Kanchan Gupta
In a passionately written article, “It’s time to declare Pakistan a terrorist state”, soon after last weekend’s raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, Salman Rushdie pitilessly ridicules what he calls “Pakistan’s dangerous folly” of persisting with its “double game” of pretending to fight terrorism while providing succour and shelter to terrorists. “As the world braces for the terrorists’ response to the death of their leader, it should also demand that Pakistan give satisfactory answers to the very tough questions it must now be asked,” Rushdie writes, and adds with more than a tinge of rage, “If it does not provide those answers, perhaps the time has come to declare it a terrorist state and expel it from the comity of nations.”
Nice as that may sound to Indian ears which are tired of hearing, ad nauseum ad infinitum, from Pakistanis that they are full participants in the war on terror and doubting their sincerity would be tantamount to strengthening the tribe of Osama bin Laden, in reality it is a naïve expectation. The demand to declare Pakistan a terrorist state is not new; nor is American obduracy to act against a deceitful Pakistan of recent vintage. Similar demands have been made in the past, including by Congressmen on Capitol Hill, but the US Administration has stoutly defended Pakistan as its “frontline ally in the war on terror”.
That’s a clever cover for a client state which serves America’s larger geopolitical interest, straddling as Pakistan does, by accident of history, an important geostrategic location. But for the Suez Canal, Egypt would not have been a pampered child, first of the USSR and later of the US. So also is Pakistan, which deeply believes, and for good reason, that the worst that can happen to it is to be reprimanded as a “global headache”, as Madeleine Albright famously described the US’s major non-NATO ally in the immediate aftermath of 26/11.
There’s a fundamental flaw in Rushdie’s argument which brings to mind India’s expectation in the early 1990s when Pakistan-sponsored terrorism’s hideous brutality, with its attendant horror, pain and anguish, was being felt in Jammu & Kashmir. American law designates any state that sponsors terrorist groups, or harbours terrorists, as a terrorist state. In our innocence, some would say naivety, we chose to believe that the US would not spurn its own law, especially when confronted with evidence compiled by the State Department in successive Patterns of Global Terrorism reports. Cold water was rudely poured on that expectation.
Between then and now, American interest in Pakistan has remained undiminished while American investment in Pakistan by way of unrestricted aid has multiplied manifold. Soon after 9/11 when George W Bush declared “You are either with us or against us”, Pakistan’s then President Pervez Musharraf, characteristically, had tried to act tough rather than be seen to be meekly cooperating with the Americans. First came the stick. Richard Armitage flew down to Islamabad and bluntly told Musharraf that if he didn’t toe the line laid down by Washington, DC, the US would “bomb Pakistan back to the stone age”. Then came the carrot. The US would write out billion-dollar cheques if Pakistan pretended to play along. So Pakistan pretended to play along.
Between 2002 and 2010, the US has, literally, poured nearly $20 billion, some 60 per cent of it in security-related aid, down a bottomless black hole called Pakistan on which the military-jihadi complex of that country has fattened itself. That’s the overt aid. Add to this the covert aid which remains undisclosed and the figure could be as high as $50 billion. The US wouldn’t pay that kind of money to a country had it truly believed that it is a terrorist state. Others have been punished for far less — Iraq is only one example of how the world appears through the tinted glass that separates the truth as Americans perceive it and as it is seen by the rest.
It is within this matrix of perverted perception that we have to locate what last weekend’s targetted assassination means for India. We have to also be mindful of the very real possibility that while the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout may have been conducted by a crack unit of the American SEALs without the participation of Pakistani forces and by keeping the effete Zardari-Gilani Government in the dark, the Pakistani military and the ISI may not have been entirely ignorant. Letting Osama bin Laden go at this point of time suits the Generals of Rawalpindi; Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani would consider it fair exchange for regaining ‘strategic depth in Afghanistan’.
Both Washington and Islamabad would insist it’s coincidental, but that the slaying of the world’s most wanted terrorist comes exactly two months before the US begins its drawdown in Afghanistan must not be seen as a mere coincidence. We should ask, and legitimately so, was there a trade-off somewhere along the line? Did Gen Kayani agree to let the US get the trophy it has been hunting for a decade in exchange of getting his own proxies into power in Kabul as America winds down its presence in Afghanistan?
These and other related questions are being asked in Pakistan, more so among the second and third tier of officers in the military who make no effort to hide their Islamist credentials. They are torn between anger over the loss of terror’s amir and the tantalising promise of regaining what Pakistan lost when the Taliban fled from Afghanistan in 2001-02.
