Is Punishing Pakistan a Solution ? - Part II

So, is there a case to be made out for the US to force Pakistan shun its wayward ways, renounce its implicit faith in violent jihad, give up on the export of terrorism across the borders into India and Afghanistan and increasingly worldwide {See the Terror Map here} , make it disband the terrorist tanzeems and their training camps, smash the nexus between the armed forces and Islamist and jihadi groups, rein-in the Pakistani Army and intelligence agencies so that Pakistan becomes a more normal nation-state, make it stop indoctrinating and preaching hatred in mainstream and madrasseh schools, and allow a natural and representative regime to take control in Afghanistan ?

Yes, there is, because everything else has failed and Pakistan is about to become even more dangerous than what it already is.

The reason is quite simple and is unfolding right in front of our very eyes. That is the danger of rising jihadi Islamism and its collusion with more traditional-looking political forces which are rising in Pakistan with the blessings and support of the armed forces. Surely, there has been support by these groups for traditional political parties even earlier. Neither the politicians nor the military can function in Pakistan without being seen in the company of these extreme right-wing Islamist groups. History is testimony to that. But, this time the situation is far more dangerous and critical. These groups never before came so close to implementing the extremist agenda and objectives of their ideology, as they are now. The 'Objectives Resolution' was adopted in the Pakistani Parliament in c. 1949, which indelibly stamped Pakistan as an Islamist country. The society and the armed forces were radicalized by Z.A.Bhutto and then Gen. Zia-ul-Haq in the 70s and the 80s. What Pakistan is about to witness is the next step in this evolutionary process, the seizure of power by an extremist sect of Islam dominated by Deobandi and Salafi groups through a proxy, Tehrik-e-Insaf, with the acquiescence of the Pakistani Army (PA). The internal situation of Pakistan has never before been so fraught, fragile and dysfunctional. The hopelessness among the people has never been so palpable, a situation that jihadi Islamists exploit so well. Among all these doom and gloom, there is one sense of achievement that has begun to appear for the Pakistanis, the thought of the impending defeat of the US at the hands of the Believers (just as they did to the Soviets in c. 1989) and the likely installation of the Taliban back in power in Kabul and Kandahar. That exalts the position of the jihadi Islamists within the Pakistani society. It is this sense of victory that will play a significant role in the drama that is about to unfold in the next few months in Pakistan. And, that will also be the victory for the more pious in the ongoing Third and the Fourth Jihads there over the kafir and the less pious respectively. {See this post to understand these jihads}

After the c. 2007 seizure of the Swat valley by the Taliban, when the rampaging Taliban came within 100 Kms of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, the US decided to act in Pakistan. It decided to bring back democracy (or at least a semblance of it), install a more pliant Benazir Bhuto and forced a reluctant and unwilling Musharraf to accept this change. However, Musharraf and his civilian cohorts, who were increasingly under siege due to economic and other mismanagement (especially the judiciary), tried to threaten Ms. Bhutto so that she would opt out of competition. But, when Nawaz Sharif too surprisingly returned to Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf used all the means available to him to re-exile him. Thereafter, the only option left to the ruling clique was to eliminate her in the hope that the resulting political chaos and vacuum would enable them to retain their hold, especially as Nawaz Sharif's threat had been suitably averted. As the domestic situation and the international monitoring of the polls did not allow the usual large-scale manipulation of the results, the ruling clique had to lose power. The Pakistani Army (PA), which always disliked the Bhutto clan, had one more reason to feel intensely peeved at the turn of events, especially when Asif Ali Zardari took over the Presidency. Some of Zardari's pronouncements and actions soon thereafter, such as agreeing to send the ISI Chief to India immediately after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, unilaterally announcing a 'No First Use (NFU)' policy for nuclear weapons, his assessment of India not being an external threat as is usually made out or his attempt to bring the high-flying ISI under civilian control etc. were naturally disliked by the PA. He should have been even looked at suspiciously since the PA had always held a view that his wife, the late Ms. Benazir Bhutto, was an Indian agent. The PA tried everything possible to dislodge Zardari but he has been one-up on the PA and has tenaciously stuck to his post through clever political manouevering. Naturally, the PA is unhappy with the US for this situation. The fall-out between the US and the PA over the years, but ever so sharply in the last two years, has added to the grievances of the latter. The US has been rather openly blunt in matters such as Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill, the Raymond Davis incident, the Syed Saleem Shehzad assassination, the hiding of Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad, the Salala raid on a Pakistani post in the Mohmand Agency of FATA, to name a few. Therefore, in Pakistan today, the 'Establishment' also has become openly anti-US and is propping up a closet Islamist, Imran Khan, against the two traditional rivals PPP and PML-N.

The jihadi-Islamist alliance of 'Diffa-e-Pakistan Council' (DPC) has all the anti-American-Indian-Israel entities as major components. The political party of the Prime-Minister-in-waiting, Imran Khan, supports their strident call by participating in their country-wide meetings. These meetings have been attracting large crowds and speakers trot out fiery denunciations of the US and India. The US efforts to bring in Ms. Benazir Bhutto and later backing the combination of Zardari and Gilani, seem to have led to a consolidation of Islamist jihadi forces. The people at large have been also against the incumbent government because of the economic miseries. The US efforts to make the civilian government rein-in the PA and the ISI have not succeeded either though Zardari and Gilani did make serious efforts at that, something no other government, with the possible exception of Z.A. Bhutto's, has attempted before. The Memogate is a revenge of the PA against the civilian government and the American efforts. The PA is therefore angry with the US Administration and is increasingly turning to China to protect itself.

However, the annual budget of the US for c. 2013 includes a massive USD 2.2 Billion aid for the Pakistani military. In an approximately 4 Trillion USD budget, USD 2.2 Billion may appear utterly insignificant. But, it spells a significant danger for India. The US State Department offers the same old stale and patently false argument that such an aid will "provide a bulwark against extremism and support joint security and counter-terrorism efforts". This 'bulwark' theory was first propounded against Communism and was proved completely wrong as far back as c. 1962.

I quote from a document exchanged by Thomas Hughes, the then Director of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State, with the then Director of Central Intelligence Agency, W.F. Raborn, on 21 July 1965, which has been recently declassified and is available in the National Security Archives of the US. ". . . We have bi- lateral security arrangements with Pakistan, as well as shared membership in SEATO and CENTO. Imperfect as any alliance system may be,there are certain minimum standards of behavior that we expect from any ally. We feel that Pakistan has fallen short of these standards in a number of respects, especially since 1962; even before that time, the Pakistanis attempted to divert the alliances to its regional quarrel with India and have encouraged other members to do likewise. Although In 1960 Pakistan had declared itself willing to send troops into Laos in support of SEATO commitments there, in November 1962 Ayub, speaking before a secret session of the National Assembly, asserted that Pakistan had no military commitment to SEATO. He added, and has repeatedly reaffirmed, that he sees India as a greater threat than international Communism. Such an attitude is clearly not in accord with the purposes of SEATO. . . In March 1963, and again in March 1965, the Pakistanis apparently offered their assistance to Peking In developing diplomatic ties between Communist China and.Turkey, Aside from countering our general objective of keeping Peking isolated diplomatically, the Pakistani action was particularly repugnant in ‘that it used ties established through CENTO'. . . . As Pakistan has loosened its ties with the U.S., SEATO and CENTO, it has increasingly come to look to Communist China for reinsurance against India. This has been a self-reinforcing process. Although Pakistan had never been a strong critic of China, the increase In Sino-Pakistani ties has come at a time when the confrontation between the U.S. and Communist China has been reaching critical proportions. Parallel to the decline in relationships with the U S . , the rapprochement with China can best be dated from the time of the Chinese attack on India, as we have noted, Pakistan refused to give any comfort to India at the time of the Chinese attack. Indeed, it has exploited India’s discomfiture for its own purposes and gone further by actually condoning Chinese behavior."

As far back as c. 1957, there were warning signals and the US Ambassador to Pakistan, James Langley described the US arming of Pakistan as follows: "The present military program is a hoax, the hoax being that it is related to the Soviet threat". In June, 1968, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Arshad Hussain, announced in the National Assembly that Pakistan had decided to pull out of both CENTO and SEATO and was 'no longer taking any active part in the military activities of these pacts'. It only found 'economic and cultural aspects of the pact as of some benefit'. Therefore, the 'bulwark' theory, then as well as now, is a big hoax. Pakistan neither was a bulwark against communism nor against jihadi Islamism. If anything, it has helped immensely with the flourishing of both of them. The arms supplied for fighting the communists were used by Pakistan only against India and Afghanistan. They were also used against Pakistan's own citizens in East Pakistan, Balochistan and FATA. A recent hearing in the US Senate on the Balochistan situation brings out the stark truth of PA's atrocities there. So, why is the US continuing with its fake 'bulwark' theory ? They may have their own reasons for that. However, the miscalculation being made by the US is that they do not recognize the fact that the PA has become insignificant in the emerging Pakistani situation. It will no longer have the power and pelf to influence the course of events for two reasons. One, the jihadi-Islamists will be able to move on their own steam henceforth and two the PA itself will subserve the jihadi-Islamists. The US efforts to 'buy' the PA will, in all likelihood, fail.

It is an irony that history has come a full circle and that too so soon. It was precisley to protect the arc from North Africa to India from being swamped by communism and to protect the 'wells of power' that the fading British Empire designed the Middle East Defence Organization (MEDO or the 'northern tier defence' as it was initially known and later to become 'Baghdad Pact') which the Americans took over, expanded the scope and called it Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). Now, that lies in shambles. Country after country in this arc has fallen for Islamists. Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Yemen have all gone to the Islamists. With the fringes gone, the core such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or the UAE, the last bastion of the US, are nervous and are simmering. The US may not lose out to the Communists to retain influence in these areas, but to the Islamists who equally abhor the Americans. The pinnacle for the Islamists would however be the nuclear-Pakistan.

While the Islamic neighbourhood of Pakistan has become Islamist, the situation within Pakistan itself is teetering towards that. Unlike in c. 1988 when a similar Islamist alliance IJI (Islami-Jamhoori-Ittehad) was formed by the ISI, this time, the alliance wants to usher in its Islamist policies through its proxy, Imran Khan. Last time, it was merely to fight the PPP and the alliance was formed by Lt. Gen.Hamid Gul who has also spearheaded the formation of DPC now. There is a close similarity between what happened in Egypt after the overthrowing of Hosni Mubarak and what is unfolding in Pakistan now. In Egypt, the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood and the even more extremist salafi party Al Nour have gained more than two-thirds of the seats in the Parliament. In Pakistan, the jihadi-Islamists may not be elected in such large numbers to the National Assembly for various reasons, but their stranglehold on governance would be similar (to that in Egypt) nevertheless after the upcoming elections. Like in Pakistan, the Egyptian government is run by the military commanders (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or SCAF) and the military has enjoyed governance ever since King Farouk was dislodged by the Free Officers in collusion with the Muslim Brotherhood in July, 1952. Since then, the Egyptian military has also been running an economic empire just like the 'mil-bus' of the Pakistani armed forces and its officers have enjoyed 'entitlements' similar to the officers of the Pakistani military (though may not be on such a large and lavish scale as their counterparts in Pakistan). The difference between Pakistan and Egypt might be that unlike the Egyptian Army, the PA is already overloaded with officers and ranks of Islamic extremism, swears by 'Jihad fi Sabilillah' (which is not the motto of the army of any other Islamic nation) and considers itself as the 'guardians of the ideological frontiers of Islam'. It was the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt that collaborated with Maulana Abu Ala al Mawdudi of JI in the formative years of Pakistan. {See this post, for details} A nuclear-weaponised Pakistan would have finally slipped into the hands of the jihadi Islamists if back-door usurping of power happens in Pakistan after the next elections.

