Combating insurgency
Militancy, as sponsored by Al Qaeda and its ally the Taliban, continues to make the world’s headlines, with the contention now that Pakistan is the hub of international terrorism. Not so, counters Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, currently attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: Pakistan, today, is the principal victim of the insurgency and needs all the help it can draw from the international community to combat the fundamentalist anarchists that have crossed into its territories from Afghanistan as a direct consequence of NATO’s war against the conservative Pushtun tribes straddling the Afghan-Pakistan border belt.
Conservative, or ultra-conservative if you like, is the key word and in this regard, and what perhaps best draws the line of difference is a passage taken out of former Indian general Afsir Karim’s treatise titled Radicalisation of Pakistan and its impact on India published in India’s Overseas Research Foundation (ORF) issue brief #11 dated January. Almost at the outset General Karim observes “Conservatism cannot and should not always be equated with extremism and terms such as radicalisation, fundamentalism and religious intolerance should be examined in relation to the religious upsurge now being witnessed in Pakistan because of the American-NATO military intervention in Afghanistan.”
Fairer words could not have been written, making it clear to all save those who are directly involved in the intervention, that the Pushtun tribes that form the nucleus of the Taliban movement are resisting the invasion for fear of their traditions and culture being forcibly overwritten and, the resistance to the occupation is of itself part and parcel of those traditions and that culture. Not for nothing then, had Asia Times in an article published on January 18, seen it fit to highlight “…Islamabad has tried to defuse the situation by negotiating with selected Taliban leaders”, going on to expand that Al Qaeda wanted to be brought into the peace talks as the “chief interlocutor”.
But Al Qaeda wants more. Much more. According to the column it requires guarantees for the withdrawal of all security forces from the tribal areas, enforcement of Sharia law, release of Abdul Aziz of the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) cleric apprehended last year, and President Pervez Musharraf stepping down. All of this is an open challenge to the writ of the state. As if that were not enough, the journal referenced an Al Qaeda video which carried “bloody footage” of gruesome decapitations and “surrender scenes” and saw the video as “a declaration of war against the Pakistani army” urging continued struggle “until Islamabad is captured”.
The article also brought into the picture the bin Laden video of last year in which he “urged the West for dialogue”, concluding that “this was not a straight-forward offer of an olive branch, but an indication that Al Qaeda (was working towards becoming the) main negotiator of Muslim issues, rather than local groups such as the Taliban”. Should this Asia Times assessment be considered worthy of merit it would appear that Pakistan’s policy must be to unearth and win over those elements within Taliban circles who may be receptive to the spirit of Islam rather than Al Qaeda’s fundamentalist interpretations.
“Pakistan is in eye of a storm with regard to the battle against extremism”, wrote Lisa Curtis a senior research fellow in the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation some ten days ago in the Los Angeles Times, “It would be a folly for the US to turn its back on the country in this crisis period.” Not so wrote Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, in the same paper, “For far too long, key institutions in (the) government have been playing a double game – going after militants just enough to appease the United States but focusing strategic priorities elsewhere…The sad truth is that too much of US assistance to Pakistan has been squandered…”.
Not “squandered”, surely. The fact remains that Pakistan has 100,000 men on its side of the Afghan border and has suffered over 1000 casualties of its military personnel in the area, to say nothing of the collateral damage inflicted on its own people as a consequence of military operations against al Qaeda inspired Taliban elements. If the US think-tanks and media are not able to fully grasp this, perhaps the European Community in Davos may have. And if not they, Britain, which is infinitely more familiar with sub-continental affairs, might. What is now awaited is the outcome of the Brown-Musharraf talks.