Mumbai saga continues

SUPPOSE 10 Indians had taken a boat from Mumbai and attacked Karachi, killing some 180 people, including 81 foreigners. What would have been the reaction in Pakistan?

Again, how angry and broken Pakistanis would have been if New Delhi had not even identified the perpetrators, much less brought them to justice?

Would the government in Islamabad have waited patiently for almost three months after the carnage to get a reply and that too mostly through non-official channels? These are precisely the questions raised in India as its exasperation increases day by day.

Right from the beginning, Pakistan has been dismissing the whole thing as if it was an adventurous prank by some street urchins. It has never appreciated the depth of anger that is seething throughout India nor the pressure exerted on the coalition government by its partners and within the ruling Congress itself to act.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has shown commendable restraint while the government in Islamabad has done little beyond holding meeting after meeting. Everything coming from India has been either rubbished or scoffed at. Questions asked through the Pakistani media have even suggested that what happened in Mumbai was India’s doing.

It appears that Islamabad has something to hide. Otherwise, the Asif Ali Zardari government should have come clean on day one. Why has it been dragging its feet? Frankly speaking, it is not difficult to guess. Anti-India elements still dictate Islamabad. Although democratically elected, the government seems to lack the gumption to join issue with those who have enjoyed power for decades and who are not terribly upset over the Mumbai attack.

The tragedy is that political parties in Pakistan want to be on the right side of such elements because even if the leaders were to challenge the establishment they are not sure whether they would be able to bring people on to the streets on secular issues. The lawyers’ movement is a warning. It began for the laudable purpose of reinstating the judges dismissed by the former president Gen Pervez Musharraf and continued for months. But it petered out due to lack of a popular response.

It is possible that the dossier New Delhi has given Pakistan has holes. Every bit of evidence cannot be foolproof. But Islamabad raises doubts whenever New Delhi provides it with any evidence. It is considered fragmentary and, cynically, described as information, not evidence. At least the telephonic talk between the terrorists and those in Pakistan should have been taken as concrete evidence.

Take Islamabad’s denial of Kasab’s nationality. Islamabad kept on saying that he was not a Pakistani national. It was the Pakistani media which forced the government to admit that he was a Pakistani. That Islamabad should ask for facilities to interview Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist, is not surprising. So why did it reject New Delhi’s earlier offer to facilitate Pakistan in interviewing Kasab who is facing threats from the underworld.

All this shows that Pakistan has a closed mind where the Mumbai attack is concerned as indicated by its reactions long before India’s dossier reached it. The purpose appears to have been to shift the blame. There were reports emanating from Islamabad that the perpetrators had Bangladeshi links and then they were linked to mainland Europe.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s statement that the Mumbai attack was not discussed with US representative Richard Holbrooke is enigmatic. Washington had made it clear when it announced the appointment of Holbrooke that his job was confined to Afghanistan. Both New Delhi and Islamabad are keeping Washington in the picture. That is enough. Let us not involve it in the problem which we have to sort out between ourselves.

As of today, Pakistan is reluctant to accept the involvement of people from its soil, whether of state or non-state actors. This reflects an attitude that is counter-productive. A statement to suggest that Islamabad itself was not sure on this point would have gone a long way in building up trust between India and Pakistan. This is essential even if the two countries have to start afresh. What Pakistan should have realised from the beginning is that its statements on the Mumbai attack would be taken with loads of salt.

Even now Islamabad is asking more questions than answering them. Seeking more information may well be part of Pakistan’s strategy to deny everything lest even a slight admission should lead to a trail which it does not want followed. It is sad that in the midst of all this — India is also to blame — the main issue of terrorism has been lost. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is right when he says that it is obvious that the terrorists have succeeded in their purpose to divert attention from terrorism.

Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s reiteration that every option is open or the statement by the chief of the army staff that strategic strikes are possible may well be meant to pacify the Indian people.

Such statements only intensify suspicions regarding New Delhi’s bona fides. They renew the age-old belief that India is out to destroy Pakistan. Because of the impending Lok Sabha elections, the two main political parties, the Congress and the BJP, are vying with each other in making inflammatory statements. It appears as if the ruling Congress is going to stretch the Mumbai tragedy until after the polls scheduled to be held late in April or early May.

It was an unhelpful top level meeting which Gilani presided over the other day to discuss a preliminary report on “evidence” from India linking “elements” in Pakistan to the attack. An official announcement said Pakistani investigators needed more information from India to complete the probe into the Mumbai attacks and that Islamabad would convey a request for further details to New Delhi shortly. “The meeting, however, observed that without substantial evidence from India it will be exceedingly difficult to complete the investigation and proceed with the case,” the statement said. “In order to complete the investigation the questions which are arising from the inquiry carried out by the Federal Investigating Agency need to be answered by the Indian authorities. These will be communicated to the Indian authorities shortly.”

