If at all the drone attacks are in Pakistan's interest, the government should either take the people into confidence telling them that the US is doing this on our request or we ask the Americans to give us the drones and drone technology to do the job ourselves.
President Obama had promised change to the world. On coming to office, he no doubt faced formidable challenges both at home and abroad. But he vowed to meet them to bring about a change in the lives of Americans as well as in those of the people of the world. Domestically, he inherited an unprecedented fiscal crisis. He seems to be managing this crisis through his own “stimulus” plan as well as a multilateral approach recently agreed at the G-20 meeting in London.
'The Other War'
Globally, President Obama had to grapple with two ongoing wars. The one in Iraq, he wanted to end “responsibly” and the “other war” in Afghanistan, he thought he would conclude by defeating the Taliban and al-Qaeda. No one disagreed with this agenda which inevitably required America to be at peace with itself and with the rest of the world. But this was predicated on how President Obama was going to deal with what his administration has now started calling as AfPak, an acronym for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
'Tide of Disaster'
Obama entered the White House determined to pursue this conflict, having stated repeatedly that he would reinforce US troops in Afghanistan. He had also been hinting at more muscular CIA covert operations (drone attacks) in the “unacknowledged” parallel war across the Pakistani border. But in an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes programme on March 22, Obama acknowledged publicly that military force alone would not end the war in Afghanistan and admitted that “there has to be an exit strategy” for this war.
He said: "What we can't do is think that just a military approach in Afghanistan is going to be able to solve our problems," Obama said. "So what we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's got to be an exit strategy ... There's got to be a sense that this is not perpetual drift.” It is a welcome change in Obama's own stated position on “pursuing” the war in Afghanistan. Apparently this change was based on fresh readings of the “tide of disaster” under the military approach that had been swelling since at least 2005.
American engagement in Pakistan has never been people-specific. It has always been issue-specific and geared only to prop up military dictators and autocratic regimes. The Bush administration's blatant meddling in Pakistan's internal affairs had gone beyond all limits.
awaited Obama's new AfPak strategy. The cat finally came out of the bag on March 27 with lot of “brouhaha” emanating from the inter-agency review by a task force headed by a former CIA official Bruce Riedel and co-chaired by Special Representative Richard Holbrooke and Under Secretary of Defence Michelle Flournoy. The new strategy ostensibly seeking a broader mix of “diplomatic, economic and security” measures reverses the US priorities in the region.
Pakistan the Real Afghan Issue
For Obama, the real Afghan issue now starts and ends with Pakistan. This has had an alarmingly adverse impact on Pakistan's psyche which already is perturbed by America's indifference to its legitimate concerns and sensitivities. No one in Pakistan disagrees with the overall objective in the strategy: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and prevent their return to either of them.
Pakistan has already staked everything in supporting this war by deploying over 100,000 troops in its tribal areas and along its Afghan border. It is also working closely with Nato-led forces in southern Afghanistan, and has offered to further expand and reinforce this cooperation. President Obama while announcing his new AfPak strategy also argued that the future of Afghanistan is "inextricably linked" to the future of Pakistan. Pakistan is now the real Afghan issue.
In stern, forceful language, the president sought to make the case to the American people -- and to the world -- that the security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan was intertwined and a shared responsibility that required a sustained international effort to go after al-Qaeda and to help with economic development in the region.
"For the American people, this border region has become the most dangerous place in the world," he said. "I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future."
Besides 17,000 additional troops already decided for deployment to Afghanistan this year, Obama announced roughly 4,000 more to be sent to help train Afghan security forces. He also called on Congress to pass two bills -- one that would provide $1.5 billion a year for five years to build schools, roads and hospitals in Pakistan; and another that would create "opportunity zones" in border regions to develop the economy. He did make it clear that the era of 'blank cheques” was over, and that future security to Pakistan will be performance-based and result-oriented.
Obama acknowledged that the road ahead would be long and tough, but he insisted that America would "not blindly stay the course" and would instead set clear standards for measuring progress in the region. He called al-Qaeda and its allies a "cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within," and he said intelligence estimates had warned the group was actively planning attacks on the United States from its safe havens in Pakistan.
The administration White Paper on New AfPak Strategy added that America must overcome a "trust deficit" in the two countries, where many people believe the US is not a reliable long-term partner. Obama's policy for the region calls for a "standing, trilateral dialogue" among the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Our problems, however, have been aggravated by the complex regional configuration with a growing Indo-US nexus, India's strategic ascendancy in the region and its unprecedented influence in Afghanistan with serious nuisance potential against Pakistan's security interests. The US in recent years has also been targeting Pakistan with military incursions and drone attacks in our tribal areas to pressurise the new civilian government to continue to follow General Musharraf's policies in the “war on terror.”
