Pakistan’s Existential Crisis

By S.P.SETH

Pakistan’s conundrum remains the same. Which is to define how it sees itself? Since it was created out of India in 1947 as a secure homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims, it hasn’t stopped seeing India as its enemy.

Lately, there was some hope that its government might be starting a process of re-evaluating this assessment. Faced with an imminent threat to its survival from the Taliban rebels penetrating deep into the Swat Valley and the adjoining areas (while its tribal belt continues to shelter the al-Qaeda leaders, like Osama bin Laden, and the Baluchistan province is harboring some of the top Taliban leadership of Afghanistan), President Zardari reportedly said that India was no longer a threat to Pakistan’s security.

He felt that Pakistan’s biggest threat was from terrorism and the Taliban militancy. And it appeared that his military establishment concurred with this revised view.

But this was too good to be true. It is now reported that Pakistan is not happy with the enhanced US military activity against the Taliban in Afghan provinces adjoining Pakistan. Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence Agency fears that the US push against the Taliban in Afghanistan will push them across the border into Pakistan, putting further pressure on Pakistani military already engaged with its own Talibans in the tribal belt and North-West Frontier Province.

The reports suggest (quoting anonymous Pakistani intelligence), that they do not like the idea of withdrawing some formations from the Indian border to face greater Taliban activity from added American military pressure.

And there is the same old argument. Which is that in the event of American withdrawal from Afghanistan at some stage (as happened with the Soviets), since the Afghan war is unwinnable, a Taliban regime in Afghanistan would be a strategic asset against India.

There is an expectation that by maintaining a neutral position vis-à-vis the Afghani Taliban (indeed, sympathizing with them and seeking a formal understanding with them as distinct from the al-Qaeda), Pakistan will be able to exercise greater control over them. Pakistan eventually hopes to become a conduit between the Afghani Talibans and the US that will exclude the al-Qaeda.

The fact, though, is that Pakistan has tried all these stratagems with different groups in its own territory and across the border with disastrous results. Which required it, for instance, to wage a war against them in the Swat valley and in the tribal belt.

Indeed, the line between the Afghan Talibans and their Pakistani counterparts is now so blurred that Pakistani establishment’s espousal of possible deals with militants is becoming increasingly suicidal for the regime.

The steadfast belief that Pakistan can use these militants against India after American withdrawal (which is taken for granted at some point of time) is so pernicious that Pakistan’s governing elite, especially its military establishment, is willing to bet its own existence for the sake of a phantom settling of scores with India.

This is the crux of Pakistan’s existential crisis. And unless this is re-evaluated and the emphasis shifted to building a civil society, there is no long term hope for Pakistan and no solution for the terrorist menace which is developing deeper roots in this country.

COMMENT: What hope for Pakistan?

By S.P.SETH

Pakistan’s vulnerability is not so much from terrorism and militancy but from its failure, since its birth in 1947, to give the country a positive identity. It was created because the Muslim League, the party that led the movement for a separate state, felt that Muslims would not be secure in an independent India with its majority Hindu population. Conceived negatively as a counter to independent India, it sought its identity by regarding India as a hostile, if not an enemy state.

What followed thereafter is well known. Much of Pakistan’s budget and energy were directed toward building up its armed forces and creating political and military alliances to counter a perceived Indian threat.

Not surprisingly, the armed forces and its generals also became the political masters of the country. The interests of the army and the nation became synonymous. With the generals hogging the limelight and pushing army’s interests to the fore, nothing was done to build up the nation in any sustainable way in terms of institution-building, economic, social and educational advancement.

And since India was the identifiable enemy, the militias and Jihadi groups that sprung up during the Afghani struggle against the Soviet Union, were turned on India in the Kashmir region. The Pakistani army and its intelligence services believed that since these militias were its own creation, it would always be able to direct and control them.

But that is not what happened. When Pakistan came under pressure from the US to eradicate terrorists operating both in Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan, Islamabad found that the monster of terrorism they had created was now getting ready to devour the army and the Pakistani state.

Not until very recently, important elements in the armed forces were still hesitant to completely abandon the militias and the Talibans. They argued that the United States would soon be worn out in Afghanistan, unable to carry out its mission. In that case, it would be forced out of Afghanistan. And give Pakistan an opportunity to revive their old links with the militants for use against India and the frail state of Afghanistan.

In other words, even in the midst of worst militant violence, Pakistan’s army remained hesitant to go all out against its terrorist outfits. India still remained the enemy that might have to be dealt with.

There is some realization now that the militant Islamic forces that the armed forces spawned once have turned into a horrible monster. Hence, the military’s operations to clear them out of Swat valley and elsewhere in the tribal region.

But it is all happening too little too late. Such haphazard military operations, causing so much suffering and pain for the civilian population, tends to only compound the problem.