US-Pakistan ties in a knot

By S P SETH

Many people in Pakistan hate the Western coverage of their country as a litany of disasters from terrorism to becoming a nuclear threat for the rest of the world. Here is one such description from a senior Australian journalist who recently visited Pakistan for an investigative report. Paul McGeough’s report in the Sydney Morning Herald headlined, “A monster roaming the world”, began: “Search for a firm footing in Pakistan and there is none—all is quicksand… strategically, politically morally.” The rest of the article is an elaboration of what is wrong with Pakistan.

A recent report in the Economist magazine concludes that Pakistan is a country with “venal civilian leaders; army men hankering for the next coup and having pesky journalists killed off; Islamists who shoot opponents for being liberal.” And it says, “With a friend like Pakistan, who needs enemies?”

A recent BBC documentary has further amplified this image, quoting Taliban sources confirming the US allegations that Pakistan’s ISI is actively involved in helping Taliban. Mullah Azizullah, a Taliban official, reportedly said that the trainers at the Taliban training camps “are all the ISI men.”

Understandably, such negative imaging of Pakistan creates annoyance and resentment in the country. Of course, within Pakistan, some of its finest journalists are even harder on their country’s political and military establishment for their acts of omission and commission, though they don’t much like outsiders telling them what they already know. One notices, though, that the criticism within Pakistani media is now more circumspect, which might have something to do with the country’s worsening relationship with the United States and the need to stand together fearing some sort of US military against Pakistan. The US accuses Pakistan of being in cahoots with the Taliban in its recent attacks in Kabul.

The situation seems to have eased a bit following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit. She, however, kept up the pressure on Pakistan to do more against the Taliban sheltering in its territory as well as against the Haqqani network, believed to be an extension of the ISI. As a result, the Haqqanis might have temporarily moved across into Afghan side of the border. The Pakistani army seems to have stepped up operations against Taliban elements in tribal areas of Waziristan. How long this temporary truce will last is anybody’s guess, because the relationship is based on distrust. But as long as both sides find the other useful, they will try to make it work, though the pressures lately are too sustained and likely to cause more ruptures and political confrontation.

As is, by now, well-known that a sharp slide in Pak-US relations started with the US military operation in Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden, without the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities. Since then it has been one thing after the other, with stepped up Taliban attacks on the US and NATO troops in Kabul, US accusation of ISI’ involvement with the Taliban, and Pakistan’s fear of US military attacks into its tribal areas on top of the current drone operations. This has seriously worked up all sections of the Pakistani people, where support for the United States was already in short supply.

The problem for the United States is that a progressive radicalization of Pakistani people in anti-US terms is making its task of fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan increasingly difficult. As Noam Chomsky, a well-known US academic who is known to hold views different from his governments, (quoting Anatol Lieven, a British specialist) said here in his Sydney Peace Prize lecture: “…destabilizing and radicalizing Pakistan, risking a geopolitical catastrophe for the United States—and the world---which would dwarf anything that could possibly occur in Afghanistan…” is not a wise move.

In Pakistan, the problem, though, is (and has been) that the country’s establishment, dominated by the military, thinks mostly in terms of beefing up their military power to prepare against a foreign attack, most of the time from India. This has skewed Pakistan’s priorities since the fifties, leading it into unwholesome alliances with the US and its Western allies, hoping to have an edge against India that hasn’t worked.

In the eighties, Pakistan got involved into the Afghan imbroglio, first against the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and more recently (since after the 9/11 terrorist attacks) with the US to fight Taliban in Afghanistan, which is not going too well. Indeed, instead of creating a solid alliance with a common purpose, it has plunged their relationship into, probably, their worst crisis. With the US committed to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014, Pakistan apparently is keen to position itself for a determining role in that country.

Which has led both the US and Pakistan to fast track their respective political agendas in Afghanistan. It would appear that Pakistan has lately bolstered up its linkages with the Taliban to establish a privileged position in the post-2014 period, hoping that the Taliban will eventually come on top in any struggle for political power. On the other hand, the US is even more desperate to require Pakistan’s help to deal forcefully with the Taliban. This is part of the US strategy to bring the Taliban into Afghanistan’s political process from a position of strength. At the same time, it requires Pakistan to be a conduit and guarantor of such a peace deal. Which, in effect, means that the Taliban will agree to operate under the present Afghan constitution with Hamid Karzai as the country’s president until the next round of elections. It seems like a forlorn exercise, principally because the Taliban don’t see themselves as a vanquished political and military force.

Whatever the future political and power contours of Afghanistan, the lesson for Pakistan is that the country’s political and military establishments urgently require a reorientation of priorities to provide its much suffering people economic and physical security that has eluded them so long. Because: without internal cohesion and strength, no amount of military power and strategic shuffling will keep Pakistani state afloat for long. Paul McGeough quotes Arif from Human Rights Commission of Pakistan to say: “The government does not have the capacity to tackle any of the issues [confronting the country]. Things will just keep getting bad… and I don’t discount the fact that we can fall into chaos.” It is, therefore, high time for a total national re-think of the country’s future.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Rethinking India-Pakistan relations

By S P SETH

Even as Pakistan’s establishment weighs up the country’s situation in the midst of its multiple woes a certain perspective of contemporary history might help. Ever since India’s partition and the creation of Pakistan as a sovereign state, the relationship between the two countries has been, in so many ways, a continuation of the pre-partition politics. But with independence and separation the stakes rose by externalizing and accentuating, what was once, the internal politics of an undivided people. The Hindu-Muslim divide, fostered by the British during their long rule, is continuing to characterize India-Pakistan relations. As a smaller state with its perceived insecurity, Pakistan sought powerful friends and allies to strengthen it.

This is where the United States came in with its own national and strategic interests. During the Cold War, the US was inclined to regard India with suspicion for its close ties with the Soviet Union. Which created convergence of political and strategic interests between the US and Pakistan, though they didn’t have quite the same agenda. Pakistan wanted to create leverage against India, while the US was more interested in Pakistan’s strategic location not far from the then Soviet Union. The point is that Pakistan’s insecurity against a larger India (a carry over of the pre-partition politics) militated against a fresh start between the two countries. And this has continued to this day, with added complications.

Indeed, with both India and Pakistan as sovereign nations, it was possible, after initial hiccups, to build upon their shared history and culture. But it wasn’t done and both are paying the price for it. For instance, the economic imperative of lifting the standards of their majority populations living in poverty would have created regional stability. There would have been greater cultural interaction to explore a common past and build on it. The vast amount of monies spent on defense budgets could have been used in more productive ways to fund infrastructure thus creating employment opportunities, and to fund literacy and education, to extend and improve health facilities and outcomes and the list would go on. The stakes thus created in common good would have acted as a curb on extremism and terrorist activities.

A shared peace between India and Pakistan is imperative for their common prosperity, now torn by artificial barriers built on prejudice and fear. While India is weighed down by Pakistan’s lurch toward militancy and terrorism mounted by Taliban and associated extremist groups, for Pakistan it is an existential crisis. Therefore, it is time for a rethink in Pakistan to confront the new reality when the state has become a hostage to militant groups dictating the country’s contours in a direction that is alien to majority of its population, if their voting record is anything to go by. In other words, the country’s leadership across the political spectrum requires strategic clarity. That is to decide: which is the biggest danger to Pakistan? Is it a perceived threat from India or a possible internal collapse?

When the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan after a bloody civil war and with Pakistan’s support, it was regarded as a great strategic victory. Under a friendly Taliban regime beholden to Pakistan, Afghanistan was said to provide “strategic depth” in a potential war with India. But what happened was that the Taliban’s nexus with al Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, and the 9/11 attack on the US, believed to have been orchestrated by him and his close lieutenants, eventually ended up embroiling Pakistan in the US war in Afghanistan. Which is still causing serious problems in the country, including rolling attacks in parts of Pakistan by the Taliban’s offshoot, Pakistani Taliban. And these attacks have de-stabilized Pakistan to the point of creating an existential threat to the state.

