and Pakistan is the major theater. Unless it gives battle now, the West will
face a much more deadly battle within the next five years, just as the Allies
did from 1939 to 1945, after they ignored the Nazi storm from 1936 to 1938.
-(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.)
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