Afghanistan Reflections

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From The Friday Times

Split Down the Middle

Khaled Ahmed

Pervez Musharraf announced that it would give unstinted support to the international initiative against terrorism led by the US, the Pakistani mind is split down the middle. The question is whether Afghanistan should be punished for harbouring Osama bib Laden. Pakistanis don`t believe that enough proof has been furnished of Osama bin Laden`s complicity in the attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. If he is not proven guilty, then the invasion of Afghanistan would be wrong and immoral. The tortured question is: why has Islamabad supported the expected invasion and offered `unstinted support`?

The heart has `other` reasons: The wide-spread support for this policy change on Osama bib Laden was pegged adroitly by General Musharraf to India`s support to the expected invasion. (You want to get anything accepted by a Pakistani? Peg it to India. But such subterfuge leads to problems of a collective split personality). The Pakistani quickly accepted the fact that standing outside the international consensus, Pakistan could be isolated and destroyed by a flanking move by India. Indian private TV stations had a hawk like Brahma Chellany presenting scenarios of Pakistan`s destruction as a terrorist state, and that was enough to raise the hackles in Pakistan and make the government opt for `unstinted support`. But the truth of the matter is that no Pakistani actually supports the American invasion. The mullahs have come out on the road. But those opposed to the mullahs don`t think differently from the mullahs.

Not long ago it was settled among the columnists and General Musharraf that the religious trouble-makers in Pakistan were only one percent of the population and that there was a large segment of the population which was cosmopolitan and therefore non-isolationist. Now the new figure relating to those who are agitating against Islamabad`s change of policy over the Taliban is 10 percent. It means that 90 percent of the population wants General Musharraf to help the United States invade Afghanistan. But if you examine the mind of this 90 percent, they don`t want Musharraf to give any meaningful facilities to the US. As time passes, the Pakistani mind is throwing up fresh barriers of objection to what Pakistan earlier wanted to do to break out of the isolation emanating from supporting the Taliban, and relieve its long drawn out economic crisis.

The perfidious United States syndrome: Kamran Khan ( The News 22 September) brought the `inside` information that while General Musharraf`s civilian cabinet was all for offering unstinted support to the United States, the generals in the corps commanders` meeting had voiced their reluctance to relying on the Americans to assist Pakistan in the future to overcome its difficulties. They referred to the past record of the United States with regard to friendship with Pakistan and appeared cautious about implementing the `unstinted` policy. The Urdu press echoed the split in the Pakistani mind. The English language press focused on a pragmatic approach and some writers in it also referred to the global alliance against the Taliban as an antidote to the almost unsolvable problems of fundamentalism and the two `tired` policies (Afghan and Kashmir) that were now yielding negative fallouts.

But the split mind manifested a curious pattern. Those who relied on the English press to accept the pragmatism of General Musharraf`s decision leaned significantly to the opinion expressed in the Urdu press about the satanism of the United States. It seems as if the English language press represents the mind while the Urdu press holds sway over the hearts of Pakistanis. Even those who boast about not reading the `emotional` Urdu press tended to express views very close to the column-writers of the Urdu newspapers. The mind prefers a deal benefiting Pakistan financially. The heart wants to challenge America and defend Osama bin Laden. The heart of course is persuaded by the grand myth that the United States had betrayed Pakistan in the past. Once that premise has been accepted then the whole story about Zionism and Pakistan`s epic struggle against it becomes our real narrative.

