Limitations of the friendship

TWO important developments relating to Pakistan-US relations have once again brought home the limitations of the friendship between the two countries. The first one is the sustained and heightened pressure that Washington has been exerting on Pakistan during the past few weeks, asking it to do more in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban in its tribal and frontier areas where they allegedly have found a ‘safe haven.’ This pressure has been accompanied by threats of direct military action by the US against actionable targets inside Pakistan’s territory.

The second development is the passage of a counter-terrorism bill by the US Congress. The bill links US military assistance to Pakistan to efforts by Islamabad “to prevent the Taliban from operating in areas under its sovereign control, including in the cities of Quetta and Chaman and in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.”

The calls from Washington asking Islamabad to ‘do more’ to control the Al Qaeda and Taliban elements in its frontier areas adjoining Afghanistan have been coming for some time. The latest phase in this campaign started with the release on July 17 of the US National Intelligence Estimate, which claimed that Al Qaeda had established a safe haven in Fata and was using it to plan attacks inside the United States. While releasing the NIE, Frances Townsend, the Homeland Security Adviser to President Bush, stated that the US had not ruled out the option of unilateral military action in hitting targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In later statements and comments, this position was maintained by US spokesmen representing the White House, the State Department and the Congress.Predictably, the government of Pakistan through the spokespersons of the Foreign Office and ISPR, rejected as “unacceptable” the declared US option of launching military strikes against the so-called actionable Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan. On the eve of his departure for a visit to the UAE and Saudi Arabia on July 27, President Musharraf again rejected the US allegation that Al Qaeda was regrouping in Pakistan’s tribal belt. He reiterated that the US forces would not be allowed to operate in the area as Pakistani forces were quite capable of performing this task.

But the president’s categorical statement did not put a stop to US allegations. The American campaign reached its crescendo with a television interview given by Nicholas Burns, the US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, on August 2 alleging that Al Qaeda had built a safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas, that the Taliban leadership operated from bases in and around Quetta, and that Pakistani banks were involved in laundering money for Al Qaeda and other terrorist outfits.

He called upon the government of Pakistan to take strong military action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan while reserving the right to undertake unilateral military strikes against actionable Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan. He went to the extent of calling Pakistan as “ground zero in the fight against terror.” He also called upon Islamabad to take stronger measures to stop the alleged money laundering in support of terrorist groups.

What should one make of these ominous signals coming from the US? Are they part of the presidential election rhetoric or do they indicate a policy shift in Washington? What do they say about the nature of Pakistan-US relationship? And how should Pakistan respond to them? These are important questions which should engage the serious attention of Pakistan’s leadership and policymakers.

It would be a mistake to write off the recent statements and comments coming from virtually the whole spectrum of the US politics as mere election sloganeering although it may explain to some extent their intensity. The fact of the matter is that the National Intelligence Estimate is a serious document reflecting the collective assessment of the US intelligence community. One may disagree with it and it may be flawed or exaggerated in one respect or another. But until it is replaced by another assessment, it will continue to influence the opinions of the US policymakers in the Executive and the Congress as well as those of the US media and presidential candidates.

The result of the heightened US concern can be seen in the form of the US Counter-Terrorism Act linking future US military aid to Pakistan’s performance in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Through this Act the Americans now have got a stick with which to beat Pakistan at a time of their choice. It is significant that the provisions of this Act and the comments of the US Under-Secretary of State are similar as far as Pakistan is concerned.

The charge by the representatives of the government of Pakistan that the US assessment of the situation in the country’s tribal areas is flawed does not redound to its credit. After all, the government takes pride in claiming that it has established durable friendly relations and long-term strategic cooperation with the US. If it were so, why was the government not able to project our point of view to Washington on these issues of fundamental importance in time for the US National Intelligence Estimate to take it into account?

