Afghanistan: the nightmare continues

S P SETH

Things are becoming murkier than usual as the US and its allies are in the process withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan by end of next year. The proposed US-Taliban talks in Qatar collapsed even before they started because President Hamid Karzai objected to the look of the Taliban office there with its official flag. In its bid for direct talks with the Taliban in Qatar, the US appeared to be bypassing the Afghan government. President Karzai wanted talks to be held in Afghanistan, with his government the centerpiece of negotiations. He, therefore, opposed the talks and the format adopted, and threatened to abort the negotiations with the US about a bilateral security pact post-2014.

According to media reports, a subsequent video-conference between Karzai and Obama didn’t go well, causing a serious dent in their personal chemistry. The US is, therefore, said to be considering an early and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is not quite clear if this is a serious proposition or a political ploy on the part of the Obama administration to put pressure on Karzai. Whatever the case, the Obama administration appears quite annoyed with Karzai.

With Afghan elections due next year, and Karzai constitutionally barred from running for a third term, he should essentially be lame duck. But it is difficult to visualize a post-Karzai Afghanistan, as the Americans invested so much of their strategy and hope in him and the people around him.  And now that they seem so keen to get out of Afghanistan they are no longer squeamish about dealing directly with the Taliban, without the usual pre-conditions of renunciation of violence, acceptance of the Afghan constitution and severing links with the al Qaeda.

Not surprisingly, Karzai is feeling abandoned in some ways. In its bid to hold talks with the Taliban, the US hopes to ease the process of its troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. Gone are the days, it would appear, when the Karzai administration was   the front and centre of any US strategy to deal with Afghanistan. For the time being, though, President Karzai has thrown a spanner into the works, so to say, to become the focus of US attention. But indications so far are that it has further annoyed the US. Frankly, the US is in a hurry as its withdrawal schedule is approaching and they have to work out some arrangement with the Taliban to avoid a disaster like that faced by the retreating British troops in the 19^th century.

At this point, it might be worthwhile to consider why things have gone so badly for the US Afghan policy? A recent book, “The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat” by Vali Nasr, throws some light on it. Nasr was a US state department insider at one time as senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He examines this in a chapter entitled, “Who Lost Pakistan?” In reviewing Nasr’s book in the New York Review of Books, Steve Coll says that Holbrooke, who died in December 2010, had a different approach on the Pakistan/Afghan issue to the mainstream view in the State Department. He was for bolstering up Pakistan through a large and ambitious aid program, like Marshall Plan, and change its “strategic calculus” of covertly supporting and sheltering Taliban as an instrument of political influence in Afghanistan, partly to thwart India. Holbrooke and Nasr felt that this was a better bet than the surge into Afghanistan. In other words, the solution to Afghanistan lay through Pakistan and investment in its prosperity.

Whether or not Holbrook was right or wrong is beside the point. The US went for the surge and it failed. The idea behind the surge was to put the US in a position of strength through some military gains on the ground to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. As this didn’t happen  there is now an element of hurry in the US to negotiate with the Taliban. to facilitate a relatively peaceful withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the Karzai government is worried about being sidelined.

The real problem with the US foreign policy, in Afghanistan as elsewhere, has been to see issues through black or white lens of a US-defined strategic/moral imperative. George Bush’s categorization of Iran, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) and North Korea as an “axis of evil”, is a case in point. It was the same with the threat from communism throughout the Cold War period. Such simplified categorization makes it easier to sell even a dubious policy domestically and with allied countries. And when that country is a superpower, as the US has been for much of the post-war period, chances of having much of the world on its side and having its way are pretty good; though there are exceptions as in the case of the Vietnam war where even total weapons’ superiority didn’t work.

However, if the American power is in retreat, as the title of Vali Nasr’s book suggests, it can create serious problems as it is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Take, for instance, the Middle East. According to Nasr, “If there is any American strategy at play in the Middle East these days it can be summed up as follows: Keep Egypt from getting worse, contain Iran, rely on Turkey, and build up the diplomatic and military capabilities of the Persian Gulf monarchies…” In other words, ad hocism is the order of the day.

