India and Pakistan turn into good friends, and America is kept at arms’ length. Is that possible?

Diplomacy like politics is the art of the possible, and if you listen to the new voices emerging from Pakistan, there is change blowing in the wind as it makes the transition to civilian rule after nearly nine years of military leadership.

To stop the extremism and intolerance that is sweeping Pakistan, it must turn away from the Middle East and instead look to its east to rediscover a gentler, yet immensely vibrant heritage that took root in India through the centuries, Pakistan’s The News argued in an extraordinary editorial urging the country’s new leaders to respond to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh call to transform relations into the “best ever”.

“Despite all the attempts to deny this, the reality is that Pakistanis and Indians share a great deal in common — from cuisine to wedding traditions, and of course a great deal more. Rather than tearing ourselves away from this past, which is so much a part of our present, it should be warmly embraced,” it said.

To be sure, there is an element of rebound here and it’s more the fraying relationship with the United States that is driving Pakistan into the unlikely embrace of India, rather than any new-found love for its bitter rival, as the Daily Times said, warning that forging a new relationship with India while dumping America wouldn’t work.

“From the editorials written by the newspapers one comes to the conclusion that whereas the American nexus has become anathema, Pakistan’s good relations with India are a part of the new vision.” it said.

“Somehow, it is presumed that normalising with India will get rid of our problems at home. It is also assumed that getting rid of the American friendship and its implied slavery will benefit us on the basis of our earlier normalisation with India.” But taking on America would only damage Pakistan and give it less leverage in negotiations with India, it added.

On the other side of the border there are equally insistent voices calling for faster normalisation of ties. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is hoping to make a visit to Pakistan, a rare event by an Indian leader, at the earliest opportunity. The two sides are trying to put some agreements in place so that it doesn’t look like an image-building exercise, one for a new leader and another facing elections in India that could be as early as this November.

But of course, mirroring the sceptics across the border, there are voices of caution in India too. A day after Singh said he would try to transform relations with Pakistan, his security adviser M.K.Narayanan warned that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence continued to support militant groups that had carried out attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.

And those with longer memories point out that the installation of a civilian government in Pakistan historically has not been a portent of improved bilateral ties, mostly because of the need for politicians to appear strong on national defence. As an army general President Pervez Musharraf was less vulnerable than civilian politicians on that issue. The Indians are aware of the history.

So is it going to be a real detente? Or are the neighbours condemned to uneasy ties, prisoners of history?

A story in the Washington Post “U.S. Steps Up Unilateral Strikes in Pakistan has attracted attention worldwide. It says the United States has escalated its unilateral strikes against al-Qaeda members and fighters operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, partly because of anxieties that Pakistan’s new leaders will insist on scaling back military operations there. 

“Over the past two months, U.S.-controlled Predator aircraft are known to have struck at least three sites used by al-Qaeda operatives,” it says. “The moves followed a tacit understanding with (President Pervez) Musharraf and Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani that allows U.S. strikes on foreign fighters operating in Pakistan, but not against the Pakistani Taliban.”

Stories of missile attacks by unmanned CIA-operated Predator drones in Pakistan are not new, and nor indeed is Pakistani anger at what it sees as a violation of its sovereignty. In early February I highlighted a story by the Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai in The News saying that the American policy of hitting targets inside Pakistan had now become “the norm than the exception”. Neither U.S. nor Pakistani authorities officially confirm U.S. missile attacks on Pakistani territory.

What is new is the amount of attention the missile attacks are now gaining, particularly in the United States.  It’s worth reading the comments on the Washington Post article – 161 of them when I last looked — to see how many people are learning about them for the first time.

Some comments give credit to Senator Barack Obama for suggesting targeted attacks on Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan — an idea he repeated this month, as I noted in a previous entry on this subject. As far as I know, the Predator attacks — including one in Bajaur Agency in January 2006 that was reported to have killed up to 18 people, including women and children — started before Obama suggested the idea. But he does seem to have got people talking about them.