The concept of “defense in depth” turned into a nightmare created by the Afghan Taliban because of its dalliance with the al Qaeda. But the concept still finds favor with Pakistan’s political and military establishment. As the US proceeds with withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the prospect of Taliban once again capturing power in Afghanistan and beholden to Pakistan for sheltering its top leadership, the idea of “strategic depth” in Afghanistan might once again become attractive.

But it might turn out to be as deceptive as before. Islamabad might find again that a Taliban regime would like to pursue its own agenda. As Tariq Ali has recently commented in the London Review of Books, as part of a review of two books on Afghanistan: “…Gradually, Mullah Omar’s government gained autonomy from its patrons in Islamabad and even engaged in friendly negotiations with US oil companies. But its Wahhabi connections proved fatal. The rest we know.” This time, it might take the form of supporting the Pakistani Taliban against the state. Their ideological affinity to promote and impose a Wahhabi version of Islam on both Afghanistan and Pakistan is a dreadful prospect.

Pakistan, therefore, needs to rethink the country’s ethos and identity. It is true that Pakistan was created to ensure a secure future for the subcontinent’s Muslim population from a Hindu-majority India. But it hasn’t worked like that. It has simply externalized that sense of insecurity. True, the younger generations of people on both sides have very little or no experience of the violence and forced migration of communities that followed partition. But the narrative of that experience by elders and school/university textbooks has, in some ways, deepened the chasm.

Pakistan’s Taliban insurgency is not only widening the gulf, but also threatening the state. Pakistan’s establishment might re-think its founding ideology as a counter to a Hindu-majority India. Its negative formulation tends to cast it into a state of permanent insecurity and threat from India to the point that it can’t even see the serious danger it is facing from within. For sure, it will be controversial after so many years. But there is need to think outside the box of permanent hostility between India and Pakistan, because it hasn’t served the people’s interest. Besides, there is need for a new vision and a new direction in its national affairs.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

The US's Afghan conundrum

By S.P.SETH

The US is in a terrible quandary. Which is: how best to extricate from its ten-year old quagmire in Afghanistan? President Obama’s announcement of a process of withdrawal, starting next month (July), only highlights this predicament. The US doesn’t want to admit that its long military engagement in Afghanistan has been a disaster of monumental proportions in strategic, economic and political terms. Strategically, it has seriously damaged its ally, Pakistan. Parts of Pakistan are now said to be the virtual headquarters of the Afghan Taliban (for which Pakistani establishment cannot escape responsibility), as well as the staging post for operations against NATO and the Afghan government. Which, in turn, invites US drone strikes. This has made many Pakistanis even more bitter with the US than they already were. People are also venting their fury on their own government and the army for their inability or complicity in letting the US flout Pakistan’s sovereignty.

The most dramatic example was the US commando operation in Abbottabad where they killed Osama bin Laden without Islamabad having any inkling of it, until the US informed them after the successful completion of the mission. Not surprisingly, the government and the military came for stinging popular indignation, not so much because the US killed Osama, but the impunity with which the US was perceived to have violated Pakistan’s sovereignty. At times, it would seem that with the US and the Afghan Taliban fighting their battles on or through Pakistani territory, the state in Pakistan has ceased to exist.

The most damaging effect for Pakistan has been the spawning of the Pakistani Taliban, a corollary of its Afghan cousin, which is more dangerous for the Pakistani state because it is its primary target. And with attacks on Pakistani state agencies (police, army and so on), it seeks to destabilize the state, overwhelm it and replace it. The weakening of Pakistan to the point where terrorists run wild and attack people and state institutes at will is an important indictment of the Afghan war. Having gone into Afghanistan to snuff out the al Qaeda and Taliban from Afghanistan and create a stable democratic state, the US has not only failed to do that but its long and unsuccessful military engagement in Afghanistan has also de-stabilized Pakistan.

Again, it is important to point out that the Pakistan’s government and military were willing to play out the US games, without any serious thought of terrible cosequences for their own country. With its Afghan misadventure, the US has seriously weakened its ally, Pakistan, in a very important strategic region bordering on oil and gas rich central Asian states, Iran and China. At another level, its preoccupation with Afghanistan and Iraq wars has enabled China to raise its political and military profile in the Asia-Pacific region to become a serious strategic rival. But that is another story.

At the economic level, although estimates differ about the cost of the US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq (another by-product of the US war on terror), it could be as much 3 trillion dollars to include all the costs (medical treatment of the wounded etc) of a prolonged war. This would amount to as much as 20 per cent of the US GDP. And has certainly complicated, if not contributed, to the US economic crisis that is still haunting the country.

Politically, the Afghan and Iraq wars have tended to polarize the United States. There was remarkable political consensus in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, which enabled the then President George Bush to not only invade Afghanistan but also follow it with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But the consensus started to fray when Iraq was found to have no weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the ostensible reason for attacking Iraq. And the war didn’t seem to be following the Bush administration’s script with the United States getting stuck into a quagmire.

And when Obama became President in 2009, he christened the war in Afghanistan as a war of necessity to hunt down the al-Qaeda and create a democratic and stable Afghanistan. All sorts of combinations and permutations of a mix of military strategies to successfully conclude the Afghan operations have failed. In other words, the United States cannot prevail in Afghanistan militarily—a lesson painfully learnt earlier by the British in the 19^th century and the Soviet Union in the nineteen eighties. Even the latest US strategy of putting enough military pressure on the Taliban, applied since last year with more US troops deployed in the Afghanistan, isn’t working. They are able to explode bombs and enact suicide attacks at will, even in the most protected zones.

The US is now seeking to engage Taliban in political talks to, hopefully, bring the war to an end. Confirming that the US is engaged in “very preliminary talks” with the Taliban, the US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, however, maintained, “… that real reconciliation talks are not likely to be able to make any substantive headway until at least this winter [because] I think that the Taliban have to feel themselves under military pressure, and begin to believe that they cant’ win before they’re willing to have a serious conversation.” Another obstacle, according to Gates, was locating members of the Taliban who could credibly speak for its leadership. It might be recalled that last year a supposed Taliban commander flown to Kabul for peace talks was found to be an imposter. Therefore, in the absence of any credible confirmation from Taliban’s top leadership (Mullah Omar, for instance), it is difficult to confirm Robert Gates’ confirmation of peace talks.

In any case, the Taliban has time and again maintained that the NATO forces must withdraw from Afghanistan before peace talks can begin. This doesn’t look like the language of an enemy under military pressure. As for the US, it has its own conditions for the Taliban “to renounce al-Qaeda, forsake violence, and adhere to the Afghan constitution.” Under the circumstances, it seems unlikely that there will be much advance during the supposed peace talks.

The point is: why would the Taliban like to help out the United States with an ‘honorable’ exit when all signs point to the fact that the US cannot sustain intervention much longer due to serious military, economic and political constraints. Militarily, the US is not winning the war. And after ten years of non-result, war weariness has set in with the United States. Economically, the ballooning cost of the war in a depressed economy is further compounding the US’s economic woes. Politically, with the election season setting in for the next presidential election in 2012, Barak Obama needs some kind of forward movement of the Afghan imbroglio to win another term.

