SO, an urgent review of the national security strategy has been carried out amid much fanfare.

A joint resolution produced on this strategy has supposedly passed muster and all the significant political parties have unanimously endorsed it. That’s the good news. The bad news, however, is the joint resolution’s four glaring omissions.

These omissions have to do with a deafening silence about the almost daily violations of Pakistani territory by US drones that literally rain Hellfire and kill and maim scores of peaceful women, children and men. There is also disquiet about the necessity of an independent judiciary. The third conspicuous omission is the lack of recognition that women in the troubled areas and in the rest of Pakistani society need to be integrated as thinking, feeling human beings. The fourth issue missing from the review is any thought on investment in meaningful public education.

To understand the resolution’s silence on protecting national sovereignty it is instructive to examine the timing of Richard Boucher’s recent visit to Pakistan. He came just when the military briefings and joint-committee meetings were underway. His presence in Pakistan was meant to underscore that the US would just not tolerate Pakistan’s withdrawal from the war on terror. And to make the point Boucher arrogantly insisted that the drone attacks will continue — meaning Pakistan’s sovereignty will be violated at will. Given this circumstance the joint resolution appears to have ‘Made in USA’ written all over it.

However, the national security review has been a clever strategy to get the dissenting political parties on board by claiming that Pakistan is on a precipice, when the tensions have been escalated militarily by the state in the first place. Nawaz Sharif and others have once again been sucker punched.

Now Zardari and the PPP can continue the military operations in the northwest, largely at the US’s bidding, and all that Sharif and others can do is to say that dialogue has to be the answer. Unfortunately, the brunt of this big clientelist misstep will be borne by the ordinary people in Dir, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Swat and other areas.

The irony of this joint resolution is that clientelism — the tendency to prostrate before imperialist pressure — which until now had largely affected the military, the civil bureaucracy and some political parties has now also enveloped most leaders of other political parties. Tragically, this turn of events will spell misfortune for Pakistan. Overall this joint resolution is meant to placate political dissenters rather than stem the rot that is consuming Pakistan, i.e. a corrosive political and military elite that toadies to the US begging bowl in hand.

That said the one redeeming element of the joint resolution is the recognition that militant Islam cannot be defeated militarily. Paradoxically, the joint resolution also states the need for “developing a consensus and dialogue with all genuine stakeholders” which, as it creates the qualifier ‘genuine’, makes you wonder whether a dialogue will ever be allowed by the imperial power wielding the big stick. If the war on terror is really the Pentagon’s ‘long war’ for access to Central Asian and Middle Eastern energy resources, then Pakistan’s goose is cooked if it continues to kowtow to Washington’s edicts and the PPP government continues to insist that the war on terror is ‘our’ war.

Imperial occupation and militant Islam feed off each other. It seems Pakistan’s political leadership does not understand what many analysts in the country are saying: that militant Islam is a political and social force and will have to be countered as such. But if military force is the Pakistani state’s answer it is fighting a losing battle.

I’m putting my faith in the people. Ordinary Pakistanis will eventually force the government of the day to see the folly of their actions and change course. Once that eventuality comes to pass it will no longer be business as usual for the party or parties in power. They will have to carefully embed in economic and social uplift the other three omissions which I will now address.

The second of the serious omissions has been around since Pakistan’s inception. This is about the independence of the judiciary. People in Pakistan are desperate for justice to be speedy and fair. The fight for an independent judiciary is really a fight, figuratively speaking, between protecting Zardari (who represents a particular oppressive class) and promoting genuine judicial reform.

Iftikhar Chaudhry cannot do anything on his own but he is the lightning rod for judicial reform. An independent judiciary will keep the politicians (as well as the military and the civil bureaucracy) honest. The judiciary’s independence will be the perfect foil against the hijacking of the political process for personal gain and will control political excesses and waste. It will also look at how justice is imparted in the northwest.

As for the omission of integrating women as equals, one of the most serious consequences of the rise of militant Islam is the incredible rise in the oppression of women. They have borne the brunt of the militant Islam’s doctrinaire edicts and obscurantism. Women have been forced to become the protectors of the male patriarch’s honour and this symbolism has been adopted by ordinary men from all classes. The result has meant horrific consequences for women, even death.

Women in the northwest have been specifically targeted by militant Islam — witness the number of charred girls’ schools or the forcible edicts against women who do not wear the burqa. Sadly, this tendency to ignore women’s participation and integration is also visible in this joint resolution.

Finally, any recognition of the need for meaningful public education, especially in the northwest, Balochistan and interior Sindh, has been completely omitted from this resolution. The rulers of the state need to recognise that universal public education is the social cement that binds a society and gives it cohesiveness.