Blessings of `emotional` foreign policy: There is a basic contradiction in how Pakistanis and the Americans look at the conduct of foreign policy. American thinking is based on enlightened self-interest, in other words, a tendency to change policy not on the basis of morality or emotion but opportunity to enhance the state`s international standing. One can say that America admits that it is not a loyal friend unless such a course is dictated by domestic lobbies and external self-interest. On the other hand, Pakistanis think of international relations as a network of emotional friendships. For them the state is a sentient being which experiences passions of friendship and alienation. Pakistan`s first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was so put off by the American credo of foreign policy opportunism that he politely objected to it during his tour of the United States: `A statesman, well known in history, speaking of his own country, once said that it had no eternal friends and no eternal enemies but that it had eternal national interests. Personally I believe that is too cynical a view to take of the foreign relations of any country, unless the word `interests` is interpreted very widely. But perhaps for some people it is a good starting point for the study of foreign relations.`

The truth is that Pakistan never really understood the nature of American policy. It was offended that the Americans should object to Pakistan using weapons received by it under the anti-Soviet treaties against India. Wasn`t India a Soviet ally? And wasn`t Pakistan treating the enemies of the United States as its own enemies? Sadly, the American embargo on arms to Pakistan after the 1965 Indo-Pak war was correct on the basis of the agreements under which the arms had been received. In 1979-80, when the Americans needed Pakistan to fight their covert war in Afghanistan, Pakistan acted pragmatically. This pragmatism was manifest in the price which Pakistan named for its participation in the jehad. It told President Carter off for his parsimony and went along with the big-spending President Reagan and his `package` for Pakistan`s economy and a shopping list for General Zia`s depleted military arsenal. The named price was paid. There were other bonanzas from the Afghan war pocketed by the rulers of Pakistan about which the less said the better.

Pakistan too stabs US in the back: How did Pakistan behave as a friend of the United States? This must also be examined if Pakistan`s protestations about America`s perfidy are to be credited. An American ambassador representing the Reagan Administration in Islamabad used to cite five contradictions between Pakistan and the United States despite the alliance in the Afghan war. Some of these contradictions were actually complaints about how Pakistan had been stabbing the United States in the back while posing as its `paid` friend. The first contradiction was of course the development of Pakistan`s nuclear program in violation of the express American policy against nuclear proliferation. Some of the equipment that went into the maturing of the bomb in Pakistan was actually stolen from the United State which had to keep quiet so as not to jeopardize its enterprise of defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

The second contradiction was the production of narcotics in Pakistan and the export of heroin to the United States. At one point during the Afghan war, fully 80 percent of the heroin consumed in the United States was supplied from Pakistan. And the suppliers included the president of Pakistan and some of his fellow generals as well as his civilian friends who ran the federal and provincial assemblies. As the war simmered down in Afghanistan a bit, the American embassy took to circulating lists of those members of the assemblies who were busy exporting heroin to the United States. The list contained nearly 60 percent of the members who served General Zia in the provinces. A convicted heroin-smuggling son-in-law of an important functionary of Pakistan, who later became president, had to be freed by the United States in deference to the Afghan war. The habit of smuggling heroin to the United States spread to the armed forces and lingered long after the Afghan war.

The wrong bed-fellow protests too much: The third contradiction was the abysmal human rights record of the Zia regime which had just added to the disabilities of the Ahmedi community in Pakistan earlier apostatized by the Bhutto government. The fourth contradiction was of course the lack of democracy in Pakistan - an admission by the US that it was willing, temporarily, to deal with dictators and despots to gain its foreign policy objectives around the globe. The fifth contradiction was Pakistan`s resistance to normalization of relations with India, which was a part of the American foreign policy in South Asia. Pakistanis were always mystified by this insistence on normalization with India. Bhutto in his Myth of Independence in fact came to the conclusion that the US and the USSR were actually planning Pakistan`s subjugation to India through this policy. The thesis in India was that, far from seeking such normalization, the Americans were responsible for sowing the seeds of discord between otherwise brotherly Pakistan and India. In South Asia, no one believes that a big power may find normalization between India and Pakistan to be in its interest.