What are the implications of the developing situation in Pakistan ? This development puts not only India but also the region and the world itself in grave danger. The explosive combination of national power coupled with the possession of nuclear weapons and missiles is what the jihadi Islamists have been gunning for at least since Operation Enduring Freedom began in right earnest in the fag end of c. 2001. They will have it achieved within the next couple of years if the unfolding trajectory of events continues unchecked in Pakistan. Then, Afghanistan would be a true strategic depth for the jihadists, not for the PA. In the recent DPC rally at Karachi, the Emir of Jama'at-e-Islami (JI), the organization closest to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, made a startling claim that the jihadi Islamists who constituted the DPC were the defenders of the 'territorial integrity' of Pakistan as well the 'ideological frontiers of Islam', roles hitherto claimed by the PA and upheld as well by these Islamists. It would not be too far fetched, therefore, to imagine the PA turning into an accessory, an accomplice and a tool in the hands of the jihadis. That would be a natural reversal of roles between the PA and the jihadists. The Islamist arc from the west in North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt) to its eastern pivot in Pakistan would then consolidate and coalesce and the friends of the US in its middle such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the Emirates would be simply blown away. The US will lose access to oil and gas in this region and will have to relocate its military assets elsewhere. Israel would be considerably weakened, and threatened too, in the immediate absence of US military in the Middle East. Iran would be at a considerable risk from the overwhelming Sunni extremist nations that will surround it. The world economic order, already under considerable stress in the last few years, would be irreperably damaged if the Islamists assume power in the Islamist Arc. One can easily imagine the tremendous pressure on India if Pakistan goes the Islamist way and its energy security is considerably threatened due to events in West Asia and Iran. Besides, India could even come under a nuclear attack from Pakistan. The Chinese should be under no illusion of any immunity from these Islamist forces as well. Its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Islamist Jama'at-e-Islami (JI) a couple of years back would be not even worth the paper on which it was written. There is a very real possibility that the province of Xinjiang will become East Turkestan.

The US has to atone for its colossal misconduct of the past by seeing the real danger that is emanating from Pakistan and has to brace itself for taking some tough actions. Its strategic interests will come a cropper if there is no clean break from its past (and even present) and a new policy is pursued with determination and a purpose. That policy must hold Pakistan accountable for its actions and demand course correction for good, including bringing people and organizations to justice for acts of terrorism. The US has several levers available to it. It can choose to give up its policy of appeasing the Pakistani armed forces, delay aid or even cut aid by strictly following provisions of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman act rather than the Secretary of State simply giving a good conduct certificate mechanically every year, pressurize Pakistan through multilateral financial agencies by denying loans or placing stringent conditions for loan disbursal including demanding good behaviour (just not asking Pakistan to control fiscal deficits by asking it to raise tax collection or electricity tariff etc.), denying or delaying delivery of spare parts for the arms Pakistan has obtained from the US, indict Pakistan severely for its gross human-rights violation against minorities, Balochis etc., reveal damning details of the involvement of the PA in terrorist activities against India and Afghanistan etc. These are some of the first steps that the US can take to show its determination to the 'Establishment' in Pakistan that the US meant business. If it results in no changes to Pakistan's behaviour, which is most likely to happen, it must launch into a more aggressive next phase in consultation with important stakeholders in Pakistan namely India, China, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the UK. These have to be discussed separately.

The inescapable conclusion then is that the 'soft' approach towards Pakistan had long back failed miserably and a fresh tougher approach is needed. The US has to lead this tough approach since it has been the main backer and financier of the Pakistani military and the jihadis that has brought Pakistan and the region to the brink. The US must not get diverted by Iran at this stage. It must not once again be like the US taking its eyes off the Af-Pak region and concentrating on a non-existent threat in Iraq that brough doom to itself and also let Af-Pak off the hook. The situation in Af-Pak is moving to extreme danger and the US has to decisively act now. This is a tough and long-drawn out process but there is no longer any easy way out.

Is Punishing Pakistan a Solution ?

I think, by now, everyone else other than Pakistanis and their ardent supporters, agrees that Pakistan has been playing a dangerous double game and practising perfidy with friends and foe alike. The disagreement, if any, lies only in deciding as to how far back in history this mendacity goes. As an Indian, I believe and as I have posted here, that it goes as far back as 1906 when an elite 'Mussalman' delegation met the Viceroy, Lord Minto, to demand an exclusivist treatment of the Muslims of India by the Imperial British power in the then impending reform process for the governance of India. Ever since that time, the founding fathers of Pakistan such as Sir Aga Khan, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Allama Iqbal, Jinnah, the Raja of Mahmudabad et al and their successors have practised this exact game sometimes with finesse, sometimes crudley but always with the active connivance of either the British or later the Americans. However, the British having been the active partners in carving out and later propping up an Islamist state in the Indian Subcontinent with the help of the Americans, would naturally agree only to a much later date for Pakistan's perfidious behaviour, lest its complicity comes into the open.

I do not intend to go into all that Western complicity now. We can largely confine ourselves to more agreeable later dates and still discuss the issue elaborately.

The question that is doing the rounds in the last few years, especially among American analysts, think-tanks and government circles, is what could they do with an increasingly intransigent and troublesome Pakistan. Some have suggested that Pakistan be exposed for its perfidy and shame it for whatever it is worth. They glibly assume that such an exposé would cure Pakistan of its perfidy, but they either pretend not to know or do not realize that Pakistan is too thick skinned for all that. Pakistan has been exposed so many times before and yet it blithely continues with its bad behaviour. Some others have suggested a break-up of Pakistan so that the individual parcels do not pose any danger anymore. This was the import of an article, 'The Blood Borders', in the US Armed Forces Journal in c. 2006 by an ex-CIA analyst, Col. Ralph Peters. Of course, there remains the question of how to handle the nuclear weapons (over a hundred of them and growing at a considerable pace and sophistication) and some have suggested to find solutions from the more serious breakup of the USSR and how the nuclear issue was handled then.

Yet others have argued that punishing Pakistan is not exactly the way to go about. There are two streams of arguments here. One group thinks that Pakistan is not so irretrievably lost that it needs to be written off and there are enough avenues open to bring it back on the rails. If Kashmir problem was solved and if its economy improves, its behaviour would change for the better. So goes their argument. The other group, which also agrees that punishing Pakistan will not solve any problems, says that Pakistan's (mis)behaviour stems from its fear of a much larger India from which it seceded violently. It was this fear that led the Pakistani military to hijack the situation and convert the country into a 'security state' thereby arrogating to itself all the powers and a disproportionately massive share of the meagre resources. Punishing Pakistan, by cutting off US military aid would not impact the military because the military would use more of the meagre resources of the state for itself thereby putting development into even more jeopardy. Cutting off civilian aid will not impact the military at all and on the contrary will lead to a more severe situation for the already grossly embattled population. Thus, their argument is that punishing Pakistani military or the society is not the way to go about reforming Pakistan. This article in the Foreign Policy magazine suggests that "trade, investment, and encouraging the normalization of relations with India" must be emphasized as alternatives to punishing Pakistan. This line of argument is not really new and has been in vogue for a while now. Let us see how it holds up to serious scrutiny.

The US-Pakistan relationships have been marked by marriages (of convenience) and divorces. The US has had multiple marriages with political and military regimes of Pakistan. Each marriage followed a while later by an acrimonious divorce that caused only more pain for the US and the rest of the world, especially India. The US-Pakistan relationship has been a love-hate one since the 50s. I will briefly recall the history of military and economic aid from the US in the period leading up to the first divorce between the US and Pakistan which occurred soon after 1965.

Pakistan’s sole obsession from Aug. 14, 1947 had been India. With this in mind, Pakistan approached the Truman administration of the US for arms support as early as October-November, 1947 and again in 1948. The US, concerned as it was with the deteriorating and tense situation in Germany and the rest of Europe, did not pay attention to Pakistani requests. In May 1950, during the state visit by Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan to the US, the military aid request was renewed. In the late 40s and during the 50s, it was the expedience of preventing the scourge of communism from spreading that prompted the Baghdad Pact (later to become SEATO in c. 1954) and CENTO (signed in c. 1955)to be formulated. Pakistan was a member of both and also had a special "Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement" with the Eisenhower administration in the US in 1954. It was, inter alia, to "preserve and maintain the integrity of Pakistan" and agreed to take "appropriate action, including the use of armed forces, as may be mutually agreed upon . . . in order to assist the Government of Pakistan at its request.". While the US was led to believe that that clause was needed with Communism knocking at the doors of Pakistan from Sinkiang (now, Xinjiang) in the East and a weak and troubled Afghanistan in the West, Pakistan's calculus was to use this friendship in its fight against India. The US ambassador, James Langley, said in c. 1957, (sic) “The present military program is a hoax, the hoax being that it is related to the Soviet threat”. As India feared, the arms were indeed used only against India and there was no single occasion to use them against the Communists. Similarly, Pakistan never helped the US in its anti-Communism drive, the sole purpose for which extensive and elaborate treaties were signed and military aid was generously given. When Gen. McArthur demanded a brigade of Pakistani troops to be deployed in Korea under the US command after the Armistice was signed there, Pakistan cleverly avoided that. India deeply resented this military aid arrangement but the US spurned India’s justified concerns through subterfuge and diplomatese. For example, when the Indian Prime Minister Nehru voiced his concern, the US simply kept on repeating the statement that this was no new agreement and that “ in fact they have avoided extending it.” This was in c. 1959. A frustrated and angry Nehru said in the Parliament on April 29, 1959, "The fact of the U.S. Government supplying jet bombers to Pakistan has led to considerable feeling, concern and resentment in India which have progressively grown as shown in the recent Canberra incident when one of our planes was shot down by these jet planes. This fact has been brought to the notice of the U.S. Government on several occasions." Gen. Ayub Khan wanted to completely equip the existing five-and-a-half Divisions of the Pakistani Army with modern US weapons and looked up to largesse from the US for the same. He also wanted to add more strength by recruiting an additional 56000 soldiers, comprising of an additional Infantry division, a new para Brigade, and conversion of the Independent Armoured Brigade into a Division. During the period between c. 1954 and 1965, the US completely equipped the five-and-a-half divisions of Pakistani Army besides gifting six squadrons of fighter aircraft, twelve ships to the Pakistani Navy, modernizing the Karachi and Chittagong ports, and providing technical support and training for the Pakistani armed forces.