Weaknesses in New Strategy
No wonder, serious differences erupted this time when Ambassador Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen visited Islamabad. According to reports, the differences revolved around two major issues: India's growing role in Afghanistan and the continuing drone attacks against suspected terrorist targets inside Pakistan's tribal areas. Pakistan has been claiming for some time that India was using its presence in Afghanistan to foment trouble in Balochistan and tribal areas and also to sponsor and finance acts of terrorism in other areas of Pakistan.
Pakistani officials, in recent months, have been drawing US attention to this serious problem but apparently the Americans have paid no attention to their concerns. In one of his pre-election television interviews, Obama had said that as president he would urge India to solve the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan, so that Islamabad could better cooperate with the US on Afghanistan. He was convinced that to keep Pakistan focused on the larger challenges in our region, the Kashmir issue had to be resolved. The new strategy marks a clear shift in US approach towards India-Pakistan situation.
The recent talks in Islamabad ended on a sour note also because lately, the US officials had been engaged in a slander campaign against Pakistan's army and its intelligence agency, the ISI questioning their sincerity in the war on terror and the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban. According to the US Council on Foreign Relations, the talks ran into muddy waters when in their meetings with Ambas-sador Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen, Pakistani officials contended that Washington showed disproportionate support for India in its bilateral relations with Pakistan.
While President Obama looks at Afghanistan and Pakistan as the central “battleground” of the war against terrorism and also sees many of the strategic problems in this war playing out in both countries as an intertwined phenomenon, the emphasis on regional approach tends to make serious mistakes in grappling with the real challenge. Richard Holbrooke only complicated this aspect by over-emphasising in his press conference in New Delhi a notional and perhaps unintended narrative ascribing to India the role of a major power in the region.
No country in South Asia would accept this narrative. My friend, Richard Holbrook is new to this region and has no indepth exposure yet to its susceptibilities. In the context of South Asia, the US must remain sensitive to Pakistan's legitimate concerns and security interests. Any policies that create strategic imbalances in the region and fuel an arms race between the two nuclear-capable neighbours with an escalatory effect on their military budgets and arsenals is no service to the peoples of the two countries. They complicate the issues of peace and security in this volatile region.
Pakistan the Real Afghan Issue
For Obama, the real Afghan issue now starts and ends with Pakistan. This has had an alarmingly adverse impact on Pakistan's psyche which already is perturbed by America's indifference to its legitimate concerns and sensitivities. No one in Pakistan disagrees with the overall objective in the strategy: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and prevent their return to either of them.
Pakistan has already staked everything in supporting this war by deploying over 100,000 troops in its tribal areas and along its Afghan border. It is also working closely with Nato-led forces in southern Afghanistan, and has offered to further expand and reinforce this cooperation. President Obama while announcing his new AfPak strategy also argued that the future of Afghanistan is "inextricably linked" to the future of Pakistan. Pakistan is now the real Afghan issue.
In stern, forceful language, the president sought to make the case to the American people -- and to the world -- that the security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan was intertwined and a shared responsibility that required a sustained international effort to go after al-Qaeda and to help with economic development in the region.
"For the American people, this border region has become the most dangerous place in the world," he said. "I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future."
Besides 17,000 additional troops already decided for deployment to Afghanistan this year, Obama announced roughly 4,000 more to be sent to help train Afghan security forces. He also called on Congress to pass two bills -- one that would provide $1.5 billion a year for five years to build schools, roads and hospitals in Pakistan; and another that would create "opportunity zones" in border regions to develop the economy. He did make it clear that the era of 'blank cheques” was over, and that future security to Pakistan will be performance-based and result-oriented.
Obama acknowledged that the road ahead would be long and tough, but he insisted that America would "not blindly stay the course" and would instead set clear standards for measuring progress in the region. He called al-Qaeda and its allies a "cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within," and he said intelligence estimates had warned the group was actively planning attacks on the United States from its safe havens in Pakistan.
The administration White Paper on New AfPak Strategy added that America must overcome a "trust deficit" in the two countries, where many people believe the US is not a reliable long-term partner. Obama's policy for the region calls for a "standing, trilateral dialogue" among the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Our problems, however, have been aggravated by the complex regional configuration with a growing Indo-US nexus, India's strategic ascendancy in the region and its unprecedented influence in Afghanistan with serious nuisance potential against Pakistan's security interests. The US in recent years has also been targeting Pakistan with military incursions and drone attacks in our tribal areas to pressurise the new civilian government to continue to follow General Musharraf's policies in the “war on terror.”
