Terror strikes again

COMING four days after the Mirali attack that killed four soldiers and a woman on Monday, the blast at an Islamabad hotel on Friday was more than a security lapse — as admitted by an interior ministry official — and points to the terrorists’ unhindered ability to strike wherever they wish in the country. Both were cases of suicide bombing. In the first case, the target was military — though a woman, too, died — but the attack had taken place in North Waziristan, which has been in the grip of violence for more than five years. Friday’s attack, however, was directed against a civilian target and took place not in some remote tribal area but in the capital city. It will take some time before the identity of Friday’s suicide bomber is established, but the authorities must try to find whether there is a link between the Mirali and Islamabad blasts. Earlier this month, following an air attack on Hamzola, which killed 10 people, a Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud, had sworn vengeance on Pakistan. The intelligence agencies must now find whether both attacks were engineered by the Taliban.

Even though the Islamabad blast was not of a sectarian nature, the fact that it occurred a few days before Ashura must add to the concerns about peace during Muharram. TV shots show security troops patrolling towns and cities in what obviously is a massive show of force intended to give a sense of security to citizens and warn terrorists. While nobody denies the utility of this street deployment, an indoctrinated fanatic can still manage to get into the crowd and blow himself up. At the Islamabad hotel, a security guard, who gave his life while performing his duty, grappled with the suicide bomber, but in a huge procession it is difficult to spot an individual determined to strike terror. This brings us to the heart of the matter — going to the source of terrorism.

At present, there are two sources of terrorism in Pakistan. One can be called “secular terrorism” that manifests itself in attacks on gas, rail and power installations in Balochistan. This kind of sabotage has political roots and can best be addressed politically by talking to the Baloch nationalist parties that have for long been agitating for their long denied rights. The other, more dangerous source of terrorism stems from the kind of religious militancy that has been sweeping Pakistan since the launch of the US-led ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. 9/11 and its aftermath have accentuated this brand of militancy that believes in shedding innocent people’s blood without a qualm of conscience. The two attacks in less than a week highlight the failure of the intelligence agencies to discover the brains behind these acts of terrorism. Many religious outfits remain outlawed on paper — Sipah-i-Sahaba, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Sipah-i-Muhammadi, to name only a few. But evidently they are operating underground and their sources of arms and money remain a mystery. No amount of show of force on the streets can deliver unless the plethora of intelligence agencies we have are able to penetrate the underground terrorist networks that continue to kill and maim at will. A full investigation must be conducted into Friday’s hotel bombing and the guilty be brought to justice. If it is established that the Taliban were behind the bombings, then the government must take action against those elements in the tribal area who are in breach of the Sept 5 agreement.

A tightening noose?

THE Democrats, who regained a majority in the US Congress in November after 12 years, are making their presence felt by giving a new direction to American law making. The proposed Nuclear Black Market Counter Terrorism Act would require the president to identify countries that cooperated with the nuclear proliferation network that had transactions with the A.Q. Khan network. Foreign assistance will be provided only to countries that are not cooperating with non-nuclear states working to develop a nuclear explosive device. The bill also contains a number of provisions which in Pakistan’s case amount to tightening the noose round its neck. It could also revive the US demand to have Dr A.Q. Khan handed over to it for interrogation. The implications of this bill are serious not just for Islamabad but also for global politics. It smacks of the unilateralism that has characterised American policy since the end of the Cold War. It is ironical that the US should be so overly concerned at the dangers of nuclear proliferation when it has not moved at all to destroy its own nuclear weapons. It has long been recognised that a nuclear non-proliferation regime can be effectively enforced only when the members of the nuclear club disarm themselves to provide a moral, political and geostrategic justification for denying the nuclear have-nots access to nuclear technology for military purposes.

For Pakistan, the American move means added pressure and coercion. It is not clear how the government, which is already beholden to Washington politically and economically, plans to respond to the emerging situation. The A.Q. Khan episode should however drive home some lessons to Islamabad, irrespective of who is in office. Superpowers, especially when world politics does not have another countervailing force around, can prove to be difficult to deal with. Their friendship — if carried to the extreme — can be suffocating since the price demanded in return is no less than humiliating servility. At the other end, their enmity can be devastating and a sure recipe for trouble. Hence maintaining a balanced relationship at a safe distance with a superpower is the wisest strategy a relatively small state can adopt.

Poor mother and child healthcare

LAUNCHED recently by an international NGO in Mansehra district, a training programme for mother and child healthcare providers will benefit thousands of women in almost 100 villages if carried out in a proper way. There are thousands of villages all over rural Pakistan that would welcome such projects. At present, statistics paint a dismal picture of the state of maternal and child healthcare in the country. According to a detailed report carried in this paper last year, the number of women dying of birth-related complications is between 350 to 400 per 100,000 live births. The infant mortality rate is about 77 per 1,000 live births. The situation is far worse in rural areas where health facilities are so primitive that pregnant women often have to travel long distances to reach better-equipped maternity clinics. Trained midwives are a rarity in the rural hinterland and unskilled birth attendants are not able to cope with a crisis during delivery, often complicating the procedure through the use of unsterilised equipment.