During the same time, the US economic aid to Pakistan also increased substantially. From nearly USD 3 million in c. 1951, it shot upto ~USD 750 million in c. 1953 and touched a massive 2.4 billion in c. 1962. It began to decline after the 1965 divorce following the Pakistani accusation of US arms embargo being the reson for its reverses in the 1965 war with India. It still remained significant at around USD 1 Billion until c. 1972 when it dipped again to around USD ½ Billion. The aid took a real hit in c. 1991 when the next divorce took place following the Geneva accord, the withdrawal of the USSR from Afghanistan and the sudden US concerns of nuclear proliferation by Pakistan. As we all know, the aid dramatically picked up after 9/11 with the peak of USD 2 Billion in c. 2010. To this direct economic assistance must be added aid under various other headings such as USAID, Health Assistance, PL-480 assistance etc which have not been insignificant and as large as the direct economic aid most times.

Let us cut to more recent times. The same US-Pakistan supply-demand scenario re-appeared after 9/11. While the US wanted unrestricted access to Pakistani facilities to pursue its goals against Al Qaeda, Gen. Musharraf wanted legitimacy for himself as the President of Pakistan, more military aid, debt relief, economic aid, and greater access to Pakistan's textile products in the US and Europe. One can easily surmise that he would have also demanded a US intervention in its disputes with India. As all these were not against US interests, they were (at least one presumes so) conceded to without much hassle. The February 12-14, 2002 visit of Gen. Musharraf to Washington was hailed as the 'opening of a new chapter' in the tortured and chequered US-Pakistani relationship. The US immediately restored the aid relationship to the status before the latest c. 1991 divorce. Even as this 'new chapter' opened and Pakistan was being showered with goodies, Gen. Musharraf played the usual Pakistani perfidy upon the US. His announcement in Washington that the kidnapped journalist of the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearl, was still alive and would be safely recovered shortly turned out to be false immediately after he left Washington. The perfidy, as we know now, was that Gen. Musharraf knew exactly a week before his travel to Washington, from the surrendered Omar Saeed Sheikh (an ISI agent who 'surrendered' to his ISI handler and Gen. Musharraf's old and close confidante, Brig. Shah) what exactly had happened to Daniel Pearl but chose to depict the situation deliberately differently at Washington, raising false hopes.

Even in the recent strained times, the US certainly seems to have more than fulfilled its end of its [Faustian] bargain with Pakistan. The US entered into a new defence relationship with Pakistan by designating that country as a ‘Major Non-Nato Ally’ (MNNA) in c. 2004. Under this rubric, it then supplied arms to Pakistan ostensibly to fight the Taliban/Al Qaeda terrorists who were operating out of mud houses and caves in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. This was so even in circa 2008 by which time the US-Pakistan War on Terror steam had run out and the US was attacking inside Pakistan at will. Only this time, most of the kind of arms supplied were not usable against these terrorists. These were items like 250 Armour piercing TOW 2A Anti-tank missiles, Excalibur Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs), eight Aerostat radars, six AN-TPS77 surveillance radar, 5600 military radio sets, 500 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, 200 AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles, 36 F-16 Block 52s, mid-life upgrade to 34 existing F-16 A/Bs to C/D block 50/52, ALQ-211 Advanced Integrated Defensive Electronic Warfare Suite (AIDEWS) pod for their F-16s to detect radar, jamming and laser signals hitting the aircraft, 8 P-3C maritime reconnaissance aircraft, mid-life upgrade to existing P-3 fleet, modernization of the Shahbaz Airbase (Jacobabad), 26 Bell 412 helicopters, 39 T-37 military trainer jets, 150 submarine/surface/air launched Harpoon Block II missiles, six Phalanx Close In Weapon Systems (CIWS) for the Navy, five refurbished SH-2I Super Seasprite maritime helicopters etc. The US is also to provide Pakistan with three additional P-3 aircraft that will be configured with the E-2C HAWKEYE airborne early warning electronics suite. Later, in c. 2009, the US complained that its P-3C and Harpoon missiles have been converted for attacking India. Since the start of Afghan operations in c. 2002, the US had supplied other arms like 115 155mm Self-propelled M109A5 howitzers, 20 AH-1 Cobra Attack helicopters, upgrades to existing older versions of AH-1 Cobras, 6 C-130Hs, transfer of 8 Perry-class guided missile Frigates upgraded with anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability, five fast patrol boats, 450 vehicles for Frontier Corps, hundreds of NVGs, thousands of protective vests, 12 Shadow drones, Harris high frequency communication sets, and undisclosed special weapons. In c. 2010, it gave Pakistan 18 new F-16 aircraft which the US Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jeffry Glenn said “would give the Pakistan Air Force greatly expanded capabilities in its fight against ‘radical elements’ in the border region.” The US also delivered 1,000 MK-82 500-pound bombs to Pakistan which were later outfitted with 700 GBU-12 and 300 GBU-10 Paveway laser-guided bomb kits built by Lockheed and Raytheon Co allowing the country’s air force a better targeting of the weapons. In addition, the International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme had been revived after c. 2002, and significant number of officers from Pakistan Army have attended these programmes. After the Raymond Davis incident and the increasing anti-American sentiments within the society and the military, it is doubtful if the military would be as enthusiastic as before in sending its officers to the US.

The real reason behind these useless arms for pursuing the Global War on Terror (GWoT) in the Af-Pak badlands, but useful for pursuing Pakistan's eternal and enduring hostility with India, came out very soon. “We must continue to reassure Pakistan that as it combats the terrorist threat, it is not exposing itself to increased risk along its eastern border,” said Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Michele Flournoy while explaining why the United States needed to strengthen Islamabad’s conventional defence systems as well. “Although extremist attacks have led to the repositioning of substantial Pakistani forces, Pakistan’s strategic concerns about India remain pre-eminent.” The import of these statements was revealed by an exposed cable by the WikiLeaks wherein the US Ambassador in Pakistan, Ms. Anne W Patterson justified another USD 1½ Billion to Pakistan to provide for its ‘national defense’ against the ‘threat from India’. In October 2010, the US decided to grant USD 2 Billion worth of arms to Pakistan, spread over a five year period.

Pakistanis have always calibrated their assistance to the US directly but meagrely proportional to the quantum of aid they received from the US. It has been so ever since Eisenhower decided to establish a close relationship with that country. In the period between circa 1954 and 2002, the US had provided Pakistan with overt aid amounting to USD 12.6 Billion. In the period after 9/11, between circa 2002 and 2007, the US aid was over 9 Billion USD (USD 4.586 billion as reimbursement for assistance to Op Enduring Freedom (launched Oct. 7, 2001) and USD 4.422 Billion as economic and military assistance). The Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act (or PEACE Act, 2009 or Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement Act or also known as Enhanced Partnership Act 2009), assured USD 1.5 Billion of economic aid every year for the next five years. All these are in addition to the Direct Military Aid from the Pentagon which is on top of the equipment that Pakistan receives through normal foreign military sales (FMS) overseen by the State Department. Those sales vary year to year but generally total around $300 million annually. A special counterinsurgency fund approved by Congress earlier in c. 2009 gave the Pentagon the authorisation to speed delivery of military equipment to the Pakistan Army. In addition, Pakistan gets reimbursed annually USD 1.6 Billion for the logistical and military support it provides to the US (the Coalition Support Fund). The US also offers Pakistan annually another aid of USD 700 million annually to fight Al Qaeda and Taliban on its soil (the Counter Insurgency Capability Fund). It later emerged that all these funds were misused by the Government of Pakistan, an admission made by none other than Gen. Musharraf himself, the tight buddy of the US. Besides these two funding options, the US offers a variety of other funds: Foreign Military Financing (FMF), International Military Education and Training (IMET), International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement, Non-proliferation and Anti-Terrorism, De-mining & Related etc. The US uses the FMF to maintain close contacts with the Pakistani military and as a ‘foundation for bilateral security relationship’. After 26/11, the US decided to increase its FMF assistance to Pakistan to USD 400 Million a year for five more years. This was expected to demonstrate the US commitment to Paksitan and affirm its reliability as a partner. This was also expected ‘to address, among other security needs, its “growing conventional disadvantage vis-à-vis India,” in order to secure its cooperation in the “war on terror.” Of course, the quantum of the covert aid is unknown.

Pakistan also owes the various multilateral lending organizations directly controlled by the US such as IMF, IBRD, ADB etc. over 20 Billion US Dollars. Overall, by 2006, Pakistan’s foreign debts had declined from US$ 47.8 Billion to US$ 30.3 Billion, solely due to US waivers and other interventions. Only in c. 2009, did the Americans attach stringent conditionalities on how these funds were to be spent by Pakistan. One of the conditions was to make sure that the funds were not squandered or diverted to affect the “balance of power in the region”. Some of these conditions were later diluted to assuage Pakistani sensitivities and upon the intervention of the Pakistani military.

Is there a strategic nature in the relationship between the US and Pakistan ? More importantly, does Pakistan want such a relationship or does it seek only a tactical and transactional relationship that suits its exigencies ? Do Pakistan and the US share vital national interests that could form the basis for a strong strategic partnership ? Does Pakistan think that only tactical relationship with the US suits its strategic interests ? These are questions that the managers of the relationship between these two nations have to ask themselves and seek answers.

But, the larger question here is, has Pakistan delivered any value to the US for the billions of dollars it has sunk into this state since the early 1950s ? It might have. There are many that the world is aware of, like for instance the U2 overflights from Badaber airbase near Peshawar, the gathering of intelligence on various countries such as Iran, the Pakistani help in the thawing of the US-China relationship, the ensnaring of the USSR into Afghanistan and its eventual humiliating withdrawal, the various pinpricks to India over several decades to keep it off-balance etc. Whether these were worth the amount of aid that the US poured into Pakistan and the diplomatic and other support it provided for its villainous activities is something that only the US can conceivably answer, especially in the backlash of terrorism it faces from that country. Of course, it has been a massive problem for India in particular and the region as well as the world in general. Though Pakistan's (ir)relevance is a question that the US has to deliberate, it concerns India as well because the US aid has been mostly used by Pakistan against Indian interests with the tacit approval of the various US Administrations. A question such as 'Is punishing Pakistan a solution' therefore impacts India as much as it does Pakistan.

