Pakistan on the march again
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
SourceKARACHI - In the changing dynamics of the world community post-September 11, Pakistan has moved from being a pariah state (nuclear-armed, terrorist haven) to one of international acceptability, culminating at the weekend it its partial suspension from the Commonwealth being lifted. This follows the United States declaring Pakistan a major non-NATO(North Atlantic Treaty Organization) ally, and the European Union strengthened economic ties with Islamabad.
Much of this acceptance has to do with Pakistan being a crucial front-line country in the US's "war on terror", and the fact that President General Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, restored parliament and staged democratic elections (albeit somewhat flawed) last October.
Parallel to these developments, though, Pakistan continues to develop policies that will both protect and further its strategic interests in the region - even if this means engaging in activities inconsistent with its new global image, particularly in relation to Afghanistan and Kashmir.
Officials close to Pakistan's strategic circle have told Asia Times Online that recently Musharraf was given a detailed briefing of a new strategic road map for Indian-administered Kashmir in which Kashmiri freedom fighters will launch fresh assaults on key targets in the state. Over the past year, under intense US-led international pressure, Pakistan had scaled back its support for jihadis launching cross-border attacks from Pakistan-administered Kashmir into Indian territory.
At the same time, the Gillani group of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), which is Pakistan-backed, will show a much more active face aimed at revitalizing Pakistan's position on Kashmir and isolating the Abbas Ansari faction of the APHC, forcing it to merge with the Gillani group.
The APHC is an umbrella organization of more than 20 Kashmiri separatist groups. Formed in 1993, it states that it is committed to seeking dialogue with the Indian government on a broad range of issues. Some members seek independence for Kashmir, while others want all Kashmir to become part of Pakistan.
India has long held that the whole of Muslim-majority Kashmir is an integral part of the country, while Pakistan demands the implementation of decades-old United Nation resolutions for a plebiscite in Kashmir to determine whether the territory should be incorporated into India or merged with Pakistan.
Under the recently-ousted Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who launched a peace process last year, and Musharraf, there have been signs that the two sides are ready to show flexibility in their positions. Talks are scheduled for within the next few months.
In Afghanistan, meanwhile, Islamabad is adopting a similar approach by actively supporting the political arm of the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) as a part of the political mainstream to contest presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for September. Already, a Peshawar-based HIA team has met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his cabinet ministers with a view to cementing their legitimacy.
The military wing of the HIA, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is still actively involved in the resistance movement against the thousands of foreign troops in the country, both US and those in the International Security Assistance Force, comprising mostly troops from NATO.
The genesis of Pakistan's latest policy lies in a meeting held about eight months ago which included several prominent retired army officers, including former chief of army staff, retired General Jehangir Karamat, and a former director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and present managing director of Fauji Fertilizer (the country's largest fertilizer plant owned by the army's Fauji Foundation), retired Lieutenant-General Mehmood Ahmed. Also present was retired General (now senator) Javed Asharaf Qazi.
These men agreed that Pakistan should perform a delicate balancing act by aggressively pursuing its own interests on the one hand, while on the other hand convincing the world that it does not support terrorism - be it in the form of harboring al-Qaeda elements or sponsoring cross-border militancy into Kashmir.
Scope of the new mission
As little as three years ago, Pakistan had strategic depth in Afghanistan (support of the Taliban regime) and a successful proxy network of jihadis in Kashmir, which incensed New Delhi no end. Yet Pakistan was not able to translate these two major regional advantages into supremacy in the region against India.
After September 11 a number of developments took place, proving that Musharraf is extremely capable of adapting:
# The Pakistani military establishment was widely perceived in the West as a band of extremist zealots. This perception changed once Pakistan began to play an active role - at least on the face of it - in eradicating the al-Qaeda network.
# Pakistan was notorious as a home of militant organizations of every shape and form. Many of these have been banned and effectively cut to size.
# Musharraf has distinguished between fundamentalism and mainstream Islam. In the past five years of his rule, religious parties have once again become a part of Pakistan's legitimate political process, and by and large they have given up their previous designs for the "Talibanization" of society. The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, an alliance of six religious parties, is an example of this. It fared well in last year's elections, especially in North West Frontier Province and Balochistan.
In the light of these achievements, Pakistan's oligarchy of senior active and retired officers (who still wield the power, despite the facade of an elected government, notably through the recently established all-powerful National Security Council, came up with their plan of action. Key elements include:
# Disparate Pakistani militant outfits have been separated from the Kashmiri movement. Except for a few rings, the leadership of all Kashmiri field commanders is now in the hands of the Hizbul Mujahideen, an indigenous Kashmiri organization. Now, the Hizb alone handles all matters of recruitment, training and launching attacks on Indian military targets. The Hizb has been blamed for the landmine that blew up a bus in Indian-administered Kashmir on Sunday, killing 15 security forces.
# Pakistan will neither support nor oppose the Afghan resistance movement comprising Hekmatyar's HIA and the Taliban, instead focusing on strengthening "moderate" Taliban and the HIA's political wing in Afghanistan with a view to seeing them into power. In the mean time, the natural and indigenous guerrilla movement in Afghanistan will continue to act as a buffer to keep Northern Alliance influences (essentially the non-Pashtun groups that dominate the north of Afghanistan ) and US forces in check.
# Pakistan will not actively support foreign fighters and al-Qaeda in the region - notably the remote tribal areas. Indeed, it will engage in periodic hunts for "high value targets", such as the recent operation in South Waziristan, because such cat-and-mouse games keep Pakistan's strategic importance to the US alive.
Oligarchs rule
Unlike Russia and the US, Pakistan's oligarchy has its own dynamics and does not include petrochemical giants and heads of huge multi-national corporations, but ex-officers like retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, retired Lieutenant-General Mehmood Ahmed and retired Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani. These people effectively run Pakistan's de facto ruling class, the Pakistan Army.
Though these generals have been retired for several years, they have retained their grip on many mafias, including religious ones, Afghan warlords and Pakistani and Afghan politicians. Their unmatched wealth and influence keep these generals in the power game.
Apart from many powerful import and export businesses, Gul operates a transport service (a bus service monopoly) in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The business is actually in the name of his daughter, Uzma Gul.
After being railways and communications minister and director general of the ISI, General Javed Asharaf Qazi (the founding father of the Taliban) is today a senator of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League. Another former director of the ISI, Asad Durrani, launched several joint Pakistan-US intelligence operations, and since his retirement he has served as an ambassador in important European countries, as well as in Saudi Arabia.
Men such as these, as they have in the past, are defining Pakistan's policies. Now, with a new coalition government taking charge in New Delhi under Manmohan Singh, Pakistan aims to recapture a position of dominance in its strategic backyard in Kashmir. The militant movement can be expected to intensify again - Sunday's attack could be a prelude. At this point, Pakistan will be ready for political talks for an agreement in which it will meet India "half way somewhere", as Musharraf has promised.
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