During the Afghan war honeymoon, speakers from the United States often spoke publicly in Pakistan, warning the Pakistanis that once he war was over the American policy was expected to change drastically in view of Pakistan`s above-mentioned contradictions - an admission that the US and Pakistan were strange bed-fellows right from the start. If the Pakistanis say that they were taken by surprise that in 1990 President Bush stopped all aid to Pakistan and applied the Pressler Amendment sanctions to it, they are clearly not telling the truth. The record shows that Pakistan was indeed not an honest ally of the US. It had its rogue officers who spread the anti-US virus inside the army and in fact used the war to convert Pakistan into an anti-US state that may not have been in Pakistan`s interest. They gave Hekmatyar 60 percent of all aid coming from the US while Hekmatyar enjoyed little support among the mujahideen, as prime minister Nawaz Sharif discovered in 1993 when he tried to implement the Islamabad Accord among the government-in-exile of the Afghan mujahideen. It was a part of Hekmatyar`s charisma to routinely insult President Reagan - the president whose largesse was actually responsible for his prosperity and that of his handlers inside the ISI. It was this anti-US orientation of the Afghan jehad under Pakistan that also partly led to the Americans abandoning Afghanistan in great haste after the exit of the Soviet troops from there.

The US-Pak relationship was ideologically poisoned from the start. Because it was consorting with all and sundry to advance its cold war aims against he Soviet Union, the United States leaned on the theory of changeability of foreign policy. On the other hand, despite its reliance on the theory of `eternal friendship`, as enunciated by Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan routinely stabbed the US in the back during the Afghan war. At the level of theory, the US is still better off admitting that it is fickle. Pakistan`s behaviour remains schizophrenic because it boasts of moral fixates in its foreign policy.

ANOTHER AFGHANISTAN IN THE MAKING,

from hindustan times of today. It is the same in pakistan and in kashmir. IC hijackers and the WTC man, the same genus, different species.

Violent anti-US protests in Kashmir

AFP

(Srinagar, October 8)





Violent anti-US protests have erupted in the Kashmir valley on Monday with people pouring onto the streets of Srinagar, stoning taxis and chanting slogans against the United States.

In downtown localities, groups of mainly young protesters forced shops to down shutters and stoned taxis and other public vehicles.

Around 200 students, including women, participated in a peaceful protest on the campus of Kashmir University amid tight security.

The demonstrators were chanting ``Long Live Islam``, ``Down with America`` and other slogans.

Police and paramilitary forces have been sent to the trouble spots.

ANOTHER PATHETIC APOLOGIST,

So america is responsible for the afghan proble. A few hundred thousand tibetans came to india, yeah, budhist terroists are bombing china. Pakistan was created for islam, especially a viulent form of islam stemming fom TNT, essentially that muslims cannot live with people of other religions. the number of `other` religions have declined steadily in the last fifty years true to the TNt doctrine. Then comes the afghan refugees, a great oppotunity to train them and send them to kashmir. That needs a true jihadic version of islam and that is taliban.

The great success of taliban is not afghanistan, it is the invasion at KARGILL. They were armed with the stingers and their willingness to kill and maim, remeber the mutilated bodies of the first indian patrol, were true achievements of taliban.

Taliban is a carefully selected jihadic strain, cultured and propagatrd by pakistan.

Bravo, Ras, for saying the unsayable. But I would like to quote the following from your article

:

``I have to strongly disagree with Afghan representative appearing in the American media these days and blaming Pakistan for the problems of Afghanistan. Instead I would like to forward the proposal that the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan can become their own best friends (and everyone else’s) if they could learn to get along with each another inside their own countries.

Blaming Pakistan is easy but I believe that the Afghans can learn a great deal about self-preservation from the example of the current regime in Pakistan. It is time to join the real world, to quit fighting and to learn the benefits of trade and commerce.``

BY this you are saying that the current geographical dispensation - Durrand line and all should be a near final state of the States boundaries. That Trade and commerce are more important and should be first revived, rejuvinated, etc etc before any other thing can done regarding the Durrand line etc.

