Obama puts the heat on
Pakistan By Karamatullah K
Ghori
When the head of the Inter-Services
Public Relations (ISPR) directorate of the
Pakistan military makes a clean breast, as he did
on June 21, that a serving brigadier of the army
at the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi is
in detention on charges of having links with an
extremist religious organization, one has to
believe that something very serious must be wrong
in the military.
Another announcement from
the ISPR, a day later, added four majors of the
army to the brigadier's column. These four,
however, are merely being questioned and not
detained, at least not yet.
The Pakistan
military is an exclusive club that doesn't let out
much information about itself unless there's an
overwhelming reason for it. And the current period
in time is, no doubt, one such
phase when a lot has happened
that the denizens of this elitist club may never
have wished to see.
The series of
humiliations kicked off in early May with the
embarrassment of Abbottabad and the macabre siege
of the naval base Mehran, in Karachi, and shows
little sign of abating.
As the sweltering
heat in the plains of Pakistan is getting closer
to making room for the annual monsoons - with the
likelihood of another visitation of floods
engulfing the country - dark clouds ominously dot
the horizon for the army.
The open season
that opposition politicians, led by two-time prime
minister Nawaz Sharif, have declared on the
military's bloated but unwelcome role in
governance is enough to test its resilience. And
now United States President Barack Obama, too, has
waded in to make the challenge even more onerous
for the generals at GHQ.
Obama's June 22
speech from the White House - in which he
announced the commencement of his promised
drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan in July
this year and phased over the next three years -
contains a list of veiled demands and warnings for
Pakistan, particularly its military.
To
Obama, the thinning of the American combat
presence in Afghanistan doesn't mean any dilution
of his firm resolve to keep up the pressure on
al-Qaeda and its militant comrades. He
complimented Pakistan's efforts that, together
with the American punch, have led to more than
half of al-Qaeda's top brass being eliminated.
However, he left no room for doubt that as long as
he was in command, there would be no sanctuary for
terrorists, anywhere.
That's where
Pakistan and the role of its military take on a
pivotal position in Obama's estimation. He was
quite categorical that there would be no "safe
havens for al-Qaeda". That was a loud and clear
message for Pakistan to ensure there are no
hide-outs for al-Qaeda and its fellow-travellers
in the "no man's land" of Pakistan's tribal belt
straddling Afghanistan.
It's an old but
persistent demand of the Americans for the
Pakistan army to do in its North Waziristan tribal
area what it did in South Waziristan. The Pakistan
army - for a variety of reasons - has been
stalling on that demand. But Obama sounded more
insistent and resolute than ever before. Indeed,
his confidence has climbed since US special forces
killed al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in his
hideout not far from a military compound in
Abbottabad. So he hardly minced his words in
articulating that "we will insist" that Pakistan
keeps its commitments.
It's easy for Obama
to pile pressure on Pakistan, coupled with barely
disguised warnings that if Pakistan didn't, then
he would go about it on his own, which in simple
words means another Abbottabad-like solo
operation.
However, the relentless demands
from Obama for the Pakistan army to do still more
- with himself holding a gun to its head, is a
catch-22 dilemma for the generals. The price Obama
could exact from them and the country is enormous.
The latest survey by the Washington-based
Pew research in Pakistan in the wake of Bin
Laden's demise finds that 67% of Pakistanis
questioned, a solid majority, don't think the "war
on terror" is Pakistan's war. A fresh incursion by
the army into North Waziristan to oblige the
Americans could only trigger wider public uproar,
which would be hard to stomach for an army
leadership already forced onto the back foot.
The Pakistan army's operation in South
Waziristan has already brought a massive spike in
acts of terrorism that has taken a heavy toll of
public life. Another Quixotic venture would
inevitably add fuel to a burning fire and push the
country to the brink of anarchy.
In a
nutshell, Pakistan could slide into civil war,
given an already super-charged tension in its
political culture, where tolerance of any kind is
at a heavy premium.
On top of that,
Pakistan is wary of the talks that Washington has
been carrying on for some time with the Afghan
Taliban behind its back. Keeping Pakistan out of
the loop has only one meaning for Islamabad: the
Obama administration doesn't trust it enough to
make it a party to the parleys, which could have
far-reaching consequences for Pakistan, more than
any other neighbor of Afghanistan.
Islamabad is also feeling increasingly
leery of the traction that the so-called Blackwill
formula - to divide Afghanistan along ethnic lines
into a Pashtun south and a non-Pashtun north - is
apparently receiving in top echelons of the Obama
administration.
There's near-consensus in
Pakistan's intellectual community, and
policymakers, that the author of this
prescription, Robert Blackwill, has absorbed a lot
of Indian input into his brain wave. Blackwill was
George W Bush's ambassador to India from 2001 to
2003.
Pakistan's intellectual community
also fears Obama's drawdown of forces, spread over
three years, is calibrated to allow the Blackwill
plan ample opportunity to take root in
Afghanistan.
A divided Afghanistan would
not only denude Pakistan of its strategic depth,
vis-a-vis India, but may also become a cause for
the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line, the
poorly marked border between Afghanistan and
Pakistan, to unite. Such unity could only mean
further dismemberment of Pakistan and open up a
Pandora's box. Pakistan simply can't countenance
such an outcome and will pull no punches to thwart
it.
Karamatullah K Ghori is a
former career ambassador of Pakistan whose
diplomatic assignments took him to the United
States, Argentina, Japan, China, The Philippines,
Algeria, Kuwait, Iraq, Macedonia and Turkey.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
