Pakistan’s ‘image problem’

PRIME Minister Shaukat Aziz admits that Pakistan has an ‘image problem’. He said this at a meeting in Frankfurt with representatives of the German corporate sector during his recent to Germany. He went on to add: “We are conscious of that. We are not perfect. But we are on the right path and going in the right direction.”

Now what exactly is our image problem? Is it just a PR affair, as it is generally supposed to be, or something more real and substantial, embedded in the politico-administrative muddle at home and lack of sympathetic understanding abroad of our predicament as a frontline state in the global ‘war against terrorism’?

The two factors — muddle at home and a clouded image abroad — combine to put us in the unenviable position of a respondent forever trying to convince the world of our honest intentions and sincerity. Else why did the prime minister, on an official mission to project Pakistan to the world as a land of great promise for the foreign investor, had to speak at all about the ‘image problem’? Why should the foreign investor fight shy of investment here and foreign diplomats and mediamen see only the mole in our eyes while missing the beam in their own eyes?

‘Enlightened moderation’ even as a perfectly sane idea could not gain the weight it deserved, projected as it was mainly as a PR effort. The idea would seem to have found little response at the academic centres of excellence or with thinking citizens. A PR sparkler, it ended as a flash in the pan.

The image problem has been haunting us from day one. Our self-image as the largest Muslim and the fifth largest state of the world (which we were physically) obscured the truth of our status as a fledgling state, our geographical and demographic spread notwithstanding.

What added a raw edge to our perception was the emphasis on our self-proclaimed place as the centre of the Islamic universe — the Ummah. But more than gaining from this, we suffered even for the sins and failings of other Islamic countries.

Whether it’s been the Iranian and Libyan nuclear programmes, the turmoil in Chechneya, the Taliban interregnum in Afghanistan or the Uighur unrest in Xingiang, in each case Pakistan’s name has been dragged in. Ever since 9/11, Pakistan is viewed as not only a front-line state against global terrorism but also as a hub of terrorists.

While President George Bush calls Pakistan a ‘key ally’ in his campaign, his special envoy and plenipotentiary Zalmay Khalilzad, lately in Afghanistan, hardly ever misses an opportunity to accuse Pakistan of harbouring Taliban remnants — of even providing sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.

In one of his recent statements President Bush said: “Our ally, Pakistan, has killed or captured more than 600 terrorists, including bin Laden’s chief of operations, a man named Al-Libbi”. This is potentially a tendentious statement that could have implications for Pakistan’s future security. Now who were the 600 terrorists ‘killed’ or ‘captured’ by Pakistan? All were Muslims, even if non-Pakistanis. Does it deal a blow to our self-image as the Ummah’s centre of gravity or should it be seen as an implied snub? This raises the crucial question whether Pakistan’s proactive role against terrorism has been more out of its concern for world peace and stability or in pursuance of America’s strategic agenda. Also whether the rising tide of terrorism is motivated by love of Islam or is an irrepressible manifestation of anti-Westernism.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechneya, the emergent American threat to Iran besides the horrifying images of Abu Ghraib and Gauntanamo Bay have been at the roots of anti-Americanism, which has become synonymous with anti-westernism. British intelligence has identified the three young suicide bombers killed in London’s catastrophic blasts as home-grown British Muslims of Pakistani descent. They were born bred and educated in England. It can be argued that they did not know much and cared even less about their Islamic roots, and that their suicidal act was powered overwhelmingly by anti-western rather than religious sentiments.

Can or (should) we, therefore, completely rule out the possibility of our on-going US-driven anti-terrorist campaign unleashing a wave of anti-westernism to pose a serious threat to our own internal peace and stability — a sort of a revival of Talibanism in a moderate modified form?

As for the prime minister’s concern with the ‘image problem’, its gravity can hardly be exaggerated. What with the rampant lawlessness in our major cities —- from Gilgit to Karachi, the passage of the Hasba law by the NWFP Assembly, the centre-province confrontation, the violations of human rights (honour killings of women and gang rapes), inter-party confrontation in advance of the forthcoming non-party LB polls, etc. — these are all are hard realities rather than mere image problems.