But there are internal contradictions to your arguments. rememebr these sentiments/arguments should be apllicable everywhere, and one counter example is enough to dismantle the who edifice. Those of us who are steeped in mathematical analysis realise this and spend our lives looking for counter examples for every theorem we come up with. Anyway I will gove you one (for better or worse):

I wonder how long it will be before our brothers from the various jehadi outfits take this message and use it in other places. Or is this only for the believers, not not for the kafirs/kufirs like Ahmedias, pagans, the heeng oozers aka dirty hindoos (thanks Sarwari for this new epithet for the Indians brings a new new dimension to the racism and bigotry of your elite ilk). If it is aplicable to the other scenario on Pakistan`s eastern borders - I would suggest that you say it loud and clear so that all can hear it.

But somehow I feel that this will not happen. Peace and the subcontinent are two words which can never go together. History, repeats itself, and will keep repeating itself - Alexander, mogols, Ahmed Shah abdali, 1857 etc etc. We subcontinentals are always at mercy of foreigners, and can never live in peace within ourselves. Well, I say let the world rule us. We are better off that way. The brits, gave us some sort of a law and a sense of equitableness. When they left, we ruined the system (built our 200 yrs) in the matter of a few years.

Now that the americans have started their, long overdue and for the Taliban a just desert, attacks let us hope that they have a permanent presence on the roof of the subcontinent to keep us brown skins in place so that we do not loose sight of daily bread......justice, equality etc etc etc

Iran fills a void left by Pakistan`s decline

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/008/nation/Iran_fills_a_void_left_by_Pakistan_s_decline+.shtml

By Anthony Shadid, Globe Staff, 1/8/2002

SLAMABAD, Pakistan - Long the regional heavyweight, Pakistan now finds its role in Afghanistan has all but vanished, dealing a blow to the nation`s influence in southwestern Asia and leaving an opening for rivals like Iran, diplomats and officials say.

Iran is seeking to capitalize on the dramatic shift in Pakistan`s fortunes with moves to tie its economy more closely to Afghanistan, according to officials here and in Washington. Pakistan`s longtime rival is opening links to Afghanistan by air and road, the officials said.

``There has been a complete flip-flop on who was the major player, and it has gone from Pakistan to Iran,`` a Western diplomat in Islamabad said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``The Iranians are good about not gloating over that fact.``

Iran`s entry into the void shows both the extensive diplomatic realignment in the region since Sept. 11 and how far Washington has come in its perceptions about Iran, a state it still lists as supporting terrorism. Moreover, diplomats said, it underscores how far Iran itself has come in moderating its policies and playing a more assertive international role.

The decline of Pakistani influence here is remarkable, given the formidable authority Islamabad wielded in the US-backed fight against Soviet troops in the 1980s and the far-reaching support it provided the Taliban during its rise to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Today, Pakistan`s once-extensive intelligence network in Afghanistan has gone the way of its Taliban allies. In Kabul, it faces an Afghan government with a still-vivid memory of Pakistan`s support for the Taliban and consequently an intense distaste for any hint of Pakistani meddling.

Mushahid Hussain, a member of Pakistan`s Parliament and a former government minister, said that in his nation`s pursuit of `` this flawed policy to install a friendly government in Kabul, we promoted favorites, we ditched friends, we suddenly had a romance with the Taliban.

``Of course after Sept. 11, we realized that our pro-Taliban policy was buried in the wreckage of the World Trade Center.``

Iran played a more extensive role than has generally been acknowledged in reaching the agreement in Bonn last month that made possible the provisional government in Kabul, the diplomat said. Tehran has also taken on a higher profile inside the war-shattered country by providing aid, including the funding of teacher salaries in Kabul for the next six months.

In a farther-reaching effort, Tehran has sought to bolster its links by road from Mashhad in western Iran to Herat, an Afghan border city with longstanding links to Iran. Iranian officials have urged the United Nations to make more use of the Iranian port of Chabahar on the Arabian Sea to ship aid into southwestern Afghanistan, and an Iranian diplomat in Islamabad said that direct flights would begin ``in the near future`` from Tehran to Kabul.

``They`re not missing a beat,`` said the Western diplomat.

