| January 19, 2008 | Saturday | Muharram 09, 1429 |
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Pakistan’s Maginot Line
AFTER seeing the ease with which the German army penetrated their eastern defences in the First World War, French planners vowed to stop any future invasion by creating the Maginot Line. Manned by the finest troops in the French army, this was a formidable barrier, consisting of an impregnable complex of interlocking bunkers, forts and deep trenches.
Today, parts of the Maginot Line are still intact, symbols of a rigid military mindset. In the early phase of the Second World War, Germany’s mighty Panzer divisions simply bypassed French defences by attacking from the north, through Belgium. All the money poured into the Maginot Line went to waste, and France was soon overrun by the enemy.
The British fell into a similar trap in Singapore where they believed that the jungle was impassable for a modern enemy, and aimed their heavy guns towards the sea. This was the approach the Japanese were expected to take in their invasion of the colony. But through a series of forced marches, the foe hacked his way through the jungle and took Singapore, meeting virtually no resistance.
I mention these incidents from the past to highlight Pakistan’s strategic errors in the present. For years, our army has been fixated on the perceived threat from India. Kashmir has driven our defence and foreign policy agendas. We have poured untold billions and thousands of lives into securing our eastern borders, and on ensuring that Kashmir was kept a live issue.
Finally, as the economic and military power balance tipped irreversibly in our neighbour’s favour, we developed nuclear devices as the ultimate deterrent. The programme cost billions, and turned us into an international pariah when we tested our atomic arsenal, but at least we were safe from any attack by our powerful neighbour.
However, it turns out that the enemy is within our walls, and he did not enter from the east. All these years, all this effort and all those resources we put into our version of the Maginot Line have been squandered.
It appears that all the while we had been training our troops to fight a conventional war on the plains of Punjab and the deserts of Sindh, the real danger lay in the northwest. And this was an enemy created by the ISI and the CIA. As documented in many articles and books, the Afghan Mujahideen were trained and equipped by Pakistan and the US, and paid largely by the Saudi government.
So while the bulk of our army mans the border with India, our own citizens in the tribal areas and elsewhere are waging war on the state. As the recent series of lethal attacks on military installations, convoys and check-posts shows, the enemy is more than capable of taking on the vaunted Pakistan Army.
The capture of Sararogha Fort in South Waziristan is especially worrying. Here, not only did the local Taliban take a heavily fortified position, they also inflicted numerous casualties. This was not some small-scale ambush, but a full-fledged assault on a fort defended by trained and well-armed soldiers.
In a recent long lead article in the New York Times, the ISI’s role in the rise of religious extremism came under the spotlight. According to the newspaper, there were elements in the intelligence agency who were still reluctant to completely sever their ties with the militants they had trained and equipped not that long ago. These spooks believe that sooner or later, western forces will be forced to withdraw from Afghanistan, and when they do, Pakistan will need assets in place to influence events there.
To be fair, many civilian members of the establishments have been cheerleaders for a forward policy in Afghanistan and Kashmir. And it is easy to criticise the Frankenstein monster we have created with the benefit of hindsight. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, it was clearly not in Pakistan’s interest to have a superpower on our doorstep.
And Zia did not have many more options than Musharraf did nearly 20 years later but to sign on to an American-led alliance. Both dictators benefited in terms of new-found legitimacy, and the military gained through a windfall in cash and new toys for the boys. But in both cases, the two conflicts have been ruinous for internal security and stability.
Had civilian leaders been in power at both crucial junctures, would they have taken different decisions? We will never know, but I am sure they would have managed the fallout a lot better.Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif tried to mend fences with India. Both were toppled by an army for which the conflict with our neighbour was its sole justification for skimming off the nation’s resources. Had elected leaders been supported by the army in their efforts to reduce tensions along our eastern border, it is possible the ISI would not have blindly supported the rise of Islamic militancy.
However, these are the ifs and buts of history. We have to face the dangers we are confronted with. And as events at Islamabad’s Red Mosque and in Swat valley showed recently, the enemy is very real, and he is amongst us. Indeed, so thoroughly have the extremists infiltrated every institution of the state that uprooting them will be a Herculean task, even if there is the political will and consensus to do it.
But to do so, only genuinely elected leaders can rally the nation behind them. An ex-army president, fraudulently elected, clearly cannot convince Pakistanis who now see him as desperate to hang on to power at any cost. The only way forward is to hold free and fair elections that will, hopefully, see the emergence of a broad-based, popular government which will then try and undo some of the mess that has been created over the last decade. Half-measures will not do.
Given the scale of the problems that now face Pakistan, I honestly think the elections next month are our last chance to get our act together. If they are perceived as rigged, the country will enter a long phase of instability from which it might never recover. The stakes could not be higher.
