Pakistan's Achilles' heel
By Imtiaz Gul
28-January-2007
One after the other -- John Negroponte (director national intelligence), Richard Boucher (President Bush's pointman for South and Central Asia), Major General Benjamin Freakley (based in Afghanistan), Robert Gates (US defence minister) -- together with the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai have been singing their favourite chorus in unison; Pakistan's tribal badlands are the breeding grounds and sanctuaries and their occupants are the source of all evils in Afghanistan. By choreographing their movement, both the Afghans and Americans pinned down, and forced Pakistan into 'action' on January 16 against five alleged hideouts of foreign and local militants, destroying the 'compounds' killing all the 'miscreants'.
The question whether the Pakistani military moved on its own and conducted the attacks itself is a different issue though. But the fact of the matter is that the string of accusations from across the border and the Afghan-American outrage over Pakistani 'inaction' prompted some activity in the Zamzola area of South Waziristan Agency. "Intelligence sources had confirmed the presence of 25-30 foreign terrorists and their local facilitators, occupying a complex of five compounds in the area," army officials were quoted as saying in the media.
On January 11, the US general, Major General Benjamin Freakley had said that Jalaluddin Haqqani recruited and sent unemployed and untrained men to fight in Afghanistan. His forces killed about 130 fighters moving in two groups in the eastern province of Paktika. "There's Taliban leaders in Pakistan," Freakley said. "We know that this group ... were from Jalaluddin Haqqani and we believe, though we don't know exactly where, that Jalaluddin Haqqani is operating from inside Pakistan and sending men to fight in Afghanistan."
On one occasion in Kandahar, Karzai huffed that the problem in Afghanistan "is not Taliban"; the "problem is with Pakistan", if the difficulty with Pakistan is resolved, then "the question of the Taliban will go away automatically."
And in Washington, the outgoing National Intelligence Director John Negroponte in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on January 11 rang the alarm bells on Pakistan by stating that Al Qaeda terrorists "are cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliate throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe."
Pakistan as "a frontline partner in the war on terror" has captured several Al Qaeda leaders, but it remains a major source of Islamic extremism and the home stop for some top terrorist leaders. Eliminating the haven extremists have found in Pakistan's tribal areas is not sufficient to end the Afghan insurgency, but is necessary," Negroponte said in what amounted to a public indictment of Pakistan.
Afghan officials obviously interpreted Negroponte's assertion as 'vindication' of their position; "These comments endorse what we have been repeatedly saying -- that the sources of terrorism are across Afghan borders….time-wise it was late but we consider this a good step," defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told reporters in Kabul on January 13. "We wished it would have been made clear sooner that the leaders of al-Qaeda and the terrorists are operating outside Afghan borders against world security," he said.
What Afghan officials and many observers, however, overlooked or glossed over was Negroponte's reference to the challenge that "the ability of the Karzai government, NATO and the United States to arrest the resurgence of the Taliban will determine the country's future". Most observers also reacted rather indifferently to the relationship pointed out by General Dave Richards, the NATO-ISAF commander in Afghanistan, that existed between the narcotics trade, the Afghan economy and the law and order there.
"The economy of Afghanistan still depends to a certain extent on narcotics and one shall have to be very careful so as not to disturb the economic activity and reconstruction in that country," the general cautioned, underlining the limitations that his forces faced in the war against drugs. He made these remarks after the 20th meeting of the tripartite commission comprises top military officials of Pakistan, Afghanistan and NATO's international security assistance force (ISAF) on January 11 at the GHQ.
General Richards credited the Pakistan army with "the reduction of incidents in Afghanistan since autumn. This has much to do with activities on this (Pakistan) side of the border and we are the beneficiaries of that," Richards said, but also underscored that the 2,500 kilometres (1,553 miles) rugged 'complex and difficult' frontier still posed a big challenge.
Let us go to another source that too highlighted the difficulties that the coalition faces in Afghanistan. A January 2 report by Christian Parenti, in Truthdig, a US publication, posted on the net by Professor Barnett Rubin, also looks into many other factors -- other than the reported Pakistani support for the Taliban - that he thinks are responsible for the explosive but stale-mated situation in Afghanistan.
"After a month travelling around Afghanistan this autumn, I was forced to a grim conclusion: This project is lost, and nothing very good will likely replace it. The reasons for the international community's failure here are several. First, there are the immediate blunders of the occupiers who, despite extensive European involvement, are led by the Americans. Next are deeper historical dynamics dating back to the US role in the anti-Soviet jihad. And finally there are much older cultural, political and economic facts about Afghanistan that have long made this a wild, lawless place, impervious to conquest and even resistant to the modernising efforts of its urban middle classes.
"The stated goal of this latest occupation has been to create a functioning state where none had existed. Thus, if Afghan institutions fail, so too does the West's project there," says the report.
Education is only one barometer of failure, the report states. "The harsh truth is that the West, led by the US, has been defeated in Afghanistan. It is only a matter [of] time -- probably three to five more bloody years -- before international troops are forced to leave and a new government, or several governments, or a civil war takes hold. …..Perhaps history doomed this project from the start. For 130 years or more, Kabul has been fighting a losing battle to subjugate the wild Afghan tribes. Sometimes the great powers aid Kabul, sometimes they undermine it by aiding the restive tribes."
The report concludes that the rushed political process after the fall of the Taliban in December 2001 did "meet US political deadlines" but "this process created a hopelessly dysfunctional, intensely corrupt Afghan government, and that foreordained Western failure. After all, who would stand up as the West stood down?
The international community's military spending in Afghanistan has outpaced development spending by 10 to one. This is a core mistake in a war that is fundamentally political. Despite the disproportionate military spending, the US deployed only 9,000 troops to hunt Osama bin Laden during the first two years. The ratio of support troops to combat soldiers in the US military is such that a force of 9,000 translates into little more than 800 or 900 soldiers actually in the field at any one time.
These references to shortcomings in the Afghan system by non-Pakistani sources underline the stark realities that confront the international community in Afghanistan. It is a multitude of factors -- drugs, warlordism, corruption, deficient institutional capacities (army and police), ignorance, religious conservativism, tribalism and foreign interference -- that complicate the ground situation in Afghanistan.
Singling out Pakistan alone for a complex situation only undermines the efforts against those militants whose narrow and tunnel vision is not only destabilising Afghanistan but also embroiling Pakistan's tribal areas -- particularly the Waziristan region -- in an uncertain and dangerous situation. Socio-ethnic bonds, religious affinity and ultra conservatism in a region that the state of Pakistan blatantly ignored --both socially as well as economically - since independence in 1947 are some of the big hurdles in the questionable war against terrorism.
That people hate foreigners and many of who also view the army as invaders and agents of infidels, is not their fault. It is the culture that they grew up in. For them, their religious belief and social responsibility vis a vis other fellow beings is more sacrosanct than the calls by the government to 'shun extremists'.
Growing demands by the US and Afghans (though the Afghan leaders themselves are also aware of these intricacies) must not lead to attack on beliefs and culture. Aggression will only reinforce them. Peaceful engagement and gradual canvassing, without offending the cultural values, might work in the long run. Rushed approaches could sink our frontier regions and those adjacent to them in the turmoil that Afghanistan finds itself in.
The writer is a journalist based in Islamabad. Email: vogul1960@yahoo.com