There can be only two plausible explanations: either it shows the incompetence of the government in its interaction with Washington or our own assessment of the situation in the tribal areas is flawed in some ways. The government, therefore, needs to do some soul searching to arrive at a correct answer and the nation needs to hear it.

The current state of Pakistan-US relations once again underscores the narrow basis and the fragile character of the friendship between the two countries contrary to the claims made by the government spokesmen. The genesis of the current phase of Pakistan-US friendship can be traced to the famous U-turn in our pro-Taliban policy and our decision to join the so-called war on terror in the aftermath of 9/11. While the US has rewarded the current Pakistani regime handsomely ($10 billion so far) for the services rendered by it in the course of that war, it has continued to view Pakistan as a problem as well as an asset in its efforts to defeat terrorism.

If there was any doubt about it, it was removed by the US Under-Secretary of State who recently stated that Pakistan was “ground zero in the fight against terror.”

Besides the issue of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the recent US Counter-Terrorism Act enumerates the proliferation of nuclear technology and the promotion of democracy and rule of law as issues which can disrupt Pakistan-US relations. Unfortunately, on both counts our record leaves a lot to be desired. It is a pity that the name of Dr. A.Q.Khan has become associated with unauthorised proliferation of nuclear technology. As for democracy in Pakistan, the less said about it the better.

But above all, Pakistan is not part of the US grand design for Asia for the 21st century which focuses on countering the fast-growing power and influence of China. In India, Washington sees a partner whose growth and development will check the expansion of China’s influence on its southern periphery. Pakistan, which maintains close friendly relations with China, has neither the desire nor the capacity to play such a role. That explains why the US has pledged to make India a major world power in the 21st century, why it entered into a military pact with India in 2005 and why it has agreed to start cooperation in civilian nuclear technology with India which delivered a crushing blow to the international nuclear no-proliferation regime through its nuclear explosions of 1998.

Pakistan, on the other hand, has been denied cooperation in civilian nuclear technology. The grant of major non-NATO ally status, about which our government has been crowing so much, basically means that we have been given the privilege to serve the US strategic objectives for a pittance!

How should Pakistan respond to the growing US pressure on account of the alleged activities of Al Qaeda and the Taliban? It is unfortunate that the external pressures on Pakistan are building up at a time when it is suffering from internal turmoil and instability because of the desire of a military ruler to have another term as president and subjugate the various state institutions to his will. It is obvious that General Musharraf has not drawn the right lessons from his failed attempt to get rid of the Chief Justice of Pakistan. His plummeting popularity ratings and the growing opposition to his re-election should tell him that he has outlived whatever utility he had for this nation.

The need of the hour is the restoration of the Constitution as it stood on October 12, 1999, and the holding of free and fair elections with the participation of all the political parties and leaders, whether in the country or exiled abroad. The armed forces must desist from involvement in politics in accordance with their constitutional obligations.

There is no denying the fact that the country is faced with the serious problem of extremism and terrorism. But only a genuine democratic government will have the political strength and the moral courage to engage the extremists in the country and tackle them appropriately. Also only such a government will be able to evolve a coherent policy to deal with the growing US pressures relating to the activities of Al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan. Only such a government will have the political backbone to tell the Americans, on the basis of the consultations among the various institutions of state, what Pakistan can do in the fight against terrorism and the red line that it cannot cross, aid or no aid.Our past experience has shown that a military dictatorship at the head of government does not have the ingredients to take on these challenging internal and foreign policy tasks.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Arctic scramble

AMONG the headlines I never expected to see, the top three were “Pope Marries,” “President Bush Admits Error,” and “Canada Uses Military Might,” but there it was, staring up at me from a British newspaper: “Canada Uses Military Might in Arctic Scramble.”

Read a little further into the story and the “military might” turns out to be some armed icebreakers and two small military bases in the high Arctic, neither of which will be operational for some time to come, but all the same....