We must also bear in mind that betrayal is integral to the history of humankind. Greater souls have been betrayed for far less: Judas led the Romans to Jesus for 30 pieces of silver; $25 million, even in these days of high inflation, is not exactly loose change, especially when it comes with the assured possibility of stepping in to fill the vacuum created by departing American troops in Afghanistan.
With President Barack Obama looking at shoring up his slipping fortunes in the 2012 presidential race by keeping his promise of “bringing the boys home” — the beginning of the drawdown has been timed for July 2011 with a clear purpose — Gen Kayani and his men know that sooner or later — sooner rather than later, really — the law of diminishing returns will set in as far as their double game is concerned. American interest in propping up Pakistan will remain as firm as ever, but the dollar flow will begin to thin down as the Afghan war reaches endgame. The clamour on the Hill to cut aid to treacherous Pakistan — as if the Senators and Representatives did not know of Pakistan’s perfidy all along! — could prove to be a convenient cover. In his autobiography, In the Line of Fire, Pervez Musharraf writes about the Pakistani military making millions of dollars by tracking down and handing over elements of the Taliban to the US. With an asset turning into a liability, why not encash it for whatever it’s worth?
A week after Osama bin Laden was despatched to the other world, this is what the situation looks like. Obama has presented jubilant Americans with the trophy they have been clamouring for all these years and which Bush failed to deliver. Opinion polls show that his ratings have shot up and a re-election now appears more than likely. The polls also show that the Americans want the US troops out of Afghanistan “as soon as possible”. As far the US is concerned, the war on terror is over; feeble clarifications by the State Department, that the larger war on Al Qaeda shall continue, are inconsequential. Pakistan knows that by skilfully holding out till now, it is close to getting its proxy regime in place in Kabul. If it is able to sell the idea of an Islamabad-friendly Government as being of strategic utility to Washington, there’s no reason why the Americans should object to that. Pakistani and American interests, both short-term and medium-term, converge at this point; a broke America cannot afford to look at long-term interests, not at this moment.
Which brings me back to Salman Rushdie’s biting article. “India, as always Pakistan’s unhealthy obsession, is the reason for the double game. Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries,” he writes, adding scathingly, “The paranoia of Pakistan about India’s supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.”
And thereby hangs a tale — of Pakistani and American perfidy. The US has been, and shall remain, mindful of the “paranoia of Pakistan”; Islamabad’s sensitivities, its faux victimhood, will always take precedence over New Delhi’s concerns in Washington. Hence, further pressure will now be mounted on India to wind down its presence in Afghanistan — we don’t need all those consulates, we will be told — to make it easier for America to begin its drawdown and finally exit the theatre of a war it is desperate not to be seen as having lost, not so much to the Taliban and Al Qaeda as to the wily Generals of Rawalpindi who have proved to be smarter than the Americans. The US would still want to be on top, to be seen to be in control of Pakistan’s expansionism which will be viewed as a tactical balancing factor in the region as India rises with each passing year and China expands exponentially, as a distraction from its “unhealthy obsession”.
So we will be told to lay-off, to get along with our growth story, to leave Pakistan alone. In brief, there’s nothing for India in the slaying of Osama bin Laden, in the war on terror crossing an important marker, in expending human and financial resources in Afghanistan. If we were to even remotely consider replicating what the Americans did in Abbottabad to grab Dawood Ibrahim or Hafiz Saeed, or to bomb terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, we would be reminded, by the Americans, that it would be a “misadventure” whose consequences would be a “terrible catastrophe”. More than a hint of just where India figures in the American establishment’s thinking was provided by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who, while justifying the US raid, recounted every major terror attack after 9/11 but studiedly excluded 26/11.
In any event, till such time we have Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister and a Government that cannot distinguish between the perpetrator of terror and the victim of terror, all speculation of what might be is purely that, and no more. On Wednesday afternoon, the top official of the Ministry of External Affairs briefed media on how India would never consider an Abbottabad-like raid because although “Pakistan is a foreign country… it is part of us”. That stunning absurdity was a perfect reflection of the Manmohan Singh doctrine, and provided the opportunity to Pakistan to pour scorn and ridicule on India and its armed forces the following day, while praising our pusillanimous Prime Minister and his ‘agenda’.
It’s a perfect fit. The US raid on Abbottabad, Manmohan Singh’s ‘agenda’, and the coming restoration of Pakistan’s supremacy in Afghanistan are all of a piece. India can wait for the moment. And more.
(Courtesy : www.international.to)
