Endless violence and continuing mistrust
TERRORISM'S endless cycle," said a Pakistani newspaper. Consecutive suicide bombings in Peshawar, followed by the bomb blast near the Indian embassy at Kabul, topped by Tehrik-e-Taliban attack on army GHQ in Rawalpindi, one of the most sensitive places in Pakistan, raise questions about the effectiveness of military operations both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Military actions in Swat and Malakand have only moved the terrorists to other areas near to Islamabad and outside the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA).
The Afghan ambassador in Washington openly accused the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, for the attack on the Indian embassy, and the Kabul foreign ministry said that the blast was "planned and implemented from outside the borders of Afghanistan." The Afghan government had also blamed the ISI for the July 2008 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
The Americans appear to believe in ISI's involvement in terrorism in India, prompting the Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi to call upon the Americans (on 10th October) to have more faith in the ISI on the ground that militants are no friends of Pakistan. There is a school of thought in Pakistan that the US perception of ISI-militant collaboration is a result of India's "undying hostility to Pakistan as well as US intention of converting it (Pakistan) into an anti-China tool."
This school also believes that the allegation of ISI's involvement is to explain away the Nato failure to pacify war-torn Afghanistan. This claim is weakened by the August report of General Stanley McChrystal's initial assessment of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the implied indication that India should scale back its presence in Afghanistan because "increasing Indian presence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India."
India has extended more than one billion dollars to Afghanistan in financial and development assistance, and is training the Afghan police force and bureaucracy, which is encouraged by France and Britain though frowned upon by the US, as evidenced by McChrystal's fear of Pakistani "countermeasures."
What is truly surprising is the audacity shown by the terrorists in mounting the attack on the Pakistan army GHQ. A Pakistani newspaper asked: "How did these terrorists reach the second picket before they were intercepted." US Secretary of Sate Hillary Clinton, on her recent visit to London, said that the attack on GHQ underlined the extremist threat to the Islamabad government and was "a direct assault on the sovereignty of the state."
Right on the heels of Kerry-Lugar bill (KLB) on enhanced aid to Pakistan, rejected by the Pak army as "insulting" and demonstrative of diarchy between the army, which was not consulted during the processing of the bill, and the Pakistan government, the attack on GHQ would help in destroying the myth of the "invincibility" of the Pak army.
The Bangladesh liberation war should have been enough to destroy that myth, and strengthen the belief that in many developing countries the army can only conquer its own citizens and rarely the invaders. Some Pakistanis are fearful that these are desperate times for the US in Pakistan, and desperation breeds dangerous behaviour.
Though both Hillary Clinton and British Foreign Secretary David Milliband have expressed confidence that nuclear weapons are secure in civilian and military hands the West has for long been anxious that nuclear materials might fall into wrong hands. A West Point report published in July revealed that in the past three years terrorists have staged daring attacks specifically targeting Pakistani nuclear facilities.
Rolf Mowatt-Larsen, former head of CIA's terrorism efforts, in a piece in Arms Control Today (July/August 2009), cites simultaneous growth of extremism, and instability as "worrying trends" that may compromise the army's ability to retain control of nuclear materials.
Pakistan may wish to cooperate with the US as the Russians did under Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CTR), under which the US and Russia dismantled thousands of nuclear materials after the end of the Cold War. CTR provided funding and expertise to upgrade security at nuclear facilities. The problem in this case is the US-India-Pakistan triangle, and to convince Pakistan that Indian "enmity" notwithstanding it is the Islamic militants who are the main threat to Pakistan's stability.
In the evolving global power structure India is seen as the weakest and the least consequential among the powers in the ordering of Asian security. 300 million Indians live in abject poverty and forty percent of the households have no electricity. In the Human Development Index India ranks among the lower part of the global community.
These indicators do not refute the projection that in a few decades India will be the second largest economy in the world after China. But the fact remains that even a nuclear India is unlikely to undertake any misadventure that could wreak havoc for the country and its future generations. It would be good for South Asia if Pakistan were to believe it.
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