The question then is: will the US quit Afghanistan like the Soviet Union? Whatever the result, it will still like to frame its withdrawal as an ‘honorable’ exit. Will the Taliban oblige? Perhaps, not.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Pakistan needs a people’s revolution

By S P SETH

In the midst of Pakistan’s multiple problems, including an existential threat to the state, one wonders why its leaders fail to see the danger. And when some public minded and brave individuals dare to take a stand and expose the rot, they are simply murdered. The murder of the Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, who publicly argued for an amendment of the blasphemy law for its misuse, is an important example. Instead of following up Taseer’s cause, the Gilani Government just caved in to militants and dropped his passionate advocacy of such a humane measure. Indeed those like Taseer who were similarly committed to amend the blasphemy law were told to lie low and were shuffled around. Sherry Rehman comes to mind in this context.

What it means is that militant Islamists who would like to take the country back to the times when men treated women as their property (they still do, by and large) have the run of the place. They can kill people, intimidate the government and do as they please. And if the state cannot provide security to its citizens for voicing their views, then the government of the country becomes a virtual non-entity. It would sometimes seem that the militants and their agents have penetrated the state and they are running it to the ground.

Salmaan Taseer is now a memory for his relatives and friends. His former political colleagues in the PPP do not want to have a bar of his crusade. This is a message to other activists, who want their country to be decent and humane, that they might also meet the same fate, if they wouldn’t shut up. And when a brave and public-minded journalist like Saleem Shehzad refused to shut up on another issue, he paid the ultimate price. He was murdered in the most gruesome way and gagged forever. His body bore the marks of torture as a lesson to anyone treading his way.

The ISI is believed to have been behind this; though it denies any connection. It raises the important question: if security outfits start killing journalists and others doing their job of uncovering the truth and exposing scandals, who will then police these institutions? Are they beyond the law they are charged to uphold? Apparently, yes. In other words, Pakistan is in the midst of lawlessness where people do not know where to turn when organized killings take place.

Why did they kill Shehzad? The clue is in the first part of his two-part article (the second part never appeared following his murder) in Asia Times Online. Shehzad wrote: “Several weeks ago, naval intelligence traced an al-Qaeda cell operating inside several naval bases in Karachi…” As further investigation of al-Qaeda penetration in the navy was pursued, it “pointed to more than one al-Qaeda cell… in the navy….” The authorities mounted a crackdown. Fearing that the arrest and interrogation of their men would expose the al-Qaeda connection, they mounted an attack on PNS Mehran base with inside knowledge of the layout and geography of the base. The important point in the article was that the al-Qaeda operatives were ensconced in the navy and, presumably, in the army and air force too. And they weren’t answerable to the military hierarchy, its discipline and its doctrine. They got their instructions from their al-Qaeda network. This is a serious situation for Pakistan.

The militants are not only terrorizing the populace of the country, they also seem entrenched within the armed forces systematically destroying its cohesion and discipline. Like a good journalist, Shehzad refused to divulge sources for his story when called for a ‘friendly’ chat by the relevant ISI bosses. And was duly warned obliquely (as he mentioned in his emails to some of his friends and colleagues) what might happen to him. He probably thought that having told his friends of the ISI warning might be a deterrent, but it didn’t work.

The point is that such lawlessness by militants and state agencies is eating Pakistan from within. If this situation continues for some more time, Pakistani state might crumble from within. And there is no knowing what sort of political order might emerge after an indeterminate period of chaos in the country.

And like Roman emperor Caligula, Pakistan’s rulers continue to behave like they are immune to any kind of fallout from their country’s sad state of affairs for which they are themselves responsible. Indeed, if they were to become conscious of the grim reality of their acts of omission and commission (or they simply don’t care), they will have to do something to prevent this slide to destruction and doom. While the rulers don’t care, the people of Pakistan do. For instance, they have time and again voted (whenever elections were held) overwhelmingly for moderate political parties, thus rejecting the politics of militancy in the name of religion.

They hoped that these parties would steer the country toward economic and physical security. Alternately, after losing faith in the elected civilian establishment given to corruption, nepotism, dynastic cronyism, and shady deals with all and sundry; they looked to the military, after periodic coups, for a better outcome. Unfortunately, they have been disappointed and frustrated time and again. No wonder, the people are losing heart not knowing how to adjust and adapt to a state of constant insecurity and deprivation. Which has bread a sense of apathy and indifference.

They apparently don’t see much difference between the country’s political and military establishment, and the militants--- both unconcerned about people’s security and welfare. When some public-minded citizens like Saleem Shehzad and Salmaan Taseer cared and dared, they were eliminated unceremoniously. And that should intimidate those who might take up where they left.

The only hope lies in a peaceful people’s movement to reclaim their country. One discerns small stirrings of this as people are urged to come together for peaceful protests like the Arab Spring. This need is further reinforced by the killing of a youth by the Rangers for no real reason; its video broadcast all over the world highlighting the sad state of lawlessness in Pakistan. The peaceful protests by the people tend to overcome fear because there is security in numbers. Will people rise to reclaim their country? Only time will tell.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

What ails US-Pakistan relations?

By S.P.SETH

Pakistan is very much in the news these days, though for the wrong reasons. In the midst of all the stuff about Osama bin Laden’s killing and who knew what, in Australia the visiting Bhutto family scion, Fatima Bhutto, here for the Sydney Writers’ Festival, made quite a splash. She was in great demand for interviews by the media. She came out as a very personable, articulate and passionate (for her people) young woman, making her points concisely without hyperbole. Even when she was critical of the United States, she said her piece matter-of-factly without wanting to score points.

Her book, Songs of Blood and Sword, is a passionate study of a daughter’s love for her father, who was killed in mysterious circumstances when Benazir Bhutto (Fatima’s aunt) was Pakistan’s prime minister. And she doesn’t hide her conviction, as she told a television interviewer here, that her aunt and her husband (the current President Zardari, Bhutto’s husband) might have had a hand in the ghastly deed---if not in the actual murder, at least, in the cover up that followed as she was the country’s prime minister at the time.

She said she had no plans to enter politics because dynastic politics (as with the Bhuttos) was against the spirit of democracy. She seemed to think that the Pakistani state was doomed. But she made a difference between the state (governed by a highly corrupt establishment) and its people who were resilient. She said that the US aid wasn’t helping the country as it seldom reached the people, being pocketed by the corrupt establishment and its crony.

Which brings us to the present crisis in US-Pakistan relations in the wake of the US military operation---executed without Pakistani knowledge--- that killed Osama bin Laden. The United States believes that some elements of the Pakistani establishment (principally military/ISI) were sheltering Osama, and is in cahoots with the terrorists. Pakistan acknowledges that there was some intelligence failure in the matter. But it strongly rejects any suggestion that it is soft on terrorism, pointing to the large number of civilian and military casualties they have suffered while fighting terrorism.

Islamabad is angry that the United States chose to violate its sovereignty in executing the Osama operation. There are, however, reports that Pakistan and the US had an understanding that allowed the latter to go after the top al Qaeda leadership sheltering in Pakistan, with Islamabad reserving the right to condemn these incursions. In other words, there is a lot of shadowboxing going on in Pak-US exchanges, with neither side wanting to blow up the relationship.

But popular pressures on both sides are quite demanding. On the Pakistan side, the popular opinion is as much critical of their own establishment (the civilian government, military/ISI) as it is of the Americans for, what people see, as brazen violation of Pakistani sovereignty. On the American side, the Congress is seeking some answers from Pakistan and threatening to suspend aid that has amounted to nearly $20 billion over the last 10 years.

There are several factors that underpin relations between countries. In the case of US-Pakistan relations, Pakistan’s geo-strategic location in the midst of a war against terrorism in Afghanistan, which has also spilled into Pakistan, is the most compelling factor. In this context, there is a general view that both the countries are stuck with each other despite all the hue and cry. Pakistan is said to be indispensable to the US for its war against terror in Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistan is heavily dependent on US aid. It is, therefore, a marriage of convenience with no prospect of a divorce, as some will argue.