Yes, public education with the full participation of women will mean that there will be challenges to feudal privilege and patriarchal domination. But the choice that Pakistani rulers face is to continue protecting their privileges or watch the country go up in flames. The country now is truly at a crossroads.

The writer teaches politics at Ryerson University, Toronto.

THE election of Barack Obama is an historic turning point for the US. The son of a black Muslim immigrant from Kenya, an underprivileged child born of a mixed marriage, raised in a broken home and a Washington outsider Obama represents an emerging post-race, post-gender, younger and more diverse America.

But that is so far as the optimism can go. Forty seven per cent of the voters still went with John McCain. That is, despite George Bush’s catastrophic presidency and the economic meltdown, a large number of Americans supported a 72-year-old white male Republican who strongly supported the invasion of Iraq and did not offer any plan for economic recovery.

Obama promises to be an agent of change but his presidency may not change much for Pakistan. It may actually make matters worse in the immediate future if he follows Bush’s failed policy in Afghanistan, expands the American military presence there, continues to support Karzai’s extremely unpopular and corrupt regime and retains the same people who are currently conducting the covert operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On Aug 1, 2007 Senator Obama made a major policy statement on national security at the Woodrow Wilson Centre. He said: “We will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world’s most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.”

The statement suggests that Barack Obama’s idea of taking the war from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan involves more than taking out the terrorists. It includes taking out, as he put it euphemistically or plainly, “the world’s most deadly weapons”, i.e. Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

Obama is likely to continue the present American policy of encouraging India to play an active role in Afghanistan because he believes, as he wrote in a Feb 28, 2008 article in India Abroad, a newspaper on Indian affairs published in New York, that Washington and New Delhi must work together to combat the common threats of the 21st century because “both countries have been victims of catastrophic terrorist attacks and we have a shared interest in succeeding in the fight against Al Qaeda and its operational and ideological affiliates”.

There have been many developments since Senator Obama made these statements. The UN, Britain and America’s Nato allies in general no longer believe that a military victory is possible in Afghanistan. The outright defeat of the Taliban is no longer the goal. Nor do the western diplomats envisage a perfect democracy emerging from the rubble of three decades of war. The West will settle for military stability (or dictatorship), effective government and a squeeze on drugs.

When a departing British commander said the war against the Taliban cannot be won, his remarks were dismissed as defeatist by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. But Gates later said reconciliation with the Taliban was needed to end the conflict. The Pentagon has to be more realistic now that the American budget in 2009 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been cut by about 40 per cent compared to previous years.

The US’s Afghan war has been based on a dangerous premise: that 40 per cent of the Pashtun population of Afghanistan is either the Taliban or its sympathisers. A military solution to bring peace and stability to the war-torn narco-state of Afghanistan, in the face of growing religious sentiment combined with nationalist Pashtun feelings, was doomed to failure. The US failure in Afghanistan fuelled an insurgency that created civil war-like conditions in the northwest frontier region of Pakistan. It was this failure that spilled over into Pakistan and not vice versa as US government officials wrongly allege.

The US failure has been compounded by the CIA, notorious for its botched operations and intelligence failures. The drone attacks are controlled and executed by the CIA. They have proved to be highly counterproductive but continue even after Obama’s election. One would think the Pentagon and the CIA would pause and let the new administration formulate its policy. The briefing by the intelligence agencies to Obama on Nov 7 must have included the situation on the Pak-Afghan border and one can only guess Obama’s reaction at this point.

Much is at stake. The ‘great game’ and the covert wars of the intelligence agencies have destabilised Pakistan and could lead to a bigger catastrophe in the coming years. The worst outcome would be a Pashtun rebellion on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border. At the very least it would make Pakistan ungovernable. Is weakening Pakistan and defanging it by ‘taking out’ its nuclear weapons an objective of US policy?

Even Indians have now started to recognise the apprehensions of some Pakistanis. According to an analyst, quoted by the Press Trust of India, “Pakistan should not be pressured, because its security establishment believes that it is threatened by a US-India-Afghan alliance to dismember Pakistan.”

It is in this context that Barack Obama’s actions in Pakistan will be judged as to whether he really meant what he said in his first speech as president-elect: “And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright — tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.”

The US-Nato operation in Afghanistan and the covert operations being conducted inside Pakistan by American special operations forces are viewed with deep suspicion in Pakistan. If the objective is to capture elements belonging to Al Qaeda because they pose a security threat to the US, then this is plainly absurd although the US intelligence continues to propagate this myth. There has not been a single attack on American soil since September 2001 but thousands of innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, including soldiers, have died in this war.

