Jihadis turn on Pakistan

By G Parthasarathy

(March 05, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Pakistan’s politicians appear to learn nothing from their country’s past, when lack of respect for democratic and constitutional norms and institutions led to military takeovers. Whether it was the coup staged by Gen Iskandar Mirza and Gen Ayub Khan within a decade of independence, the ouster of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto after allegations of rigging the national election, or the 1999 takeover by Gen Pervez Musharraf — the political class had so thoroughly discredited itself that not a voice was raised whenever the Army’s infamous 111 Brigade moved in to take over the country.

Is Pakistan moving in this direction again with President Asif Ali Zardari and Mr Nawaz Sharif locked in a confrontation? Where is Pakistan headed after Mr Zardari’s refusal to restore the former Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to the Supreme Court, and the decision of the apex court, headed by a Chief Justice beholden to Gen Musharraf and Mr Zardari, to declare Mr Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, ineligible to stand for elections and hold high office?

Mr Sharif himself can have no great claims to being a stickler for constitutional propriety. Following the ouster of Benazir Bhutto in 1990 in a constitutional coup staged by then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Army chief Mirza Aslam Beg, Mr Sharif led an alliance of Right-wing parties, duly bankrolled by the ISI, to become Prime Minister. During Mr Sharif’s second term as Prime Minister, goons from his ruling Pakistan Muslim League, led by his political secretary, Mr Mushtaq Tahir Kheli, stormed the Supreme Court on November 28, 1997, during a confrontation with then Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah.

His present claims of ‘respect’ for constitutional propriety and independence of the judiciary are primarily motivated by his belief that, if restored to office, sacked Chief Justice Chaudhry will declare Gen Musharraf’s actions illegal and seek punitive action against him. Mr Zardari believes that if this happens, the immunity granted to him by Gen Musharraf in cases of corruption would be revoked. Pakistan’s squabbling and feudal politicians have still to learn that in political life, compromise is a better option than vendetta.

The Zardari-Sharif feud is being played out in Islamabad and in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s populous Punjab province, where Sharif enjoys widespread support. This battle is being carried into Islamabad by lawyers demanding the restoration of sacked Chief Justice Chaudhry to office. The lawyers are determined to converge in large numbers on the capital. Mr Zardari’s coalition partners are uneasy over the looming confrontation. His authoritarian style of functioning is leading to tensions and differences within the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, and particularly with his hand-picked Prime Minister, Mr Yousuf Raza Gilani.

With Mr Gilani appearing determined to trim Mr Zardari’s powers by seeking to disband the National Security Council, which the President presides over, Pakistan could see a Government hamstrung by internal rivalries and challenged by a confrontational Opposition. In such a situation, the Army, which recognises that years of misrule by it has resulted in public disenchantment, will remain the dominant player in shaping national security policies, while gleefully allowing the politicians to discredit themselves.

These developments have led to American and international recognition that outside powers and visiting VIPs have to deal directly with Army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani while professing support for democracy in Pakistan. For India, this means that the ability of Pakistan’s civilian interlocutors to deliver results on issues like terrorism is very limited. This becomes important now because evidence corroborated by the FBI shows the Pakistani Army-controlled Special Communications Organisation was involved in developing communications facilities for Lashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan who executed the 26/11 Mumbai carnage. It also means that given the links of senior LeT functionaries like operations chief Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi and communications chief Zarar Shah with the ISI and other elements in the Pakistani Army, there is little prospect of either a comprehensive investigation or a transparent trial of the perpetrators of the carnage.

Noted American commentators like journalist David Sanger have exposed the duplicity of the Pakistani military establishment, led earlier by Gen Musharraf and now by Gen Kayani, in supporting Taliban leaders and even informing Taliban fighters of impending American military operations. Sanger has revealed that the CIA had monitored a conversation in which Gen Kayani described the top Taliban military commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani, as a “strategic asset”. Sanger has also exposed the ISI’s involvement in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

Pakistan has paid a high price for its duplicity and the policies of successive Army chiefs of seeking ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan and ‘bleeding India with a thousand cuts’, utilising radical Islamic groups. These groups have joined hands and created a situation wherein the entire North-West Frontier Province, including Swat valley, located 160 km from Islamabad, is now under Taliban rule. The Durand Line, which Afghanistan has never recognised as its international border, has virtually ceased to exist. Rather than gaining ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan, all that the Pakistani Army has achieved is giving ‘strategic depth’ to the Taliban in Pakistan.

In this volatile situation, New Delhi cannot rule out the possibility of even more terrorist strikes in the coming months. The Rand Corporation has carried out a detailed study authored, among others, by former US envoy to India Robert Blackwill and strategic analyst Ashley Tellis. The report notes that the objective of the LeT, which is dedicated to destroying what it calls a “Crusader, Zionist, Hindu alliance”, is not merely ‘liberating’ Kashmir but breaking up India and promoting Hindu-Muslim tensions. The report is critical of the absence of effective coordination between agencies like the IB, the R&AW and State police forces, while noting that the police across India lack the equipment and training to meet the terrorist threat.

While Home Minister P Chidambaram has moved swiftly to deal with the mismanagement and inefficiency that his predecessor promoted in the country’s security set-up, it would be a serious mistake to under-estimate the challenges India still faces from jihadi terrorism emanating from across its border and from radicalised youth within the country. The Rand Corporation report notes, “For the foreseeable future India is likely to remain a target of Pakistan-based terrorism.” More importantly, it says that while India understands the “costs of military action”, it should clearly understand the costs of “not responding” to terrorist outrages sponsored from across its border. -Sri Lanka Guardian