The question is: is this conventional wisdom so sacrosanct? In the short term, as long as the US is mired in Afghanistan, this certainly is true. But under the Obama administration, the US military engagement is time bound to withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1914, with the drawdown of its troops starting middle of this year. With Osama bin Laden now killed, the domestic pressure in the United States for withdrawal will be even more compelling. It is important to remember that the US invaded Afghanistan because its Taliban government refused to surrender Osama whom the US held responsible for the 9/11 US bombing. It might be argued that if Osama bin Laden had been handed over to the United States, there would have been no Afghan war and Pakistan might have escaped being conscripted into it by the United States.

With Osama bin Laden eliminated, the ostensible cause for US military engagement is no more compelling. Of course, things have got complicated during 10 years of US military operations in Afghanistan. First of all, there is a new Karzai government propped up by the United States to democratize, stabilize and develop Afghanistan. If this were to be accomplished, Afghanistan will cease to be a terrorist hub posing threat to the United States and other countries. Of course, this seems improbable with the Taliban able to mount insurgency operations at will.

To deal with this, the US is seeking to eliminate the leadership of both the Taliban and al Qaeda through drone attacks on their hideouts on the Pakistani side of the Afghan-Pak border. At the same time, they are also conducting military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US is also putting pressure on Pakistan to mount further military operations against terrorists within its own territory. These multiple operations are designed to force the Taliban to seek peace and work within the parameters of Afghanistan’s constitution. In an ideal world, this is how it should be. But Afghanistan is hardly ideal. Therefore, things are not likely to work according to the US or anyone else’s script.

Another complicating factor is the US belief, indeed conviction, that Pakistan is playing a double game of simultaneously keeping their lines of communication open with top leadership of the Afghan Taliban. It is widely believed that the Americans will not stick around in Afghanistan for long, with the war not going their way and because of their internal political and economic constraints. At the same time, Pakistan’s relations with the Karzai government have never been good which, among other things, is perceived being partial toward New Delhi.

Against this backdrop, its prior contacts with the top Taliban leadership, said to be sheltering in Pakistan, will enable it to play an important role in determining the political future of Afghanistan, in which the Taliban are likely to feature prominently. With a friendly regime in Afghanistan, Pakistan will be able to have strategic depth against India. The problem, though, is that the last time Pakistan had a friendly regime in Afghanistan, they got sucked into the war on terror that is still unfolding; its recent chapter being the US killing of Osama bin Laden and the open airing of the blame game on both sides.

Obviously, neither US nor Pakistan want to rupture the relationship. But in Pakistan, both the civilian government and military are under intense popular scrutiny after the US killing of Osama bin Laden. Pakistan’s civilian governments have been savaged in the past too for their various acts of omission and commission, thus providing the trigger for a military coup now and then. But this time the military leadership is as much under microscope, if not more, than the civilian government. The Zardari government is a bit of a joke, though not a funny one with so much at stake for Pakistan. But with the military now joining the ranks of derision in popular imagination, Pakistan is really a troubled nation.

At the same time, US-Pakistan row, if it escalates further, has the prospect of endangering US aid to Pakistan. The United States’ aid to Pakistan is critical in some sectors. The popular anger in Pakistan against the United States is so widespread and so vociferous that its people want the country to recover its full sovereignty by spurning US aid. For instance, the cricketer-turned-politician, Imran Khan, is leading the charge for this and blasting the ruling establishment for their subservience. Which is all fine but, without any alternative vision and a concrete blueprint for Pakistan’s future, these kind of angry and populist demands do not take the country anywhere.

There is a sense in Pakistan that US needs it more than Pakistan needs the United States. This is because of Pakistan’s crucial geo-strategic location regionally, and for the war on terrorism. But, at the same time, it is increasingly believed that the United States might withdraw from Afghanistan because (I) it is not winning the war in Afghanistan and (2) the Bush administration’s rhetoric of war on terror was overblown. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were unnecessary and they have simply prolonged America’s agony.

At some point, and sooner rather than later, the United States is going to disengage from Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan high and dry. In other words, however prized Pakistan’s strategic location might be, the United States’ domestic political and economic constraints dictate withdrawal.

However, the United States is also worried about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, fearing that the terrorists might get their hands on them through lax security or whatever. Bruce Riedel, an influential US strategist, graphically describes this fear: “Imagine a jihadist state with the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world. If that doesn’t scare you at night, then you have been watching too many horror movies.” He reportedly told this to an audience at the Brookings Institution. Pakistan, on the other hand, seems to fear that encouraged by the Osama operation, the United States or some other country might be tempted to go after Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. And it has threatened catastrophic consequences.

There is thus an underlying distrust between Pakistan and the United States, now magnified with the Osama episode. Indeed, the United States doubts Pakistan’s commitment and sincerity regarding anti-terrorism. An example of this is a piece in a recent issue of the New Yorker where Lawrence Wright, a prize winning American writer, suggests that the Pakistani military might not be all that keen to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders because that would put the army out of business by drying up the flow of dollars from the United States. To quote Wright, “…What would happen if the Pakistani military actually captured or killed Al Qaeda’s top leaders?” His answer: “The great flow of dollars would stop, just as it had in Afghanistan after the Soviets limped away…”

Such deep distrust might dissipate or moderate over time, but the bitterness and a sense of betrayal on both sides is likely to persist, more so because the Pakistani people are much more exercised over the US unilateralism, whether it is the drones’ operations in the frontier badlands or something big like Osama’s killing. This crisis of confidence is eating away at US-Pakistan relations. And Pakistan is worried because of its considerable dependence on US aid. Whether or not this aid reaches people of Pakistan is not considered terribly relevant by the generals, as long as it enables them to keep expanding their share of the pie.

Not surprisingly, at this critical juncture in US-Pakistan relations, Pakistan is turning to China for moral and material support. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s recent China visit, among other things, was designed to let the United States know that Pakistan has other options and a trusted friend in China. And Beijing suitably reassured the visiting Prime Minister Gilani of their friendship for and support of Pakistan. But there was nothing concrete, apart from the usual expressions of goodwill, friendship and further expansion of cultural and economic ties. China certainly would give Pakistan aid for economic projects, and equipment and weaponry for the military, as it is already doing. The military and economic aid might be expanded. But China is likely to stay out of Pakistan’s multiple fault lines of Islamic militancy, sectarian strife, ethnic separatism; civil-military hiatus and fragmented polity.

In the ultimate analysis, Pakistan would need to launch a nation-building popular movement to raise literacy, empower women, foster economic activity and development, strengthen its institutions, promote democracy based on the primacy of civilian authority and so on. The threat to Pakistan is not so much external but internal. And if that is not tackled, things might get worse before they ever get better. (Note: this article was first published in Daily Times)