For those who argue that if the US withdrew military aid to Pakistan, the military would lay their hands on the 'overall available resources' of the Government of Pakistan, thereby reducuing even more the civilian government's capacity for economic and developmental projects, the question that needs to be asked is this. Why did Pakistan maintain a defence spending of 4% of its Gross National Product (GNP) throughout the 1950s, hiking it to 6% throughout the 60s and even going further up in the succeeding decades when there was a massive US military support ? Yes, in the absence of US military aid, there is a possibility that instead of 6%, the Pakistani military might have taken away 9% of the GNP for its own use. The Pakistani leaders were quite willing to let the people 'eat grass' anyhow. There is also another possibility that in the absence of such blind support from the US, the Pakistani military might have seen the futility of it all because it could not acquire more modern weapons than what India possessed to neutralize the numerical advantage, even if it had got money, and desisted therefore from inflicting wars and terrorism upon India. It could not have turned to the USSR for obvious reasons and China then was not what it became in the twenty first century. Their progenitor, Britain, was on the decline and was not a significant arms supplier anyway. And, that might have lead to a more normal nation-state of Pakistan. Even domestically, the Pakistani Army and the Air Force might have behaved more responsibly towards East Pakistan, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan regions, rather than engaging in a genocide or going on a killing spree. Besides equipping the Pakistani military and arming it to its teeth unnecessarily, the US also stood solidly by the military dictators who usurped power from civilian governments. Needless to mention that a more truthful US stance (without compromising its realpolitik requirements) would have seen a truer form of 'democracy' taking roots in Pakistan than the sham one we are seeing today. But, the US felt no such compunction in its transactional dealing with Pakistan and therefore its assurances today of a more sustained relationship with Pakistan sound hollow to many. More than a subservient Supreme Court of Pakistan that justified and legitimized Army coups through an exotic 'doctrine of necessity', it was the unflinching diplomatic support from the numerous Presidents and the Governments of the US that made the position of the military so unassailable within Pakistan, even as the US preached the virtues of democracy to other nations. Thus, the double-dealing Pakistan and the forked-tongue United States were handsome winners of the 'Made for Each Other Contest'. It is therefore my contention that the US bears a huge responsibility to sort out the Pakistani mess and rid the world of a menace.

What are the options available to the US now ? Can it talk Pakistan into becoming a more normal nation-state ? Unlikely. The rot is not confined to a few sections of the military or bureaucracy or political class. It runs right through. And, in current circumstances, the US would be the last nation that would be listened to even if such an attempt were to be made by it. Even the 'enduring enemy', India, would have a brighter chance than the US ! Most people do not realize that the US never enjoyed a great equation with the masses of Pakistan (notwithstanding Lyndon B. Johnson's much acclaimed tete-a-tete with a Pakistani camel-cart driver) even when the US-Pakistan relationship was at its best. It was just the 'Establishment' that kept the relationship going and that too transactionally. The Pakistani Establishment-US relationship was not rollicking either. At periodic intervals, there was great stress and breakdown, only for the relationship to be revived by the next big event that needed Paksitan's help for the US. In this profession, it has always been a seller's market and the rich client was happy so long as his needs were serviced. With the result, Pakistan feels that the US can be toyed around with because the client is still in need of its services.

Are there other options for the US such as asking China to discipline Pakistan's behaviour ? Not exactly. People's Republic of China (PRC) is another important customer for Pakistan and has been so for five decades now. The bond is becoming stronger now that the Pakistani bond with the US is weakening. PRC has used Pakistan as a lower cost option to restrain India and keep her in check. When the Pakistani Army (especially Gen. Musharraf in his money-making talk circuits in the US and Europe) says that irrespective of India considering the PRC military as a larger threat, it was concentrating most of its forces against Pakistan, there is truth in that. The truth is that PRC has adroitly exploited the Pakistani hatred for India to its advantage. By maintaining a deceptive calm along the India border, while building up enormous infrastructure behind the lines and pointing nuclear-tipped missiles at India from far away, PRC made India concentrate on the Pakistani borders. It is only now India woke up to a huge Chinese threat and the eminent possibility of a two-front war involving both Pakistan and China simultaneously. Reports are now appearing of Pakistan giving on 'lease' the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) area to China for fifty years. {See this post for the Pakistan-China perfidy in this region} After having supplied Pakistan with nuclear weapons, their delivery systems and remaining, at this point, as the only likely supplier for more such lethal weapons and platforms (Pakistan is in need of nuclear submarines, SSBNs, to complete its triad or Ballistic Missile Defences, BMDs, it also needs MIRV & MaRV technology-enabled missiles, and China is the only source for all these; the US may wink and allow China to supply these platforms but it would never transfer these from its own arsenal), China has enormous leverage with Pakistan but it would not exercise that leverage now because that would then benefit its two staunchest enemies, the US and India. PRC needs Pakistan's support in containing the simmering Xinjiang cauldron with the ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement) finding sanctuaries in Pakistan and operating out of it. China needs Pakistan to keep a tight leash on these jihadi Islamists even as the Tibetan monks immolate themselves on the more contentious Tibetan independence issue. There are also other sections of Chinese society who are showing defiance, in some parts of the country, an act not tolerated by the Communist Party of China (CPC). The global economic slowdown has its repercussions on China as well. Thus, CPC's hands are full in dealing with all these domestic issues. More than all these issues, other nations in the region seem to be coming to an alliance over issues of territorial jurisdiction and the US has created a naval base in Northern Australia expressly for inserting the US Navy into Asia-Pacific in a big way. The emerging trilateral alliance among Japan (with which the Chinese relationship has been strained after recent incidents), India (which is beginning to assert itself vis-a-vis PRC) and the US, is being looked at suspiciously by the PRC. The imminent change of guard in CPC would also demand that China retains its dwindling number of friends in Asia and Pakistan is a pivot that China cannot afford to annoy.

What else can the US do if it cannot use its or China's 'soft' influence to change Pakistan's behaviour ? More importantly, why should the US be concerned with even changing Pakistan's behaviour ?

(To be concluded . . . )

What do Pakistanis perceive about their National Security ? Part III

This is the last concluding part in this series.

In the two previous posts I had discussed about international isolation of Pakistan and the lack of control over non-state actors. I argued that while international isolation of Pakistan was true, the concept of 'non-state actors' was a fig leaf to cover the state's employment of jihadi terrorists through the Pakistani Army (PA) against India especially and other nations as well. I also argued that the apparent lack of control over the 'non-state actors', which the Group-of-50 commented about {"Seeing Beyond Perceptions" in The Nation }, was simply an internecine feud (or, more precisely the Fourth Jihad since c. 1979).

The Group-of-50 went on to say, analyzing the current situation, that there were other important national security concerns such as penetration of foreign influence in Pakistan's domestic media, lack of Pakistan's outreach to international media, and the ability of foreign intelligence agencies to penetrate into Pakistan's socio-political fabric.

Let us now look at some of these other concerns.

Penetration of foreign influence in Pakistan's domestic media

I am really at a loss to understand what the group meant by domestic media being influenced by foreign entities. The following enjoyed by the English-language-media is abysmally low in Pakistan, a country dominated by vernacular press. This is true of both the print and the electronic media. There is nothing surprising in this as it is true of almost any other country. The factors that distinguish the vernacular Pakistani media from similar media in most other countries are their utter lack of objectivity, their extremism, crudeness and excess dependence on exotic conspiracy theories. Among the vernacular media, it is the Urdu media that rules the roost within Pakistan. Anybody who has followed the Pakistani TV news channels or the Urdu newspapers and weeklies would know how virulent and venomous their views are. They echo the jihadi mindset and act as mouthpieces of these extremist organizations spinning out conspiracy theories to suit their viewpoint. The excellent English-language weekly, The Friday Times, published from Lahore has a section devoted to the Urdu press which it aptly calls as 'Nuggets from the Urdu Press', standing in mute testimony to the characteristics of the Urdu media in Pakistan that I have listed above. Late last year, Pakistan's only 24X7 English news channel, Express 24/7 closed shop as it could not be made "self-sustaining from a financial and commercial standpoint". English-language newspapers are read by less than 1% of the population and their circulation numbers are peanuts (to borrow from Gen. Zia-ul-Haq) compared to their Urdu counterparts. Apart from these dailies, weeklies and fortnightlies, there is a significant circulation of jihadi material from various jihadi terrorist tanzeems. For example, Jama'at-ud-Dawah (JuD, better known as Lashkar-e-Tayba or LeT) publishes a weekly newspaper, Ghazwa and a monthly magazine Majalah al Dawa which circulate 200,000 copies. Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) publishes a weekly magazine Zarb-i-Momin and the sectarian terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi(LeJ) publishes Intiqam-i-Haq. True to its deviant nature, all these publications are banned in Pakistan but are freely available in news stalls in addition to being distributed by volunteers. Moreover, GoP (Government of Pakistan) has not taken any effort to seize these material or prevent their distribution. That is the usual Pakistani perfidy. Besides, Pakistan has been the deadliest nation for journalists in c. 2010, a distinction it appears to have easily retained in c. 2011 as well with some high profile assassinations (such as Syed Saleem Shahzad of Asia Times Online or Wali Khan Babar of Geo News TV), attacks against and kidnappings of journalists who were considered as not toeing the line of the PA, the ISI and the terrorist groups, and attacks against offices of private TV channels, and local Press Clubs.

I would therefore assume that when the Group-of-50 talk of 'foreign influence of local media', they refer to the widespread viewership of Indian entertainment channels in Hindi and the Hindi movies. The Group-of-50 might have thought of these as 'cultural invasion' by India aimed at subverting the nation from within. The central concern, from demanding a separate Muslim electorate (from Viceroy Minto in c. 1904) to the demands for keeping 'Indian cultural invasion' at bay, is the exclusivist policy of the founding fathers of Pakistan and their successors. This exclusion is hoped by the 'Establishment' and the clerics to preserve the purity of this Islamic nation, a la Nazis who had similar notions of Aryan purity under Adolf Hitler. It has been said that the Nazis were radicals in the garb of the traditionalists. In their scheme of things based on the Aryan Master Race, moral obligations are owed only to them but not to the inferior races. The Nazi attack on the Jews stemmed from their presumption that they were superior and were committing all atrocities (which to them were glorious deeds) for the common good of the superior community. The genocide by the Pakistani Army in the then East Pakistan is along similar lines as the holocaust that killed millions of Jews in Nazi Germany. Apart from the hatred for the infidel Hindus, it was the contempt that the 'meat-eating, tall, fair and handsome' West Pakistanis had for the 'rice-and-fish eating, small, dark and ugly' Bengalis that drove the policy makers in West Pakistan and the West Pakistani army to launch a massive genocidal programme. Pakistani clerics associate any perceived “moral decadence” such as music, dance, drama and films in Pakistan as a bad influence from India and un-Islamic. For most Pakistanis, dance forms like Bharatnatyam and Kathak which were once freely practised in these areas have become unIslamic and Gen. Zia-ul-Haq’s regime banned them and even today, one needs a government permission to stage a public dance programme.

