THE world in general and Pakistan in particular have witnessed cataclysmic events which have had a profound impact on their psyche, behaviour and conduct. These events are interrelated in one way or another.

Would it be prudent to state that 9/11 shaped not only US behaviour and attitude towards others but also confined the regional ambitions of emerging powers to ‘preferred policy goals’? While India emerged as the preferred power to deal with in South Asia, Pakistan, despite its honeymoon with the coalition forces in Afghanistan, did not find long-term favour.

In the new world order, Washington’s priorities were to commit US forces to two potential conflict zones simultaneously in order to be able to regulate their final outcome. While Iraq and Afghanistan emerged as ‘near threats’, North Korea and Iran were long-term threats which could wait. Resultantly, Pakistan was marginalised in its quest for recognition as a self-professed regional power.

Pakistan’s Kashmir policy took a direct hit because of its alleged military support to ‘freedom fighters’ in Kashmir, and seen as terrorists trying to destabilise a democratic India. Kargil and its fallout were symptoms of a larger malaise which we failed to recognise: our attempts to find strategic depth in Afghanistan and the consequent rebound on the intervention of US forces, much to the detriment of the state’s long-term strategic goals vis-à-vis India.

Intelligence-gathering during peacetime negates or confirms the ‘hypotheses’ wargamed for a potential conflict, both external and internal. While our conclusions over the post-Kargil standoff with India with respect to avoiding an all-out war may be correct, the exploitation of the environment went in India’s favour, with the knowledge that the US would not allow an all-out war between two nuclear powers, especially when its game plan was unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Consequently, we lost face both on the political and military fronts because of India’s superior exterior and internal manoeuvres. A poor understanding of the international political environment led to faulty conclusions being drawn which included the assumption that Kargil would ultimately result in a stalemate, with India accepting the intrusion as a consequence of its Siachen adventure. Nothing could have been more out of sync with US interests in the region. We faced a humiliating retreat once India was given the ‘go ahead’ by the US leadership.

The insurgency pattern in Balochistan can be seen in its revival after 1974 and subsequently as it gathered momentum in 2000, especially in relation to the US interest of isolating an increasingly dominating Iran in the region. The IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline was planned under an adverse international environment, where the long-term ambitions of the US in the region were ignored. Meanwhile, the alternative energy options from Turkmenistan and Qatar, widely supported by the US, were ignored to our own detriment especially in view of the lack of control over the security situation in Balochistan. The pattern is reversed in Afghanistan’s north where relative peace prevails and where the Northern Alliance guarantees security for alternative power transmission lines through Wakhan and the Kunduz province.

What does this mean to our strategic analysts? Considering the expected acute shortage of energy in the coming years, we will perforce gravitate towards these ‘preferred options’. Why then must we squander millions of dollars in feasibility studies and waste precious time in the process?

In a post-9/11 world, notions of sovereignty, independent foreign policy and ‘first-strike capability’ in a conventional conflict have to be seriously reviewed. During Kargil, preparations to arm strike aircraft with nuclear warheads and the movement of strategic launchers to forward launch sites were picked up by US surveillance immediately, with warnings being issued to both antagonists to scale down this alert. The launching of Tomahawk cruise missiles over Pakistan’s sovereign airspace and meant for Al Qaeda/Taliban targets in Afghanistan in 2001 is a case in point where information was shared at the last moment with Pakistan, and that too to avoid a misunderstanding concerning a possible Indian strike. Again, during Operation Enduring Freedom, US strategic over-flights in Pakistan’s airspace were forced upon a vacillating government, which had not fully comprehended the dynamics of the unfolding US strategy in the region. Not only were over-flight rights given, certain PAF airfields were also handed over (officially for logistic support) to US ground forces for the conduct of Afghan-based operations. Why did we fail to adapt to the changing military strategy in our region?

First and foremost, the fixed mindset of our strategic analysts, and the notion that Pakistan was militarily weaker than India led to a strategy of pre-emption, or choosing the time and place to strike first to neutralise enemy war plans in a reactive mode. Also the idea of capturing strategic depth or the centre of gravity to quickly bring about a reversal in strategic operations has to be seen in the early arrival of military thresholds.

Is the conventional wisdom of using direct military force preferred over the weakening of the state from within by means of insurgency and insurrection? Is this the preferred model post 9/11?

A reappraisal of Pakistan’s threat assessment will point towards greater emphasis on internal threat especially in view of the Taliban and Baloch insurgencies in two provinces. While the conventional military threat has receded where Pakistan’s traditional enemy is concerned, the preferred model is the attrition-based one that advocates prolonged internal operations leading to the erosion of will and an economic meltdown.

The ultimate aim of weakening the state from within is to erode the capacity to launch military operations and the logistic sustainability for future military endeavours in Kashmir and Afghanistan — in other words to make it a pliant state to allow the ambitions of outside state actors to unfold; and so that minimal resistance is offered. There seems to be a paralysis in the minds of our policymakers on what to do in the given scenario.

The writer is a retired brigadier.

THEY clutched union flags and held pictures of the Queen, and some wore rows of medals across their breasts. But the words on the banners that they unfurled spelled out their protest: “Gurkhas Won 13 VCs But Still Unwanted By UK.”

On Tuesday, hundreds of Gurkha veterans gathered outside the high court in London to mark the beginning of a battle against the British government’s refusal to grant settlement in the United Kingdom to those who retired from the regiment before 1997.

The actor Joanna Lumley told the gathering: “My father served alongside the Gurkhas for 30 years. I am a daughter of the regiment. He would be absolutely overwhelmed with shame and fury that we have behaved this way to the Gurkhas, our most loyal and constant friends..”

Lumley rallied them with the words “ayo Gurkhali”, the traditional battle cry meaning “Gurkhas go forward”. Many veterans see this as their final fight: five have died in the time that it has taken for their appeals to be heard.

The UK government argues that since the Gurkhas’ regimental headquarters were in Hong Kong until 1997, those who retired before then would not have developed significant ties to the UK. Five Gurkhas who have been refused visas on this basis are spearheading what will be a test case for almost 2,000 other similar refusals.

The Gurkhas, who have fought and died for the British for almost two centuries, insist that their ties are strong. Arguing their case, Edward Fitzgerald QC told the court that the Home Office’s claim that those who retired before 1997 could not have built up close ties to the UK was not rational. “To say this is to ignore the history of the Gurkhas. And it is to ignore the special debt this country owes to all Gurkhas, past and present,” he said. “What matters is the fact of service, not the location of service.”

Soldiers recruited from the Commonwealth to the British army have a right to settle in Britain after four years of service anywhere in the world, under a policy known as the Armed Forces Concession (AFC). Fitzgerald said the AFC “elevates three years in UK barracks beyond the defence of Britain abroad”.

Present in court, in their wheelchairs, were two Gurkha soldiers who were awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery. Tulbahadur Pun, 85, was decorated for charging the enemy alone and enabling his platoon to move forward. Lachiman Gurung lost a hand when, after lobbing back a number of enemy grenades, the third one he threw exploded in his hand — he continued to fire at the enemy for four hours. Pun was awarded a settlement visa only after a special concession followed a high-profile campaign; Gurung does not have one.

— The Guardian, London