At the beginning of August, mini-submarines planted a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed at the North Pole, symbolically claiming the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range, as part of the country’s continental shelf. If the claim were accepted, it would expand the Exclusive Economic Zone in which only Russians can exploit minerals and other seabed resources all the way to the North Pole, but it wasn’t immediately obvious how planting a titanium-encased Russian flag on the sea-floor advanced Russia’s case.

Days later, Danish scientists headed for the Arctic to gather evidence for their claim that the Lomonosov ridge is actually an extension of Greenland’s continental shelf, and therefore belongs to Denmark. “We will be collecting data for a possible demand,” explained Christian Marcussen of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. And then last Friday Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, flew to Resolute Bay in the territory of Nunavut for the photo-op of a lifetime.

“Canada’s new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: use it or lose it,” said Harper, for the second time in a week trotting out a phrase that was originally coined to describe one of the uglier realities of nuclear strategy. Nunavut is one of the coldest human settlements on earth, but Harper was having the time of his life. For once there was some sort of threat to Canada’s sovereignty, or at least it could be made to look as if there were, and he was the staunch patriot standing up for Canada’s rights. What politician could ask for more?

It’s actually the Canadian government that has led this round of Arctic posturing, beginning with its declaration in April that the Northwest Passage, a series of channels between Canadian-owned Arctic Islands that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans if they weren’t choked with ice most of the year, would no longer be classified as “territorial waters” (through which foreign ships enjoy the right of innocent passage, although foreign warships are expected to seek permission). In future they will be “Canadian internal waters,” over which Canada exercises complete control.

It was a crowd-pleasing gesture in Canada, especially since the United States has long denied that the Northwest Passage is even Canadian territorial waters, insisting instead that it is “international waters” over which Canada has no control. Washington has even sent warships through from time to time, deliberately not asking permission, which greatly annoyed Canadian nationalists. And global warming means that by 2015 or 2020 the Northwest Passage might even be open to commercial shipping for five or six months a year, so Harper had a plausible pretext for getting excited.

But it was a pretext, not a reason, since there is actually no danger that the United States is going to steal the Northwest Passage from Canada, or blockade it, or even attack Canadian ships. Yet Harper has announced that Canada will spend $7 billion on six new armed ice-breakers to assert its sovereignty in Arctic waters, build a new deep-water port at Nanisivik on the northern tip of Baffin Island for both military and civilian use, and even open a new army training centre for cold-weather warfare at Resolute Bay.

This all makes great copy, but just whom are these soldiers supposed to fight? Russians infiltrating the Canadian Arctic on foot? And what are the guns on the new Canadian ice-breakers for? Fighting the US Navy the next time it sends a ship through the Northwest Passage without permission? There is a scramble for the Arctic, but it is not military. It’s about laying claim to potentially valuable resources on the basis of geographical and geological data, within the framework laid down by the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea.The 1982 treaty, which now has 155 member-states, sets out the rules for claiming seabed rights, which is the only issue of real economic importance to the various Arctic players. It’s all about mapping the seabed, doing the seismic work, and registering your claims within ten years of ratifying the UNCLOS treaty. In Canada’s case, that means by 2013, and it would do better to concentrate on that task, like the Russians and the Danes, rather than make meaningless military gestures. ––Copyright

The price of success

“A NEW star rises ... a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materialises.” In his speech celebrating India’s creation, Jawaharlal Nehru was occasionally guilty of improving on reality. Just before independence arrived at midnight in India, he declared that freedom was dawning “when the world sleeps”, amusing residents of London and New York, who at the time were in daylight.

Yet his main point was right: the giant born 60 years ago today had formidable ideals to carry. Nationalism has at times been little more than a branch of identity politics, but big countries of disparate population cannot afford to define themselves so narrowly: they need the nourishment of big ideas. America has its Dream, and China Middle Kingdom communism. And India? JBS Haldane, the legendary, eccentric biologist who left Macmillan’s fusty Britain to live in Nehru’s India, described his new home as “a better model for a possible world organisation. It may of course break up, but it is a wonderful experiment.”