It is obvious therefore that when the Group-of-50 laments about invasion of foreign influence in local media, they refer to the Indian influence. And, why do they think that Indian cultural influence is a concern for their national security ? The reason is not far to seek. The severest problem for Pakistan since independence has been its 'identity'. Jinnah, Iqbal and others divided India claiming that the Hindus and Muslims constituted two different nations because 'culture, civilization, language, literature, art, architecture, names, nomenclature, sense of value, proportions, legal laws, moral codes, customs, calendar, history, tradition, aptitudes and ambitions' all differed diametrically between these two. Unfortunately, this was largely untrue as Muslims of India were converts from Hinduism (like Jinnah or Allama Iqbal themselves) and were bound to India culturally, historically, geographically, civilizationally, linguistically, traditionally and in every other way possible. Having developed this fraudulent theory, Jinnah and his cohorts had to prove it and sustain it too. Thus, linkages with India needed to be shunned. Since “national identity” is derived from such things as culture, heritage, history, experiences etc. and since all these were inextricably linked with India, Pakistani leaders sought to redefine their 'identity'. Various organs of the Pakistani government therefore developed and propagated the myth of Pakistanis being of Central Asian or Middle Eastern or Turkish origin, depending upon circumstances or imagination, in order to avoid having anything to do with their “Indianness”.

It is this fear of people rediscovering their Indianness (especially Bhartiya) that drives the Group-of-50 to voice 'foreign influence in domestic media' as a security concern. The PA has skillfully exploited such paranoia and the repetition of the same by the Group-of-50 perhaps confirms my suspicion about who the sponsors of this group could be.

Lack of Pakistan's outreach to international media

One needs to understand the Pakistani society to appreciate why the Group-of-50 thinks the above is a serious security concern. Pakistan is constrained by fierce notions of ghairat (honour) and izzat (dignity). Frequently, Pakistani politicians invoke ‘honour and dignity’ (H&D)to justify their actions. This is not surprising in a feudal and biradari (clannish affinity) based society dominated by landlords and tribal chiefs. This system is deeply entrenched and no attempt has been made to eliminate these practices. This is why there is still widespread use of such abominable evils as karo-kari, swara etc. and the Lahore High Court in circa 1994 allowed such murders as sanctioned by the Hadith. The court opined, “Although in existing laws there is no concession for momentary insanity but those implicated in ‘honour’ killings are worthy of some concession since ‘honour’ killings cannot be considered the same as a murder in cold blood.” { Ghulam Yasin Ghulam vs the State 1994 PLD 392 (Lahore)} Senators in the National and Provincial Assemblies have openly supported such honour killings to the point of even dismissing a gruesome case of burying alive in July 2008 of five women as natural and lawful tribal tradition. Honour is also the reason that even when the Pakistani military got defeated by India in various wars, they were depicted to the Pakistanis as great victories instead. And the people who had been brought up on the invincibility of Muslims and the cowardice of the Hindus simply gulped them without asking questions. The end result of the conflicts were presented as machinations by the evil Indians or the Western powers or an alliance of both.

Thus, after the surrender of 93000 Pakistani soldiers and on the eve of his departure to Simla for signing a Peace Deal and release of the PoWs (Prisoners-of-War), Z.A. Bhutto thundered about a thousand-year war with India. Upon his return to Lahore from Simla, he had the gall to say “We lost a political war and not a military engagement.” Ayub Khan’s ratio of ten Indian soldiers equaling one Pakistani soldier and Ms. Benazir Bhutto’s redefinition of the same ratio to a hundred as well as Musharraf’s assertion that Pakistani space scientists and engineers were better than those of the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) and how Pakistanis speak better English than the Indians were attempts to preserve the honour and dignity.

It was in the same vein that the COAS of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani handed over to the US Administration a 14-page set of demands during the strategic dialogue in Washington D.C. in October, 2010. This was eerily similar to the set of outrageous demands that the vanquished Pakistani Army asked Z.A. Bhutto to present to the victorious Indian leaders when there were 93,000 Pakistani POWs in Indian hands after the massive defeat and surrender in December, 1971. The ridiculous flag-lowering and gate-closing ceremony at the Wagah border every evening is another manifestation of the Pakistani H&D business. The Indian suggestion to do away with this ceremony altogether has been rejected by Pakistan because an important spectacle of H&D would then be lost to the Pakistani masses. Pakistanis believe that their H&D not only lies in presenting a better image of their nation than what is portrayed otherwise in international media, but most importantly, it lies in being portrayed as superior to India. That was why the slain Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer tweeted before his assassination that the Indians were making fools of themselves when an Indian rocket failed, forgetting other notable Indian achievements in space science and technology for several decades now and that failures are not uncommon in the tough conditions of space as all space-faring nations know. Gen. Kayani made this overwhelming H&D aspect very clear when he said, as talks to normalize trade relations were going on between India and Pakistan at Islamabad, "The nation’s honour and integrity will not be traded in exchange for prosperity". He also said in another context that "welfare of the people at the cost of national honour" was unacceptable to him. Of course, the definition of what constitutes 'national honour' comes from the PA, not from the elected government as otherwise there is no need for an Army chief to comment on these matters. It came as no surprise therefore when in December 2010, in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks expose of diplomatic cables to and from the US embassies worldwide and the State Department, Pakistan fabricated fake cables to malign Indian Army and India. For example, the fake cables were quoted by Pakistani newspapers to describe senior Indian generals as vain, egotistical and genocidal; they said India's government is secretly allied with Hindu fundamentalists; and they claimed Indian spies are covertly supporting Islamist militants in Pakistan's tribal belt and Balochistan. It did not take much to blow off these fake stories anyway.

For the same reasons of ‘honour and dignity’, Pakistan blames India for domestic terrorism. For example, after the Ashura Shia Procession in Karachi was attacked by Sunni sectarian suicide bombers two years back, and the well-prepared Shias retaliated and torched all the shops and establishments surrounding the bombed out place resulting in losses worth billions of Pakistani Rupees, Pakistan conveniently blamed it on India. The H&D-obsessed Pakistani belief is that 'no Muslim could do such horrible things to another Muslim' and so the corollary to follow is that the evil Hindu from India must have carried these out. One wants to ask these people then why a certain Brig. Zia-ul-Haq inflicted such a massive and bloody carnage on the Muslim Palestinian refugees in Jordan. Why did the PA kill millions of East Pakistani Muslims and drive out even more millions to Hindu India during that genocidal spree in 1971 ? Why does TTP (Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan) claim to have launched a war on the PA, ISI and the Pakistani government and those fellow Pakistani Muslims who support the CIA ?

The Group-of-50 should have therefore advised the 'Establishment' to achieve real honour and dignity rather than a fake one by presenting a better image of Pakistan through a mere manipulation of the international media.

Whose War on Terror is it ?

The report by the Group-of-50 goes on to refer to the ambiguities as to whose war Pakistan was fighting resulting in a huge perceptional gap between the national policy (both political and military) and public opinion.

Such are the wages of sin. In my previous post, we saw the earlier and on-going jihads involving the PA. The sin is the enduring hostility with India. Everything else is tied to that. It was this hostility that drove Pakistan to develop a close alliance with the Americans even at the cost of other brotherly Islamic nations such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia. It was this hostility that sought Pakistan to establish a friendly relationship with a Godless Communist China even while claiming to be at the vanguard of Islam and targetting to assume the mantle of ummah leadership. It has been this hostility that has allowed Pakistan to concede space on its independent policies and even sovereignty to these states as well as Saudi Arabia. It has been this hostility that has been the sole cause for employing jihadism and terrorism as state policies and seeing absolutely nothing wrong in pursuing these tools wholeheartedly. It is this hostility that has corrupted the minds of young and impressionable students with false history, false religiosity and intolerance. It is this hostility that has led the State to abdicate itself to the armed forces. It is this hostility that demands a false sense of honour and dignity. It is this hostility that leads to Pakistan punching way above its weight with all the attendant problems. It is this hostility that blinds its planners keeping its people mired in poverty while allocating disproportionate amount of funds to the armed forces. It is this hostility that has given rise to dozens of terrorist outfits who now terrorize not only India but also the region. The wages of the sin are the blowback to Pakistan itself from these jihadi terrorists themselves, the tag of a 'failing' or even a 'failed' state where nobody wants to invest, the sliding human development indices, the choicest epithets and adjectives that are freely used to describe Pakistan which this H&D loving country is unable to do anything about, the economic mess which is worsening by the day, the reluctance of the once-close friends to lend a helping hand in the way they have done countless times before and above all the complete lack of faith in the future of Pakistan by their very people themselves.

The only set of people who believe in a bright future for the nuclear-armed Pakistan are the jihadi terrorists and the political wings of various Islamist parties to which the jihadi groups may be allied or act as extensions. They have once again united under a common banner, 'Difaa-e-Pakistan Council' (Defence of Pakistan Council, DPC). This is clearly a PA and ISI created organization comprising of Islamist political parties, jihadi terrorist outfits, jihad supporting ex PA Generals et al. Once again, the PA is feeling that it is destined to play a major role in settling the Afghanistan issue as it slowly reaches a climax. The PA wants to get rid of the PPP government, install a more acceptable Islamist group in PPP's place, leverage the US (using carrots and sticks) to gain primacy in Afghanistan, and keep India out of Afghanistan. The same evil players (personalities and/or organizations) who setup the anti-Benazir Bhutto Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (or, IJI) in 1988 have forged the alliance this time too. The DPC wants to create a mass movement against the US, against its Afghan campaign and malign the Americans as part of an evil group of Hindus, Christians and Jews. They would then insinuate the PPP government as traitors supporting the Americans. The timing of the creation of DPC is a straight giveaway as to its sponsorship and aims.

The Group-of-50 has echoed similar sentiments. One can therefore say that the recommendations of the Group-of-50 are nothing but a signal disservice to Pakistan. But, Pakistan seems determined not to learn from the past and seems determined to do more and more of the same destructive policies that it has pursued since its founding fathers in the Muslim League of pre-Partition days decided upon a particular line of action vis-a-vis Hindu India.

PS: If one reads the tea-leaves, India should be watchful of imminent terror strikes. Such a strike may force the Indian Army to launch punitive strikes against Pakistan. The PPP government will then be forced to take a stand on the developing situation, caught as it surely would be between Indian counter-attack and Western pressure. In fact, I would even expect the PA & the ISI to leave enough tantalizing evidence to link their involvement in the terror act so that there would positively be retribution by India as GoI (Government of India) has already said that anymore attack (after 26/11) would invite punishment. The PA can use that opportunity to consolidate its position and achieve its tactical goals. It may also miscalculate (as it has done several time before without learning any lesson therefrom) that a terrified US (and possibly China) would step-in to diffuse the situation by demanding restraint from India (or by threatening to open another front in the Indian east, in the case of China). The PA might have war-gamed that it has a better chance in either case and all its domestic objectives could also be met.

Links to Part-I & Part-II

What do Pakistanis perceive about their National Security ? Part II

In the previous installment, we saw about international isolation.

I am not going to discuss other issues like poor governance and shaky economy that were also expressed by the group of 50-odd civil society members as contributing to the concerns regarding national security. That may be true but that follows from several factors, most notable of which is the particular path of confrontation that Pakistan has chosen to employ with India, the country from which it was yanked away. We will come back to this theme later.

