Pakistan: Now or Never?

India and Pakistan: moving out of intensive care

The joint statement released after the meeting of the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan was so predictably cautious that inevitably attention focused on Pakistan’s glamorous new  foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, and  her designer accessories (a Hermes Birkin handbag, we were told.) Much of the debate was about whether it was sexist to comment on her appearance/question her competence; whether she had performed well in her television interviews (CNN-IBN is here); and whether it was appropriate for a minister to be so expensively attired. (See Dawn’s slideshow for some snarky captions.)

But that debate was also irrelevant. Nobody ever expected policy on India and Pakistan to be set by the foreign ministers. In Pakistan, it is heavily influenced by the army; in India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is driving it.   The two ministers were simply expected to deliver that policy with tact and conviction.

The heavy lifting in rebuilding India-Pakistan ties, soured by the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai,  had in any case already been carried out by their top diplomats, foreign secretaries Nirupama Rao and Salman Bashir.  Their aim, according to an ANI profile of Rao, was to take the India-Pakistan relationship off life-support and bring it into the incubator stage.

So how far did the joint statement - so detailed that it had to have been the product of weeks of work by diplomats behind the scenes — achieve that aim?

The main caveat is that nobody is entirely clear where the Pakistan army stands on the peace process. But equally, since only the military and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency have the power to deliver on security measures, the likelihood is that it was consulted well in advance.

Among the pointers and questions on where talks go from here, based on the joint statement, are:

- As expected, there was no reference to Afghanistan, since this has never been included within the formal peace process between India and Pakistan. Yet with many suggesting both countries have an interest in discussing stability in Afghanistan it remains unclear how they will find a mechanism to incorporate this into their peace talks.

Pakistan, India and the possibility of change

Pakistan has been defined – sometimes by itself, sometimes by outsiders – as “not India” for so long that it has almost become set in stone. Conventional wisdom would have it that Pakistan can unite its many different ethnic and sectarian groups only by setting itself up in opposition to India and stressing its Muslim identity against Indian secularism and pluralism.  In particular, its powerful army has thrived in part because of that traditional enmity with India.

Yet viewing Pakistan through such a simple prism can be misleading, especially if by freeze-framing it within a historical perspective, it denies the possibility of change.

In many conversations during a trip I just made to Pakistan, I found the subject of India to be remarkable largely for its absence.  The United States is of course popularly perceived as a bigger enemy now, but even talk of relations with America – the big obsession of the western media — was dwarfed by an inwards focus on Pakistan itself.

In a four-hour discussion with his officers in May, Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani made no mention of India, but said that he worried about the weak economy being a threat to Pakistan.  Then in a speech to a conference on deradicalisation in July, he urged “all elements of national power” to work together on a national strategy to counter  terrorism — echoing a line frequently made by the army that Pakistan’s national security depends on better governance and an improved economy. 

Speaking at the same conference alongside Kayani, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani did mention India, but that was to stress the need for better relations. He made the same point in an interview last week, adding that he hoped India could “play a good role” in Afghanistan, where both countries have traditionally been rivals for influence.

None of that is to suggest a sea-change in Pakistan’s view of India — its military in particular remains configured for war with its much bigger neighbour.  And given that Pakistan’s foreign and security policies — including once nurturing militant groups to fight in Afghanistan and Kashmir – have been shrouded in secrecy for decades, few would dare say with certainty exactly what is going on.

But there is a change, at least in relative terms. Pakistan has so many internal problems – the Taliban insurgency,  a weak economy, poor governance, political, ethnic and sectarian violence - that “the Indian threat” has receded, while the fear of internal threats to national security has grown. And amongst people not in positions of authority, the conversation is far more likely to be about power cuts and price rises.

from FaithWorld:

In Ahmadis’s desert city, Pakistan closes in on group it declared non-Muslim

(Ahmadis stand over graves of victims of an attack on one of their mosques, in Rabwah, May 29, 2010/Stringer)

At the office of what claims to be one of Pakistan's oldest newspapers, workers scan copy for words it is not allowed to use -- words like Muslim and Islam. "The government is constantly monitoring this publication to make sure none of these words are published," explains our guide during a visit to the offices of al Fazl, the newspaper of the Ahmadiyya sect in Pakistan.

This is Rabwah, the town the Ahmadis built when they fled the killings of Muslims in India at Partition in 1947, and believing themselves guided by God, chose a barren stretch of land where they hoped to make the Punjab desert bloom. Affluent and well-educated, they started out camping in tents and mud huts near the river and the railway line. Now they have a town of some 60,000 people, a jumble of one- and two-storey buildings, along with an Olympic size swimming pool, a fire service and a world class heart institute.

Yet declared by the state in the 1970s to be non-Muslims, they face increasing threats of violence across Pakistan as the country strained by a weakening economy, an Islamist insurgency and internecine political feuds, fractures down sectarian and ethnic lines.

"The situation is getting worse and worse," says Mirza Khurshid Ahmed, amir of the Ahmadi community in Pakistan. "The level of religious intolerance has increased considerably during the last 10 years."

