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EDITORIAL: NATO, Afghanistan and Pakistan

Four top commanders of the Afghanistan-based North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) arrived in Islamabad on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and devise a new strategy on the war against Talibanism and terrorism with President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani military high command.

NATO commanders have steadily accused Pakistan of sheltering the Taliban raiders who attack across the border to destabilise the Kabul government. They are confronted with an increasingly shrill Karzai government that rebukes them for not tackling the real cause of trouble in Islamabad which allegedly nurses Islamic extremism and then sends it across the Durand Line. The media in the United States that play a crucial rule in forming American opinion has also been pointing the accusing finger at Pakistan.

Pakistan denies that it shelters the Taliban despite reports appearing in the Pakistani press that, in addition to the Taliban finding safe haven in the Pakistani tribal belt, Pakistani boys are increasingly being recruited to fight across the Durand Line and often act as suicide-bombers. But when Pakistan says it can only ensure a complete stoppage of cross-border movement by erecting a mined fence on the Durand Line no one likes the idea. However, when the Pakistan army risks internal rifts and operates against the Taliban-Al Qaeda elements inside Pakistani territory, the act is often ignored or passed off as mere pretence.

In Washington, however, there has so far been a degree of consistency in the White House statements focusing on Pakistan’s importance as a frontline state against the Taliban-Al Qaeda threat. This actually happens whenever the bureaucracy expresses grave doubts about Pakistan’s sincerity as an ally when it is compelled to depose before committees in the US Congress. But the policy continues to focus on President Musharraf as the trouble-shooter for NATO and ISAF. Therefore the latest visit by the military high command may only be aimed at making the best out of this irreducible policy of relying on Islamabad, albeit with a tighter monitoring and coordination between the two sides.

Within the NATO high command in Afghanistan a similar dichotomy exists between the British officers and their government in London. The Labour government is loath to forget the crucial cooperation it has received from Islamabad with regard to Pakistani expat terrorists and persists in closer and more stringent interaction with Pakistan rather than giving it up as a lost cause. But in the United States, conservative think tanks that affect the thinking of the White House tend to encapsulate the policy towards Pakistan in the following manner: ‘Although Musharraf deserves credit for apprehending hundreds of Qaeda operatives, the continued presence of the Taliban and Qaeda terrorists along the border poses a threat to American interests and to US relations with Pakistan’. Equally, however, there is some understanding that ‘it would be politically risky for Musharraf to crack down on the Taliban as they were assisted by Pakistan security services in the 1990s, and still have close ties to some intelligence officers and religious parties’.

President Musharraf’s career is informed by the courage to fight the right battles — barring Kargil of course — but winning very few. Starting with the madrassas and ending with Balochistan and Waziristan, the tasks he has given himself will probably have to be taken on by Pakistan if it wants to survive after Musharraf. The civilian politicians who take over from him will discover very soon that they had defended the wrong causes when they attacked his campaigns. President Musharraf’s non-success stems from a number of factors.

After 9/11 he quite correctly turned on a dime and dumped some of the baggage of the military’s old ‘strategic depth’ policy. But since the entire campaign was a decade in the making, it required countrywide re-orientation, which wasn’t easy because what he wanted to roll back after 2001 had been too deeply internalised by Pakistani society for him to easily understand. Thus, while the military operations he undertook were right, he didn’t realise that when operations are directed against one’s own people they have to be surgical and quick; getting bogged down means losing even what you have in hand. That is what Talibanisation of Pakistan’s ‘settled areas’ means.

President Musharraf has reacted to the failure of his policies by hedging his bets. This has required a flexibility of such extremes that he seems to be doing two contradictory things at the same time. India thinks he is reserving the jihadi option while the jihadis think he is determined to get rid of them. The West thinks he is sheltering the Taliban but the Taliban despise him. So the question arises: has he reached the limits of his ability to make new and bold policy changes? Certainly, in order to do so, he needs more political support in Pakistan than he has now. But if he goes the way he seems to have planned after the 2007 general elections, things will become tougher for everyone concerned. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Sincere and welcome Katasraj gesture

The government of Pakistan has invited Indian Hindus to participate in the first puja (prayers) in the renovated Shiva temple in the famous Katasraj Complex in the Salt Range region of Punjab. The Katasraj temple, according to mythology, is the place where the Pandavas met the Yaksha who asked them the ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ questions. Al-Biruni mentioned in Tarikh al-Hind (Chronicles of India) that he learned Sanskrit and Science at Katasraj. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Lal Krishan Advani had laid the foundation stone for the temple when he visited Pakistan in 2005.

The restoration of the Hindu temple has cost Pakistan Rs60 million but this is money well spent. In a gesture to prove Pakistan’s sincerity, a Pakistani delegation went on a 10-day trip to India to study Hindu architecture and customs, and visited several temples in Varanasi, Pushkar and Ajanta-Alora. The Indian Archaeology Department also advised Pakistan on the restoration work at Katasraj. This is how, with very little effort, Pakistan has shown to the world a cultural image of itself that threatens no one and pleases many. That is why it is so unfortunate that until now it has been asserting a religious identity that has made the world uneasy. Katasraj is not only our link with India, it is very much our own heritage, just as the Qutb Minar in Delhi is a legacy of India. *

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