Lack of control over non-State actors

What is disturbing is that the eminent group thought it fit to accept the use of 'non-state actors', but what they lamented was the lack of 'control' over them. {For the sake of understanding how Pakistan has used the 'non-state actors', please see earlier posts in this blog, 'The Fraudulent Theory of Non-State Actors' Part I, Part II and Part III} Instead of condemning outright the Pakistani policy of using terror as the main plank of the state policy and advising the powers-that-be that this integration of jihad into the role of a professional army has brought only doom and gloom to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, they chose instead to highlight the 'loss of control' over the jihadi groups. That shows the bankruptcy of thinking in Pakistan and the overall acknowledgement of jihadism as an accepted and sanctioned way of life. The theory of non-state actors, as propounded by the Pakistanis and the Pakistani State itself, is as fraudulent as their other pet theory of 'good' and 'bad' Taliban. One should, however, marvel at the Pakistanis for regularly developing and propagating such theories to which gullible and other realpolitik-practising nations either fall a prey or which they have exploited for their own narrow interests. These [fairly successful] theories are not recent attempts at fraud. Pakistan has been at it for a very long time, deceiving not only the rest of the world but its own people all along. The precursor to such fantastic theories is the most audacious 'Two Nation Theory' which got completely unravelled in 1971. Anyway, that is beyond the scope of this post.

Before one looks at the lament of the Group-of-50 over the 'lack of control over non-state actors', one must briefly recall their genesis in present-day Pakistan. My contention is that there is no separate entity called 'non-state actors' within Pakistan. The non-state actors are nothing but an extension of the State, most especially the Pakistani Army (PA) because the PA is substantially the 'State'. It is not a 'State within the State' as some refer to it because it is the State. The evolution of the Pakistani Army, a legacy of the secular and professional British India Army, into its current pathetic state is a pointer to why I claim that the non-state actors are a part and parcel of the PA. It will be appropriate to divide the history of the PA into four distinctive segments: early professional years up to 1971, the middle years of creeping Islamization within the PA, the next decade of consolidation of Islamism, and the current transformation into Wahhabi jihadism. Except for the initial segment, the Pakistani society at large had also gone through the same metamorphosis.

While the State and the PA employed non-state actors (the Pakhtun tribes to invade, loot, burn and pillage the Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir in c. 1947) right from day one of their independent existence and invoked extensive Islamic symbolism to justify to the masses their amoral ambitions, it had to turn to an Islamist narrative later to justify the PA's successive string of defeats (1947/1948 failures were conveniently blamed on the perfidy of the British officers who were holding all the high positions in the three Services. The 1965 result when Pakistan came close to a debacle was partially explained away as due to American sanctions.). The East Pakistanis were described as not 'good Muslims' having been irretrievably corrupted by Hindu influence and hence the 1971 defeat was a 'good riddance' for the pious Islamic West Pakistan. The 1971 loss was also explained away as further proof of the machinations of the cunning and evil Hindu India. At the same time, a campaign was unleashed to ascribe the failure to the deviation of Pakistan from truly Islamic values and systems of governance.

It was the 1971 crackdown on the hapless East Pakistanis that first saw the Islamist jihadi volunteers from Pakistan fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the PA. The slide of Pakistan into such religious extremism was anticipated but not in the wildest imagination so quickly and so extensively. Though Pakistan was formed on the basis of Islam, Jinnah’s Aug. 11, 1947 speech about a secular Pakistan was expected to be the guideline for the actions of the State. However, the hopes were soon dashed. Pakistan organized a World Muslim Conference (Motamar Al- Alam Al-Islami) in Karachi in Feb. 1949. Later it organized an even bigger event in 1951, again in Karachi, when Karachi was made the world headquarters of the Motamar. On both occasions, the Congress was chaired by the then Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan. In c. 1948, the expelled Muslim Brotherhood leader from Egypt, Said Ramadan (d. 1995), came to Pakistan where he was received warmly. Said Ramadan, who was the son-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood founder Mohammed al Banna, stayed in Pakistan for a year. It was Said Ramadan who helped Maulana Abu ala al Mawdudi to set up the radical IJT (Islami-Jamia'at-e-Tulaba) student wing of his Jama’at-e-Islami (JI). He also helped the convening of the Motamar conference in Karachi in c. 1951. In c. 1962, Said Ramadan set up the Muslim World League to spread wahhabism. In those areas that became of Pakistan, the masses practised Low Islam or Folk Islam which centred on practices anathema to High Islam. While High Islam was puritanical and scriptural, the practitioners of Low Islam relied on the ‘saint cult’. The Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith sects strove to lift the masses from Low Islam to High Islam gradually, an effort in which the political and the military classes participated either out of compulsion in certain cases or out of conviction in other cases. For example, Mohammed Ali Jinnah or F.M. Ayub Khan or Z.A. Bhutto were not strictly adherents of Islam and yet pandered to the dictates of the Islamists out of necessity. On the other hand, Gen Zia-ul-Haq and Nawaz Sharif were fundamentalists who supported Islamists out of conviction. So also is the Prime-Minister-in-waiting, Imran Khan.

It was this IJT that was let loose on the East Pakistanis in March, 1971 when the talks between Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and Yahya Khan broke down permanently. As he came closer to JI, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq banned all student organizations except the IJT. The ban was lifted only in c. 2008 by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. The IJT played a significant role in the ouster of Z.A.Bhutto. It was this IJT that was also involved in the initial stages of the militancy and terrorism in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir in early 1990. The IJT has been virtually running the famous Punjab University (PU), a university which has a hoary tradition, terrorizing the student community and the faculty, imposing its strict Islamic code even today. The IJT was dominant in the campus even when the powerful military dictator Gen. Musharraf was ruling and the Punjab University’s Chancellor and Vice Chancellor were Army Generals. The IJT terrorizes campuses in the same way the Hitler Youth Brigade of Nazi Germany ran rampant across the German academic institutions. It is no wonder that the IJT has such a stranglehold on the PU because the previous Amir of JI, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, was a faculty in the PU. The PU also had another illustrious faculty in the form of Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the Emir of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Gen. Zia-ul-Haq also utilized the IJT to target the communist movement that opposed his rule in the 1980s. The communists found a favourable environment in the PU and the IJT was employed to cleanse the University and they have remained entrenched ever thereafter. The IJT was also used to recruit jihadis for the Afghan and later the Kashmiri campaigns of the PA. Thus, very close proximity developed between the PA and the IJT. This proximity was encouraged by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq who was a great admirer of JI, the parent organization of IJT. Gen. Zia gave unprecedented access to the JI within the PA.

The other Islamist organization that was allowed to develop an affinity with the three services of the Pakistani armed forces was the Tablighi-Jama'at (TJ). The organization, TJ, was formed in India in the 1920s as a revivalist Islamic movement to counter the increasingly popular Arya Samaj which was involved in the twin objectives of ridding the Hindu society of what it considered as superstitions and in winning back, through its shuddhi movement, those Hindus converted to Islam and Christianity en masse. After Partition, the TJ posed themselves in Pakistan as an apolitical Islamic organization involved in proselytization, spreading of the good Muslim virtues and prevention of vices among the population, though their not-so-secret agenda is to seize political power. Such an ambition is not surprising since in Islam political and religious powers are inseparable. Gen. Zia-ul-Haq encouraged the TJ to preach to the various Army units. It is their belief in Jihad-fi-Sabilillah (Jihad in the service of Allah) which found itself as the new motto of the Pakistani Army as imposed by a true adherent of TJ, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq as he took over the Army and soon thereafter, the Presidency. The Deobandi-leaning fundamentalist TJ has followers at the highest levels in political, bureaucratic, academic and armed forces establishments. For example, apart from Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, the then President of Pakistan Rafiq Tarar used to attend regularly Tablighi Jamaat congretations(ijtima) at Raiwind near Lahore, as also Lt. Gen. Javid Nasir, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul and Lt. Gen. Naseem Rana, all DGs, ISI and Nawaz Sharif, the two-time ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan and a closet Islamist. On the eve of the November, 2009 annual convention of the Tablighi Jamaat, 50 former high-ranking officers of the armed forces met under the chairmanship of Lt. Gen. Javid Nasir for a day to deliberate how to take the movement forward, possibly within the armed forces. It included many retired Generals, Brigadiers and Admirals including former Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) Admiral Karamat Rehman Niazi, Lt Gen (r) Agha Masood Hasan, Lt Gen (r) Aftab Ahmed et al. The brutal daylight attack on the mosques (officially known as Ibadatgah because of the law declaring Ahmedis as non-Muslims) of the Ahmedis on May 28, 2010, that killed 95 of them was carried out by a suicide squad which had been assembled in the Raiwind office of the Tablighi-e-Jama’at. Later, a hospital where injured Ahmedis were being treated was also attacked killing even more of them followed by a warning to doctors not to treat them. Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber, attended the mosques run by Tablighi. Several men connected with the aborted UK plane bombing of Aug,2006 were members of the Tablighi. Tablighi Jamaat members were also involved earlier in a failed coup against Ms. Benazir Bhutto in September, 1995. This coup was staged by Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul Islam Abbassi, who had earlier been relieved of his command in 1990 in Kargil. As an aside, he was the Force Commander Northern Area (FCNA) when he made an amateurish and unauthorized attempt to re-take the Bilafond La Pass on the Saltoro Range from the Indian Army, leading to the death of dozens of Pakistani soldiers. TJ also acts as a cover organization for LeT, HuM, HuJI and JEM. The TJ has cleverly used its 'apolitical' tag to infiltrate heavily into the three services of the Pakistani military. When the Supreme Commander of the armed forces, the COAS, the Prime Minister and leading politicians attend the congregations openly, it is no wonder that the rank and file of the armed forces also participate in them. The TJ's faith in the concept of ummah is also responsible for frequently referring to the PA as guardians of the 'ideological frontiers' too and not merely the 'geographical boundaries of Pakistan'.

Thus, TJ is singularly responsible for the twin maladies afflicting the society, and by extension the Pakistani armed forces, namely jihadism and participation in international terror (or jihad as the Islamists call) through its popularization of Jihad-fi-Sabilillah and ummahdom. It is claimed that Gen. Zia-ul-Haq encouraged TJ within the PA as an alternative to the JI in order to cut down its preponderant influence. This has been the practice of the Pakistani 'Establishment' in managing various Islamist, sectarian and jihadi outfits. Whenever one of them becomes too large, it is either split or a competing group is created to checkmate its growth, thereby spawning a mind-boggling number of these organizations leading to many of them going out of control eventually, as we are now seeing in the form of the Teheek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP).