The town, renamed Chenabnagar by the state government since "Rabwah" comes from a verse in the Koran, is now retreating behind high walls and razor wire, awaiting the suicide bombers and fedayeen gunmen who police tell them are plotting attacks. Last May, 86 people were killed in two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, capital of Punjab; others were attacked elsewhere in the province. Many fled to Rabwah where the community gives them cheap housing and financial support.

from Afghan Journal:

On the Afghanistan-Pakistan border : cutting off the nose to spite the face

Pakistan's defence minister has threatened to move forces away from the Afghan border, where they are deployed to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban, if the United States cuts off aid to the cash-strapped country. Ahmed Mukhtar's logic is that Pakistan is essentially fighting America's war on the Afghan border, and if it is going to put the squeeze on its frontline partner, then it will respond by not doing America's bidding.

But  apart from the issue of whether Pakistan can really stand up to the United States  is the question of whether Islamabad can afford to pull back from the Afghan border for its own sake. This is no longer the porous border where movement of insurgents is confined to members of the Afghan Taliban travelling across to launch attacks on foreign forces in their country. Over the past few weeks, the traffic has moved in the reverse direction, with militants crossing over from Afghanistan to attack Pakistani security posts, Pakistani officials say.  These are not armed men sneaking across in twos and threes , but large groups of up to 600 men armed with rocket launchers and  grenades flagrantly crossing the mountainous border to attack security forces and civilians in Pakistan. (It also stands Pakistan's strategy of seeking strategic depth versus India on its head; now the rear itself has become a threat.)

It is not very clear who these raiders are  - which adds to the anxiety - but one obvious  guess is that they could be members of the Pakistan Taliban who have come under pressure in their mountain redoubts in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) from the military and may have found sanctuary just over the border in eastern Afghanistan.  The umbrella organisation is sworn to fighting the Pakistani state and is mainly behind the wave of suicide bombings in the country over the past three years, stepping up the momentum even more after Osama bin Laden's killing, with an audacious attack on a naval base in the southern city of Karachi.

Indeed, the Pakistani military's offensives have been focused on crushing the Tehrik-e-Taliban, and  it is inconceivable that they would thin out on the Afghan border which is where the threat is coming from, at the moment.

There is another, equally worrying challenge. What if the U.S.-led NATO forces were to cross  the border in "hot pursuit" of insurgents? It's not entirely impossible : in May NATO helicopters , pursuing insurgents, were reported to have crossed into North Waziristan which followed another raid back in October in which two Pakistani soldiers were accidentally shot. Two years earlier, in September 2008, American commandos carried out a raid in Pakistan’s tribal areas and killed several people suspected of being insurgents. The attack led to outrage among Pakistan’s leaders — and warnings not to do it again.

With ties testing new lows each week, and America's impatience with the militants growing, the chances of greater aggression on the border have only increased. For Pakistan to pull out from the troubled frontier at this point seems like a self-defeating goal, more than anything else.

from FaithWorld:

Pakistan’s patchy fight against Islamist violence sows confusion

(A man takes a nap next to a poster of Osama bin Laden at the Chauburji monument in Lahore May 13, 2011. The message written on the posters read: "The prayer absentia for martyr of Islamic nation is a duty and a debt"/Mani Rana)

At the rehabilitation center for former militants in Pakistan's Swat valley, the psychiatrist speaks for the young man sitting opposite him in silence. "It was terrible. He was unable to escape. The fear is so strong. Still the fear is so strong." Hundreds of miles away in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, a retired army officer recalls another young man who attacked him while he prayed - his "absolutely expressionless face" as he crouched down robot-like to reload his gun.

Both youths had been sucked into an increasingly fierce campaign of gun and bomb attacks by Islamist militants on military and civilian targets across Pakistan. But there the similarity stops.

One is now being "de-radicalized" in the rehabilitation center in Swat, the northern region which only two years ago was overrun by the Pakistani Taliban and has since been cleared after a massive military operation. He will be taught that Islam does not permit violence against the state and that suicide bombing is "haram" or forbidden.

The other had attacked the minority Ahmadi sect, declared non-Muslim by the state and subject to frequent attacks in Punjab, where many of them live. Though he was arrested after being overpowered by the retired army officer, survivors said many of their neighbors celebrated his act of violence with the distribution of sweets.

The different responses to the two are symptomatic of Pakistan's compartmentalized approach on counter-terrorism and counter-extremism. In some parts of the country - like Swat - violent Islamists are crushed and their beliefs confronted. In others - like Punjab, the heartland province far more important to the stability of Pakistan than the more talked-about tribal areas bordering Afghanistan - they are tolerated while their ideology of religious extremism flourishes.

from India Insight:

Rebel incursions into Kashmir from Pakistan at all-time low

Summer has set in in scenic Kashmir, melting snow on the high Himalayan mountain passes and allowing easier movement of separatist militants from the Pakistani side.

But this year, rebel incursion into Kashmir is down to its lowest level since the separatist revolt began in 1989.