So here is the question. If the American public is now waking up to the notion that the United States is launching missile attacks in Pakistan, will that affect U.S. policy? Will it become a U.S. election issue? And what does it mean for Pakistan and its new government?

When it comes to Pakistan, sometimes you want to be told what is going on; sometimes you want to stop and think for yourself.  But rarely is there a middle ground. Here are three very different pieces for those who are interested in this conundrum.

In an op-ed in Dawn Cyril Almeida tackles the perennial question of how far Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) controls the Islamist militants who helped end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, fought against Indian rule in Kashmir in the 1990s and this century turned first against the United States in 9/11 and then against Pakistan itself in a wave of suicide bombings.

“The evolution of Afghan jihadists of the 1980s to today’s suicide bombers via the Kashmir insurgency and the Taliban regime is an open secret and few question the role of the intelligence apparatus in nurturing that progression,” he writes. “Today, the problem is that neither the civilian elite nor the general public is convinced that suicide bombers are no longer under the control of intelligence ‘handlers’ who have guided the activities of militants for over two decades now.”

His editorial calls, perhaps paradoxically, for a new approach to militancy which is both nuanced and decisive. “Whatever course of action the incoming government takes will be fraught with difficulties. The key though is to act decisively. If the incoming government dithers, the coming crisis will almost make people yearn for the simpler days of a tussle between the presidency and the judiciary.”

On another subject, here is an article I came across on a website called n+1 defending the legacy of President Pervez Musharraf. It credits him with creating the conditions for a working democracy in 2008 that did not exist when he seized power in 1999. After a day in which he swore in a new prime minister from the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, and watched Pakistan’s new civilian leadership courted by the same U.S. officials he counted as allies, the article makes interesting reading, running against the tide of his current unpopularity. ”It is entirely fitting that the very conditions that Musharraf has attempted to create to make true democracy possible in Pakistan should provide the force that may remove him from office when he starts to behave autocratically,” it says.

Finally, I noticed a blog by a Pakistani called Ahson Saeed Hasan, who blames Pakistan’s current problems on the Islamist policies of former military ruler Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. Unlike the other two posts, his entry is personal rather than dispassionate. “A few days back a close friend raised an obnoxiously intriguing question,” he writes. “Why is it that a good number of folks from my generation who grew up during General Zia-ul-Haq’s rule are so severely antagonistic and aggressive when it comes to a conversation that is inclined towards Islam being a religion of peace?”

Can someone find a coherent narrative here which draws these different threads together? Or are they all reflections of a country which more than 60 years after its creation has yet to settle on a clear identity?
 

Interesting piece by Reuters Security Correspondent Mark Trevelyan about German authorities using comic strips to combat the appeal of militant Islamism to European youths. The comic strip, distributed to schools in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, features Andi, his Muslim girlfriend Ayshe and her brother Murat, who comes under the influence of a radical friend and an Islamist “hate preacher”.

The idea is to offer young people an alternative world view to combat the “narrative” of al Qaeda. ”We have learned from our opponents. This is exactly the age at which the Islamists are trying, through Koranic schools and other means, to fill young people with other values,” says Hartwig Moeller, from the German state’s interior ministry.

Of course, some people will argue that in a world polarised by the Iraq war and the Middle East conflict amongst others, tackling militant Islamism with comic strips is at best lightweight, at worst a failure to understand the issues.

But Moeller says the project — which is already attracting interest elsewhere in Europe and in the United States – could win over the hearts and minds of some youngsters.

“If I get through to someone this way, and it makes him more critical of people who want to make him a jihadist, then I’ve stopped him at some point committing terrorist attacks or going to a terrorist camp in Afghanistan or Pakistan,” he said. “Maybe he won’t slide off into this milieu — that’s the idea.”

What do you think? Read the full story here.

Former Indian deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani has just released his autobiography and he takes issue with President Pervez Musharraf for blaming him for being “the hidden hand” behind the failure of a 2001 summit between the two countries that ultimately led to a dangerous military stand-off before they talked peace again.