He and other diplomats agreed that the Iranians appear to be a force for stability in Afghanistan, so US officials have so far raised no objection to their growing role.

``It`s obviously something we`re going to keep an eye on, but it`s not causing alarm to the extent that we`re trying to stop it,`` a State Department official said.

Pakistan`s diplomatic retreat from Afghanistan is occurring as the nation is losing ground in other ways.

For example, Washington is not only cooperating more with Iran, but is also diluting its reliance on Pakistan by forging closer ties to nations in the region such as Uzbekistan and, of course, Afghanistan itself. And the United States is reshaping the situation on the ground by increasing its military presence in the region, with Russia`s blessing.

Pakistan is also stinging - and presumably has lost ground in the region, at least for the time being - as a result of its ongoing military confrontation with India.

Although the Bush administration has pressured both sides to avoid war, the most intense efforts have clearly been made in Islamabad, which has reacted with unprecedented crackdowns on the Islamic militants it had been supporting. The result has been to make Pakistan seem less of a force, particularly compared with its archrival, India, which has offered no apparent concessions.

Some analysts say that next to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pakistan has lost the most as a result of the US campaign.

``Everything seems to have boomeranged against Pakistan, both in the east and in the west,`` said Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan`s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

It is hard to overstate the extent of Pakistan`s loss of influence, especially within Afghanistan.

After the Soviet invasion in 1979, Pakistan had treated its neighbor to the west as its strategic backyard, shepherding the US-funded resistance by the mujahideen that eventually led to a Soviet withdrawal a decade later.

But it was under the Taliban that Pakistan enjoyed its greatest influence.

From 1994 on, Pakistani intelligence fostered the Taliban as a military client, providing help in recruitment and training, logistics, money, weapons, and even military intervention on the Taliban`s behalf.

Hundreds of Pakistani volunteers, many fired by religious fervor, populated the Taliban`s ranks. And the religious militia drew on Pakistan`s religious parties, groups that grew in prominence during the 1990s, for financial and ideological backing. In 1997, Pakistan led the way in granting diplomatic recognition to the Taliban.

``If you look at Afghanistan, the Taliban regime was probably the most friendly to Pakistan in the last 100 years,`` said Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, a Pakistani think tank.

That very success with the Taliban, analysts said, is the reason the retreat has been so sweeping: Pakistan invested so much in the Taliban that it was left with virtually nothing to show once the Taliban disintegrated before the American military onslaught.

Diplomats and former officials said Pakistani policy is in shambles, reeling from the loss of influence in Afghanistan and with no realistic prospect of exerting any.

Pakistan has yet to open an embassy in Kabul, though a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that would occur ``sooner rather than later.``

``Where does Pakistan stand after 25 years of making sacrifices for Afghanistan?`` said Gul. ``Pakistan has no relevance as of now. It has completely pulled out.``

Gul, who supported Pakistan`s policy of fostering the Taliban, blames the US government. Washington broke promises to keep the Northern Alliance from taking power, he said. ``Pakistan was used as a pawn, not as a partner by the Americans.``

But other analysts here put the blame squarely on Pakistan, part of an assessment of policy here that some compare to US discussions over the victory of communists in China in 1949.

``Pakistan`s policy toward Afghanistan was one vast failure,`` said Hussain.

``Judge by the results. Ultimately what did it produce? It didn`t produce stability for the region, for Pakistan, or for Afghanistan.``

For now, Pakistani officials say they will support UN efforts to form a government in Kabul that represents Afghanistan`s mosaic of ethnic and religious groups. That in itself is new, said one senior Pakistani official.

``In the past, there were preferences for certain people and certain parties,`` the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``That has proved to be a disaster.``

But given Pakistan`s ties of language, culture, and ethnicity, the official predicted that its influence would once again grow in Afghanistan.

``Whatever government ultimately emerges in Afghanistan will have to deal with Pakistan,`` he said. ``We are not worried about it.``

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 1/8/2002.

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