Shahzad's killing echoes in
Washington By Brian M Downing
In 1979, Nicaraguan soldiers stopped an
American correspondent covering the deteriorating
situation and summarily executed him. The American
public was appalled, support for Anastasio Somoza
flagged badly after that, and his regime soon
collapsed. Similar dynamics may be underway in
Pakistan.
The murder in May of Asia Times
Online's Pakistani bureau chief Syed Saleem
Shahzad, evidently at the hands of Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), [1] has
appalled many inside Pakistan and US policymakers
are attracted to the issue. China has more
influence there than the US does and so its
disposition will be critical.
The matter
of the ISI's connection to Shahzad's murder is no
longer a cause of journalist associations and human-rights
groups. It is being addressed
at very high levels in Washington, including by
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta.
David Petraeus,
the recent commanding general in Afghanistan and
now director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
will undoubtedly take a keen interest, critical as
the matter is for the Afghan war and the stability
of Pakistan as well.
The Shahzad case will
mesh well with the evidence against the ISI that
the US is gathering from many sources, including
data taken from Osama bin Laden's dwelling in
Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May after he was killed
by US special forces. India will offer
intelligence collected after many terrorist
attacks - especially the 2001 attack in New Delhi
and the one in Mumbai seven years later, both of
which are thought to be the work of the ISI-backed
group, Lashkar-i-Taiba.
The army's ties to
various other groups such as the Afghan Taliban,
the Jaish-i-Mohammed, Jundallah and the
Sipah-i-Sahaba have become increasingly clear -
and increasingly worrisome as well.
Shahzad had reported that the military's
relations to such groups were not based simply on
their utility. Directing them into strategic
directions may have been the approach of senior
commanders, but younger officers recruited into
the military over the years have had ideological
affinities. This has dire potential consequences
for the region and for Pakistan itself.
The US will seek to work with indigenous
groups to weaken the military's position in
political life and to redirect the officer corps
into professional achievement and conventional
organization geared to regional stability. More
importantly, the US will seek to bolster the
competence of the civilian government, which over
the years has been largely in the hands of a
corrupt landholding elite.
The Pakistani
public is angry with the military, though for
different and sometimes conflicting reasons. Some
are upset that US special forces were able to
penetrate their nation's security measures and
kill Bin Laden; others are aghast that the late
al-Qaeda chief had been living in comfort within a
few hundred meters of an army facility; others
remain critical of the military's years of
misrule, control of key parts of the economy,
bloated budgets - and more recently for the
senseless killing of a young man in Karachi.
Two groups in particular will play
important parts in the murder investigation and
its political denouement. Pakistan has a vigorous
and generally independent press that bristles at
the intimidation of their guild and the brutal
murder of one of their own. (Indeed, Shahzad was
the 37th journalist to be killed in Pakistan since
2001.) Media around much of the world may share
their Pakistani colleagues' concern and aid their
cause.
Despite its many years of army
rule, Pakistan can pride itself on its judiciary,
which has retained autonomy from the military. The
supreme court has even taken the military to task,
as when it forced the reinstatement of Chief
Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry after
then-president General Pervez Musharraf had
removed him.
China, having surpassed the
US in influence, will be important if not decisive
in events underway. The generals have ignored
pressure from Washington to break with militants,
confident that in the event of an aid curtailment
they will always have support from Beijing - a
confidence that China has done little to
discourage, until recently. China has cooled to
the idea of establishing a naval base in
southwestern Pakistan - a remarkable embarrassment
and perhaps a portentous one.
China is
concerned with Pakistan's stability, especially
after the killing of several Chinese in Pakistan's
Baloch region and the recent attack in Karachi.
Beijing is wary of drawing closer to a failing
state. Pakistan's network of violent groups is
another cause for second thoughts, injurious as
they may be to China's growing prestige in the
world - and to the image of its products as well.
Of particular concern is the group of
Uyghur fighters operating along the AfPak line.
They are tied to a separatist movement in China's
Xinjiang province - a region with a large Turkic
Muslim population chaffing under Han hegemony and
building ties with Turkic peoples in Central Asia.
Xinjiang contains promising oil fields and is the
eastern terminus for the China National Petroleum
Company's now completed pipeline from oil fields
in Kazakhstan.
Pakistan once figured
highly in China's economic and geopolitical
ambitions. The country is in such disarray that it
may no longer be seen as a reliable partner in any
endeavor - a view finally dawning in the US as
well.
As regrettable and often ineffectual
as external pressure has often been in world
affairs, the influence of China and the US - in
concert with parts of the Pakistani people,
especially its press and judiciary - may be the
country's last chance to avoid self destruction
brought on by its military.
Brian M Downing
is a political/military analyst and author of
The Military Revolution and Political Change
and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in
America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can
be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.=
(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