We are almost back to square one. However, the committee’s statement does at least show Islamabad’s intent to register the cases on the basis of the inquiry conducted by the FIA. The government has detained a number of people in connection with the attack on Mumbai. In a way, there is a formal acknowledgment of the existence of a Pakistani link to the attacks. This seems to have been conceded unwittingly. But at least a beginning has been made.

The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi.

Populism vs democracy

DESPITE the presence of an elected government in the country, there is nervousness and unease on the streets. Those that ridicule democracy are having a field day, satisfied as they are at the thought of people getting punished for choosing leaders who have not been able to deliver and are caught up in internal disputes.

Some educated and powerful elements feel that their opinion that Pakistan’s ‘illiterate’ people are incapable of exercising the correct judgment has been justified. But the counter question is: were the people wrong when they voted in political leaders and showed the door to a military dictator?

The answer is in the negative. The people followed their correct instinct when they voted for a political dispensation in Islamabad. Moreover, democracy’s sad experience in Pakistan should not negate the concept of its existence. Democracy is about a system where different groups of people get an equal opportunity to contest for their interests.

From a common man’s perspective, elections are about electing politicians to negotiate the interests of the people, interests which include greater access to justice, better governance, accountability, the rule of law and provision of services such as law and order, health, education and all that a society requires for its survival.

What we have instead is a government that has adopted populist means for its own survival. For example, the recent out-of-court settlement to release Dr A.Q. Khan was meant to appease the people. The action is equivalent to a morphine injection being administered to a drug addict. People are kept happy for a short while and this gives them a sense of confidence that the government is doing exactly what they want. A.Q. Khan is one of the heroes created by successive governments. He is the man who is believed to have played a critical role in the production of the nuclear bomb, and whom the country now has to defend as a symbol of its honour and security.

Nuclear weapons have become critical to Pakistan’s identity and so releasing the national hero is meant to comfort people who would otherwise start reminding the government about their need for greater social and economic security. Of course, the present government would not explain to the people that this freedom of sorts was basically a prior arrangement and has nothing to do with the independence of the judiciary; or that it’s about the government’s urgent need to ratchet up its popularity; or even that Dr Khan was kept inside and is under strict observation because of his part in the racket — which caused Islamabad to be caught almost red-handed — of providing nuclear technology to other countries.

Surely, we must have boosted the security of nuclear weapons since the expose but it will take a while before the world begins to trust us again. More importantly, people were never informed that the proliferation we were accused of through Dr Khan’s network compromised Pakistan’s security.

In any case, the emphasis on military security and the bomb as opposed to food, shelter, clothing and opportunities for social mobility is based on a flawed principle that links greater social and economic security with a robust military security. Countries that cannot defend themselves will never be affluent or have a share of global resources. Unfortunately, we still lack the ability to strengthen ourselves economically.

But referring to the game that governments play to seek public support, this is about populist politics rather than democracy. The renowned Pakistani political scientist (late) Hamza Alavi was of the view that what Pakistan has is “legal constitutionalism” and not democracy. We have never had the latter, not even periods of transition to democracy. According to his idea, we continue to have elections which bring strong interest groups into power rather than democracy which is meant to open up political space for ordinary people.

To paraphrase a popular argument, the answer to bad democracy is more democracy. But the problem is that we may still not see a change in the system unless there is structural transformation. Even during the early years after independence Pakistan emerged as a bureaucratic state when politics, political parties and politicians were meant to bring some legitimacy to the system. So, there was a partnership among the political parties, the politicians and the civil-military bureaucracy. And while the state bureaucracy considers itself the creator of national ideology and its primary guardian, the political class and significant segments of civil society continue to partner it because service delivery to the people was never one of the main goals.This creates a highly turbulent political system of a revolving door in which civilians replace the military to be replaced themselves. And the circus goes on. Once in power, the politicians begin to believe that they are in control of the state and the government and operate under the false assumption that they can change the situation from within. Little do they know that the bureaucratic system is far more robust and they the politicians are at best delusional.

After every injection of democracy, society itself becomes delusional and thinks that there will not be another military takeover. However, it doesn’t take a lot of time before minds begin to change and people get tired of the political dispensation. At present, things are not too different. The lack of performance, accountability and rule of law accompanied by the breakdown of all civilian institutions is bound to result in mounting frustration and lead to a change that will be welcomed by the bulk of the population.

Another military takeover will of course create its own set of frustrations and then the people will begin to wait for another cycle of civilian rule. Of course, the problem right now is that other forces have also emerged to fill the gap. These are the militant forces which will further weaken political control.

It is a fallacy to keep arguing about the majority of Pakistanis not being pro-Taliban. Many cite the election results in support of their argument, without recalling that a political system that does not deliver is at best a representation of a predatory patronage system in which people use their right to vote to get the crumbs on offer. After all, how does one survive in a system in which power is centralised, any change is at best temporary, the only alternative ideology is violence and the political legacy of any political leader and party is brutal power and patronage?