But in the case of military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US is keen to see it happen in an orderly way. And for that to happen, some sort of cooperation with the Taliban will be necessary. But the Taliban are unlikely to oblige if they will be treated as a sideshow. On the other hand, if they come to occupy the centre stage, the Karzai government will create difficulties as they did with the planned US-Taliban talks in Qatar. And having invested so much in the Karzai government, including raising a large Afghan army, the US is in a terrible quandary. Which is: how to get out of Afghanistan in a relatively orderly fashion while still bequeathing a working political system for the post-American phase. Pakistan could be helpful in this with their patronage of the Taliban leadership sheltering there. But it is not as easy as that.

If the past is any guide, despite their dependence on Pakistan in so many ways, the Taliban leaders have generally managed to go their own way. It was certainly not in Pakistan’s strategic interest for the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to get involved with the al Qaeda leadership, and the latter’s sponsorship of the 9/11 attack. Pakistan is still reeling from it, being part of the George Bush’s war on terrorism. In other words, Afghanistan is going to haunt the US as much as it did the British in the 19^th century and the Soviet Union in the eighties of the last century, contributing in some ways to its collapse. And will continue to haunt Pakistan, as its involvement with the Taliban and their politics will tend to overwhelm its resources and further skew its domestic priorities.

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

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au 

US drones and Pakistan

S P SETH

Is US policy on the use of drones changing? President Obama’s recent speech at the US National Defence University would seem to suggest rather more a rethink than a change. He would like it to be based on firmer legal ground but he didn’t unveil any course of action to achieve it. His speech was a mishmash of wanting to follow a moral and legal code but unable to do so, as has been the case with Obama on most things. For a President who claims moral high ground, the revelations by the New York Times some time ago about drone targeting didn’t quite match up to this. Indeed, they were quite the opposite.

The Times reported that the Obama Administration held “Terror Tuesdays” meetings in which the President and his national security advisers discussed, which suspected terrorists should be assassinated by drones. And in about a third of these cases, Obama alone took responsibility for naming the targets. This was quite a shocking revelation about the President of the world’s most powerful country making decisions about whether or not someone will live sitting thousands of miles away from the targeted individual(s) and groups.

While the drone strikes started under the Bush presidency, their numbers exploded from about 50 (under Bush) to over 300 hundred under Obama. While these did kill some targeted terrorists, the resultant “collateral” damage in terms of civilian casualties, including women and children, was much greater, though there is no reliable tally. Amazing how we all have got used to the detestable description of civilian deaths as collateral damage! According to the New Yorker, after 2008, the CIA won approval for a category of drone attacks known as “signature strikes” in which, even without a specific target, an attack is justified by a pattern of behaviour, like young men test-firing their weapons or, perhaps, even celebratory firing at a community gathering.

Obama’s speech, though, seemed to suggest some softening of the drones’ policy. Before one is carried away, it is necessary to point out that droning as a policy instrument to hunt out suspected terrorists would continue. The recent drone killing of the Pakistani Taliban’s second-ranking leader, Waliur Rahman, is a case in point, so soon after Obama’s speech. At this point it is important to stress that Pakistan’s political/military establishment has been, over a period, complicit in the US policy of droning terror suspects in the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, even as it conveniently blamed the US for these strikes.

It is only after the Raymond Davis affair when the US secret agent killed two Pakistanis early in 2011 that US-Pakistan relations became testy.  And they got worse after the US commandos killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. However, despite all the acrimony, the US satellite intelligence has most likely been useful to the Pakistani army in the Swat valley where the Pakistani Taliban almost succeeded in creating a secure foothold to expand their territorial control. But they were halted and even pushed out, though the situation remains unstable. In this situation, some of the high level drone killings, including that of Waliur Rahman, might not be unwelcome; though in today’s politically charged environment nobody in Pakistan’s establishment will admit to it.

The recent elections in Pakistan further raised the temperature on US drone killings. Two major political parties, led respectively by Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, cited this as a major complication in US-Pakistan relations. And they both committed themselves to dealing with this issue, and the Taliban question, first, by seeking to stop the use of drones over Pakistan and, second, by starting a political dialogue with the Pakistani Taliban. On both these counts, Waliur Rahman’s death is likely to create fresh complications. Besides, a number of deaths and injuries from blowing up of a university bus in Quetta and attacks on a nearby hospital will make the government’s task of a dialogue with the militants quite difficult. As for drone strikes, even though President Obama made some encouraging gesture in his congratulatory message to Nawaz Sharif (now Prime Minister) on his election victory, the latter would need to tread cautiously in his opening moves that would be watched carefully by many people in Pakistan. Sharif wouldn’t like to be seen as caving in to the US pressure.