Unfortunately, in all these years, the government has failed to come up with a proper plan on maternal and child healthcare while its new Mother, Neonatal and Child Health (MNCH) programme is still to get off the ground. All this shows the low priority given to mothers and children and the existing gender bias because of which women and their female offspring suffer from neglect and discrimination which has a negative impact on their health — as in the case of being given inadequate nutrition. In this scenario, projects focusing on better medical care for mothers and infants are welcome. But these would be ineffective unless accompanied by strong measures to remove gender biases, especially in rural areas where the lack of education has contributed to mediaeval notions regarding the status of women.

What lies ahead for the fateful triangle

BY the middle of 2007’ or earlier, Afghanistan would have joined the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) as a full member to bring India closer to it as a partner in trade, commerce and all other corporate matters within the Association’s orbit at par with Pakistan to complete what may well be called the fateful triangle.

India as the trading partner under South Asian Free Trade Area (Safta) protocol could and would in due course demand free land-air access to Afghanistan via Pakistan.

Territorial, religious and cultural affinities with Pakistan apart, Afghanistan had never questioned the historical standing of India and viewed Pakistan in the subcontinent as a sort of an intruder in the geo-strategic set-up on the other side of the Durand Line after the British quit India.

At the back of Afghanistan’s anti-Pakistan attitude lay three subtle but compelling factors. There were the Afghan irredentism; Pakistan’s ‘triumphalism’ and NWFP’s pro-Indianism under the Khan Brothers — the redoubtable Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Dr. Khan Sahib.

An irredentist Afghanistgan, claiming all ther trans-Indus territory beyond the Durand Line right upto Attock, narrowly eyed the fledgling state of Pakistan loudy proclaiming its status as the world’s fifth largest and the second largest Muslim state, the hub of the Islamic Ummah and ‘laboratory’ of a modern, vibrant Islam. Pakistan’s sense of achievement and triumph (triumphalism) was thus pitted against the Afghan irredentism to push the two neighbours into an uneasy equation at the very outset. The more Pakistan would seek to woo Afghanistan, the more Afghanistan distanced itself in anger.

Oddly enough, NWFP, the land of the jihadist fundamentalist Pathans, politically tied to the apron strings of the Indian National Congress, had the only Congress ministry under Dr. Khan Sahib at the time of partition. Then as now, therefore, anything pro-Indian in the tense Pak-Afghan milieu would be viewed as anti-Pakistan. Afghanistan’s present unfriendly and provocative attitude towards Pakistan would acquire a shaper edge after Afghanistan’s inclusion in Saarc to bring it closer to India as a fellow member. The success of the on-going Pak-Indian peace process would put Afghanistan back into its place.

To Pakistan’s fraternal good-neighbourly overtures, Afghanistan’s response has been either one of cold indifference or outright hostility. It would not recognise the continued legal status of the Durand Line after the cosignatory — Great Britain — quit India and go on to claim practically the whole of the trans-Indus territory upto Attock. It was the first (in alphabetical order on the UN rolls — and only country to have said ‘No” to Pakistan’s admission into the world body.

Kabul under King Zahir Shah and his uncle and right-hand man Sardar Mohammad Daud would leave no stone unturned to destabilise Pakistan ever since its birth. Two major events bear witness to it. One, an episodic concerned the flight of the recalcitrant Prince Abdul Karim of Kalat to Kabul (April, 1948) and recognition accorded instantly to his government-in-exile by Afghanistan. The other, threatening the very organic fabric of Pakistan was the separatist Pushtoonistan movement engineered and supported by Kabul. Kabul’s provocative behaviour brought the two Muslim neighbours eyeball-to-eyeball in a military stand-off in Bajaur in 1961.

In the fall of 1961Afghanistan moved its forces close to the Bajaur area. Pakistan’s riposte to the Afghan offensive move was prompt and in some strength with a brigade group moved up under Brigadier Toor Gul. After a week or two of small border incursions by Afghanistan, Pakistan mounted an artillery barrage to force the Afghan forward troops to return to their base.

The current phase of the Pakistan-Afghanistan relations remains at the lowest ebb. Afghanistan spurns any positive move, backed by firm action, to counter and contain the alleged cross-border incursions by the Taliban. President Abdul Hamid Karzai repeatedly blames Pakistan for the prevailing state of anarchy in his country — especially in the east and south — engineered by the Taliban terrorists. He would go on to accuse Pakistan of turning his countrymen into ‘slaves’. In his theatrical anti-Pakistan tirade, he would even forget the presence of some two-three million Afghan refugees still camped in Pakistan.

