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Complex conflict in the tribal belt
What might have been America's war in 2001 to re-shape the broader Mideast has become Pakistan's war in the eastern theatre.
- By Tanvir Ahmad Khan, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 22:59 September 12, 2008
The situation in Pakistan's north-western border is obviously pivotal to the country's relations with Kabul, Washington and Nato. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to define. Its enduring complexity was amply dramatised by the prominent presence of President Hamid Karzai at the oath-taking ceremony of President Asif Ali Zardari and, more interestingly, during the entire press conference that followed.
In his first public comments as the newly-elected president, Zardari emphasised Pakistan's resolve to work with Afghanistan and, indeed, the entire region. That he invited Karzai to be the only foreign guest of honour at his inauguration spoke volumes for the importance he attaches to future relations with Afghanistan. That he also fielded tough questions by the Pakistani media on Pakistan's domestic and international policies not only in Karzai's presence but together with him added an unexpected dimension to the occasion.
If this was the only scene, the optimists would proclaim a relationship of unparalleled harmony. But it would be impossible to ignore the backdrop - a veritable montage of harsh images of deadly attacks on Pakistani tribal settlements in the wake of months of threats emanating from both Kabul and Washington. There has been an escalating pattern of aerial incursions into Pakistani territory for some time. The year 2007 saw at least three occasions when American Predators fired Hellfire missiles on Pakistani villages suspected of sheltering the Taliban or Al Qaida leaders. This year the number of such strikes is already 12. These attacks reportedly aim at decimating the insurgents' high command. The tragic fact is that the dead and wounded are mostly civilians.
On June 10, several Pakistani soldiers manning a border post inside Pakistan were killed. During the run-up to Pakistani presidential election, American Special Forces made their first officially admitted cross-border raid by land killing more than 20 civilians. The Pakistani capital is abuzz with speculation that even larger raids by land and air are on the anvil.
Killing women and children
Karzai offered no assurance that these raids would stop. In his own country, an American air strike recently killed 90 civilians, mostly women and children. All that he could do was to personally go there and console the bereaved. President George W. Bush timed a tough comment with President Zardari's inauguration to declare that Pakistan was as much a battleground against terrorism as Iraq and Afghanistan. In the dying hours of his presidency, Bush faces the prospect of Osama Bin Laden outliving his eight-year campaign to hunt him down and of the Taliban creeping ever closer to Kabul. Karzai's secret dream that the international community would transform the Afghan economy lies shattered. In the UN's human development index, Afghanistan now ranks 174th out of the listed 178. At least 20 per cent Afghans are deprived every day of their minimum food requirement. While supersonic aircraft thunder across the Afghan skies, the infrastructure down below is in shambles.
Zardari's enemies are vociferously accusing him of being as complicit in the American raids as Musharraf. Those of us who know him better would, however, attribute his restrained response to the unfolding tragedy in Pakistan's borderlands to what strategic analysts call the compellence of circumstances. It is what he has inherited from Musharraf. Bush's belligerence may too have a life beyond his term of office; both the presidential candidates use the rhetoric of intimidation about Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Not to be denied is the fact that what might have been America's war in 2001 to re-shape the broader Middle East has become Pakistan's war in the eastern theatre as the insurgents - Al Qaida, the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban - now unanimously identify Islamabad as a major enemy that has to be defeated either by carving an Islamist emirate in the Pushtun belt or even in the whole of Pakistan
Zardari's invitation to Karzai was an act of statesmanship. It was a multi-tone signal that Pakistan accepted the ownership of the war against the terrorists while reminding Karzai that mighty empires from Alexander the Great to the British via the Great Mughals had to, in the end, arrive at a peaceful settlement with these tribes.
Recent intensification of military operations by Pakistan has created a major problem of internal refugees in the Bajaur area in the battered tribal belt. Bush is sending 4,500 troops from Iraq with a similar number raised from other Nato countries. But the over-all strength will still not give the coalition a decisive military victory. Nor would it reduce the dependence on the highly erratic air power that often acts on faulty intelligence.
It may well be that presidents Zardari and Karzai would do some thinking together in the months ahead and persuade the Americans that it was time for a change of tactics if not a for a revised mission statement and objectives. Ironically, the two Muslim heads of state need to try to reduce the ideological element in Bush's own policy towards the Islamists of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A good substitute for the neo-con ideology that launched these wars of transformation in the first place is a genuine reconstruction effort under a UN flag. It will have to be backed by a local version of a mini-Marshal plan for the Pakistani tribes whose economy could be literally revolutionised at a fraction of the cost of another "surge" in Afghanistan. There is an air of exasperated resignation today that the time for fresh ideas would not come before the summer of 2009 when Bush's Iraq and Afghan legacy would have been discarded and either Obama or McCain would have hopefully learnt to look at the ground realities of the "battlefield": without the fog of Bush's seven year war in a theatre that he never understood.
The rapport that Zardari and Karzai establish now may well come in handy if and when such a happy conjunction of stars appears over the Afghan horizon.
Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former ambassador and foreign secretary of Pakistan who currently heads the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.
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