What was this experiment in aid of? India’s founding ideals are given lapidary form in the preamble to its constitution. It is “solemnly resolved” that this new nation will be “a sovereign, democratic republic”. The words “socialist” and “secular” were added later, but they too were from the outset central to the vision of the founding fathers. Freed from the yoke of empire, India was to plot an utterly independent course. In foreign policy it would not follow any new master but would be “non-aligned” to either America or the Soviet Union.

Because Indians had only ever experienced capitalism as a tool of the colonialists, even businessmen were sympathetic to progressive alternatives. Democracy and secularism were a response to imperial disfranchisement and the horror of partition. There were other values too, as might be expected from a people who had had decades to figure out how to gain independence, and what it might look like.

This, then, was a nation with a much-refined sense of itself. Far from being confined to constitutional parchment, these ideals were very much alive; until recently, politicians would claim to be “Gandhian”, and civil servants happily described themselves as “Nehruvian”.

Sixty years on, how has the “wonderful experiment” fared? Despite Haldane’s fears, it survives intact. Democracy in a country of a billion people was indeed at first widely seen as an experiment.

––The Guardian, London

Musharraf in a quandary

EMERGENCY has been avoided, thanks to foreign intervention. The much-coveted visit of President Musharraf to Kabul to attend the jirga finally did take place, again thanks to Washington. The ruling oligarchy never stops to amaze the nation.

It would be stating the obvious that President Musharraf has been in a quandary for some time now. He has been making political moves outside the narrow confines of his support base in the army to secure his future on top of the state machinery.

The dichotomy between President Musharraf and Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has comprehensively shaped the current political scenario. This dichotomy operated in two phases. In the first phase, when the Chief Justice was made non-functional, the lawyers’ community launched a movement and civil society openly supported it.

The president faced a widely mobilised, hostile public for the first time in his eight years in power. The movement shook the presidency, the cabinet and the establishment. Musharraf was publicly discredited.

In the second phase, Justice Chaudhry won and Musharraf lost. The movement came to an abrupt end after the former was reinstated as Chief Justice. The verdict gave birth to what is widely perceived as an independent judiciary. Iftikhar Chaudhry is the new icon on the horizon — the ultimate symbol of justice in an unjust society. Other judges in the Supreme Court and high courts have been emboldened. The image of the higher courts has been transformed like never before.

For Musharraf, this is life after fall. He did not apologise to the public for his action of March 9, 2007. No heads rolled in the executive wing of the state. The principle of accountability to the public was totally disregarded. Musharraf took time to resurface after disappearing from the public scene for a week. He has been giving the image of a lame-duck president after losing legally as well as morally.

The Musharraf-judiciary conflict ran parallel to a second and relatively unexpected dichotomy between Musharraf and Washington. It had been simmering for a while, occasionally bursting out in Congress, the think-tank community and the media in the US. Now, the critical voices from Washington have become a chorus, issuing threats of taking direct military action inside Pakistan and professing utter dissatisfaction with Musharraf’s policies.

The Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had his own share of wild talk on this issue. The level of marginality in the “marginal satisfier”, as Musharraf is sometimes described at congressional hearings in Washington, has gradually increased. Musharraf’s initial decision to stay away from the joint Pakistan-Afghan jirga in Kabul did not help matters either.

Political circles in Pakistan have reacted sharply to the perceived American high-handedness. The renewed calls for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan emanating from the treasury benches amply reflected a measure of the loss of Musharraf’s clout in Washington. There is an ample reservoir of anti-US sentiment in the country, which is mobilised by Islamabad whenever it is under pressure.

While the judicial crisis was on and Pakistan-US relations gradually assumed an adverse public profile, the Musharraf-Benazir parleys were moving towards a denouement. Benazir first loosened her ties with the ARD, then abstained from attending the proceedings of the All Parties Conference in London and finally opted out of the emergent forum for launching a democratic movement.

