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Pakistan seen reluctant on US agenda

* As Washington calls for urgent measures to rebuild Islamabad’s institutions, politicians are oblivious to fast-expanding terror threat
* Analysts in Washington putting forward apocalyptic timetables for the nuclear-armed country

Daily Times Monitor

WASHINGTON: While US President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy calls for a virtual remaking of state institutions, and even of the national psyche, Pakistan’s politicians and the people appear unprepared for it, the New York Times wrote on Monday.

While officially Islamabad has welcomed Obama’s new strategy, calling it a “positive change”, the paper pointed out that large parts of the public, the political class and the military have brushed off the idea that the threat from Al Qaeda and the Taliban is so urgent.

A shift in the focus in Pakistan from the Indian threat to a fast-expanding insurgency is the challenge facing Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy to the region, who have arrived in Islamabad for a fresh round of talks.

Strengthening weak civilian institutions, updating political parties and recasting a military stuck in the traditions of conventional warfare, are generational challenges. But some analysts in Washington are already putting forward apocalyptic timetables for the country. A report by a task force of the Atlantic Council that is led by former senator Chuck Hagel and Senator John Kerry – released in February – gave the Pakistani government 6 to 12 months before things went from bad to dangerous.

David Kilcullen, a specialist in guerrilla warfare who advised Gen David Petraeus in Iraq, offered a more dire assessment. Pakistan could be facing internal collapse within six months, he said.

But it is not clear whether supporting President Zardari, and $1.5 billion in aid for each of the next five years, can change the mood, said former interior minister Aftab Ahmad Sherpao. Fighting the insurgency is commonly seen in Pakistan as an American cause, not a Pakistani one, he said.

It is unclear also whether nearly $3 billion counterinsurgency aid promised by the US can quickly convert the Pakistani military from a force trained to fight India on the plains of Punjab into an outfit that can conquer the mountains of the Tribal Areas.

Former ISI director general Lt Gen Javed Ashraf says the American distrust of Pakistan’s military did not augur well. “You can’t start a successful operation with a trust deficit,” General Ashraf said. “Pakistan is an ally. But then you say we are linked with the Taliban. The serving army people will say, ‘To hell with them if this is what we are going to get after laying down more than 1,500 lives’.”

The lack of trust was evident, military analysts said, in the American refusal to consider a request from the Pakistani military that it operate the remotely piloted aircraft the CIA has been using to hit the militants.

The Americans have been stingy on even more basic tools, like helicopter gunships and night-vision goggles.

Also, the growing Indian presence in Afghanistan convinces Pakistan it is being encircled. “The United States has to get India to back off in Afghanistan,” said former minister Ishaq Khakwani. “That will give confidence to Pakistan.”

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