Posted on 08/19/2006 11:33:12 PM PDT by neverdem
Op-Ed Contributor
IN the wake of the foiled terror plot in London involving British Muslims with Pakistani connections, all eyes are again on Pakistan as the breeding ground for terrorists. While the arrests may serve as proof to some that the country cannot be relied on as an ally in our fight against Islamic extremism, we would argue that the recent events should harden our resolve to support it.
On Sept. 12, 2001, the United States gave Pakistan a stark choice — be with us or against us. Understanding the dangers and opportunities of this choice, President Pervez Musharraf chose to stand with America, and since then he has taken tremendous steps to fight Islamic extremists and move Pakistan toward enlightened moderation.
Pakistan has worked closely with the United States, sharing intelligence and capturing and handing over many terrorists, including top Al Qaeda leaders. It has sent more than 70,000 troops to the Afghan border and conducted successful operations to flush out foreign fighters. Hundreds of Pakistani troops have been killed in these efforts, and thousands injured.
Perhaps more important, General Musharraf has shown that he understands the seriousness of dealing with the root causes of extremism, making real efforts to improve economic and educational opportunities. He solved the country’s crippling debt crisis and loosened regulations on businesses, paving the way for an economic growth rate rivaling India’s. With mixed success, he has worked to free the judiciary from religious control and to loosen the grip of Islamic extremists on madrassas, the prevalent religious academies.
Yes, much remains to be accomplished, particularly in terms of democratization. Pakistan must increase efforts toward a lasting peace with India and eliminate the home-grown jihadists who threaten that peace. And, given the exposure of the arms bazaar run by its top nuclear scientist, Abdul...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Well, I love and respect Richard but we part ways on this a bit...
On Pakistan and Terror War:More Questions than Answers
By John E. Carey
August 16, 2006
After last week’s dramatic bagging of suspected airline bombers, one of the subtexts of the story still emerging is the key cooperation and involvement of Pakistan’s government and intelligence services.
Widespread media reporting on Pakistan’s role as super-partner of the U.S. and Britain in the war against terror needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
The complexities of Pakistan are not well understood in the west. As Sumit Ganguly, author of “Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947,” reported in Foreign Affairs, “Given the signal importance of Pakistan to U.S. foreign policy these days, the lack of informed commentary on the country is striking.”
Dr. Ganguly is Professor of Political Science at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, and a respected analyst of Pakistan's political situation.
We caught up with Professor Ganguly as he traveled between Singapore and India. We asked him, "Is Pakistan really committed to the war against terror?"
Dr. Ganguly answered, without much pause: "It is not. The commitment is merely expediential. I well realize that my view is heretical but the task of an academic is to speak truth to power. General Musharraf and his colleagues, I have long maintained, are only doing enough to ensure a steady supply of American economic and military assistance."
Dr. Ganguly was born in India, which makes some doubt his assessment. Yet he expressed the opinion of a wide spectrum of analysts who watch Pakistan.
Pakistan’s military government is headed by President/General Pervez Musharraf. He took power by military coup and heads a difficult coalition that enforces loyalty to one man and one country.But there is no one country.
Pakistan has a well known underground of Islamic extremists and terrorists and has long been suspected of harboring Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, long a disputed kind of rebel territory the Pakistani Army stayed clear of, most western intelligence experts believe Osama bib Laden and al Qaida, the leadership of the Taliban, and other Islamic terror camps now house terrorists from Uzbekistan and groups from Chechnya to Indonesia.
These terrorists groups in the secret underground of radicals within Pakistan itself operate in virtually self governed enclaves, much the way Hezbollah has operated within Lebanon for years.
Although Pakistan has made some inroads into the area at the urging of the US, the widespread existence of the terror camps continues.
"Pakistan will cooperate to the extent it suits them," said Dr. Ganguly, referring to Pakistan's work with the U.S. on the war on terror.
The “Father of Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb” is A. Q. Khan. He was sacked from the position unceremoniously in January 2004 during an investigation into allegations that he gave or sold nuclear secrets to nations and groups outside Pakistan. He confessed and apologized.
The next day President Musharraf pardoned him, calling him “my hero.”
So why has the U.S. ignored Pakistan’s vocal but not total support for the war on terror and apparent disregard for nuclear non-proliferation?
The U.S. may feel that it has done enough in the war against terror with Pakistan and further persuasion of Musharraf would pay few dividends.
Inside Pakistan, some of the answers lie in the secret intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Widely reported as one of the heroes in thwarting the London airline pilot plot (and assisting in the arrest of London July 05 bus bombers), the ISI has a record shrouded in secrecy and double dealing.