— The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.

Afghanistan situation: a barely managed chaos

WASHINGTON: On the day of the London bombings, President Bush proclaimed: “The war on terror goes on.” Through the 2004 campaign, his winning theme was terror. He achieved the logic of a unified field theory connecting Iraq to Afghanistan by threading terror through both, despite the absence of evidence. He insisted that if we didn’t fight the terrorists there, we would be fighting them at home. In January, the CIA’s think-tank, the National Intelligence Council, issued a report describing Iraq as the magnet and training and recruiting ground for terrorism. The false rationale for the invasion had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. With his popularity flagging, Bush returned to the formulations that succeeded in his campaign.

In Bush’s ‘global war on terror’ (Gwot), Iraq and Afghanistan present one extended battlefield against a common enemy — and the strategy is and must be the same. So far as Bush is concerned, it’s always either the day after 9/11 or the day before the Iraq invasion. Time stands still at two ideal political moments. But his consequences since are barely managed chaos.

“I was horrified by the president’s last speech [on the war on terror], so much unsaid, so much disingenuous, so many half truths,” said James Dobbins, Bush’s first envoy to Afghanistan, now director of international programmes at the Rand Corporation.

Afghanistan is now the scene of a Taliban revival, chronic violence, dominance by US-supported warlords who have become narco-lords, and a human rights black hole.

From the start, he said, the effort in Afghanistan was ‘grossly underfunded and undermanned’. The military doctrine was the first error. “The US focus on force protection and substitution of firepower for manpower creates significant collateral damage.”

But the faith in firepower sustained the illusion that the mission could be ‘quicker, cheaper, easier’. And that justification fitted with Afghanistan being relegated into a sideshow to Iraq.

According to Dobbins, there was also ‘a generally negative appreciation of peacekeeping and nation building as components of US policy, a disinclination to learn anything from...Bosnia and Kosovo’.

Lack of accountability began at the top and filtered down. On the day of President Hamid Karzai’s inauguration in Afghanistan, in December 2001, Dobbins met General Tommy Franks, the Centcom commander, at the airport. As they drove to the ceremony, Dobbins informed Franks of press reports that US planes had mistakenly bombed a delegation of tribal leaders and killed perhaps several dozen.

“It was the first time he heard about it. When he got out of the car, reporters asked him about it. He denied it happened. And he denied it happened for several days. It was classic deny first, investigate later. It turned out to be true. It was a normal reflex.”

Democracy was an afterthought for the White House, which believed it had little application to Afghans. At the Bonn conference establishing international legitimacy for the Kabul government, “the word ‘democracy’ was introduced at the insistence of the Iranian delegation”, Dobbins points out.

However, democracy — now the overriding rationale for the Gwot — does not include support for human rights. “In terms of the human rights situation in Afghanistan, Karzai is well meaning and moderate and thoroughly honourable,” said Dobbins, “but he’s overwhelmed.”

Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon and the White House removed restraints on torture. “These were command failures, not just isolated incidents ... You didn’t have the checks and balances. They’ve had consequences in terms of public image.” In April, the US succeeded in abolishing the office of the UN rapporteur on human rights for Afghanistan.

Dobbins believes that the operation in Afghanistan has improved, but that the administration “hasn’t readily acknowledged its mistakes, and corrected them only after losing a good deal of ground, irrecoverable ground...most of the violence is not Al Qaeda type, but Pukhtun sectarian violence. It’s not international terrorism.”

Facts on the ground cannot alter Bush’s stentorian summons to the Gwot. “This is a campaign conducted primarily, and should be, by law enforcement, diplomatic and intelligence means,” Dobbins said.

“The militarization of the concept is a theme that mobilizes the American public effectively, but it’s not a theme that resonates well in the Middle East or with our allies elsewhere in the world.”

“We’re taking the fight to the terrorists abroad, so we don’t have to face them here at home,” Bush declared in June — and repeated endlessly — finally appearing vindicated with the London attacks. London, like Iraq and Afghanistan, is ‘there’, not ‘here’.—Dawn/Guardian News Service