Osama bin Laden and After

Osama Bin Laden and after
By S.P.SETH

The wild popular jubilation in the United States over Osama bin Laden’s killing is indicative of the need for a demonstrative victory. The successful execution of a limited operation against Osama in his hideout in Abbottabad couldn’t have been more dramatic. It had all the hallmark of a Hollywood thriller resulting in the good guys (the US special forces) prevailing over the evil (Osama bin Laden), with his deserved death. As President Obama said, the justice was done for the 9/11 bombing of the New York Trade Centre, with Osama as its mastermind. Or to put it in the cowboy/Indian analogy, as the Sydney Morning Herald did editorially: “For the moment, America is walking tall back into town with the body of the outlaw [Osama] thrown over the saddle.”
However, Geoffrey Robertson, a well-known international law practitioner, is not happy with the way Osama was killed and disposed off. In a newspaper article, he writes: “…It [Osama’s death] endorses what looks increasingly like a cold-blooded assassination ordered by a president, who as a former law professor, knows the absurdity of his statement that ‘justice was done’”. As we know now from the US Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) director, the order was to kill him. Osama was unarmed at the time of his execution, and his young wife was shot in the leg but not killed.
Osama bin Laden’s death is a great morale booster for the United States at a time when much of the news about the country is not all that encouraging. The economy is languishing, the dollar is sliding, its credit rating is no longer top notch and the grind of the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is taking its toll on the United States in all sorts of ways. Whether the positive impact of Osama’s killing will be fleeting or lasting remains to be seen. The reaction in the United States, both at the public and official level, is self-congratulatory. President Obama, in his victory speech to declare Osama’s death, was keen to highlight his personal role. With his polls sliding, this should help him to regain the popular ground, though it is too early to make any confident prediction. Because, in politics, even a week can be an eternity. In Obama’s case, his re-election still has quite some time to go.
Apart from the news and commentary on Osama’s death, the second most discussed related issue in the global media is whether or not the Pakistan Government was complicit in hiding Osama bin Laden. The clincher for those who believe in Pakistan’s complicity is that Osama couldn’t have lived in his Abbottabad house for an extended period without being detected in a garrison town with its elite military academy and other military facilities all around. The Pakistan Government is simply trying to shrug off the whole affair with varied explanations. But it might have some explaining to do to the United States, even though the latter, at its highest levels, is seeking to emphasize their shared anti-terror commitment and credentials.
It is common knowledge that, of late, the relations between the United States and Pakistan have been, more than usually, tense, especially after the Raymond Davis affair. The Davis episode aside, the United States has been suspicious of Pakistan’s perceived duplicitous dealings, seeking to keep their options open with the terrorists while professing a common cause with the United States. Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, bluntly said, last May, “…I believe somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are, and where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Taliban are.” However, her latest statement tends to gloss over this to emphasize Pakistan’s help in fighting terrorism. Pakistan, however, will come under greater scrutiny in the US Congress and media, as is already happening, with damaging effect on their bilateral relationship; though efforts will be made to contain the damage.
Osama’s death is likely to lead to random acts of violence by assorted terrorist outfits professing ideological inspiration from their former mentor. A large-scale terrorist attack is likely to take time, if it does eventuate. In the Arab world, supposed to have been the center of Osama’s Islamist revolution, his message has already been overtaken by the popular revolutionary upsurge to overthrow the region’s dictators and replace them with a democratic dispensation. In a sense, in the heartland of Islam, Osama’s massage has become irrelevant for the time being. But in the medium and long terms, if political democracy doesn’t lead to economic betterment of the people, there is a danger that people might find refuge in religion looking for targets of hate and violence elsewhere.
The question then is: What made Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda tick? Because, if it was relevant then, it might still be lurking. An insight into this is provided by an interview he gave CNN in 1997. He said, “It [US] wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose agents on us [Arab kings and dictators] to rule us, and then wants us to agree to all this.” He added, “If we refuse to do so, it says we are terrorists.” In this regard, at least, the people in the Middle East have risen to overthrow some of the regional dictators. In other words, the ongoing people’s revolt in the Middle East has made Osama’s thesis dated, though the US and Western domination of Middle Eastern economies is still relevant and is likely to remain a contentious issue.
Osama’s rage on the Palestinian question is still relevant. He said, “When Palestinian children throw stones against the Israeli occupation, the US says they are terrorists. Whereas when Israel bombed the United Nations building in Lebanon while it was full of children and women, the US stopped any plan to condemn Israel.” Israeli intransigence and US support of it remains a provocative issue for the Muslim world.
In his confident advocacy of the ending of “the legend of the so-called superpower that is America”, Osama and his band of fighters, who became al-Qaeda, were inspired by their victory against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the eighties. Once the Soviets were forced to quit Afghanistan, the US didn’t appear invincible to them. And Osama’s thesis/ideology found resonance with many Muslims in the world, where al-Qaeda franchises to kill people became popular.
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda provided the trigger against the US and Western powers’ perceived injustices against the Muslim world. Susan Sontag, a US writer, had the courage to articulate this soon after the 9/11 attacks in a short essay published in the New Yorker. She wrote on September 24, 2001, “The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public.”
And she added, “Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?...”
Her withering criticism of US self-image and policies, for which she was pilloried relentlessly in her country, remains relevant.

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times

Saudi Arabia’s pre-emptive doctrine

By S.P.SETH

After the relative ease of people’s revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, things are not going straightforward in North Africa and the Middle East. The people are facing stiff resistance from their despotic rulers. Which is not surprising because the march of history is never linear. There will always be twists and turns and setbacks. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi regime is fighting back with great brutality to re-establish control over the eastern part of the country, with Benghazi as its nerve centre. The struggle in Libya appears to have entered a crucial stage, with the US and other Western countries still undecided about how best to help the rebels.

In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, the royal family is trying to deal with the situation by a mix of bribing the people through financial largesse and using a big stick, particularly in the largely Shia populated Eastern Province, where the unrest is quite widespread and has led to the use of force by the Saudi security establishment. The Eastern Province is rich in oil, but its people have remained marginalized and discriminated because of their Shia faith. Until now, they have been kept under tight control as second class citizens. They have always been restive but with the new revolutionary ferment enveloping the Middle East, they are now keen to breath freely under a democratic dispensation.

In Saudi Arabia, therefore, the people’s struggle also has a sectarian tinge with its Shia population seeking equal opportunities and democratic rule, as well as the freedom to practice their faith with their own mosques and rituals. The Shias constitute about 10 per cent of the population, with most concentrated in the oil rich Eastern Province. The Saudi ruling class is obsessed with sectarian divisions, particularly because of the perceived Iranian threat. They have been badly shaken by the popular upsurge in Bahrain, which is about 70 per cent Shia. Its Sunni ruling dynasty has generally dealt with the Shia majority in a ham-handed and discriminatory way. And when the popular upsurge broke out there, Bahrain’s ruling establishment sought to deal with it through overwhelming force. Which only further fuelled resistance, with the rebels demanding a democratic order. The violence of the regime has only intensified.

The situation In Bahrain has become even more explosive with the arrival of troops from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The rebels have called it “…an overt occupation…” Iran has called the move an “occupation” and an “invasion”. The situation is further complicated because Iran has long regarded Bahrain as its territory, though this claim has been dormant for quite some time.

There are two issues here. First, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are connected by a 25 kilometers causeway reaching into Saudi Arabia’s Shia-majority Eastern Province, where there have already been protests leading to the use of police force. Riyadh fears that Shia resistance on both sides of the causeway will feed on each other. And with Iran not far away from Bahrain, it will try to subvert Bahrain and the Gulf region. The Shia Iran is Saudi Arabia’s ultimate nightmare, and there has been no love lost between the two countries. It was dramatized in the WikieLeaks cables, with the Saudi King urging the US to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Will Iran fish into the troubled regional waters. It doesn’t seem likely. First: because Iran’s clerical establishment has enough on its plate as it is, with the opposition in the country mounting its own protests. Second: Iran has pretensions to being the leader of the Islamic world. Therefore, any open advocacy of a sectarian Shia cause would distract from its leadership aspirations. Third: any serious intervention by Iran will bring in the US, with its 5^th fleet stationed there.

In any case, an overwhelming use of force against rebels, whether in Bahrain and/or Saudi Arabia, will be counterproductive. It is important to realize that if cornered, only a small section of the rebels can do havoc to oil installations and US military bases. And this will have repercussions across the globe.