Is it just a coincidence that at this juncture one is reminded of numerous African states like Ethiopia, Congo, Chad and others where the situation could not improve despite being the country’s being blessed with capable people?

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com

Betting on failure

WITH Holbrooke pottering around the neighbourhood, the Afpak policy under review and the Obama administration flagging the Pak-Afghan border as ground zero in the fight against militancy, change seems to be in the air.

What hasn’t changed though is that the US expects to end its Afghan adventure on a positive note. Sure, the Obama administration has tried to dampen expectations, talked down nation-building and done away with the hyperbole of the Bush era. Yet Obama wouldn’t be sending more troops to Afghanistan or fixing his star so firmly to that country if he believed that all is already lost.

But what if he’s wrong? Newsweek’s cover story last week was ‘Obama’s Vietnam’. The magazine noted: “The analogy isn’t exact. But the war in Afghanistan is starting to look disturbingly familiar.” Can the Americans salvage something from Afghanistan? Nobody can know for sure right now. But that doesn’t stop people from taking a hard look at the situation and betting on the outcome.

What many Pakistanis may not realise as yet is that their very future may hinge on the answer — more specifically, our security establishment’s answer — to that question.

Ever since the Americans charged into Afghanistan, the question has haunted security analysts: is Pakistan betting against an American victory? As Newsweek points out: “The Pakistanis have a strategic interest in keeping Afghanistan — which has developed close ties to arch-enemy India — weak. Since many Pakistani leaders are convinced that America will eventually leave, they’re covering their bets for the future.”

America will leave because America will lose; at least that’s what the world thinks the Pakistani security establishment is thinking.

Of course, the Pakistanis wouldn’t be alone. In November 2001, when Rumsfeld’s army had just entered Afghanistan, Milton Bearden, CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs entitled ‘Afghanistan, graveyard of empires’. The circumstances and context were different then, but for many Bearden’s warning still rings true today: “The United States must proceed with caution — or end up on the ash heap of Afghan history.”

Right now some Pakistanis are salivating at the idea of Obama’s regional strategy in Afghanistan which will, they hope, force concessions from India on Kashmir and Afghanistan and thus save South Asia itself. Obama’s idea has intrinsic appeal to those hoping for a less violent future for this part of the world, and especially Pakistan — all the big problems on our eastern and western borders addressed in a neat quid pro quo: Pakistan tackles the menace in Fata and is simultaneously weaned from its India fixation.

But the regional-strategy hype is based on one big assumption: that America can come through in Afghanistan. If our security establishment continues to bet against that possibility, then nothing Obama puts on the table will jolt it out of its reluctance to take down its long-time assets, the militant proxies.

Think about it: they’ve already seen off one US president and two terms. And Bush was as bellicose as they come. What’s another four years, or maybe eight? Sure, the security boys will grab with both hands whatever goodies the Americans offer, just like Musharraf did. And they’ll be tickled that Obama may turn the world’s focus on Kashmir, especially since we don’t really have the means to wrest from the Indians on our own.

But get rid of our militant networks? Don’t bet on it. Like a parent who can’t believe her child has grown up, the Pakistan security establishment is in denial about the fact that the proxies it nurtured for so many years have moved on. More dangerously, it hasn’t grasped that it is an irreversible process.

The Long War Journal reported this week that Al Qaeda has “re-established the predominantly Arab and Asian paramilitary formation that was formerly known as Brigade 055 into a larger, more effective fighting unit known as the Lashkar al Zil, or Shadow Army”.

What his this Shadow Army been up to? “Inside Pakistan, the Shadow Army has been active in successful Taliban campaigns in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber and Swat.”

Sound familiar? Those happen to be the very places Pakistan is struggling to quell militancy, and where it’s unclear if inflicting a comprehensive defeat is on the Pakistan Army’s agenda.

More from the Long War Journal: “The presence of the Shadow Army has been evident for some time, as there have been numerous reports of joint operations between the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the Haqqani network, Hizb-i-Islami, Lashkar-i-Taiba, Harkatul Jihad-i-Islami and other terror groups.”

The nightmare scenario for Pakistan is that our security establishment stays rooted in the past, desperately clinging on to its militants in the hope of pursuing the chimera of strategic depth in Afghanistan and bleeding the Indians in Kashmir — and blocking out all evidence that those militants no longer respond to their erstwhile puppet master.

The fact is, Al Qaeda has infected many of the ‘good’ Taliban and Kashmiri militants and the evolving toxic brew of militancy can no longer be harnessed to achieve the state’s security objectives. Betting on them in a post-American Afghanistan is really betting against Pakistan, for in the long run (and in many ways, we’ve already entered that phase) this country is the ultimate prize.