In recent times, another virulent Islamist organization of a similar nature, Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT), has also been making its violent presence felt among the officers of the armed forces. In July 2009, HuT announced that four Pakistani Army officers sent to Sandhurst for military training had been ‘converted’. A serving Brigadier Ali Khan, who was posted at the Army Headquarters was arrested on May 6. 2011 for his association with the HuT, a few days after the dramatic assassination of Osama bin Laden by the US Navy SEALs on the night between May 1 and 2. Like TJ, the HuT also claims to be an 'apolitical' organization but its sole aim is to bring a caliphate to Pakistan and from there expand the struggle to establish the caliphate in the rest of the world’s Islamic countries and even in non-Muslim states. It is usually stated that Hizb ut-Tahrir believes in jihad against hostile states only after establishing a caliphate in an Islamic country, preferably Pakistan, as opposed to the current wave of jihad. However, HuT does not expressly condemn terrorist strikes against civilian and military targets either, which makes one believe that the underlying ideology of HuT is actually not based on non-violence. Like the TJ, HuT also has its tentacles deep inside the tri-services of the Pakistani military. Captain Farooq, who was President Musharraf's security officer was quietly removed from service after it was found that he had helped HuT smuggle in NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) into Pakistan. In 2009, the then commanding officer of Shamsi Air Force Base Colonel Shahid Bashir, and a retired PAF Squadron Leader were arrested for leaking sensitive information to the HuT. A military court in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir identified two military officers in January 2010 as members of HuT and charged them with planning to attack the Shamsi airbase in Balochistan. The modus operandi of HuT is to bring the personnel of military forces under its umbrella. Unlike usual revolutionary movements, HuT aims to bring change through the military because it is well aware that the military is the strongest institution in Pakistan.

A consequence of creating and involving with these fundamentalist and extremist outfits was that many rank and file of the armed forces got infected with the jihadi terrorism virus and quit their service jobs to dedicate their services full time with these jihadi outfits. A prime example was the dreaded Ilyas Kashmiri who set up the 313 Brigade and briefly held the command of operations within Al Qaeda before he was killed in a CIA drone attack. Thus, serving, retired, dismissed and voluntarily retired military personnel constitute a significant percentage of these jihadi terror outfits. The confessions of the lone survivor of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist strike and then the revelations by Daoud Gilani alias David Coleman Headley who mapped out the likely targets in Mumbai (and Delhi and Pune as well) for the attack reveal an elaborate collaboration between the armed forces and the jihadi groups. These have been also accurately substantiated by extensive communication intercepts by the Indian and American intelligence agencies. Several terrorists caught in India and elsewhere have confirmed the same conclusions. The NATO/ISAF field commanders in Af-Pak have time and again brought out this evil nexus between the PA and the Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives. Many journalists who ventured into the Af-Pak badlands have corroborated the same. Even Pakistani media editors, analysts, politicians and retired PA officers have accepted this fact. So much so, the PA is no longer interested in the theory of 'plausible deniability' that it practised during the First Afghan Jihad and then in the 90s when it turned its full jihadi force towards India. It tauntingly leaves enough evidence in every operation these days almost inviting the rest of the world to take it on. Today, there is therefore voluminous and irrefutable evidence linking the close cooperation between the Pakistani armed forces (especially the PA) and the dozens of jihadi terrorist tanzeems and sectarian groups in Pakistan.

The radicalization of the society for which the foundations were laid by Jinnah, then taken to the next higher level by the 'secular socialist' Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, followed by the dizzying heights it reached during the reign of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq; the changing patterns of recruitment to the armed forces resulting in a large number of officers from the middle classes and lower middle classes that have become vulnerable over the years to extremist thinking, and the rapid spreading of intolerance-preaching-madrassah in the Potohar region of Northern Punjab which has been the traditional recruitment grounds for the Pakistani Army, are major causes for concern in the upsurge of jihadi Islamism within the officer corps of the Pakistani armed forces. By his own admission, the then DG, ISI, Lt. Gen Mahmoud Ahmed admitted as far back as circa 2000, that 15 to 16% of the army officer corps were religious extremists. In February 2011, when the Punjab Governor Salman Taseer was assassinated by his own police bodyguard for his stand on the Blasphemy Law, the COAS Gen. Kiyani refused to condemn it or even issue any condolence to the Taseer family. He confided to Western diplomats that there were simply too many religious fundamentalists in the Pakistani Army that such an overt sympathy might lead to disunity within the Army ranks. This implicit reliance on jihad to achieve political goals was amply demonstrated in the National Assembly of Pakistan by no other than the Secretary of Defence Maj. Tanveer Syed on Aug. 7, 2007 when he demanded the Pakistani government to wage jihad against India to get Kashmir. He assured the nation that if full-fledged jihad was waged, Pakistan would get Kashmir within six months. There are numerous such instances to show that the fervour of extremism and Islamist jihadism are deeply entrenched even among the officer corps of the armed forces.

Now, to my reasoning as to why there is no distinction between the PA and the Islamist jihadis operating in and from that country. The AfPak region has seen four phases of jihad since that fateful day on the eve of Christmas in 1979 when the USSR crossed Amu Darya into Afghanistan. The PA has been involved in all of these along with the jihadis, sectarian groups, warlords and terror outfits which were all its own creation. The events since then have led to two types of jihad. I know that it is even blasphemous to characterize jihad like that because jihad is jihad. But, I take strength from Islamic scholars who themselves talk of jihad-al-saif (jihad by sword) and jihad-al-nafs (jihad against human weaknessess). They say that jihad-al-nafs is Jihad-al-Akbar (Greater Struggle) and jihad-al-saif as Jihad-al-Saghir (Minor Struggle). However, the two types that are on-going in Af-Pak are finer variations within jihad-al-saif. For ease of understanding, the jihad in AfPak can be classified as either 'pure' or 'impure'.

The First Jihad was of the pure jihad variety by the mujahideen supported by the US, KSA, Pakistan et al. Though the infidel US was involved on the side of the Believers, it was still acceptable. This jihad was 'pure' because the Godless Communists were taken on by the Believers. However, this pure jihad came to an end through an agreement, not by military defeat, and the Believers had to rely on the Crusaders for success.

After the Geneva Accord, came the internecine war after unity (which was never strong to start with) unravelled among the mujahideen. This internecine war was brought to an end by the impure jihad of the Taliban supported by Pakistan. That was the Second Jihad and it was impure in the sense that the more pious Believers had to take on the less pious Believers. It came to an end after bloody battles and the military defeat of the less pious Believers. Afghanistan saw more damage in the three years of this impure jihad than the preceding ten years of pure jihad. Somehow, this type of green-on-green is always more damaging to the ummah than otherwise as we saw in that Operation Black September in Jordan against helpless Palestenians refugees in the refugee camps. That was again unleashed by a Pakistani Brigadier by name Zia-ul-Haq in 1970-71 in camps at Irbid, Salt, Sweileh,Baq'aa, Wehdat and Zarqa. More Palestenians were reported to have died in that operation than at Israeli hands in the previous twenty years. As the Jordanian King decorated Brig. Zia-ul-Haq with his country's highest medal of ‘Order of Valiance’, the Palestenians equated him with the Israeli General Ariel Sharon.

After that Second Jihad was the pure jihad once again, this time against the 'Ahl-e-Kitab' (People of the Book) after 9/11 when the Believers had to take on the combined might of the infidel Americans and their Allies. That was the Third Jihad. This is still on-going. This looks likely to come to an end just like the first pure jihad, through an agreement, not by military defeat. Again, like the first jihad, the PA and their allied jihadis would celebrate their victory over the only remaining Superpower.

The Fourth Jihad, an impure one, had to be fought against the state of Pakistan, after its CEO, Gen. Musharraf imposed bans on the jihadi groups on Jan. 12, 2002. This jihad is also on-going. If the previous jihads are any indicators, the impure jihad will also be bloody (has already been so) and will also end in a military victory for the more pious over the less pious or in other words for the more savage over the relatively less savage. The events, so far since the 2002 announcement, confirm the ferocity of the impure jihad.

Before the Fourth Jihad, the interests of the jihadists and the PA coincided. They continue to coincide though the Pakistani Taliban and most of the Punjabi Taliban were not able to appreciate the nuances and adjust their war-fighting strategy accordingly. For the simple-minded Punjabi Taliban, it was "either with us or against us". The frothing-at-the-mouth-corner jihadists wanted Pakistan to withdraw support to the US and help the jihadists as they have always done before. But, that was no longer possible as things had changed dramatically. Musharraf, Mehmood Ahmed, Kayani and Nadeem Taj tried their best but the support could never be like before because the Eagle, sitting in the same room, was watching everything very closely. So, the more pious determined that it was time to defeat the less pious and therefore launched the impure jihad. There can be no room for sentiments in jihad, as the assassinations of Khalid Khwaja and more importantly that of the architect of Afghan Jihad Col. Imam (Sultan Amin Tarar) issues showed clearly. Both were accused of being a CIA/ISI agent as the notes attached to their bullet-riddled bodies indicated. The bloody attack on PNS Mehran, the earlier attack on the GHQ itself, the assassination attempts on Musharraf and other top Army officers, the suicide bombing at the SSG HQ at Tarbela, the numerous attacks on military-industrial complexes that hold nuclear weapons etc. have taken place due to insider information and assistance. PA might have been the hand that fed the viper the milk before, but that hand has to be bitten now and that too from within. the Fourth Jihad is as much internal to the PA as it is external by the Punjabi Taliban or the TTP. It is Pakistan's perfidy to turn around and claim victimhood. However, that show of injured innocence in this internecine and impure jihad should not detract us from the fact that all this while (and continuing still) the various jihadi terror groups have functioned as the 'veritable arm' of the PA, to quote from Adm. Mike Mullen.

The group-of-50's lament of this unravelling of the unity of the jihadi forces of Pakistan is therefore understandable but untenable.

What do Pakistanis perceive about their National Security ?

I am prompted to write this by the article titled, "Seeing Beyond Perceptions" in The Nation, a Pakistani English language newspaper, by a retired Air Commodore and former assistant chief of air staff of the Pakistan Air Force(PAF), who is now a member of the visiting faculty at the PAF Air War College, Naval War College and Quaid-i-Azam University. I thought that the article portrays prominent thinking among the elites of the Pakistani society and hence worth having a look at.

He writes that "Over 50 parliamentarians, bureaucrats, advocates, technocrats, media men, prominent members of the civil society and politicians assembled at the National Defence University to conceptualise the contours of Comprehensive National Security". Apparently, it was all 'Brownian Movement' initially but soon the group settled down to serious thinking and came to some conclusions after five weeks of intense and wide-ranging deliberations. Who funded this effort, to whom the conclusions were presented and what effect that would have in moulding future policy decisions are unknown as they were not revealed. But, we can make some guesses. However, the scope of this activity seems serious enough to look into the conclusions.

The 50-odd members from diverse sections of the civil society have concluded that the present difficulties of the Pakistani state are transient and Pakistan has nothing but a bright future. All it needs to do is to be resolute and follow 'a comprehensive national security'. Now, this is a give away to me, at least, as to which of the three branches of the State, viz. Executive or Judiciary or the Armed Forces, would have funded this workshop. As an Indian, I can nothing but wish Pakistan a very bright future because Pakistanis were, after all, Indians until sixty four years back. That aside, I would like to look critically at the outcome of the five week deliberations.