The Saudi monarchy is hardly popular among its majority Sunni citizens. It has been tolerated out of deep fear of consequences of being thrown into some dungeon, without due recourse to proper constitutional processes. But with revolutionary ferment in the region, its people are prepared to test the waters. There have already been protests by hundreds of family members of people jailed without charge to demand their release. This wouldn’t have happened without the revolutionary ferment in the region. The Internet is buzzing with calls for staging rage rallies on the Egyptian model. In other words, people are shedding off their fear. And that spells danger for the Saudi royals.

And what is the response of the Saudi authorities? Predictably, they announced a $36 billion package of subsidies etc. If the authorities were expecting an enthusiastic response from its citizenry for this gesture, this certainly hasn’t happened. Indeed, the country’s leading intellectuals have reportedly warned that financial gestures, however big, are no substitute for real political reforms. According to Shadi Hamid from the Brookings Doha Center, “The Saudi regime is learning all the wrong lessons from Egypt and Tunisia”. Because: “The unrest in the region is not fundamentally economic. It’s fundamentally about politics.”

The economics certainly plays a role. But, as Hamid says “…what the events of the past few months have shown us is that Arabs are looking for freedom, dignity and democracy---and if the Saudi leadership can’t see that, then they’re in trouble.” Saudi Arabia a closed political system with all power vested in the ruling dynasty, with its myriad princes and relations. The kingdom has faced for many years an undercurrent of dissatisfaction from its citizens. The dynasty managed to make a partnership of sorts with the clerical establishment by buying its political silence in return for promoting and exporting religious orthodoxy of the Wahabi Islamic tradition with money and political patronage.

But the demographics and rising unemployment among the country’s youth is changing the situation in Saudi Arabia. Almost half the country’s population is reportedly under the age of 18, and 40 per cent of the20-24 old are said to be out of work. And many of the young are educated, connected with the world through social media like Facebook, Twitter etc. With this kind of exposure to the outside world, living under an oppressive regime with near-total social and political control is clearly weighing on the people. This is a recipe for disaster sooner or later, especially in the new revolutionary situation.

With such combustible situation at home, one has to wonder why Saudi Arabia has taken on the mantle of saving Bahrain’s ruling family. Of course, they fear that the toppling of the Bahraini monarchy could have a ripple effect on the Saudi kingdom. This, therefore, looks like the Saudi application of the former US President George Bush’s pre-emptive doctrine.

Well, we all know what happened and is happening to Bush’s adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moving Saudi troops into Bahrain doesn’t look like a sensible strategy, and has the potential of plunging the region into an unthinkable disaster of global dimension.

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times

Israeli veto on US’ Palestine policy

By S.P.SETH

Even as the despotic Middle Eastern regimes are falling, the US is continuing to dither. One area where the US now can act with vigor is the continued Israeli intransigence over the Palestinian issue. Obviously, at the present time when the Middle Eastern countries are seeking to overthrow their dictators and despots, the attention of its people is primarily focused on their struggle at hand. But when things settle down and they forge new relations with the United States, even Egypt and Jordan, the two countries with peace treaties with Israel, are unlikely to actively help Israel to continue choking off Gaza, as Hosni Mubarak’s regime did.

Israel has always argued that its occupation of Palestinian territories is not an issue of much, if any, relevance in the Middle Eastern polity. Therefore, all those who argue that a resolution of the Palestinian question will significantly improve the US and Israeli relations with the Arab world, indeed with the Muslim world, are barking up the wrong tree.

Even Barack Obama once believed that a resolution of the Palestinian issue will greatly help the US make a new start with the Muslim world. Unless one is a downright bigot, it makes sound sense. As David Remnick writes in a recent issue of the New Yorker:”….The Netanyahu government’s refusal to come to terms with the Palestinians , and its insistence on settlement building, have steadily undermined both the security and the essence of the [Israeli]state, which was founded as a refuge from dispossession… [and] its prospects will not be enhanced by an adherence to the status quo [of occupation].”

Remnick adds, “That was true before the uprising in Cairo, and will remain true after it. This was true before the uprising in Cairo, and will remain true after it.” Because: “Judgment—whether rendered by gods or by people---can be postponed but not forestalled.”

But is Washington listening? Not at all, judging by its veto of the Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli settlement activity in occupied Palestinian territories. The irony is that only a short while ago the Obama administration was urging Israel to extend its 10-month moratorium (which the Netanyahu government was forced to impose under pressure from the Obama administration on illegal construction) for a little longer to facilitate peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Authority. Which Tel Aviv refused?

If, this was the US position a while ago, why did it not join other Security Council members to condemn Israel for acting against international law? Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, argued it was a matter better pursued in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

At a time when the Arab world is going through a people’s revolution, on the Palestinian issue the US is still taking shelter behind arcane and, frankly, absurd arguments that even its European allies are finding it hard to digest. As Jonathan Freedland has written in the Guardian, “… that peace with Arab rulers alone could never last, and that one day Israel will have to make peace with the peoples [Arabs] it lives among.”

And he adds, “ That day may not be coming soon—but that truth just got a whole lot harder to avoid.” Not if the United States will continue to reinforce Israeli delusion by giving it political, economic and military support.

The point is that the US’ Middle Eastern strategy is in tatters. It had two pillars. First: an alliance with regional dictators to keep the Arab people down because, if allowed democratic rights, they might elect an Islamist regime hostile to the US strategic interests in the region. Indeed, there was a convergence of interests between the US and Arab dictators and monarchs because both feared the Arab people and Islamists.

The second pillar is the United States’ unquestioning commitment to Israeli state and its “security”. Both pillars are interconnected because Israeli “security” and US strategic interests require supine rulers in the Middle East, like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, that would do their bidding.

Regarding the first, the People’s Power has shown that Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups were as much spooked by the popular and essentially secular nature of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world as anybody else. The militant Islam as a political force was largely exaggerated. Indeed, the protesters everywhere were gathering around the banner of freedom and democracy that should calm US fears.

Even a prominent US conservative analyst like Robert Kagan of Brookings Institution, a prominent early advocate of Iraq war, has said, “ We were overly spooked by the victory of Hamas” in the 2006 Palestinian elections. And he says, “…There’s no way for us to go through the long evolution of history without allowing Islamists to participate in democratic society.”

Which raises a pertinent question: “What are we going to do ---support dictators for the rest of eternity because we don’t want Islamists taking their share of some political system in the Middle East?” In other words, the US would need to reorient its Middle Eastern policy to accommodate the dynamics of democracy in that region, including legitimate political representation of Islamic parties.

Writing in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof is equally emphatic when he says, “For decades, the US embraced corrupt and repressive autocracies in the Middle East, turning a blind eye to torture and repression, in part because of fear that the ‘democratic rabble’ might be hostile to us.” He adds, “Far too often, we were both myopic and just plain on the wrong side.”

An important factor in this has been the Israeli pressure, reinforced by the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States, to keep supporting and nurturing the despotic rulers because they were easy to manipulate and were equally fearful of the “democratic rabble”. Over the decades, Israel and the US have become indivisible over the Middle East, particularly on the Palestinian question. And that still seems to be the case, despite all the fluttering of democracy in the Arab world, as evident in the US vetoing of the UN Security Council resolution to condemn Israeli settlement activity in occupied Palestine.

Unless the United States starts seeing its national interest independently of Israel, there will be this dichotomy in its Middle Eastern policy. The democratic Arab countries in a new Middle East are unlikely to confront Israel militarily over Palestine, but their popular constituencies at home will not let them turn a blind eye to the sufferings and bombing of fellow Arabs in the Palestine. And this will have an important bearing on their relations with the United States.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Egypt Wins

By S.P.SETH

One good thing about the revolutionary upsurge in the Middle East was a debate of sorts in Pakistan about its relevance and possible replication in this country. However, the only common thread between the two situations is that people in Pakistan, like their counterparts in the Middle East, are frustrated with their rulers and would like deliverance from them. Which the Egyptian people have achieved by overthrowing Hosni Mubarak.