The problem in US-Pakistan relations is not just between the governments in the two countries, which in itself is quite formidable. At a more fundamental level, a vast majority of people in Pakistan disapproves of the United States and its policies. And the drone strikes have come to symbolize the low level of their relationship. Therefore, any turnaround would require an important shift in the US policy on drone killings. The US, on the other hand, would like Pakistan to be able to exercise control over terrorists in the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Which is easier said than done. It has the look sometimes of an untamed wild frontier with no government control on both sides. That makes it a haven for terrorists, extremists and al Qaeda elements. In this situation, the US authorities have taken on themselves the role of judge, jury and executioner in another country infringing its national sovereignty.

Pakistan, of course, has been complicit at times and, at other times, unwilling or unable to take a determined stand.  The US has argued that the drone strikes are precise in hitting the targets and the resultant collateral damage is minimal compared to comparable action on the ground by troops. The US certainly has been able to eliminate some high value targets but at what cost?  The cost of turning almost an entire country into hating the United States is pretty high, by any reckoning. At the same time, this has the potential of turning many Pakistanis into sympathizers and/or even recruits of the Taliban cause. This is certainly something the US should ponder about, and initiate some concrete action to halt drone strikes. This will be helped considerably if the new government in Pakistan were to succeed in asserting control over the Pakistan-Afghan tribal belt to deny terrorists the safe haven they have come to exploit to Pakistan’s own great detriment.

However, any effective and lasting solution might have to await the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by end-2014. In the meantime, some political fence-mending with Pakistan’s new government  is all that one can hope for.

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

Pakistan: elections and beyond

S P SETH

Some people hold the view that Pakistan would need a miracle to become a viable and normal state. Will its grueling and violent elections bring about that miracle? Miracle it might not create but its very completion, in the midst of a concerted violent campaign by Pakistan’s Taliban, is a hopeful sign. The transition from one elected civilian government to another, whatever its political hue and combination, is an achievement. And it is also heartening that people, by and large, were not cowed down by Pakistani Taliban’s orchestrated violent campaign to keep them away from the polling booths. They apparently ignored threats and reality of violence and turned out in large numbers to do their civic duty of electing their new parliamentary representatives who, in turn, will select a new government.

It is also encouraging that the religious Islamic parties didn’t make much headway. But both PML-N led by Nawaz Sharif, and Imran Khan’s PTI, though, are inclined to appease Sunni religious bias than reflect a liberal streak. Imran Khan, for instance, went on record to distance himself from the Ahmadis saying reportedly that he wouldn’t be seeking their votes. He has also been publicly airing his renewed and newly reinvigorated faith in Islam, which, more or less, parallels his political activism. Nawaz Sharif’s pandering to the religious right is not unknown. In other words, both Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan sought to present themselves in suitably religious garbs.

Pakistan, it would seem, is now set on a democratic process, which gives its politicians legitimacy to govern the country for another term. But democracy, still in its nascent form and under attack from militants, will find real popular legitimacy when the elected governments start addressing the country’s problems and deliver results. Pakistan has immense problems and unless the new dispensation creates hopes for a better future, the net gainers will be the extremists and religious fanatics. They will be able to say that ‘we told you so.’

Even as the new government begins the task of governing, it will also simultaneously need to create a broad and inclusive national ethos. Pakistan lacks a national ethos where all people, irrespective of their religion, ethnicity and sects, should feel included. Despite the tone set by Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, of an inclusive Pakistan for all its citizens, his political successors, by and large, found political advantage in pushing the religious card in which Muslims were the privileged citizens. Some of them even went further to privilege only the Sunni community by ex-communicating sect(s) that claimed Islam as their religion but were found to lack ‘real’ Islamic credentials. For instance, then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1974 got the country’s constitution amended to declare Ahmadi community as non-Muslims.

And under General Zia’s dispensation, any pretence of tolerance for others was abandoned and intolerance was constitutionally enshrined. Not only are the Ahmadis virtually disenfranchised, they are also subjected to persecution, sometimes bordering on pogroms. And the large Shia community doesn’t fare much better with frequent attacks on their persons, property and religious shrines. Outside the sectarian divide, the country’s Christians and Hindus are constantly targeted.