Syed Atta Hasnain, General Officer Commanding of the Indian army's Kashmir-based 15 Corps, recently said that for the first time infiltration has come down to zero in the last 20 years.

No militant has been able to sneak into the Kashmir Valley so far this year, local media reports. There were two failed infiltration bids near the Line of Control (LoC), the heavily militarised ceasefire line dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

But peace still remains a distant prospect in Kashmir, a region at the heart of decades of animosity between Pakistan and India, and more recently, the scene of massive street protests which erupted in the past three summers.

The Indian army built a three-metre high barbed wire fence along much of the 742-km (460-mile) LoC in 2003. But the fence failed to stop incursions.

Is the Pakistani government making efforts this time to stop infiltration and give peaceful resolution a chance?

from Afghan Journal:

Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?

Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America's rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don't see it that way.

They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighbourhood than a military conflict.

These raids conducted by sinister-looking Predator or Reaper aircraft in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen - and since last month in Somalia - should not be seen as a challenge to states and their authority. Instead they are meant to supplement the power of governments that are either unable to or unwilling to fight the militants operating from their territories.

They are precise, limited, strikes aimed at taking down specific individuals, and in that sense are more like the police going after criminals, rather than a full-on military assault. Ricks writes: 

"Police work involves small arms used precisely. Drones aren't pistols, but firing one Hellfire at a Land Rover is more like a police action than it is like a large-scale military offensive with artillery barrages, armored columns, and infantry assaults."

It is a bit of a stretch, though, to compare a police action in a rough part of town with the kind of devastation that the laser-guided Hellfire missile can rain down when fired from unmanned aircraft as scores of Pakistani civilians in the troubled northwest region  discovered in the initial days of the programme launched by the Bush administration.

from Afghan Journal:

Pakistan’s Shamsi base : a mystery wrapped in a riddle

Pakistan Defence Minister Mukhtar Ahmad's comments this week that the government had ended U.S. drone flights out of Shamsi air base deep in southwest Baluchistan province has injected new controversy in their troubled relationship. U.S. officials appeared to scoff at Mukhtar's remarks, saying they had no plans to vacate the base from where they have in the past launched unmanned Predator aircraft targeting militant havens in the northwest region.

Washington's dismissal of the Pakistan government's stand is quite extraordinary. Can a country, even if it is the world's strongest power, continue to use an air base despite the refusal of the host country ?  The United States is effectively encamped in Pakistan using its air strip to run a not-so-secret assassination campaign  against militant leaders including Pakistanis while Islamabad fumes.

One possible reason Washington can get away with it is that the base may not belong to Pakistan. Ahmed said that Shamsi had been leased to the United Arab Emirates in 1992 and they had handed over operational control to the United States when it launched the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and eventually Pakistan.  Pakistan's air force made the same disclosure during an in-camera hearing for parliament following the secret raid to kill Osama bin Laden in May, the Pakistani press reported at the time and again this week as controversy swirled over Mukhtar's comment.

It raises troubling issues of sovereignty for Pakistanis as an editorial in The Daily Times noted :

The questions are many. What is the agreement regarding Shamsi air base? If the Pakistanis are in control of it, what need is there to `ask` the Americans to leave? If the Americans control it, under what laws and agreement have they been permitted to and who on the Pakistani side has signed off on it?

It is not the first time the issue of control of Shamsi has erupted in public. A 2005 U.S. diplomatic cable published by Dawn records the UAE government's displeasure at leak of reports about its military cooperation with the United States inside Pakistan.  The cable from the U.S. embassy in Abu Dhabi says that the UAE government had complained about  General Tommy Franks, former Commander of U.S. Central Command, writing  in his book, “”American Soldier”" that U.S. forces had made use of Sheikh Zayed’s private airstrip in Baluchistan, Pakistan.  The cable said :

MQM’s pullout – Is it too late to have an impact ?

By Faisal Aziz

For once, the government of President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party does not seem too bothered about the decision of its junior partner, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), to say good-bye to the ruling coalition.

Perhaps it is too late a call by the MQM to pile pressure on the government, and that too if it sticks to its decision. The MQM, which has long dominated urban parts of Sindh province and is now aspiring to make a mark at the national level, is not new to such resignations, and has done so in the past, in what has been an uneasy relationship with the PPP. But the sweet talk by the PPP has been able to lure back its partner one way or the other.

While the recent decision by the party looks more serious this time, it does not pose a threat to the government in terms of numbers. The government already has in the coalition wings the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), once the loyal soldiers of former president Pervez Musharraf, so that nullifies the impact of the MQM’s move.

However, a deep downturn in the economy and the poor security situation in the country have put the government on the back foot and if the MQM can join hands with the other opposition parties and is able to mobilize the public, bringing them out on the streets, that can be the start of a move to topple the government and go for an early elections.

But it’s not as simple.  It is not yet clear how the MQM will work with the main opposition party of former premier Nawaz Sharif and if it will start a movement, but if it does that will certainly be a hard job for the government to handle.