Though it’s seven years past, both Advani’s, and before him, Musharraf’s version of that summit with Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, still makes for interesting reading. It offers a glimpse into the minds of two powerful men — one a Hindu nationalist leader and the other a military general — as they struggled to set aside the baggage of history and half a century of conflict and came close to making history themselves before courage deserted them. They eventually made their peace, partly brought on by circumstance including a dramatically different world after September 11, but also because the mis-steps of Agra were never far from the mind.

In excerpts from his book “My Country, My Life”, Advani says that in the summer of 2001, he proposed to Vajpayee that he invite General Musharraf for talks, to test the mind of the military ruler who did not carry any political baggage and seemed to be his own master in a country where democratically elected leaders had never exercised real power. The rare invitation to a Pakistani ruler to visit India went out, but what obviously the Indians had not bargained for, Advani suggests, was that the general arrived intending to rewrite India-Pakistan relations totally, and on his own terms.

So the summit against the backdrop of the Taj Mahal, whose beauty and symmetry the Indians hoped would soften the former commando, was doomed from the start. Kashmir, as always, remained the stumbling block. India wanted Pakistan to end what it called “cross-border terrorism” — code for Pakistani help to militants fighting to end Indian rule in Kashmir. The Pakistanis in turn, accused India of insincerity and of trying to obstruct any real attempt to tackle the problem at the heart of decades of hostility.

Musharraf says in his book, “In the Line of Fire”, that the two sides came close to an agreement. At one point he even went back to his hotel to change into his “shalwar kameez” ahead of the signing ceremony that had all been arranged, “down to the table and two chairs where we would sit”.

But the Indians backed out and a livid Musharraf let fly at Vajpayee during a farewell call in the dead of the night. “I met Prime Minister Vajpayee at about eleven o’clock that night in an extremely somber mood. I told him bluntly that there seemed to be someone above the two of us who had the power to overrule us. I also said that today both of us had been humiliated. He just sat there, speechless. I left abruptly, after thanking him in brisk manner.”

Most people knew Musharraf was pointing the finger at Advani, for long seen as the hardliner juxtaposed against the poet-politician Vajpayee. Advani himself says in his book that Musharraf was referring to him, but says the whole claim that he scuttled the summit was outrageous. Everyone in the Indian government was on board and agreed that there couldn’t be normalcy in relations until “cross-border terrorism” ended.

And which, Advani says, Pakistan, still led by the general, agreed to at a later summit in Islamabad in 2004. But by then the world had changed, especially Pakistan’s following the September 11 attacks.

The naming of Yousaf Raza Gilani  as the Pakistan People’s Party’s candidate for prime minister has raised as many questions as it answered, amid speculation that he is only keeping the seat warm until PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari takes over.

Dawn newspaper questioned the drawn-out arguments within the PPP before Gilani was named and asked what this would mean for a PPP-led government facing the challenges of an economy bedevilled by inflation and a country reeling after a string of bombings. “We hope the country will have a prime minister empowered to tackle the challenges, rather than a puppet on a string with real authority lying elsewhere in the party hierarchy,” it said.

The Daily Times focuses instead on a reconciliation between the PPP and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), which said on Saturday it was withdrawing its own candidate for prime minister and would vote for the PPP candidate to show goodwill.  “Mr Zardari has shown remarkable statesmanship in putting together a national coalition that no one could dream of a month ago,” it says.

It also asks what the move by the MQM, which supported President Pervez Musharraf, will mean for him.   Will it make Musharraf  even more isolated and force him out? Or, it says, ”It could be the other way around: a lower-profile president can be “lived with” as the strongest-ever-in-history coalition - which now looks like a national government - takes matters in hand.”

So will Gilani be able to lead Pakistan into a new period of stability, helped by backing from a strong coalition? Or will he be too much of a “puppet on a string”?

In those first few seconds of waking in the morning, when my sleep has been disturbed, my first thoughts are to deny the cause of the sound.