Wouldn’t that be justification enough for Pakistan to view and treat the Afghan refugees as a potential security risk or outright spies? Furthermore, how should Afghan refugees themselves react to the blunt statement of their president vis-a-vis the country while has been their safe haven and home for well over a generation?

President Karzai transcended all bonds of civility and calculated restraint observed in inter-state relations when he trained his batteries on the Pakistan government as distinct from the Pakistani people. “This tyranny against our people is not by the nation of Pakistan, it is by the government of Pakistan”, he said. A statement of such bitter virulence against the government of a country harbouring roughly a tenth of its people would be hard to come by. Is it not inciting Pakistanis against the Afghan refugees and demand their immediate eviction form Pakistan? 

India, for its part would never hesitate to make political and diplomatic capital out of Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions. India’s support of the Northern Alliance against Mulla Umar’s Taliban regime (1996-2001) had been more out of its calculated policy to put Pakistan in a spot for its support of the Taliban regime than for any fellow feeling or friendly sentiment for the Afghans. Pakistan went out of the way in full support of the Taliban regime unmindful of the negative fall-out it would face in the event of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance gaining the upper hand.

The episode of September 11, 2001, brought America to the support of the Northern Alliance and help it enter Kabul over the ruins of the Taliban regime. The victory of the Northern Alliance not only tolled the death knell of the Taliban interregnum but also put Pakistan on the spot as its one (in effect the only one) sustained supporter. India thus gained enormously where Pakistan had failed physically and diplomatically.

Top leadership of the Northern Alliance comprised individuals like its first Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, Home Minister Younas Quanooni, Defence Minister Marshal Qasim Fahim and President Abdul Hamid Karzai journeying to India all the way through the war and post-war crises. While they all shared their anti-Pakistan passion, Abdullah Abdullah was most vocal in articulating it through foreign media before they took over. Karzai, about the most moderate of the lot, is now the loudest in his denunciation of Pakistan. He holds Pakistan responsible for all his failures as the Afghan ruler since 2001.

Pakistan’s involvement with the Taliban regime beyond the normal diplomatic norms also put it on the wrong side of all other elements — ranging from the fundamentalists like Gulbadin Hekmatyar, Abdur Rauf Sayyaf and the moderates like Sayed Ahmad Gilani, Rabbani, Mojeddedi and others. The Northern Alliance marched triumphantly into Kabul in November 2001 — just a couple months after the 9/11 disaster. The Northern Alliance, Pakistan’s sworn enemy for its sustained support to the Taliban, fully backed by America, Europe and no less by India, would not wait to mount its diplomatic fusillade against Pakistan. It singled out Pakistan as ‘Enemy Number One’ not only of Afghanistan but virtually of the rest of the civilized world as the patron saint of the Taliban, the prime source of global terrorism.

A reppraisal of Pakistan’s Afghan strategy would show that it committed similar errors of judgement through the course of the jihad against the Soviet occupation (1979-1989) by supporting the radical fundamentalist Gulbadin Hekmatyar who remained the main beneficiary of the US arms and funds much to annoyance of the moderates and royalyst like Pir Gilani, Mojeddadi, Rabbani and others. After Hekmatyar, Abdur Rasul Sayyaf and, to a lesser extent, Maulana Younus Khalis together had the lion’s share of the Saudi largesse — about the largest after America’s contribution . Unlike the US contribution delivered through the Pakistani agencies mainly ISI, Saudi money was handed down directly to the Mujahideen.

In my various war-time interviews with each and every one of the Mujahideen leaders, all the moderates freely aired their major grievances regarding the unfair delocation of the US arms and money to various bodies. They stated that while 50 per cent of the US aid in terms of arms and hard cash was siphoned off by the ISI itself, 25 per cent was given to the radicals — Hekmatyar et al — and the remaining one-fourth to the moderates. Thus Pakistan helped the mjuahideen more to wage their jihad as disparate groups rather than as a united front.

After the withdrawal of the Soviet troops under the Geneva accords of April 1988, President Najibullah stayed at the helm of affairs maintaining the centrality of the state in the face of stiff mujahideen resistance and a campaign to overthrow him. Whether such a campaign would have been possible without Pakistan’s (ISI’s) active support would be hard to imagine. Thus, along with prolonging the agony of Afghanistan, Pakistan also lost what might have been its last opportunity to play the role of the honest broker and earn the gratitude of the Afghan nation.

Instead, the serving army chief, General Mirza Aslam Beg, and the DG ISI, Lieutant General Hamid Gul, would untiringly talk of Afghanistan almost as Pakistan’s fifth province providing it the so-called ‘strategic depth’ in the event of a war with India and a serious military reverse along its eastern border. As if such a starry-eyed postulate was not enough to expose the hollowness of our strategic vision, we went on to launch a campaigh to capture Jalalabad and pose a direct threat to Kabul from there. The campaign collapsed virtually on the launching pad.

To be concluded