The ISI helps keep Musharraf in power even as he cultivates the west. Many believe the ISI also allows Islamic extremists and Al-Qaeda to operate within Pakistan.Just after the terror train bombing in India on July 11, 2006, India’s well respected Hundustan Times reported, “[Indian] Intelligence agencies on Thursday confirmed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was the ‘mastermind’ of the blasts that killed about 200 people.”
We also wondered why more experts in Pakistan are not speaking out about the war on terror and Pakistan’s role. A Pakistani professor who carefully follows politics and security issues from within Pakistan told us, “The ISI would make things extremely uncomfortable for any critics speaking to the international press. I correct that. Any press.”
We certainly take with a grain of salt the mainstream media’s proclamations this week that Pakistan is a full and reliable partner in the war against terror.
John E. Carey is former president of International Defense Consultants, Inc. He frequently has worked in Pakistan.
This essay is also at "India Defense:"
http://www.india-defence.com/reports/2360
We need to be planning for the post-Mushy future.
There will be nukes to be secured, mullahs to be snatched, a friendly strong man to be installed, Red Chinese to be confounded, Indians to be mollified and a LOC from the SPOD to Kabul to be secured.
The head of Osama bin Laden can be ours, IF we will spend the money and spill the blood to go get it.
Pakistan is like a big version of Lebanon in that it's not really one country, it's at least two countries, one of which is a virulent stinkhole of Islamic murderers.
Right.
i Agree 100%
I'd argue that Pakistan never really made the transition from the imagination of Mohammad Jinnah to real world nationhood. It remains not much more than a neighborhood.
Pakistan still defines itself as the Muslim non-India. This could never possibly be a base broad enough and compelling enough to build a nation on.
Individual Pakistanis more often than not self-identify as Punjabi, Baloch, Sindhi, Pathan or Mohajir. Across these linguistic/tribal divides run religious divides among Sunni, Shia, and Ismaili and minority religions such as Parsi, Christian, Hindu and Sikh. To say nothing of the minute sectarian differences among various Muslim sub-sects, which often seem to become the most bitter and violent divides of all.
Pakistan is violent, unstable and dangerous. It is potentially a far more problematic place than Lebanon by virtue of its size and strategic location.
When I lived there back in the eighties, Karachi had the higest incidence of urban violence in the world. It has now lost that title to Bagdhad, but it has the potential to regain the title over time if things really fall apart.
The article presents too simplistic a view of Pakistan and Pakistanis. I'll tell you how and why.
1) The US supported Saddam Hussein, a dictator, in the Iran-Iraq war. It didn't care to study his record of human right abuses in his own country until the shit hit the fan. Today, the left often says it was the Americans who aided and abetted these massacres in Iraq by looking the other way when Saddam Hussein perpetrated his crimes. What is to say that working with Musharraf will not lead to a similar situation? He might be pro-US now because it suits him, keeps him in power, keeps the aid and the weapons flowing (the F-16 deal is one such example). Tomorrow, if Iran and Syria manage to destroy Israel, god forbid it, and if the tide turns against America in the region, will this same dictator not switch sides? Are you sure? It is no illusion that the majority of Pakistanis are violently anti-America, very fascists Islamists in nature. No democratically elected leader will be able to do what Musharraf is doing today for the US. But a chameleon that changed from green to brown because it fit its immediate interests when the WTC fell can just as well change back to green if it sees that the world is getting 'greener'.
2) The US could not have foreseen that the Mujahideen that it armed against Russia in Afghanistan will one day turn around and bite the hand that fed them. It happened with the Taliban. It also gave birth to an organization that mutated into Al Qaeda and global jihad today. What is to say that this short-term fix of working with Musharraf isn't another such mistake? America is being extremely myopic in dealing with Pakistan. You can kill the symptoms by allying with Pakistan but you will never destroy the cause because the CAUSE IS PAKISTAN.
3) Lets look at what Pakistan has done so far in efforts against terrorism.
a) Handed over terror suspects.
b) Acted when information of terrorists have been handed over to it.
c) Acted in coordination with the US in Afghanistan.
