Pakistan and the war of terror

by Dr Muzaffar Iqbal

(December 20, Islamabad, Sri Lanka Guardian) The war of terror initiated by the United States in September 2001 now includes at least the entire northern belt of Pakistan, and there are signs that in the months to come it will move south. One logical outcome of this expansion would be increasing "cooperation" between the governments of Pakistan and the United States. For those in power, this will mean more dollars, more world exposure, more meetings in the high places of Western capitals. For the ordinary Pakistanis it will mean a situation similar to Iraq, where all major cities have been divided into security zones of different colours. Each zone is governed by its local lord, often a US crony of some kind.

Every fourth Iraqi is a refugee either within Iraq or in one of the neighbouring countries. Imagine what Pakistan will look like at the end of 2009 if this treacherous war expands further south!

Yet, there are clear signs that Pakistan will enter a critical stage in the spring of 2009, when the Taliban begin their routine spring offensive in Afghanistan and their counterparts in Pakistan enhance their activities in support of that offensive. This will mean a gradual southward expansion of the war. If this war expands, the US-led military operations in Afghanistan will engulf the entire northern regions of Pakistan. This means that, in addition to aerial strikes--which have now become routine--there will be ground presence of NATO forces within the Pakistani border. This will mean some kind of official enrolment of Pakistan in the multinational force that is now fighting the Afghan liberation army made up of Taliban and other factions.

As President-elect Obama takes over charge of the US army in less than four weeks, he will need to show quick progress, and hence his first impulse would be pour more resources into the Afghan occupation. Withdrawal of US soldiers from Iraq will also help him in repositioning US personnel. Once Afghanistan becomes the focus of the American war of terror (and it must be stressed that it is not a war against terror), Pakistan will be pressed into making some kind of official linkage with it. Those who now sit in the official palaces in Islamabad will readily consent, because they have no other option; they owe their official palaces to the masters in Washington, DC. There is hardly any political pressure worth mentioning against such an enrolment, with Nawaz Sharif playing the second fiddle, the Jamaat-e-Islami in disarray and Imran Khan in the political wilderness, where he has been all along. The army is already fully engaged in the war on the side of the United States. Thus, the most logical outcome of the expansion of the American war of terror will be a southward expansion and official enlisting of Pakistan.

Like all wars of this nature, it will be a slow and gradually expanding war, punctuated with apparently isolated battles, all of which will fall into the larger map of a simmering conflict. One obvious result of this simmering war will be the destruction of infrastructure (roads, communication facilities, electricity and gas supplies, schools, hospitals, police stations, administrative offices, etc.), civilian casualties, and a dramatic rise in the internally displaced Pakistanis. Already, there are thousands of such persons. According to one international body monitoring conflict-induced internal displacement worldwide, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre of the Norwegian Refugee Council, military operations by the army have "led to Asia's biggest new displacement." The area from where these Pakistanis are being displaced has also increased dramatically and now includes North and South Waziristan, many parts of Balochistan, and the entire Swat Valley with a population of 1.5 million people. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, more than 1,000 houses has been destroyed just in Swat.

Camps filled with internally displaced persons are perfect and most fertile places for recruitment of desperate young men for all kinds of agendas. Those who have lost their loved ones, their homes, their orchards, have little left in their lives and despair can easily overcome their rational faculties. Hence, an exponential increase in random violence will be a logical outcome.

Do people who have some way of contributing to an effort to avoid all of this see it as clearly as they should? Is the leadership of political and religious parties not in league with the Americans utterly incapable of putting two and two together? Is there no one left within the ranks of the Jamaat-e Islami, of Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League, and of other religious parties to clearly see the impending disaster? Is the lawyers' movement not capable of becoming more than a one-cause movement? Is there no one left in Pakistan to build a national uprising against this onslaught and slaughter of our brethren in the northern region?

It is not time to keep issuing statements that no one reads anymore; it is time for action.

Action means clear, thoughtful, objective analysis of the situation presented to the masses in a language they understand, and motivation of the highest order to build a movement to stop the army, the Zaradri-led proxy government, and the United States from keeping on slaughtering and displacing Pakistanis.

The writer is a freelance columnist. Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com - Sri Lanka Guardian