http://www.spearheadresearch.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=404
Zahid U Kramet
With the new deadline for the restoration of the judges dismissed by President Musharraf under the Provisional Constitutional Ordinance (PCO) still hanging in the air, foremost in the minds of both Pakistanis and the international community is how best and most rapidly Pakistan’s stability issue can be resolved.
Thomas Houlahan, an associate of the US based Centre of Security and Science writing in The Washington Times, appears fairly optimistic about Pakistan’s political future given the stance taken by Asif Zardari, Co-Chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which holds the majority in the national chamber.
“A desire to seek retribution against the people who kept him (in jail for 11 years on charges since dropped) would have been understandable” Houlahan underscores. For his “almost total lack of bitterness”, in the appalling circumstances of his late wife and Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) main anchor Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Houlahan acknowledges Zaradri, but omewhat guardedly. He is more open in his approval of Zardari addressing US concerns by not showing any “inclination to seek a showdown with the president (Musharraf)”, and appears equally supportive of the PPP’s launch of “a social offensive to clean up the festering problems” in the troubled tribal areas, rather than persisting with the military option exclusively.
Others in the US subscribe to this train of thought. A United States Agency for International Development (USAID) official requesting anonymity reportedly told the press in Peshawar that the $750 million package earmarked for the development of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) was on its way to show the “human face” of America’s foreign policy, and this would provide around 100,000 jobs to the tribal youth. In addition, the official assured, another $1 billion would follow and that the greater part of this would be channeled through the Pakistan government.
At the same time, however, a New York Times editorial expressed serious skepticism about the new government’s projected peace deal with the tribal militants predicting it may merit as little success as did President Musharraf’s, and that the coalition government would be better advised to devise a “military fallback plan” should the talks fail. Pertinently the editorial referred to a recent Congressional investigation castigating the US administration for not having “developed a comprehensive plan -- integrating diplomacy, intelligence, law enforcement and economic aid – to address that clear and present danger”.
Applauding Pakistan’s coalition government for “exceeding expectations” by co-operating, the editorial advised the US administration “to work quietly with the new government to lay the ground for a new military strategy should the peace agreement unravel”. The barely veiled message here was it may take much more than Senator Joseph Biden’s proposed $2.5 billion package of non-military aid to combat the FATA insurgency and that Pakistan’s new government would need all the military support it could get to be able to tackle the problem effectively.
The value of that assessment surfaced almost immediately after, with Baitullah Mehsud, chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) suspending peace talks with the government until the Pakistan army withdrew from the Tribal Areas. This was a clear indication of the Islamic fundamentalist organization’s specifically territorial ambitions and opened the door for such hard-line Pakistan opponents as Jim Hoagland to contend in The Washington Post that “Pakistan with its two-dozen nuclear weapons, popular and official support for Kashmiri and Taliban and political instability, is ultimately a greater threat to world peace than Afghanistan and Iraq combined.”
In fact Hoagland at best, advocated the continuation of precision Predator missile attacks on “enemy targets” in the Tribal Areas in view of the Pakistan government’s “feeble efforts” to curb extremism – at worst, the relocation from Iraq of General Petraeus to marshal cross-border attack from Afghanistan on alleged Al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, which would amount to an open declaration of war by the US against Pakistan.
‘Hawks’ of Hoagland’s ilk are not in short supply. Another of his kind, a Michael Gerson, in his article ‘The necessary three-front war for US’, argues (once again in The Washington Post), “When it comes to Sunni radicalism, the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are a single struggle.” Honing in on Pakistan Gerson underscores, “Two thirds of ethnic Pashtuns – a tribal group that shelters Al Qaeda and perhaps Osama bin laden himself – live in Pakistan” and that “the tribal regions of Pakistan collect the most dangerous, ambitious terrorists in the world”, to conclude, “Eventually, this patience with Pakistan will need to end.”
Still there are those of more rational bent. Trudy Rubin writing in a The Philadelphia Inquirer essay writes, “Pakistan’s new civilian leaders have come with a new formula that downplays military strikes in favour of negotiations with militants…(a) strategy (that) looks remarkably similar to the formula that helped Iraq’s Anbar province of Al Qaeda” – and hope that this would convince Pakistan’s general public that America’s war against terror is their war too.
However, this could prove an uphill task, not least due to the confusion that has set in with two of the three coalition government’s partners unable to come to terms on the issue of the judges’ restoration, which presents the picture of a nation divided. In the given circumstances, rather than the PPP and PML-N, the third main component of the coalition, the Pustun oriented Awami National Party (ANP) could hold the key to the resolution of the problem as it forms the majority in the Taliban’s parent North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The ongoing Dubai talks between the three party heads, Asif Zardari of the PPP, the PML-N’s Nawaz Sharif and the ANP’s Asfandyar Wali are therefore critical.
But even if the talks lead to a fruitful conclusion, to enforce the Writ of the State in that restive province would still take some doing as the combined Afghan-Pakistan Taliban is a force to be reckoned in view of its territorial ambitions and access to funds said to be coming from the multi-billion dollar narcotics trade. The annual turnover of this far exceeds Senator Joseph Biden’s proposed annual non-military package for FATA. It likely exceeds Pakistan’s non-military and military packages combined, considering the Taliban dominated areas reportedly produce more than 93 per cent of the world\'s heroin supply. This problem then cannot be addressed solely from the supply side -- and that is the bottom line.
Courtesy Spearheadresearch.org