Four issues relating to Pakistan were presented by Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace before the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia affairs on January 16. These concerned free and fair elections; counterterrorism operations; US assistance to Pakistan; and most importantly securing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from falling into the hands of extremists.
On the matter of free and fair elections in Pakistan, South Asia Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Boucher, testifying before a House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, conceded the possibility of the vote in Pakistan’s general elections set for February 18 being tampered with. But he stressed that the US would do all it could to ensure a fair election by having teams in place from the US embassy to monitor them. President Musharraf, meantime, had assured the international press in Brussels, Paris, Davos, and London that not only would the elections be free and fair, but also peaceful, with the security apparatus positioned primarily to prevent any untoward incident from happening. The consensus of opinion among the political parties holding reservations on participating in the elections all along has been that they would not be entirely averse to this, provided a new and independent election commission overseas them, and the security forces placed by the incumbent establishment did not venture beyond featuring as a security umbrella.
Regarding counterterrorism operations, having launched a major offensive against the Baitullah Mehsud inspired Al Qaeda-linked Taliban in Waziristan, subsequent to their recapturing the Japanese gifted Kohat Tunnel connecting the NWFP’s settled areas with the tribal territories, Pakistan’s armed forces continue the fight to consolidate their positions. This is no easy task given that Baitullah Mehsud reportedly has 40,000 blooded guerillas at his call and, with the collateral damage inflicted by aerial strafing along with artillery shells raining down on the indigenous Pustun populace, passions are inflamed with more youth joining the Baitullah camp by the day. Moreover, if the US were to open yet another front in Iran, as threatened by President Bush in his State of the Union, young Shias in and around the area may well turn in the direction of joining hands with the Sunni Taliban in a fight seen as a resistance to the US occupation of Muslim lands.
On the subject of US assistance to Pakistan, there has been continued questioning on whether the $10 billion plus (some say $ 20 billion overtly and covertly) provided to Pakistan since 2001 has been channeled in the right direction. If the essential aim was and is to wage war on the Al Qaeda, which is alleged to have made the tribal territories on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border its home base, it has not. But to win the hearts and minds of the people who inhabit this area, the $750 million figure earmarked to achieve the objective may not be enough. And it rankles when such a paltry sum as the $7 million for education promised by Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown is presented where combating the madness coming from the madarassas is a critical factor. Nor does the European Community brushing-off Pakistan’s president effectively empty handed in Davos on the demerits of his pursuing policy under an authoritarian title, rather than the democratic dispensation, make much sense.
Finally, on the subject of preventing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from falling into “the wrong hands”, international opinion appears to have reached a comfort level with Pakistan’s military overseen National Command Authority which overseas Pakistan’s nuclear assets, fearing only the danger of fundamentalism seeping into the armed forces or into Pakistan’s scientific establishment. Focusing on this, the January 15 issue of the Wall Street Journal featured a repeat call by four former US strategists, Henry Kissinger, George Schulz, William Perry and Senator Sam Nunn, for the world to seriously focus on nuclear disarmament. In brief, the four statesmen recommended a reduced reliance on nuclear weapons through the extension of the 1991 START treaty, the reductions agreed upon in the 2002 Moscow treaty, fortifying the means to comply with the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, and more serious efforts to implement the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
If earnestly pursued, this could herald a new beginning, and Pakistan has shown good intent with President Musharraf reportedly having met Israel’s defence minister Ehud Barak in Paris, purportedly to allay Israel’s fears on Iran’s intention to acquire ‘the bomb’. But that singularly constructive gesture could backfire with militants upping the ante in the urban areas of Pakistan as shown by the presence of the deadly Jandullah in Karachi, where the city’s police recently had a shootout with ten terrorists in a suburb reportedly killing five and arresting two, while three are said to have escaped. With these sorts of incidents on the rise on either side of the border, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s contention in Berlin recently that bolstering local security rather than sending in foreign troops is the key to stabilizing Afghanistan pretty much mirrors Pakistan’s view on the subject.