"Maybe the door slammed; maybe a cat jumped over a bucket; maybe a vehicle tyre burst." So many maybes... but the reality is usually the same. It is a bomb!

"Get up now," I will say to myself, "If you are not there before the police then you are in trouble." I always call another photographer, or the Reuters Television producer, to double check, and I hate to hear the reply, "It is a bomb, I heard it too." But it is the response I have come to expect.

My camera equipment, which lives with me as a constant companion, will be over my shoulder as I call our driver, who lives nearby, and is usually already on the road. Now, all I have to worry about is getting to the scene as quickly as possible. We have to fight our way through heavy traffic, aggressive security forces and angry members of the public.

More than four million people live in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the traffic is my worst frustration. The roads in Afghanistan are often narrow and rutted, with no traffic signals, crazy drivers and a total absence of rules.

Above: Military personnel secure a suicide blast site in Kabul

Above: The scene of a suicide car bomb explosion in Kabul

Above: A military helicopter flies over a blast site in the south of Kabul

On my way to a scene I always try to tip off my TV and text colleagues if I haven't spoken to them already, and they do the same for me. If I am lucky I will reach the scene before the security forces, which are usually composed of Afghan policemen, Afghan soldiers, members of the Afghan intelligence service, NATO forces and U.S. troops. If I am not lucky it can feel like a big military party, at which the favourite music comprises wailing ambulance sirens and helicopter rotor blades churning the air. The accompanying lyrics go something like this, "No picture!!! Camera down!!! Get out of here!!!" followed by "Go away," "Shove off," and lots of swearing.

Above: Foreign military personnel (L) stop an Afghan police vehicle from advancing to a suicide blast site in Kabul

Above: Afghan police and security personnel search a suspect for explosives after a suicide bomb blast in Kabul

Amid this confused situation, we have little time to think of the plight of the victims - the dead and those wounded by the blast - we can only look for pictures that describe the carnage, and try to get away without being hurt ourselves. Scenes like this make me feel as if I am at a photo-shoot at a junk yard, with the wreckage of vehicles and the bits blown off them; the shattered bodies of the victims; the blood stains; the broken windows and a million other bits and pieces.

Above: A U.S. soldier walks away from a suicide blast site in Kabul

Above: Afghan policemen secure a car bomb site in Kabul

It is only when I have arrived back at the office and filed the pictures that I am back to myself, and continue with the routine of any normal person. I say to myself, "I should get some breakfast, I should brush my teeth..." and so much more.

Above: A British soldier (2nd L) tries to stop a mourning Afghan woman from approaching a suicide attack site in Kabul

Above: An employee of the Afghan Ministry of Justice looks out through a shattered window after an explosion in Kabul

Above: Afghan families and relatives of Tuesday's suicide bombing victims carry the bodies to a cemetery for burial in the city of Baghlan, north of Kabul

Above: An Afghan army soldier keeps watch after a suicide bomb blast in Kabul

Above: A U.S. military personnel (R) and an interpreter stop locals from approaching the scene of a suicide blast in Kabul

All photographs by Ahmad Masood

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The writer is a former High Commissioner of Pakistan and advisor to the late Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan.

By Wajid Shamsul Hasan

In his historic play Julius Caesar Shakespeare uses Ides of March to warn the Roman Emperor the tragic fate that was in store for him. And ever since ides of March is used as an appropriate phrase as a precursor to events of far-reaching consequences. In case of Pakistan’s history too this month has great significance on various counts. First and foremost, the Muslims in the sub-continent decided to seek and establish a separate independent homeland through a resolution adopted by All-India Muslim League on March 23, 1940 under the dynamic leadership of its leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah. And it was an astounding achievement-entirely to the credit of Mr Jinnah-that within the short span of seven years Pakistan was carved out of the Indian sub-continent to be a secular Muslim state to ensure freedom and equality to all its citizens-irrespective of their caste, creed or colour.