Weaknesses in New Strategy
No wonder, serious differences erupted this time when Ambassador Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen visited Islamabad. According to reports, the differences revolved around two major issues: India's growing role in Afghanistan and the continuing drone attacks against suspected terrorist targets inside Pakistan's tribal areas. Pakistan has been claiming for some time that India was using its presence in Afghanistan to foment trouble in Balochistan and tribal areas and also to sponsor and finance acts of terrorism in other areas of Pakistan.
Pakistani officials, in recent months, have been drawing US attention to this serious problem but apparently the Americans have paid no attention to their concerns. In one of his pre-election television interviews, Obama had said that as president he would urge India to solve the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan, so that Islamabad could better cooperate with the US on Afghanistan. He was convinced that to keep Pakistan focused on the larger challenges in our region, the Kashmir issue had to be resolved. The new strategy marks a clear shift in US approach towards India-Pakistan situation.
The recent talks in Islamabad ended on a sour note also because lately, the US officials had been engaged in a slander campaign against Pakistan's army and its intelligence agency, the ISI questioning their sincerity in the war on terror and the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban. According to the US Council on Foreign Relations, the talks ran into muddy waters when in their meetings with Ambas-sador Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen, Pakistani officials contended that Washington showed disproportionate support for India in its bilateral relations with Pakistan.
While President Obama looks at Afghanistan and Pakistan as the central “battleground” of the war against terrorism and also sees many of the strategic problems in this war playing out in both countries as an intertwined phenomenon, the emphasis on regional approach tends to make serious mistakes in grappling with the real challenge. Richard Holbrooke only complicated this aspect by over-emphasising in his press conference in New Delhi a notional and perhaps unintended narrative ascribing to India the role of a major power in the region.
No country in South Asia would accept this narrative. My friend, Richard Holbrook is new to this region and has no indepth exposure yet to its susceptibilities. In the context of South Asia, the US must remain sensitive to Pakistan's legitimate concerns and security interests. Any policies that create strategic imbalances in the region and fuel an arms race between the two nuclear-capable neighbours with an escalatory effect on their military budgets and arsenals is no service to the peoples of the two countries. They complicate the issues of peace and security in this volatile region.
While President Obama looks at Afghanistan and Pakistan as the central “battleground” of the war against terrorism and also sees many of the strategic problems in this war playing out in both countries as an intertwined phenomenon, the emphasis on regional approach tends to make serious mistakes in grappling with the real challenge.
The other inherent weakness in President Obama's strategy is the blatant discrepancy between the role expected of Pakistan by the US in fighting a common enemy and the treatment to which it is being subjected. A country cannot be treated both as a target and a partner at the same time. And surely, we should neither expect “blank cheques” nor be ready to give “blank cheques” in any form as an equal partner in this campaign.
Even if President Zardari did not ask for it, the US must reconsider its policy of covert-overt CIA operations in Pakistan. Drone attacks must stop. They are counterproductive and enraging the people of Pakistan, fuelling hostility and anti-American sentiment with greater sympathy for the Taliban in these areas. This is not what the new strategy is meant to achieve. If at all the drone attacks are in Pakistan's interest, the govern-ment should either take the people into confidence telling them that the US is doing this on our request or we ask the Americans to give us the drones and drone technology to do the job ourselves.
No Military Solution
One thing is clear. Military force will never solve the problem. The more you kill the more you produce. We need a comprehensive and measured approach to grapple with the scourge of terrorism. No strategy or roadmap will work without focusing on the underlying political and socio-economic problems. Special attention is needed to win the hearts and minds of those susceptible to sympathise or support militant extremism.
There can be no two opinions on the need to combat terrorism. But to eliminate this evil, the root causes will have to be addressed. To address the root causes is not to justify terrorism, but to understand it and thus to overcome it. The new strategy announced by President Obama rightly recognises that military force alone is not a solution to the problems in this region. It is a welcome departure from the Bush policy of relying solely on military option.
The problem of the militancy in Fata must be seen objectively. We need a well-coordinated strategy involving coercive as well as political approach in addressing this problem. Pakistan and Afghanistan will have to join together in this endeavour but they will need political and economic support in overcoming their problems. They must work together in influencing the groups which directly or indirectly support terrorism through political and tribal intermediaries to adhere to basic Islamic principles of peace, justice and moderation.
The capacity of their law enforcing agencies to detect and control terrorist groups and their supporters must also be strengthened. They must be helped to overcome the prevailing sense of desperation which pushes their people towards obscurantism and extremism. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan need to promote a culture of literacy, tolerance, moderation and mutual respect. They also must be helped in developing political stability based on genuine democratic norms, constitutional supremacy, institutional integrity, rule of law and good governance.
Linking Assistance to Goals
Washington does recognise now that for too long, US and international assistance efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan have suffered from being ill-organised and significantly under-resourced in some areas. A large portion of development assistance ends up being spent on international consultants and overhead charges with no benefit accruing to the people. But who is responsible for this mess up? The US has always been funnelling money as aid to its favourite rulers and regimes in “gunny bags” virtually with no accountability or “impact” assessment on its utilisation.
