[R-G] The Crisis in Pakistan

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/341370/the_crisis_in_pakistan>
The Crisis in Pakistan
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 08/01/2008 @ 02:51am

Here's a choice for would be foreign policy makers: is the solution to
the current crisis in Pakistan (a) a comprehensive Pakistan-India
accord, with full Iranian and Russian support, to strengthen
Pakistan's civilian government and assert civilian control over
Pakistan's rogue ISI intelligence agency, or (b) stepped-up US
military intervention in Afghanistan, unilateral US strikes into
Pakistan's lawless border areas in the northwest, and thuggish
American threats aimed at Pakistan's fledging regime?

If you picked (a), good for you. If you picked (b), well, the
campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain might offer you a job.

Recent revelations in the New York Times about Pakistan's ISI and its
ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, including reports that the ISI was
indeed responsible [LINK:
<mailto:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/world/asia/01pstan.html?em>]
for the deadly bombing at India's embassy in Afghanistan, have pushed
the Afghan-Pakistan-India nexus to the very front of the news.

But greater US attacks and more US troops in Afghanistan aren't the answer.

The answer lies in talks between India and Pakistan. India's Manmohan
Singh and Pakistan's Yousuf Raza Gilani, the two leaders, held the
first meeting between leaders of the two countries in fifteen months
this week, and Pakistan's foreign minister was optimistic [LINK:
<http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gL6wfxElUyEpyQgV0civmrnsIdCw>],
saying that the talks had helped "clear the air" between the two
nuclear-armed rivals which have fought three wars, two over the
disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. "A lot of steam had been let out
of the pressure cooker. The dish we're going to cook is going to be
for the betterment of the region," he said.

Trudy Rubin, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer [cf.
<http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/20080727_Worldview__Pakistan_and_India_need_to_normalize.html>],
described the comments of Pakistan's foreign minister on the
importance of improving India-Pakistan ties:

    Better relations with India "are a top priority," Makhdoom Shah
Mahmood Qureshi told guests, emphatically, at a recent private dinner
in Villanova, organized by the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.
Speaking the elegant English of a Cambridge University graduate, he
insisted: "There is a large constituency on both sides that wants
normalization. There may be hiccups, but we will forge ahead."

    This policy--if Pakistan's new civilian government really pursues
it--is of crucial importance to the United States and the wider world.

    Pakistan Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Quereshi said here
on Thursday that Islamabad's response to a blast outside the Pakistan
consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, was "measured" and it adopted the
same attitude towards the blast outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

    "We believe charges and counter-charges would not help. It is easy
to indulge in blame game. What we need is solutions to resolve
issues," he told journalists.

Of course, the problems between India and Pakistan aren't just
hiccups. The United States, Afghanistan, and India have all accused
Pakistan's ISI of supporting the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other
anti-Indian terrorist groups in a campaign of violence against India.
And Pakistan, not without some justification, has accused India and
Afghanistan of supporting terrorists [LINK:
<http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C08%5C01%5Cstory_1-8-2008_pg1_1>]
against Pakistan in that country's Baluchistan province and elsewhere:

    Ruling Pakistan People's Party leader Rehman Malik, who functions
as the interior minister and is a confidant of party chief Asif Ali
Zardari, appealed to Pakistan's western allies, including the US, to
stop India and Afghanistan's alleged activities.

    "India wants to destabilise FATA (Federally Administered Tribal
Areas). What India and (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai are doing must
stop. They must stop this," he told reporters in Washington yesterday.
…

    Though Pakistan has always blamed foreign hands for stirring
trouble in Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province, this is
the first time since the February 18 election that a senior government
official has blamed India for fomenting unrest in the country.

Pakistan has seen the Islamists are critical to securing Islamabad's
control of Afghanistan since the 1970s, and it sees controlling
Afghanistan as a way of countering Indian influence in the region.
India, for its part, has worked closely with Iran and Russia over the
years against Pakistan and the Taliban, and India used its ties to the
non-Islamist, non-Pashtun Northern Alliance in Afghanistan as a way of
weakening Pakistani influence in Iran and central Asia. (For most of
the years after the 1970s, the United States supported Pakistan, the
Islamists, and even the Taliban.)

It ain't beanbag when two nuclear powers start accusing each other of
close-to-war actions. Is this the kind of situation in which the
United States wants to go into, guns blazing? I hope not. The remote
chance that some nutball Islamists in Al Qaeda might do something
nasty to the United States pales in significance against the
real-world threats to the people of Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan
posed by Islamic fundamentalists and other extremists, including Hindu
fanatics.

In fact, the United States is singularly ill-equipped to go bungling
into that part of the world like some drunken sheriff. Last time we
did, post-1979, when we supported the Afghan warlords and Islamist
crazies against the USSR, we helped create the very problem we're
trying to solve now. Many of the extremists holed up in Quetta, the
Northwest Frontier Province, and the tribal agencies are people
America armed and trained a generation ago.

So let's let India and the new government of Pakistan handle their own
problems. They'll need immense diplomatic support from the rest of the
world, including the UN and the US, but also including Iran, Russia,
China, and others. Pakistan is fragile. It's new government, having
already lost one major coalition partner, is trying to bring ISI under
civilian control at the same time they are trying to force General
Pervez Musharraf out of office and reorganize the corrupt,
pro-Islamist army command. For my part, I believe they'll do better
without heavy-handed US threats, which only aid extremists and
ultranationalists.