Such persecution is not only inhumane, it also gives the country’s militants of all hues an excuse to keep pushing Pakistan more and more into religious right, as one witnesses with PML-N and PTI. They have also hounded relatively moderate parties like ANP, MQM and even PPP into a corner for fear of violent retribution. At a time when Pakistan is taking tentative steps to embrace democracy, it is important to remember that a democratic system enshrines plurality and diversity where differences are celebrated and, when necessary, mediated rather than obliterated.

Ever since its creation, Pakistan has an identity problem.  It was designed as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims where they could pursue their destiny without prejudice, discrimination and domination by the majority Hindu community. Its creation was undoubtedly religion-based. But its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, wanted an independent Pakistan to be an inclusive nation where all its citizens had an equal stake. But to give its conceptual religious origin a secular twist of inclusion, as Jinnah wanted, presented a major problem. And with none of Pakistan’s successive leaders in Jinnah’s liberal tradition and of his caliber, they found it easier to exploit religion for their political ends; thus plunging the country deeper and deeper into religious obscurantism and creating today’s version of militancy exemplified by the mindless violence of Pakistani Taliban.

Not long after Pakistan’s creation, religion (Islam) was found to be inadequate as an all-encompassing national ideology, when East Bengal insisted on its own cultural identity with its own language and tradition. Which eventually led to the creation of a separate state of Bangladesh. Besides, almost all the constituent provinces in Pakistan, Baluchistan being the most potent, insisted on autonomy railing against the domination of Punjab. And this issue has never been resolved adequately, remaining a festering sore. In view of the inadequacy of religion (Islam) as a unifying ideology, it is time for Pakistan’s political establishment, with democracy hopefully taking a hold, to start a conversation on a multifaceted national identity.  

These fissures in Pakistan’s polity and national identity might not have mattered much if its leaders had not allowed themselves to be distracted by religious politics, and instead working to better their people’s lives. But this didn’t happen. Two important tasks for any country are to ensure people’s physical and economic security. On both these counts, Pakistani state has failed dismally. The frequency of extremist violence, and the impunity with which it is done, is shocking, creating a climate of lawlessness. One just has to glance at a Pakistani newspaper or watch graphic images of violence on television screens to get a sense of the gravity of the situation.

At the same time, people are increasingly finding it difficult to fend for themselves economically. And their economic desperation is magnified when the country’s rich manage to become richer while the poor, well; they remain poor or become poorer.

Will Pakistan’s nascent democracy address these issues of large-scale violence and lifting people from a state of constant grind and abysmal poverty? Democracy is only a political tool to serve people better. And if it fails to help people they will join the ranks of the Taliban and other extremist groups in the name of religion and swell their ranks. It has already happened with unemployed and aimless youth joining the militant ranks with promised rewards in this and the next world. After all, they have nothing much to lose in a world that has abandoned them to their own devices.      

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

Pakistan: is there another way?

S P SETH

Pakistan is tearing itself apart. The killing of Hazaras (and Shias in general) is one example of it. Its fall out is even reverberated in far away Australia, with Hazaras here protesting against the “genocide” in Pakistan. Even though the Pakistan government has promised action to nab the culprits of the recent attack in Quetta killing nearly 90 Hazaras, going by the past experience of apathy, incompetence, involvement, encouragement and unwillingness of the state institutions to deal with it effectively, it will be no surprise that not much will come out of it. The country has been in a downward spiral for a long time and the slide is only accelerating.

The Shias are said to constitute about 20 per cent of the country’s population, making them a significant minority. To ostracize and target them will seriously rupture the fabric of Pakistan’s nationhood. Whoever is doing these killings, and Lakshar-e-Janghvi has claimed responsibility, they must have some kind of philosophy and game plan behind it. And it shouldn’t be beyond the ability and resources of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies to penetrate and frustrate their designs.  

In a Sunni dominated Pakistan, the Shias are regarded by many as heretics. They are, more or less, regarded no better than Ahmadis, who were declared non-Muslims in the seventies. However, the Shias are a much bigger number. At 20 per cent of the country’s estimated population of 180 million, they might number upward of 30 million. And if they continue to be targeted and killed, there is bound to be an organized backlash from within their community at some point of time. There is no knowing where such backlash might end, nationally and regionally.

