Pakistan on the march
again By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - In
the changing dynamics of the world community
post-September 11, Pakistan has moved from being a
pariah state (nuclear-armed, terrorist haven) to one of
international acceptability, culminating at the weekend
it its partial suspension from the Commonwealth being
lifted. This follows the United States declaring
Pakistan a major non-NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) ally, and the European Union strengthened
economic ties with Islamabad.
Much of this
acceptance has to do with Pakistan being a crucial
front-line country in the US's "war on terror", and the
fact that President General Pervez Musharraf, who seized
power in a bloodless coup in 1999, restored parliament
and staged democratic elections (albeit somewhat flawed)
last October.
Parallel to these developments,
though, Pakistan continues to develop policies that will
both protect and further its strategic interests in the
region - even if this means engaging in activities
inconsistent with its new global image, particularly in
relation to Afghanistan and Kashmir.
Officials
close to Pakistan's strategic circle have told Asia
Times Online that recently Musharraf was given a
detailed briefing of a new strategic road map for
Indian-administered Kashmir in which Kashmiri freedom
fighters will launch fresh assaults on key targets in
the state. Over the past year, under intense US-led
international pressure, Pakistan had scaled back its
support for jihadis launching cross-border attacks from
Pakistan-administered Kashmir into Indian territory.
At the same time, the Gillani group of the All
Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), which is
Pakistan-backed, will show a much more active face aimed
at revitalizing Pakistan's position on Kashmir and
isolating the Abbas Ansari faction of the APHC, forcing
it to merge with the Gillani group.
The APHC is
an umbrella organization of more than 20 Kashmiri
separatist groups. Formed in 1993, it states that it is
committed to seeking dialogue with the Indian government
on a broad range of issues. Some members seek
independence for Kashmir, while others want all Kashmir
to become part of Pakistan.
India has long held
that the whole of Muslim-majority Kashmir is an integral
part of the country, while Pakistan demands the
implementation of decades-old United Nation resolutions
for a plebiscite in Kashmir to determine whether the
territory should be incorporated into India or merged
with Pakistan.
Under the recently-ousted Indian
prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who launched a
peace process last year, and Musharraf, there have been
signs that the two sides are ready to show flexibility
in their positions. Talks are scheduled for within the
next few months.
In Afghanistan, meanwhile,
Islamabad is adopting a similar approach by actively
supporting the political arm of the Hezb-i-Islami
Afghanistan (HIA) as a part of the political mainstream
to contest presidential and parliamentary elections
scheduled for September. Already, a Peshawar-based HIA
team has met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his
cabinet ministers with a view to cementing their
legitimacy.
The military wing of the HIA, led by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is still actively involved in the
resistance movement against the thousands of foreign
troops in the country, both US and those in the
International Security Assistance Force, comprising
mostly troops from NATO.
The genesis of
Pakistan's latest policy lies in a meeting held about
eight months ago which included several prominent
retired army officers, including former chief of army
staff, retired General Jehangir Karamat, and a former
director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) and present managing director of Fauji Fertilizer
(the country's largest fertilizer plant owned by the
army's Fauji Foundation), retired Lieutenant-General
Mehmood Ahmed. Also present was retired General (now
senator) Javed Asharaf Qazi.
These men agreed
that Pakistan should perform a delicate balancing act by
aggressively pursuing its own interests on the one hand,
while on the other hand convincing the world that it
does not support terrorism - be it in the form of
harboring al-Qaeda elements or sponsoring cross-border
militancy into Kashmir.
Scope of the new
mission As little as three years ago, Pakistan
had strategic depth in Afghanistan (support of the
Taliban regime) and a successful proxy network of
jihadis in Kashmir, which incensed New Delhi no end. Yet
Pakistan was not able to translate these two major
regional advantages into supremacy in the region against
India.
After September 11 a number of
developments took place, proving that Musharraf is
extremely capable of adapting:
The Pakistani military establishment was widely
perceived in the West as a band of extremist zealots.
This perception changed once Pakistan began to play an
active role - at least on the face of it - in
eradicating the al-Qaeda network.
Pakistan was notorious as a home of militant
organizations of every shape and form. Many of these
have been banned and effectively cut to size.
Musharraf has distinguished between fundamentalism
and mainstream Islam. In the past five years of his
rule, religious parties have once again become a part of
Pakistan's legitimate political process, and by and
large they have given up their previous designs for the
"Talibanization" of society. The Muttahida
Majlis-i-Amal, an alliance of six religious parties, is
an example of this. It fared well in last year's
elections, especially in North West Frontier Province
and Balochistan.
In the light of these
achievements, Pakistan's oligarchy of senior active and
retired officers (who still wield the power, despite the
facade of an elected government, notably through the
recently established all-powerful National Security
Council, came up with their plan of action. Key elements
include:
Disparate Pakistani militant outfits have been
separated from the Kashmiri movement. Except for a few
rings, the leadership of all Kashmiri field commanders
is now in the hands of the Hizbul Mujahideen, an
indigenous Kashmiri organization. Now, the Hizb alone
handles all matters of recruitment, training and
launching attacks on Indian military targets. The Hizb
has been blamed for the landmine that blew up a bus in
Indian-administered Kashmir on Sunday, killing 15
security forces.
Pakistan will neither support nor oppose the Afghan
resistance movement comprising Hekmatyar's HIA and the
Taliban, instead focusing on strengthening "moderate"
Taliban and the HIA's political wing in Afghanistan with
a view to seeing them into power. In the mean time, the
natural and indigenous guerrilla movement in Afghanistan
will continue to act as a buffer to keep Northern
Alliance influences (essentially the non-Pashtun groups
that dominate the north of Afghanistan ) and US forces
in check.
Pakistan will not actively support foreign fighters
and al-Qaeda in the region - notably the remote tribal
areas. Indeed, it will engage in periodic hunts for
"high value targets", such as the recent operation in
South Waziristan, because such cat-and-mouse games keep
Pakistan's strategic importance to the US alive.
Oligarchs rule Unlike Russia and the
US, Pakistan's oligarchy has its own dynamics and does
not include petrochemical giants and heads of huge
multi-national corporations, but ex-officers like
retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, retired
Lieutenant-General Mehmood Ahmed and retired
Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani. These people
effectively run Pakistan's de facto ruling class, the
Pakistan Army.
Though these generals have been
retired for several years, they have retained their grip
on many mafias, including religious ones, Afghan
warlords and Pakistani and Afghan politicians. Their
unmatched wealth and influence keep these generals in
the power game.
Apart from many powerful import
and export businesses, Gul operates a transport service
(a bus service monopoly) in the twin cities of
Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The business is actually in
the name of his daughter, Uzma Gul.
After being
railways and communications minister and director
general of the ISI, General Javed Asharaf Qazi (the
founding father of the Taliban) is today a senator of
the ruling Pakistan Muslim League. Another former
director of the ISI, Asad Durrani, launched several
joint Pakistan-US intelligence operations, and since his
retirement he has served as an ambassador in important
European countries, as well as in Saudi Arabia.
Men such as these, as they have in the past, are
defining Pakistan's policies. Now, with a new coalition
government taking charge in New Delhi under Manmohan
Singh, Pakistan aims to recapture a position of
dominance in its strategic backyard in Kashmir. The
militant movement can be expected to intensify again -
Sunday's attack could be a prelude. At this point,
Pakistan will be ready for political talks for an
agreement in which it will meet India "half way
somewhere", as Musharraf has promised.
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Pakistan a major non-NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) ally, and the European Union strengthened
economic ties with Islamabad. 
