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Fissures in an unnatural
alliance
By K P S Gill
Both
the United States and Pakistan have dismissed the recent
clashes and exchange of fire between their troops as a
"misunderstanding", and high level interventions have
sought to undo the damage inflicted by two incidents of
friction - one of which ended in a 500-pound bomb being
dropped on an abandoned madrassa in Pakistani
territory, killing two Pakistani soldiers who had taken
shelter there.
These incidents, by themselves,
do not constitute a major crisis in relations between
the two countries and their cooperation in the war
against terror; allied forces often have frictional
confrontations in the field in other theaters of warfare
as well. In the Pakistan-US case, however, the incidents
are symptomatic of a deeper malaise, a fundamental
conflict of interests and underlying ideologies between
the two nations. What is in evidence here is, in fact,
the gradual emergence of inevitable fissures in what
was, from its very inception, an extraordinarily
unnatural alliance.
To the extent that this is
the case, an escalation of tensions between US and
Pakistani armed forces on the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border is an inevitability, though matters have been
kept from going out of hand in the immediate future. It
is clear, moreover, that US troops on the ground are
getting impatient with Pakistan's duplicity, and are
increasingly resentful of the visible support and
accommodation that the al-Qaeda and Taliban survivors
are receiving on Pakistani soil.
Impatience,
however, has another face as well. As one commentator in
the Jung Group's The News International expressed it,
"Hatred against the US is [at an] all time high in
Pakistan these days." That hatred manifested itself in a
rash of demonstrations right across the country - in
Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Karachi, Quetta,
Lahore, Bajore, Hyderabad, Kohat, Mansehra, Naushahro
Feroze, Mirpurkhas, Larkana, Sukkur - after Friday
prayers, as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the
coalition of fundamentalist parties that cornered an
unprecedented 53 seats in the National Assembly in the
dubious November 2002 elections, called on "the people"
to wage jihad against America "to halt interference by
imperialist forces in the affairs of the region".
In Islamabad, Maulana Samiul Haq, head of the
notorious Haqqani madrassa that spawned many
Taliban, intoned, "The more they suppress us, the more
we will rise," and warned that American action against
Iraq would "trigger a serious backlash from religious
forces". In Lahore, Hafiz Hussain Ahmad of the Jamiat
Ulema-i-Islam declared, "Even before the attack on
Afghanistan, we maintained that the US concern was
neither Osama bin Laden nor Mullah Omar, but the
umma [the world community of Muslims]. The
preparations for an attack on Iraq substantiate that
claim. The world should rest assured that the next US
target would be Iran, followed by Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan."
There is an entrenched lobby in
Washington which has a deep - at times personal and
vested, at other times professional, though erroneous -
interest in keeping America's unnatural alliance with
Pakistan alive at any costs, and this group will
underplay these trends. Nevertheless, these threats are
real, and are broader and far more compelling than a few
flashes of fire along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border
suggest.
The rising anti-US public
demonstrations and protests mirror a mounting hostility
within the Pakistan army to the American war against
terror agenda. Crucial in this is the fact that it is
immensely difficult for soldiers who have been
systematically indoctrinated on a steady Islamist
fundamentalist diet for over two decades now, and many
of whom have fought shoulder to shoulder with the
Taliban in Afghanistan, to suddenly abandon convictions
that have become deep-rooted and go to the very heart of
their notions of personal and national identity.
At the higher levels of military and civilian
leadership, where there is greater sophistication of
thought and perspective, compromises and readjustments
conforming to the imperatives of the situation are
possible. Even here, though, there are many senior
generals who are simply incapable of making the
necessary ideological transition, and at least some of
these have dominated the long standing collaboration
between the Pakistani army, its Inter-Services
Intelligence agency, and the jihadi-fundamentalist
forces.
Moreover, President General Pervez
Musharraf himself has actively exploited Islamist
sentiments to execute military and quasi-military
campaigns, both in Afghanistan and against India, and
when he seeks, suddenly, to distance himself from such a
position, or to purge the military leadership of
Islamist elements, he sows confusion and loses
credibility among his officers. At the middle and lower
levels, however, where responses are more emotive and
less analytical, the anti-Taliban and anti-al-Qaeda
campaign is deeply distressing, and tensions can only be
expected to rise, both within the Pakistani forces, and
in the Pakistani street.
In Afghanistan,
consequently, US troops are now getting only the
foretaste of what has been an everyday occurrence in
India, notably in Kashmir - terrorists operating out of
Pakistani soil, executing operations across an
international border, and then running back into
Pakistani sanctuaries, with the authorities denying
their existence and asserting an uncompromising
sovereignty to obstruct any legitimate punitive action.
It is this "deniability", and the international
collusion manifested in a pretended ignorance of a
reality that is widely known, that has allowed Pakistan
to create and nurture the jihadis over the decades, and
to employ them as their primary strategic force to
pursue geopolitical ambitions that are entirely
disproportionate to the country's resources and
capabilities.
Clearly, however, playing this
game against India is one thing; against the US, it may
prove to be entirely another. What we are witnessing,
consequently, is the emergence of a dynamic and
inexorable process, with Pakistani duplicity,
intransigence and the collusion of its armed forces and
intelligence agencies with the jihadis - including the
remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda - provoking harsh
US reaction; and US reactions feeding the street anger
and the resentment in Pakistan's security forces.
Countering this process will require a radical
reassessment of American policies and orientation on
Pakistan, as of the course and character of the war
against terror since September 11. The conciliation and
appeasement of "moderate Islamist extremist" forces - if
such a formulation is conceivable - has been integral to
the US policy on Pakistan. America winks continuously at
the sustained support to international Islamist
radicalism and terrorism by Pakistan, as well as at the
persistence of a vast terrorist infrastructure on
Pakistani soil, as long as these are not seen to be
directed against American targets, or to be currently
engaged with the al-Qaeda-Taliban combine.
This
is myopic in the extreme, and has created the space
precisely for the "plausible deniability" that has
allowed the al-Qaeda and Taliban survivors to relocate
themselves in Pakistan, for the country to grow into the
most significant center of Islamist terrorism, and for
these forces to increasingly direct their resources and
attacks against Western targets.
Much of this
orientation has been based on a miscalculation regarding
the risks of political collapse and anarchy if the
"indispensable" Musharraf loses control. The specter of
anarchy and collapse in Pakistan, however, is the more
real if current trends in appeasement and the
consolidation of the forces of Islamist extremism and
terror persist.
If these processes are to be
neutralized, the hard option will have to be seized, and
a clear obligation placed on those who claim to rule
Pakistan: that they bring the conduct of their affairs
in conformity with international norms; dismantle and
destroy the infrastructure of terrorism; and cease
provocation of, and support to, extremist activities
within the country and across international borders.
Failing this, the fullest force of international
sanctions and direct military intervention should be
brought to bear on a lawless nation that now not only
jeopardizes the future of the South Asian region, but
the possibilities of peace in the world at large.
K P S Gill, president, Institute for
Conflict Management, a non-profit society set up in 1997
in New Delhi committed to the evaluation and resolution
of problems of internal security in South Asia.
Published with permission from the South Asia
Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism
Portal
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