A clear “guilty” conscience was involved on both sides because the “suppliers “and the “end users of the money were in league for operations that were to be kept secret from the people of the two countries. It is the people of Pakistan who should be complaining to the US on this account. Over the past sixty years, US has given several billion dollars in aid to Pakistan but our people have yet to feel any security-related or development-based betterment in their daily lives as a result of this aid.
Not a single school or a university, a hospital or a power generation unit, a water desalination plant or a bridge or a road or any mass transit scheme anywhere in Pakistan, not even in the tribal areas can be attributed to American assistance. The same is the case unfortunately with “international” assistance, especially the UNDP-sponsored funds which have invariably been a major source of corruption and graft in recipient developing countries.
It is good that President Obama is now concerned about the need for “accountability” and 'vigilance” on the utilisation of its aid money. No one would object to the US assistance being aligned with core goals and objectives and subjected to achievement of results. But linking this aid to extraneous conditionalities will not be acceptable. How can Pakistan undertake to keep India, a country of more than one billion people free of terrorist acts? Pakistan is finding it difficult to fight terrorism on its own soil, and cannot be expected to keep a country of the size of India free of this scourge.
President Obama now speaks of the need for the US to overcome the 'trust deficit' it faces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where many believe that it is not a reliable long-term partner. This indeed is the real problem, and must be addressed as a top priority by Washington itself. The people in Pakistan would like the US to practice internationally what it preaches globally, and what it claims to practice at home, i.e. democratic values.
Internationally, it conducts itself as an omniscient sage observing what the famous historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Schlesinger described "two sets of values, one for its internal policies and the other used in foreign affairs." Its record of keeping authoritarian regimes and military dictatorships in power in many countries is too well-known to be recounted here.
People-centred Approach
The graph of anti-Americanism in Pakistan as elsewhere in the world has indeed been sky-rocketing in recent years despite all that the US claims to be doing to help Pakistan's long-term interests as a “friend and an ally.” This situation will change only if the US moves away from its ruler-specific policies to people-centred approach in Pakistan.
American engagement in Pakistan has never been people-specific. It has always been issue-specific and geared only to prop up military dictators and autocratic regimes. The Bush administration's blatant meddling in Pakistan's internal affairs had gone beyond all limits. The people of Pakistan have always wanted a good relationship with the US. They would like this relationship to endure and flourish on the basis of sovereign equality and mutual benefit with a policy focus on the people rather than on one man.
It should not be issue-specific or transactional in nature. Senator Joe Biden accurately described the essence of this relationship when he said “we've got to move from a policy concentrated on one man -- President Musharraf -- to a policy centred on an entire people... the people of Pakistan.” US engagement with Pakistan must go beyond the question of terrorism. It must reach out to democratic and liberal forces and the business community in our country, and also the younger generation which may resent US power but not its ideals. And in their success alone lies the very future of Pakistan as a strong and stable democratic country.
Given the past ex-perience, performance-based conditionalities on security assistance might be understandable but the size and quality of this aid must be commensurate with the gravity of the task that it expects Pakistan's security forces to perform in fighting the insurgency in their tribal areas. As regards the non-security assistance, the US says it will give Pakistan an amount of $1.5 billion per annum which will be meant exclusively to uplift the well-being of the people in the affected areas.
No Cash please!
According to Vice-President Joe Biden, this aid will be an unconditioned pledge to Pakistan's people and will be used for building schools, clinics and roads. To ensure the desired impact realisation, this unconditioned aid should come to us not in cash but in the form of “turn-key” projects in social sector. Regretfully, our governmental system lacks credibility and transparency in utilisation of such funds. They end up in lavish and luxurious farm houses and palatial houses in Chak Shehzad or DHAs.
Democracy dividend which Vice-President Joe Biden had promi-sed in his original proposal should also remain linked to the repeal of 17th Amend-ment and restoration of constitutional in-stitutions in Pakistan. But we do expect unhindered market access for Pakistani textiles and for products produced in our tribal areas as promised in Washington's policy to develop “Reconstruction Opportunity Zones” (ROZs) in our frontier areas with Afghanistan and within Afghanistan.
No Problem with 'Regional Approach'
No Problem with 'Regional Approach'
And finally, let us not be wary of the proposed “regional” approach involving a Contact Group and a regional security and economic cooperation forum. We should welcome and encourage the Contact Group idea involving the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, regional states, and other relevant international players. Our professional diplomats are capable enough to build effective “safety-valves” in the proposed mechanism to protect our regional interests vis-à-vis India provided our Foreign Office is allowed to play its due role in this process.
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