But the situation in Pakistan is quite different. Pakistan’s identity is much more fragmented on ethnic, regional and sectarian lines. And there is no single symbol of all that is wrong with the country, like Hosni Mubarak was in Egypt. The religion (Islam) that was supposed to be a binding factor has increasingly become divisive with terrorist violence, and the country seems to be loosing its moorings. The Taliban in Pakistan want to redefine the country in their own image and their own version of Islam. And realizing how hard that task would be, they have decided to achieve it by terrorizing the people into submission.

But even in Egypt, the revolution didn’t have an easy task. Until the last moment Mubarak kept everyone in suspense and then announced on the state television that he wasn’t going anywhere until next September when elections were likely to be held. In other words, he would still preside over the country’s transition. When the people’s revolution started in Egypt, Mubarak seemed so close to becoming another Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia. But since then, the regime regrouped, threatening to hold on to power at almost any cost.

There were reasons for this. The most important was that the Mubarak regime put up a united front, even when people read signs that the army was somehow empathetic with them. The army had said that they wouldn’t shoot at their own people and expressed understanding of their legitimate aspirations. But there were first hand accounts of the army’s involvement in the kidnapping and torturing of many people in the popular protest movement. Vice-President Omar Suleiman was even threatening the country with a military coup. He said that the protests are “very dangerous for society and we can’t put up with this at all.” This was not the talk of an empathetic army.

The spontaneous outbreak of the people’s movement took the regime totally by surprise. Not surprisingly, its initial response was ad hoc, though brutal. As it went along, it tried a stick and carrot approach, initially coming out with a police crackdown that didn’t work. The army declaring that they wouldn’t shoot down their own people followed this. This obviously encouraged the people, and unnerved the regime. The next stage was another dose of intimidation and killings when the regime mobilized their squads of thugs attacking peaceful protesters. This proved counter-productive, creating angry reaction among the regime’s foreign backers like the United States, and its Western allies.

Which brings us to the United States, and its major Western allies’ inability to decide whether to back the Egyptian popular upsurge or stand behind their loyal ally. In the event they seem to have decided to stand on the fence. Even when the US sought to put extra pressure on the Mubarak regime for change, the emphasis always was that the process of change should happen through the agency of the existing government. Indeed, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Cairo, Frank Wisner (a former US ambassador to Egypt), sent to assess the situation and report back to his government, told a security conference in Munich, “President Mubarak’s continued leadership is critical—it is his opportunity to write his own legacy.” Imagine President Mubarak being allowed to write his own legacy by leaving the presidency to his son, Gamal.

Hosni Mubarak regime was hoping to wear down the protesters through a process of attrition, hoping that the “silent majority” (dictators always live with such fantasies) will rise up in support of the regime. Which, as we know, didn’t happen. The US vacillation, even though frowned and criticized at times when it bordered on criticism, was not altogether discouraging. For instance, if you were Hosni Mubarak, you wouldn’t be discouraged with Hillary Clinton’s comment that “revolutions have overthrown dictators in the name of democracy, only to see the process hijacked by new autocrats [read Muslim Brotherhood] who use violence, deception, and rigged elections to stay in power.” A constant US refrain was that change and stability should go hand in hand.

Mubarak was also encouraged by the active advocacy of his case with the United States by Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi king reportedly was even ready to replace US aid for Egypt from its own coffers. All these factors kept Mubarak’s hopes alive that if only he could hold his nerves, and his regime stood by him, he would be able to write his own legacy, as US special envoy, Frank Wisner, said at a Munich security conference.

Encouraged by these factors, Mubarak was going to tough it out. And his loyal intelligence chief (made vice-president), was right behind him. He bluntly told people that there would be “no ending of the regime” and no immediate departure for Hosni Mubarak. He expressed his preference for dialogue with the protesters, issuing a veiled warning, though, “We don’t want to deal with Egyptian society with police tools.” Which meant that if the Egyptian people didn’t behave; the government might have no option but to use brutal force. This would suggest that Egypt was close to a bloodbath if the army had gone on to enforce Mubarak’s declaration on the state television that he wasn’t going anywhere. So what happened within less than 24 hours that made Mubarak quit the presidency?

It would be fair to assume that the army eventually decided against using force on its people gathered in large numbers in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere in the country. And without the army’s prop and support Mubarak was a nobody, when his people were dead set against him. It is also relevant to note that by this time the popular revolt had engulfed much of the country. Mubarak’s much touted rural supporters were nowhere to be seen. In the circumstances, the task of keeping Mubarak in power till September, when elections were due, seemed absurd at horrible cost in terms of people’s lives.

The scenes of jubilation on the news of Mubarak’s departure went on into the night, and the feeling was so overwhelming that many people seemed unwilling to go home. They wanted to keep on savoring their victory. One academic from the American University in Beirut even described it as cosmic. It was a truly historic moment, not only for Egypt but for the region and, indeed, for the world. Just to see a country like Egypt, with its rich history and traditions emerging out of a mummified state to once again take its place in the living world, is an inspiring moment in history.

Of course, there are worries about the future. At the best of times military coups are not good for any country (as this has been, in a sense), as the people of Pakistan might attest. But in this case, the military council, headed by the country’s defense minister, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, a Mubarak lackey, will rule the country until whatever alternative political order emerges. The army has promised peaceful transition to democratic civilian rule after the elections, whenever they are held. Frankly, there is too much lack of clarity and uncertainty about all aspects of transition.

But people of Egypt have won and let us rejoice with them. One thing is for certain. Which is that Egypt, and indeed rest of the Arab world, will never be the same again. It is quite possible, indeed probable, that more dominoes will fall inspired by Egypt’s example.

A revolutionary upsurge in the Middle East

By S.P.SETH

Tunisia is becoming a byword for hopeful resurgence in Arab countries. Who would have thought that Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, its president, who had mastered ruling by dictate for 23 years, would just fall by the way in a matter of days. Not only that, the people’s power that brought him down, do not want any vestige of his regime. They want them all to go lock, stock and barrel and start the new era with a clean slate. The country is in the midst of great anticipation and expectation from a new order that has still to arise.

However, the developments in Tunisia have created a new wave of people’s power sweeping or threatening to sweep much of the Middle East. In a sense, the Arab world is experiencing a surge of revolutionary expectations. In other words, it is not just a national movement affecting Tunisia but has regional ramifications.

But let us put all this in the context of recent Arab history. In the post-colonial period around the fifties, there have been tumultuous events in some of the Arab countries, the most important, perhaps, was the overthrow of Egypt’s King Farouk in 1952 led by a group of army officers under the nominal leadership of Brigadier Mohammed Neguib. The real leader behind the putsch was Colonel Gamal Abd al-Nasser, who managed to depose Naguib in 1954.

Nasser was not only the new hope of Egypt but also the trailblazer for Arab nationalism. It looked like the days of Arab monarchies were almost over; such was the political environment of the time. And this period also saw increasing hostility toward the newly created state of Israel that had annexed more territory to its domain following the defeat of Arab forces in late 1940s.

But what created a wave of Arab anger (and in much of the world) was the joint invasion of Egypt by Anglo-French-Israeli forces in 1956 to undo the nationalization of Suez Canal by the country’s Nasser-led government. Nasser became an instant Arab hero with his determination to stand up his ground against, what looked like, insurmountable odds of facing three powerful enemies.

Nasser was unwittingly helped by the United States because it came out against the joint attack, forcing the aggressors to withdraw. The US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was enraged that UK, France and Israel had the audacity to undertake the invasion without the knowledge or approval of the United States, still harboring dreams of their colonial days. The United States was now the undisputed leader of the “free world” as the Cold War started to hot up between the Soviet Union and the United States and its allies.