Put on your militant cap for a minute. On one side is a shattered country with no central authority and primitive infrastructure. On the other side is a well-developed central authority, a functional economy, a strong coercive arm of the state and an increasingly conservative population. Which would you rather control? It’s a no-brainer.

Even if this threat is pooh-poohed, Pakistan faces another grim reality: militancy is dangerously isolating us in a nasty neighbourhood where friends are in desperate need.

Start with the much-vaunted Pak-China friendship. The Chinese gave us missile and nuclear technology and so we like to think of them as our best friends. They, on the other hand, are bothered by the idea of militants traipsing up the Karakoram Highway and stirring up the Uighurs.

Iran has always been worried our Baloch problem will spill over into their Baloch areas and isn’t too keen on having Sunni Al Qaeda as its neighbour. Saudi Arabia meanwhile may have long used Pakistan to fight its sectarian war with Iran but 9/11 chastened them and Al Qaeda is their enemy. They want them taken out.

India, well, another Mumbai or two and a few years down the road they may actually have beefed up to deliver on their threat of surgical strikes. And in Afghanistan, Pakistan is virulently hated by those who bore the brunt of the Taliban’s rule.

Anyway you look at it, it’s a bleak picture — unless you have your head buried in the sands of the past, of course.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Inside the Gaza tunnels

ONE unanswered question of Israel’s three-week war in Gaza is why the air strikes, artillery shells, tank fire, bulldozing and detonations that caused such devastation and loss of life across the territory did so little damage to the hundreds of tunnels under Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

Those tunnels, which bring in food, clothes, machinery as well as weapons and ammunition, were supposed to be one of Israel’s key targets. On the final day of the conflict alone, the Israeli military said it had hit 100 tunnels. Gazans in the border town of Rafah spoke of night after night of enormous air strikes. But while the sandy border is marked with many large craters, the damage caused to the tunnels was, in many cases, repaired within days. Already some are operating again and new tunnels are being dug under the close eye of Hamas officials, who walk from one tent to the next clutching their walkie-talkies.

The tunnels were simply too deep to be badly damaged, even by the heavy 500lb or one-tonne bombs dropped by Israeli F-16s. In most cases, the serious damage was only to the entrances to the tunnels, which were soon uncovered again by the Palestinians using bulldozers and then rebuilt. It may be that the focus of the Israeli attacks was on the weapons tunnels, which are closely guarded by Hamas and other armed groups and not open to public view.

Inside the large white tent is a wooden coat rack from which hang the jackets and spare clothes of a dozen men or more. To the right is an electrical circuit board with five sockets. From the back, the wires run out of the tent, across the sand dunes and directly into the public electricity supply of the municipality of Rafah. From the front, a cord runs out to power a winch. Outside, a large black plastic water butt with a tap provides the thirsty workers with fresh drinking water — again, courtesy of the municipality. All of this is registered and paid for. Smuggling in Gaza is a semi-official business.

The focus of activity is the tunnel’s well: a 15m deep shaft lined on its four sides by planks of wood. Three metal beams are positioned pyramid-shape over the well and support the electric winch, whose cable runs down the shaft to the sandy floor below. There, two men crouch low and operate two more winches that run horizontally 300m to the south along the tunnel, stretching out of Gaza and into Egypt. One of the winches draws in the goods from the Egyptian side, a train of boxes and sacks sliding over the sand on plastic containers. The second winch sends back the empty containers for reloading.

It took about eight weeks to dig this tunnel; a team of men worked long days underground using a pneumatic drill to dig out the soil, which they then carried out in large, plastic containers and dumped nearby. By the time it was finished, the tunnel was tall enough for a man to stand with his head bowed, and nearly a metre wide along its full length. The tunnel walls are bare soil with regular wooden supports to prevent collapse — although it still remains a dangerous business. Around 40 Palestinian tunnellers were killed last year in cave-ins.

It is midday and the work is constant. Every 30 seconds one of the men below shouts “Raise” and a man sitting over the mouth of the well switches on the winch and pulls up another sack which contains dry, yellow chickenfeed; spare parts for cars; a box of coat hooks; microwaves; kerosene cookers; packets of rather dowdy women’s underwear; and now several large, 5.5kW generators. Notably absent are drugs and alcohol, which are forbidden by Hamas.

“Without these tunnels, everything would stop in Gaza,” says one of the workers, Abu Zeid, 22. “And they say we are terrorists. Where are the terrorists here? The world knows very well what’s going on, but they don’t want us to live. If they opened the crossings, why would we need to do this business?”

Since Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza in mid-2005, it has imposed an ever-tighter economic blockade on what it calls the “hostile entity”. For the past year and a half, that has meant closures of the crossings: banning all exports and prohibiting all imports, save for a limited list of humanitarian goods.

—The Guardian, London