This hardly is any commitment to fighting Terrorism in principle. Here's why:
a) It has not handed over AQ Khan or even allow him to be questioned by a non-Pakistani party. The reason is obvious. Any interrogation will clearly reveal that the establishment was involved in proliferation as much as Khan was. It was complicit fully!
b) It has been willing to be America's ally but when it comes to dealing with terror attacks in India, there has been no such cooperation. So its activities are hardly anti-terrorist in principle. It is just cleaning its stables handing over renegade terror operatives claiming that they were involved. Of course they were involved, every able bodied idiot in the machinery is. But has it really handed over all the terror operatives actually? That's anyone's guess.
c) Why is its cooperation with India important as long as it cooperates with the US and UK, one might ask. Because its the very same organizations involved. I don't mean the AQ, but all its tentacles. The Lashkar e Taiba, The Lashkar e Jhangvi, the Jaish e Mohammed, these organizations were involved in the plot to bomb the London planes. The Pakistani establishment is now keen on blaming Zawahiri's son. It might be true that he was, but from the language used by Pakistan, it is quite evident that it wants to step out of the terror spotlight. It says "Afghanistan based son-in-law of Zawahiri" was the planner. How are they sure he s in Afghanistan?
Too many questions to answer. I hope Bush makes a more long-sighted move by allying openly with India and working to completely destroy the PAkistani terror machine. Like in Lebanon, these people hide within civilian populations, preside over an entire country, and pretend to be American allies. Such deception is allowed in the Koran by the way.
I think Mushy is truly onside because the Islamists threaten not only the USA and the West but also his government and his own precious keister. I think he currently holds the world record for most attempted assassinations survived. It isn't Indians or Americans (the bugaboos of Pakistani politics) who have been trying to knock him off.
Cannoneer's description of what's ahead is probably the most practical path for US policy. The State Department, axis of pussi... ah, pussycats, that it is, would oppose such a path. God help us if we had a vacillating Wilsonian like Jimmy Carter in office -- I had the misfortune of soldiering under his leadership and don't believe he appointed a single able man to a policy position, even accidentally. Clinton at least appointed some able men, who then choked.
I think the question is less whether Jinnah's vision was fulfilled than whether there was anything to Jinnah's vision. Basically, he dreamed of a Muslim homeland, confessionally cleansed of other human beings, and he got it. Given the Deobandi strain of Islam percolating up the coast, it was just a matter of time for Islamism to be a problem for any Pak government.
Zia ul-Haq rode the tiger and the tiger threw him. Before Zia, a Pak Army mess was more British than the British, and you could sit and have a gin and tonic and talk about anything but shop. After Zia, the old cricket-fan officers seemed to thin out, and a new breed of Islamist fanatic came in -- less well educated, less international in outlook, much less tolerant.
The authors of the original article are correct that the Pakistan Army has taken more casualties in the OEF AOR than the US Army has... but then, the Pak Army had problems even before the 1970s collapse in leadership. TThe more Islamist the officer corps gets, the more they're going to fight like Arabs (i.e., poorly). The Paks have often had their clocks cleaned by the mountain tribes/Al-Q supporters, and in war the losing side always takes more casualties.
The fellow who observed that Pak is at least two countries is on to something. The northern and western tribal trust areas are more culturally suited to being part of Afghanistan and successive Afghan rulers have tried to obtain "Pushtunistan" from Pak, at least back to Abdur Rahman in the 19th Century. Pakistan for its part has always sought an Afghanistan which was Pushtun dominated, but weak.
Prior to 9/11 I think Musharraf (whose military background is in the Pak version of Special Forces, and who was generally considered a remarkably able officer) was using Kashmiri terrorism as a safety valve to vent off disaffected Islamists and burnish his Islamist bona fides. That option is more or less foreclosed -- being at once an enemy and a sponsor of terrorism is tough to pull off, even in south asia.
By and large, Musharraf is a guy we can work with. But Cannoneer is right -- we need to be playing chess, here, and thinking a few moves ahead.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I fear I must disagree with your post, and particularly with this passage. The cause is Islamism, no Pakistan per se. If we were playing chess we would be making some moves to undermine Islamism worldwide -- including in Pakistan.
Absent Islamism, some of the intractable problems in the region (Kashmir?) are more readily resolved. Right now, India can't consider any sort of change to the status of Kashmir because Pakistan would not protect the rights of the significant religious minorities in the territory... and Islamism doesn't even view them as humans (while Christians and Jews are viewed as infidels "of the book," therefore second-class citizens, practitioners of most Indian faiths are viewed as polytheistic, idolatrous -- for all intents and purposes, subhuman. As sixty years of Jinnah-inspired Koranically-sanctioned ethnic cleansing demonstrate).
I believe that the majority of Pakistanis are not independent actors but are following various leaders. It's like the basic judo (and football, if you're cheating) principle: move the head, and the body follows.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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