Whose gain is it after all? The general feeling is that Musharraf has succeeded in dividing the opposition. He managed to widen his support base in an election year at his weakest moment. With a master stroke, he played on the need of Benazir Bhutto to shed the burden of court cases on her and re-enter the political system of Pakistan. Musharraf’s chances of election as president are brighter after the deal with Benazir, even as there are many a slip between the cup and the lip.

For Benazir Bhutto, the deal can turn out to be the greatest risk of her political career. Already, one hears talk about the split within the party hierarchy on the issue of supporting a military ruler. The PPP cadres and workers seem to be highly worked up over the latest turn of events. They think their long-cherished democratic goals are being sacrificed at the altar of expediency.

Will Benazir’s policies cost her votes in the forthcoming elections? Will she be able to withstand the public anger over her joining hands with a president-in-uniform? Can it turn out to be the PPP’s swansong as a serious contender for power?

A lot depends on the patterns of realignment between political forces during the following months. If the PPP is left out of the mainstream of political and ideological commitments in the election campaign, it can be dangerous for its future.

What will happen to Musharraf’s relations with the ruling party PML-Q? One can imagine the high level of frustration and embarrassment within the ranks of that party in the backdrop of the meeting in Abu Dhabi between the president and Benazir Bhutto.

The party’s morale is at a record low. Its MNAs have shown a complete lack of interest in parliamentary proceedings. It stands to lose face, possibly, along with power and privilege. After serving the president loyally, the party feels strange to find itself of not much use to him during the forthcoming elections. This despite the fact that he needs the party’s numerical strength on the floor of the elected assemblies for his own election if he pushes for a re-election by the current legislatures.

It is likely that there is an arrangement about the division of power between the PPP and the PML-Q. Punjab would remain in the hands of the PML-Q whereas Sindh and the centre would go to the PPP. The trans-Indus provinces of the NWFP and Balochistan would then provide the stage for coalitional arrangements, with the ANP and the PML-Q playing a crucial role respectively. There can be further complications in the case of a split within the MMA — between the JUI and the JI.

There is a consensus in political quarters that free and fair elections are not possible under President Musharraf in or outside the uniform. If he attempts to get himself elected through the current assemblies at the end of their tenure, that can raise political temperatures sky high in the form of mass resignations from the assemblies and recourse to street action.

The judiciary is fast emerging as a power centre in its own right. It is widely expected that the higher courts will be asked to adjudicate on such issues as voters’ lists, requirements such as ID cards and graduation for voters and candidates respectively, and provisions relating to various aspects of the election including president-in-uniform.

The judiciary is under extreme pressure of an explosion of popular expectations to provide justice against the backdrop of the fear of rigging, which is shared by Pakistanis.

The political scene can be further complicated by the Nawaz Sharif phenomenon. If Benazir comes, can Nawaz Sharif be far behind? He can thrive on the mainstream anti-PPP vote. Already, the Sharif brothers have moved the judiciary for their return.

The government has responded by threatening to reopen the NAB cases against him. The Sharifs can stage a return by fiat during the election campaign and turn the tables on the state managers in terms of their political calculations.

Where does it all lead the army as the support base of Musharraf? Would it like to wade through the muddy waters of politics, which are getting muddier by the day? Can the prevailing situation lead the top brass to a loss of will to continue to dabble in politics?

As the military president becomes ever more controversial during the countdown to the general elections, the commitment of the officer cadre to preserve the army’s image as a supra-political, non-partisan and truly national institution may redefine the goals and means of their strategy.

It does not seem likely that the moment of military withdrawal from an overt political role has finally arrived. The presence of counter-currents such as the president’s pursuit of contacts all around, with Benazir in Abu Dhabi, the MQM and the PML-F in Sindh and others elsewhere in the country, point to a different direction.

However, the sense of desperation in the presidential camp does not necessarily mean the emergence of a buoyant opposition united in its agenda and operational strategy.