In essence, what was advocated by this group of intellectuals was more of the same. That is quite disappointing. No revision in policies in light of mounting crises facing Pakistan squarely in its face ? No quest to dig deep and understand the truest cause for the troubles of Pakistan ? The superficiality of the exercise makes one believe that the attempt was motivated by an agenda. Let us look at the causes identified by the group and the solutions proffered thereupon.

The author says, "The major concerns to our national security radiate from international isolation, poor governance, shaky economy, lack of control over non-State actors, an aura of insecurity among the general public, no-go areas in the context of imposition of State’s writ, penetration of foreign influence in our domestic media, lack of our outreach to international media, and the ability of foreign intelligence agencies to penetrate into our socio-political fabric. Ambiguities as to whose war are we fighting have resulted in a huge perceptional gap between the national policy (both political and military) and public opinion. This dichotomy has the potential of tearing apart the fabric of the State. This gap is being filled by the hostile States, both regional and extra regional, to create fissures and promote separatist trends."

Let us look at each one of these concerns.

International isolation.

Now, this is seriously true. Even traditionally friendly non-Muslim states like the US, UK, Japan, China or the ummah brothers such as the KSA have been unwilling to lend a helping hand to an embattled Pakistan. In better times, each one of these nations had its own reasons for the ‘rescue act’ and Pakistan exploited their compulsions to the hilt. But, times have changed, even drastically. The US has at last discovered that all this while Pakistan has been following a perfidious agenda with it vis-a-vis Global War on Terror (GWoT). Normally, whenever a major operation involving cooperation between the US and Pakistan reaches a denouement, the US discovers some startling piece of perfidy by Pakistan, as though by magic. It suddenly discovered in c. 1990 that Pakistan had enriched Uranium beyond the promised levels and also possessed nuclear weapons, within barely a few months after it had pulled out of Afghanistan and Pakistan following the Geneva accord. Until then, the US had helped Pakistan acquire nuclear weapons, their delivery platforms and Uranium enrichment facilities, in the decade of the 80s. Until then, it stubbornly refused to listen to voices from other nations and its own intelligence agency about Pakistan's furious march towards nuclear weapons. All that changed within a few months. Again, after eliminating Osama bin Laden and severely degrading Al Qaeda's leadership and capabilities, the US is on the verge of withdrawing the bulk of its military from Afghanistan (but for a small contingent perhaps) and as the general usefulness of Pakistan diminishes rapidly, the US is becoming aware of Pakistan's mendacity. The parties to the marriage contract, the US and Pakistan, willingly consummate knowing perfectly well that it is a marriage of convenience, would not last more than a decade and each would befool the other to achieve their tactical goals. They are 'made for each other'. But, each such marriage followed by a messy divorce has left Pakistan enormously weakened internaly due to the unleashing of extreme religious right wing forces. It also leaves India with a more bellicose and more dangerous neighbour. Nowadays, the region and the world have also become fair targets for this dangerous nation. Hence the international isolation.

For its part, the UK has been reeling under the effects of jihadi Islamism practised by British nationals of Pakistani origin, whose parents and grandparents were generously allowed to migrate to the UK in the 50s and the 60s by Her Majesty's Government for loyal services rendered so far and expected to be rendered in the future. The British have been so worried by the envelope of jihadi terrorism that during a visit to Islamabad, the British Prime Minister Mr. Gordon Brown addressing a press conference in Islamabad on Dec. 15, 2008, along with the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, was blunt in stating “Three quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The time has come for action, not words.” Addressing the British troops in Afghanistan in April 2009, he reiterated as follows: "There is a line of terror, a chain of terror that goes from Pakistan and the border areas of Afghanistan right back to the streets of all our countries" Three months after Mr. Brown's pronouncement, Lord Malloch-Brown, Foreign Office Minister for Africa and Asia said damningly, "The main terrorist threat comes from Pakistan and Somalia – not Afghanistan", equating Pakistan, a nuclear power, with the failed state of Somalia. Gordon Brown's successor, David Cameron administered a sort of coup de grace in July 2010 when, addressing the employees of Infosys at Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, of all places, he said that " . . . we should be very clear with Pakistan that we want to see a strong and a stable and a democratic Pakistan, but we cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able in any way to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan, or anywhere else in the world." Responding later to the outrage this statement created in Pakistan, he further rubbed salt in the wounded Pakistani honour & dignity when he told BBC, "[I gave]pretty clear and frank answer to a straight question. I don’t regret that at all". So, things have been quite difficult with Pakistan's colonial creator and consistent supporter as well.

The Pakistanis never tire of referring to their relationship with China in glowing terms, even to the point of sounding ridiculous. Even China has been tough with the Pakistani government over Islamist jihadi terrorism emanating from the Pakistani soil affecting Uyghur or even the safety of Chinese citizens in Pakistan itself. China has also been quite wary of its funding procedures. It funds only specific projects and does not give any cash whatsoever unlike Pakistan's Western friends who were doing so until recently. A meaningful comment by Zhao Gancheng, Director of South Asia studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, summed it up nicely: "The ‘all-weather friendship’ doesn’t mean that all of Pakistan’s bills should be paid by us".

What about the ummah brothers, especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ? These are no ordinary brothers if one recalls history. Both KSA and the UAE have directly helped the Pakistanis during its 1965 and 1971 wars with India either by lending fighter planes to the PAF from their respective air forces or allowing Pakistan to safekeep some of their fighter planes in their lands, out of reach of the Indian Air Force(IAF). They had thrown their lot with Pakistan, discarding their centuries old traditional warm ties with India, just because Pakistan happened to be a Muslim country. KSA ensured that Pakistan would survive after the imposition of sanctions against that country following the 1998 nuclear tests, by supplying oil free and later on much deferred easy payments for three years, which it finally even wrote-off. The magnitude of this ‘help’ by Saudi Arabia can be gauged when one realizes that the annual oil bill of USD 6B which Saudi Arabia deferred and eventually wrote-off was the same as the foreign remittances Pakistan receives annually. Saudi Arabia has bankrolled the nuclear weapons project of Pakistan. Pakistan’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is rumoured to consist of Saudi Arabia’s share too which that country has decided to safekeep in Pakistan. KSA also funded the acquisition by a bankrupt Pakistan of the French Agosta submarines and also F-16s from the US. The Pakistanis have also been quite helpful to KSA. . Since the 1970s, the Saudi Royalty, fearing disloyal members of the armed forces staging coups, always retained strong contingents of the Pakistani Army to protect the royal palaces. The lack of skills and abilities of the Saudis pushed Saudi Arabia to seek the assistance of Pakistan in building up and even manning the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF). A big contingent of PAF pilots was stationed at various air bases in Saudi Arabia and they even took part in operations such as repulsing the Yemeni incursion into Saudi Arabia in c. 1969 and attacking the rebel Houthi strongholds in c. 2010. After the Khomeini revolution in Iran, KSA has used Pakistani soil to keep tabs on Iran. The UAE hid away Pakistani-supported Indian terrorists like Dawood Ibrahim and his associates and failed to arrest and extradite them to India even when there has been several Interpol alerts and Dawood Ibrahim was freely roaming around the Emirates. Both nations, especially the KSA, had taken virulent stand against India in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) deliberations at the prompting of Pakistan. Pakistan has even ceded away sovereignty of vast tracts of its lands in the Sind and Balochistan to the dozens of princes of these two ummah brothers to hunt down the endangered species of the houbara bustards. So much so that a top Saudi Adviser to the King of Saudi Arabia was reported as boasting to the Americn diplomat, “We in Saudi Arabia are not observers in Pakistan, we are participants”, as WikiLeaks exposed in November 2010.

So, what happened to this joined-at-the-hip brotherliness ? When Pakistan's economy began to plummet and it encountered serious economic woes after the twin jeopardy of worldwide recession of c. 2007 and the high crude oil prices (not that the economy was great before), neither of these ummah brothers came to its rescue. The cartel of Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) that was setup to help Pakistan included these brothers but they were utterly unenthusiastic about helping. The said they would route their funds only through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and that too only for specific projects. And, when Pakistan went to IMF, it did get a loan of USD 7.6 Billion but was forced to control its soaring fiscal deficit, reduce its inflation, eliminate borrowing by the Government, free the stock and foreign exchange markets from Government interference, widen tax net, give autonomy to State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), reduce borrowings from SBP, reduce huge subsidies in power sector etc. With terrorism engulfing the entire Pakistan, KSA even imposed conditions on its nationals from travelling to that country. It wanted all its nationals to first get clearance from the Kingdom's Foreign Affairs Ministry before applying for a Pakistani visa. Repeated pleas from Gen. Musharraf received only a cold shoulder from KSA. Even such a friendly country as Saudi Arabia expressed worries when Prince Saud al-Faisal declared that “Pakistan is a friendly country, and therefore, any time we see dangerous things in a friendly country, we are not only sorry but also worried” to, of all the people, Indian journalists at Riyadh who were accompaniying Indian Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh during his February, 2010 visit to the Kingdom. That must have come as an unkindest cut of all to Pakistan's honour and dignity.

The European Union said that it could provide financial assistance only if it was allowed to directly access the beneficiaries and not through the Government or its agencies. In a 2008 report on "Terrorism Situation and Trends", the European Police Office (Europol) said, "Afghan Taliban and pro-Taliban groups in Pakistan have links to the increasingly active core-structure of Al Qaeda that is currently based in the Pashtun tribal areas in western Pakistan". The report further listed how Pakistan has become the most dangerous training ground for jihadi terrorists and how expatriate Pakistanis have become terrorists throughout Europe. According to the report, majority of the arrested suspects in the foiled attacks in the UK, Germany and Denmark had received some form of training in Pakistan. The top Judge of the Spanish terrorism court has voiced concern about expanding terror threat from Pakistan. Thus, nations and organizations that were once generous supporters of Pakistan through money and material, winking at or even helping in its transgressions, began to impose restrictions. Unable to take the burden, the Pakistani Parliament even passed a unanimous resolution in September, 2010 asking international donors and lending agencies to write-off Pakistan’s entire debt burden. Simply, nobody responded.

Among its neighbours, both Afghanistan and Iran have been extremely critical of its use of terror as an instrument of state policy. The neighbouring countries of Pakistan have suffered immensely from the state-sponsored and state-neglected terrorism emanating from Pakistan and have voiced their anger, bitterness and concern many times. Pakistani sources have admitted to such “mischief” at least in neighbouring countries. Iran has openly accused the Pakistani intelligence agencies as helping the anti-Iranian Jundullah group operating in the Sistan-Balochistan area. In December, 2009, Teheran presented evidence to Islamabad, showing a link between Pakistani intelligence agencies and Sistan-based Jundullah militant group. Even the President of the tiny Maldives, Mohammed Nashed, said in an interview in October, 2009 that Maldivians were being trained in Pakistan for jihad.

I am sure that with this sampling compiled above, it is easy to see how far the sense of 'international isolation' has come to.

Let us see the rest of the 'perception' in subsequent installments.

See Part II here