Still, if Mr Obama is sincere about taking out Al Qaeda or its remnants, he should demonstrate this by inviting China and Russia to join the international security force in Afghanistan. This would be a concrete step toward removing the trust deficit with Pakistan and its apprehension that the West is playing a ‘great game’ in Afghanistan which has little to do with Al Qaeda or combating terrorism.

DARRA Adamkhel, the tribal area in the frontier region under the administrative control of the federal government, is a 30-minute drive from the Peshawar cantonment on the Indus highway. Sandwiched between two cantonments and hidden beneath high and gloomy hills, Darra is the gateway to one-third of the Frontier and onward to the rest of the country, besides of course to Afghanistan and Central Asia.

However, what better illustrates the insignificant size of this tribal valley is the fact that a 20-minute drive is all it takes to travel from one end of the valley to another. Besides the proximity to the Peshawar cantonment, Darra is adjacent to the Kohat cantonment. Thus apart from serving as a haven for snipers and small-time criminals Darra Adamkhel had never posed any serious threat to the security apparatus of the country. Unfortunately, due to decades of administrative and bureaucratic ineptitude this small tribal enclave has now turned into a battleground.

It defies belief that Darra was lost only five years after the opening of the 1.8 km state-of-the-art tunnel bypassing the treacherous Kotal Pass. The long-awaited tunnel was a welcome shortcut, ending the arduous journeys of the not-too-distant past. However, the easy passage further plunged Darra into obscurantism.

The rise of obscurantism is no fault of the Darra natives. They are hard-working craftsmen, a fact borne out by the age-old weapons factories in the area. While the factories have been criticised, they only imitate and manufacture to perfection the Martini-Enfields, Klashnikovs, etc. produced in other parts of the world. If anything these people should be applauded for fending for themselves in the dreary landscape of Darra.

The people of Darra have had no one to help or guide them except a visionless political agent, who rises from the administrative ranks of the Pakistani state. A reasonably capable officer would have harnessed the gun-making abilities of the tribesmen to the advantage of the people of Darra as well as the state of Pakistan. This is what Faiz Mohammad discovered when he learned he would be able to legally export the arms manufactured in his factory. But the young Mohammad’s excitement proved short-lived as outside forces invaded his valley. The young man’s guest house still bears the marks of the early attacks.

Perhaps what let the frenzied brigades take charge of the situation in Darra was the killing of an infamous car thief, Ameer Said alias Charg (rooster). One afternoon a burst of fire from the Kalashnikov of a militant stopped the crowing of the rooster. This could have pleased the victims of the car thief and for a while it did as people praised the Taliban’s brand of justice while pouring scorn on the law-enforcement officers. However, the euphoria soon gave way to scepticism when the locals found themselves surrounded by men constantly trying to sniff out foes.

The messiahs filling the vacuum left by the law enforcers then took to reforming the system in their own fashion. The fear spread by the cleansing brigade was such that Darra soon began to miss its car thief who could once have been found languidly resting on his charpai. Female education, barbers and video shops bore the brunt of the reformation drive.

Before the arrival of the militants and despite the ubiquity of the arms business one would only hear isolated bursts of gunfire echoing in the hills. But soon the valley began to shake from the impact of improvised explosive devices. Then something happened which startled those familiar with the tribal way of life in the Frontier. Entire families abandoned the place and those left behind, the so-called formidable tribesmen, restricted themselves to their high-walled compounds.

Darra Adamkhel had long been presented to the outside world as the Wild West of Pakistan. Western tourists, notably journalists, would make it a point to be taken to Darra. Local guides would reprimand tourists who might have missed including it on their itinerary. However, Darra’s visitors would be disappointed soon enough, finding nothing to write home about. The most common sight in Darra was of people going about the routine of daily life.

Darra should not have been viewed thus. It had its brazen little world of crime but it had neither witnessed nor heard of wholesale butchery taking place in its confines. Its rough terrain belies the fact of a hospitable area and people. Khushal Khan Khattak, who was a regular visitor to the area, noted this subtle truth 400 years ago in his poetry. But the effervescent great Pashtun poet suffered a great deal at the hands of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, a known obscurantist. Given his libertine ways Khushal would not have been spared by Aurangzeb’s present-day heirs either to whom Darra has been handed over.

Darra’s resurrection is intrinsically linked with the defeat of the Taliban, tribalism and the dim political officer. That alone can soothe the restless soul of Khattak and bring the subjects of his poetry back to their homes.