It is regretfully stated that his vision was distorted by self-conceited power troika comprising of the military, civil and judicial bureaucracy in league with the Mullahs who had opposed Mr Jinnah and Pakistan. His secular ideology was replaced with a so-called Nazaria Pakistan (religioin-based ideology) by which Pakistan was in time to come was to become a theocratic state. Pakistan’s slide today under President Pervez Musharraf has brought the country to such a pass that it has almost become a failed state on the verge of meeting the fate of Yugoslavia.

March has once again placed Pakistan face to face with an opportunity not only save the country but to translate into reality Mr Jinnah’s dream of a democratic and liberal Pakistan. On March 17 the nation proudly witnessed the coming into being of the elected National Assembly historically pitched to uproot the last vestiges of military dictatorship and to usher in people’s democracy amidst stories that the usurper general has decided to run for his life seeking refuge in countries that he had served better than Pakistan. On March 19 Pakistan became yet another first-thanks to Pakistan People’s Party-to elect a woman as the Speaker of the National Assembly.

Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto  had herself set the blaze by becoming the first ever woman prime minister in a Muslim country. And she would have indeed broken the record third time had she been not assassinated late last year. Highly competent and respected Dr Fahmida’s Mirza’s election as National Assembly  Speaker is yet another step forward towards empowerment of women-a mission pursued with religious conviction by martyred Benazir Bhutto and her party PPP and its present leadership.

The PPP-PML(N)-ANP-JUI coalition that has been clobbered sagaciously by PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari and PML(N) leader Mian Nawaz Sharif-as a national consensus response– will have to face the insurmountable challenges of the dark legacy of Musharraf’s  mismanagement, reign of loot and plunder during his long dictatorship in cahoots with the political scavengers.

The task before the Coalition is onerous. It will have to take certain decisions that shall make or mar Pakistan’s future. Immediately it shall have to provide instant relief to the poor who cannot make their sustenance possible because of Musharraf-Shaukat Aziz pursued economic policies that made the rich richer and poor poorer. And along with that, they shall have to mobilise the nation to fight terrorism through a battle that would mostly require winning the hearts and minds of the tribal people who have been abused by Musharraf as the villain of the piece for blackmailing the Americans and the West that without him they cannot fight the terrorism menace. He has successfully made them believe him that he is solver of the problem and not part of the problem as is perceived by almost the entire nation. Obviously the crucial issue regarding the restoration of judiciary is also important. Hopefully it will be resolved in a manner that it will not only kill the snake but not break the stick–that is– without affecting the power and majesty of the Parliament.

In politics a week is a long time especially when there is a megalomaniac in power who would go to any end for his own survival. Although not much time is left for the transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people, one however feels apprehensive of the proverbial slip between the cup and the lips. Reports are that he is trying his best to re-play 2002 again and break the grand coalition to bring in a gang of power scavengers through the back door. He is at it in raising an old hand as his Quisling in PPP. Unlike 2002 when he was both President and the Army Chief, now denuded of his military uniform–he is a toothless wolf who can only bark but cannot bite. Whatever-one must not under-estimate the enemy. The best response to his machinations is for the Pakistani people, their democratic leaders and civil society to remain united and vigilant to collectively counter all his spanners in the wheels that will move the Pakistani nation onto a road to a sound democratic future.

For those who missed, it’s worth looking closely at Barack Obama’s latest comments on Pakistan made in a speech this week in which he repeats a call for the United States to shift its focus from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan. ”This is the area where the 9/11 attacks were planned. This is where Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants still hide. This is where extremism poses its greatest threat.”

His plan is to rethink U.S. policy towards Pakistan – which has traditionally depended on cooperation with the military rather than civilian governments — to bolster the democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people, condition aid to Pakistan on its action against al Qaeda,  and show Pakistan that America is on its side.

But then comes the rub.  If the United States has intelligence about al Qaeda targets hiding in Pakistan then America should act if Pakistan will not, or cannot do so, he says.  So far that has meant sending in unmanned Predator aircraft to fire missiles at suspected Islamist hideouts, often leading to civilian casualties and outraging Pakistanis who feel their sovereignty has been violated.