The Suez Canal saga, with Nasser leading the charge of Arab nationalism, emerged as a unifying force of sorts in a region that had not seen anything like this before. Such surge of popular enthusiasm scared the day lights out of the region’s monarchs. At the same time, Nasser’s Egypt got sucked into the Cold War, having to depend more and more on the Soviet Union for economic and arms aid as it was not forthcoming from the United States.

Arab nationalism was also perceived as a serious threat to the US oil interests concentrated in the oil producing countries ruled by kings and the likes. In the same way, the US commitment to Israel started to become more pronounced as the United States’ most reliable ally in the region, beefed up by the work of the US Jewish lobby in the United States.

Even as this surge of Arab nationalism was worrying the United States, Nasser was feeling increasingly confident riding a wave of popular support after his success in nationalizing Suez Canal and the humiliation of its attackers. And in his rallying cry for Arab solidarity, Israel increasingly appeared as the next challenge to restore Arab pride.

Nasser was a great Arab leader but also a demagogue. His 1956 success had given him a false sense of confidence hoping that such feats can be replicated again without necessary military preparations to take on the Israelis. The resultant six-day war in 1967, with Israel launching a surprise attack, finished off Egyptian air force, as it lay exposed on the ground. As part of the then rising Arab nationalism, Jordan and Syria were Egypt’s military partners. They all suffered humiliating defeats, with Israel occupying large chunks of their territories and creating the new issue of occupied Palestine.

The six-day war put to rest, for the time being at least, the surge of Arab nationalism triggered by the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Israel emerged from this a much stronger power than it ever was, and its support base in the United States expanded further embellishing its credentials as the United States’ most reliable and strongest ally in an unstable region.

By the same token, the region’s reining monarchs got a new lease of life with the United States’ as their protector. Another attempt at rescuing Arab pride also failed disastrously in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, with Arab forces once again suffering a humiliating defeat. Which finally convinced some of them, like Egypt and Jordan, to make peace with Israel.

The Arab world has been in doldrums ever since, ruled by aging kings and despots clinging to power at any cost. During such times, the events in Tunisia have an entirely new meaning. Although, it is still early days but the collapse of the first Arab dictator under popular revolt is the first of its kind in the Arab world for as long as one can remember. And the message is uplifting for all Arabs. It also shows how thin and frayed are the threads that tie together the different arms of every repressive regime. They tend to buckle under when enough popular pressure is applied.

For instance, in Tunisia, the army that should have been the bedrock of Ben Ali’s dictatorship decided to stand aside, refusing to slaughter civilians to save his political hide; leaving him no choice but to find asylum with another kindred dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.

Egypt, Yemen and Algeria are also under pressure, with popular demonstrations seeking the removal of their rulers. After Tunisia, Egypt appears to be the next domino to fall. Its dictator, Hosni Mubarak---now 82--- has been in power for thirty years, and reportedly has plans to engineer his son’s succession. His government seems determined to tough it out, even if it means killing its own people and youth of the country. Imagine the prospect of another scion of the Hosni Mubarak lineage ruling over Egypt for another 30 years.

Mubarak’s only claim to fame/notoriety is that he has presided over his country’s stagnation, and brutal political repression. He is, in so many ways, the King Farouk of today, and his people need redemption from a relic of the past. If his people overthrow him, this could be similar to the beginning of a new resurgence in the Arab world, not unlike the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952. But the United States would hate to lose him. Over the years, he has fitted ideally into the US regional strategic plans, including support for Israel. An important example of Egypt’s docility is that it has kept effectively closed its border with Gaza to help Israel choke up its people.

And in Yemen, it is the same old story of a dictator, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, presiding since 1978 over his country’s journey to nowhere. In Algeria, just when the Islamists were about to win elections in early nineties, the military stepped in to quash any such prospect and have been presiding ever since in an on-off fratricidal war.

While the popular movement is building up in Arab countries against their despotic and repressive regimes (it is reported that in a region of 333 million people, nearly 325 million live under the yoke of unelected leaders), helped by Tunisia’s example and the dexterous use of social media like Twitter, Facebook etc, it is not going to be all that smooth and easy.

There are several reasons for this. First: these countries lack institutional alternatives. It is in the nature of dictatorial regimes to destroy all alternative political structures so they do not become a rallying point for opposition to the regime. Therefore, while at the popular level people hate their rulers they lack organized alternatives to concretize their aspirations. Hence, there is danger that even if the spontaneous popular upsurge in Arab countries does manage to overthrow the tyrants this could result in some sort of anarchy without credible leadership and institutional back up.

For instance, the immediate power transition in Tunisia, after Ben Ali’s flight, involved, more or less, the old government without the old chief. How the events in Tunisia or, for that matter, in any other Arab state in that situation, will eventually work out will be a painful process.

Second, in this transitional phase of months, or even years, there will be enough scope for the revolution’s enemies to create mischief and subvert the new hopeful trend. Here, the United States and its allies will have an important role to play, as we know from the past. For instance, in 1953, the CIA and British intelligence operatives played a decisive role in the overthrow of Iran’s nationalist Prime Minister, Muhammad Mossadeq, and the restoration of the Shah as the country’s ruler to serve US interests. Which, in turn, brought into power the clerical regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors in 1979, pitting them against the US and its Western allies in, what looks like, a never-ending US-Iran saga.

Similarly, the Hamas’ election victory in Palestine in 2006 was extremely unpleasant for Israel and its Western supporters, leading it to be dubbed a terrorist organization. Algeria too experienced a similar situation in the early nineties when the Islamists had almost won elections. But it was not palatable to the West. The generals in Algeria stepped in to quash the elections.

In other words, if any of the alternative political order emerging from Tunisia, Egypt or elsewhere in Arab lands, is unacceptable to the United States, it will do its best, with its allies and hangars-on in the Arab countries, to subvert the emerging revolution.

The United States is unlikely to tolerate any alternative political order (democratic or otherwise) that is perceived to threaten its oil interests, and compromises perceived Israeli security; not withstanding Barack Obama’s reported congratulation to the youth of Tunisia for having the courage to revolt.

Look at what Washington’s behind-the-scene power structure has done to Obama’s message of reaching out to the Islamic world as spelled out in his Cairo speech, soon after he came to power. The Palestinian Papers released by Al Jazeera disclose the sordid doings of all those involved in or facilitating peace negotiations between the Mahmoud Abbas administration and the Israelis.

The mess in the Middle East, where people have no say in how they are governed, has created a sense of hopelessness and utter frustration. One great positive of the Tunisian uprising is that it has shown that people can overthrow their tyrants if they put their collective minds and energies to the task. This will have the effect of lifting that sense of desperation about a future just like the past, and worse.

If the United States wants to be part of a new future in the Middle East, it should not, like in the past, obstruct its course to make it fit into its own narrow interests. That has only perpetuated the stagnation and tyranny that is today’s Middle East. And this cannot continue, especially after the events in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. Therefore, the lesson for the West is to welcome the birth of a new Middle East and help it with political support and economic aid to lift itself from its morass.

At the same time, the US shouldn’t panic if Islamic elements manage to win elections here and there. Because, the historical process of transition in the Middle East has to go through a process of twists and turns for it to eventually become a stable region. Even the Islamists will have to provide jobs for their constituents to lift many of them out of poverty and destitution. This is probably the biggest problem with the young populations of the Middle East without work and no future. They too, as governments, will need to interact with the world at large for trade, aid, diplomacy and other needs of governance.

The situation at present, though, is so murky that it is not possible to see a clear picture. But things are starting to move, and that surely is a good thing.

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times