With Balochistan already a tinder box with all sorts of unresolved issues, one would have thought that Pakistan’s political and military establishment would be working overtime to deal with the forces that are terrorizing the Hazaras and the country’s Shia community but, apparently, that sense of urgency is sorely lacking. The sheer banality of such violence is mind-numbing as recounted by Mohsin Hamid in a recent article in the New York Times. He wrote, “On Monday, my mother’s and sister’s eye doctor was assassinated. [in Lahore] He was a Shiite. He was shot six times while driving to drop his son off at school. His son, age 12, was executed with a single shot to the head.”

And it is all happening in the name of Islam. There are all kinds of militant outfits, acting with impunity and utmost brazenness. It is the politics of the country, including its military with interchangeable roles that has brought things to such a mess. Sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish between the state’s protectors (its institutions) and those undermining it--- at times being one and the same.

The entire political establishment of the country is rotten to the core and steeped in corruption. As Tariq Ali has written in the London Review of Books, “Zardari is the most unpopular leader in the country’s history, largely because of his involvement in corruption. The main opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, is no better.” He goes on, “Both come near the top of the list of Pakistan’s billionaires (Zardari at number two, Sharif at number four). The list gives ‘politics’ as the source of their wealth.”

Equally, if not more disconcerting, is the role of the country’s establishment, in creating all sorts of hydra-headed monsters like Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and its likes, for pursuing their nefarious internal and external ends. And then there are the Taliban and their Pakistani version. The leadership of the Afghan Taliban is not only sheltering in Pakistan, but reportedly has fraternal relations with ISI. The assumption is that if and when the Taliban come to power in Afghanistan after the Americans have left, that country will become an arm of Pakistan’s regional strategy.

This was also the assumption when, with considerable help from Pakistan, Taliban was able to prevail and took power in Afghanistan in mid-nineties. With or without Pakistan’s knowledge, they started hobnobbing with Osama bin Laden who was given shelter with his al Qaeda brand. And the rest is history, with the 9/11 bombing in the US and the resultant US invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan, supposed to be a patron of Taliban, got sucked into the US-led war on terror for which it is still paying a heavy price, with no easy exit.

In other words, it is the Afghan Taliban that got Pakistan into this mess of international terrorism, and the country is still sheltering this lot in the hope that they will prove a strategic asset at some point in time? Not only that. They have also directly or indirectly helped spawn the Pakistani Taliban that has brought, at times, the functioning of the state to a standstill, making Pakistan look like a failed state

People of Pakistan, like people of any other country, want physical and economic security. For the first, any ideology that targets people because they are different, for whatever reasons, (be it religion, sectarian, appearance and so on) will always breed violence. For instance, extremists will always find their targets even among the mainstream Sunni community because some group or the other might not fit their interpretation of Islam. Once violence becomes the arbiter of power, whether expressed in religious or political terms, there are no limits to its application. The first step, therefore, is to delegitimize violence in Pakistan as the arbiter of power. The problem here is that the militants and Islamists have sanctified violence as the means to create an ideal Islamic state and this  tends to find favour with many believers.

One way to deal with it is to legitimize diversity and inclusion. In other words, through education and state patronage, to make a case that while Islam remains the favored faith of most Pakistanis, people practicing other faiths need not be coerced into becoming ‘real’ Muslims or else. Diversity creates tolerance by recognizing and accepting difference as not antagonistic but part of a cosmic pattern of life and matter.

Pakistan has seen and experienced, since its inception, that religion is not necessarily a cementing factor. If anything, judging from the way Muslims are killing other Muslims because one group is lesser Muslim than the others, religion is proving more divisive and deadly. There are no martyrs in killing other human beings for their difference.

If a new way of thinking based on inclusiveness and tolerance is promoted with passion and compassion, this will also release and divert Pakistan’s considerable energies for economic growth, presently wasted in the destructive pursuit of an ‘ideal’ Muslim society as envisioned by promoters of hate and violence that is destroying Pakistan. And this will provide economic security for its people.

I am not an Islamic scholar but I believe that Islam is essentially a religion of peace and amity.

The idea of an inclusive community for Pakistan might seem utopian, but nothing else is working. This at least has the merit of exploring a new path as there is nothing much to lose and indeed it might gather traction as it unfolds.

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au