So is there a contradiction in Obama’s commitment to Pakistan? Can the United States win over the people if it is also firing missiles at targets in its territory? Here is the whole excerpt:

“For years, we have supported stability over democracy in Pakistan, and gotten neither. The core leadership of al Qaeda has a safe-haven in Pakistan. The Taliban are able to strike inside Afghanistan and then return to the mountains of the Pakistani border. Throughout Pakistan, domestic unrest has been rising. The full democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people have been too long denied. A child growing up in Pakistan, more often than not, is taught to see America as a source of hate - not hope.

“This is why I stood up last summer and said we cannot base our entire Pakistan policy on President Musharraf. Pakistan is our ally, but we do our own security and our ally no favors by supporting its President while we are seen to be ignoring the interests of the people. Our counter-terrorism assistance must be conditioned on Pakistani action to root out the al Qaeda sanctuary. And any U.S. aid not directly needed for the fight against al Qaeda or to invest in the Pakistani people should be conditioned on the full restoration of Pakistan’s democracy and rule of law.

“The choice is not between Musharraf and Islamic extremists. As the recent legislative elections showed, there is a moderate majority of Pakistanis, and they are the people we need on our side to win the war against al Qaeda. That is why we should dramatically increase our support for the Pakistani people - for education, economic development, and democratic institutions. That child in Pakistan must know that we want a better life for him, that America is on his side, and that his interest in opportunity is our interest as well. That’s the promise that America must stand for.

“And for his sake and ours, we cannot tolerate a sanctuary for terrorists who threaten America’s homeland and Pakistan’s stability. If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot. Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have all distorted and derided this position, suggesting that I would invade or bomb Pakistan. This is politics, pure and simple. My position, in fact, is the same pragmatic policy that all three of them have belatedly - if tacitly - acknowledged is one we should pursue. Indeed, it was months after I called for this policy that a top al Qaeda leader was taken out in Pakistan by an American aircraft. And remember that the same three individuals who now criticize me for supporting a targeted strike on the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, are the same three individuals that supported an invasion of Iraq - a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. “

Thanks to openDemocracy for highlighting this piece on EurasiaNet about a row between the Taliban and al Qaeda which it says has surfaced among bloggers on a website in Egypt.

“Islamic extremists who regularly post messages to a pro-Al-Qaeda website in Egypt are accusing Afghanistan’s Taliban of straying from the path of global jihad,” it says.  “Internet criticisms of the Taliban follow a February statement from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar announcing that his movement wants to maintain positive and ‘legitimate’ relations with countries neighbouring Afghanistan.”

It caught my eye since it linked into comments in the Pakistani and other media about the relationship between pro al Qaeda Arab fighters and the Taliban based on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and its implications for Islamist militancy now spreading into the heartland of Pakistan.  The usual argument is that while elements in the Pakistan army and the ISI, the country’s powerful intelligence agency, might have some sympathy for the Taliban — a legacy of the days when they worked together to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan — they blame al Qaeda for turning on Pakistan. 

In a blog on this earlier this month I highlighted a feature on Salon.com headlined Killing ourselves in Afghanistan in which the writer accused the ISI of working against American interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This had begun to change, however, said writer Matthew Cole, with the attacks on Pakistan itself. 

“Of late, however, the foreign-led Taliban factions in the Tribal Areas, the ones believed to shelter al-Qaida’s Arab leadership, have begun focusing more attention on destabilizing Islamabad than Kabul,” he wrote. “Now Pakistani intelligence has reason to work with the Americans, at least when it comes to some jihadis, including those known locally as ‘the Arabs’. Many of these insurgents were once aligned with the ISI, but no more.”

Is there a pattern emerging here? Is there a split between the Taliban and al Qaeda that could be exploited by the Pakistan army and the ISI? Or is this just more smoke and mirrors about an invisible enemy that nobody can either understand or control?