Fissures in an Unnatural Alliance K.P.S. Gill President, Institute for Conflict Management
Both the United States and Pakistan have dismissed last week's clashes and exchange of fire between their troops as a 'misunderstanding', and high level interventions have sought to undo the damage inflicted by two incidents of friction - one of which ended in a five hundred pound bomb being dropped on an abandoned madrassa in Pakistani territory, killing two Pakistani soldiers who had taken shelter there. These incidents, by themselves, do not constitute a major crisis in relations between the two countries and their 'cooperation' in the war against terror; allied forces often have frictional confrontations in the field in other theatres of warfare as well. In the Pakistan-US case, however, the incidents are symptomatic of a deeper malaise, a fundamental conflict of interests and underlying ideologies between the two nations. What is in evidence here is, in fact, the gradual emergence of inevitable fissures in what was, from its very inception, an extraordinarily unnatural alliance. To the extent that this is the case, an escalation of tensions between US and Pakistani armed forces on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is an inevitability, though matters have been kept from going out of hand in the immediate future. It is clear, moreover, that US troops on the ground are getting impatient with Pakistan's duplicity, and are increasingly resentful of the visible support and accommodation that the Al Qaeda and Taliban survivors are receiving on Pakistani soil. Impatience, however, has another face as well. As one commentator in the Jung Group's The News International expressed it, "Hatred against the US is all time high in Pakistan these days" (sic). That hatred manifested itself in a rash of demonstrations right across the country - in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Karachi, Quetta, Lahore, Bajore, Hyderabad, Kohat, Mansehra, Naushahro Feroze, Mirpurkhas, Larkana, Sukkur - after Friday prayers last week, as the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), the coalition of fundamentalist parties that cornered an unprecedented 53 seats in the National Assembly in the dubious November 2002 elections, called upon 'the people' to wage jihad against America 'to halt interference by imperialist forces in the affairs of the region.' In Islamabad, Maulana Samiul Haq, head of the notorious Haqqani madrassa that spawned the Taliban, intoned, "the more they suppress us, the more we will rise," and warned that American action against Iraq would "trigger a serious backlash from religious forces." In Lahore, Hafiz Hussain Ahmad of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JuI) declared, "Even before the attack on Afghanistan, we maintained that the US concern was neither Osama bin Laden nor Mullah Omar, but the Ummat (the world community of Muslims). The preparations for an attack on Iraq substantiate that claim. The world should rest assured that the next US target would be Iran, followed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan." There is an entrenched lobby at Washington which has a deep - at times personal and vested, at other times professional, though erroneous - interest in keep America's unnatural alliance with Pakistan alive at any costs, and this group will underplay these trends. Nevertheless, these threats are real, and are broader and far more compelling than a few flashes of fire along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border suggest. The rising anti-US public demonstrations and protests mirror a mounting hostility within the Pakistan Army to the American 'war against terror' agenda. Crucial in this is the fact that it is immensely difficult for soldiers who have been systematically indoctrinated on a steady Islamist fundamentalist diet for over two decades now, and many of whom have fought shoulder to shoulder with the Taliban in Afghanistan, to suddenly abandon convictions that have become deep-rooted and go to the very heart of their notions of personal and national identity. At the higher levels of military and civilian leadership, where there is greater 'sophistication' of thought and perspective, compromises and readjustments conforming to the imperatives of the situation are possible. Even here, though, there are many senior generals who are simply incapable of making the necessary ideological transition, and at least some of these have dominated the long standing collaboration between the Pakistani Army, its Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, and the jehadi-fundamentalist forces. Moreover, General Pervez Musharraf himself has actively exploited Islamist sentiments to execute military and quasi-military campaigns, both in Afghanistan and against India, and when he seeks, suddenly, to distance himself from such a position, or to purge the military leadership of Islamist elements, he sows confusion and loses credibility among his officers. At the middle and lower levels, however, where responses are more emotive and less analytical, the anti-Taliban - anti-Al Qaeda campaign is deeply distressing, and tensions can only be expected to rise, both within the Pakistani Forces, and in the Pakistani street. In Afghanistan, consequently, US troops are now getting only the foretaste of what has been an everyday occurrence in India - terrorists operating out of Pakistani soil, executing operations across an international border, and then running back into Pakistani sanctuaries, with the authorities denying their existence and asserting an uncompromising sovereignty to obstruct any legitimate punitive action. It is this 'deniability', and the international collusion manifested in a pretended ignorance of a reality that is widely known, that has allowed Pakistan to create and nurture the jehadis over the decades, and to employ them as their primary strategic force to pursue geopolitical ambitions that are entirely disproportionate to the country's resources and capabilities. Clearly, however, playing this game against India is one thing; against the US, it may prove to be entirely another. What we are witnessing, consequently, is the emergence of a dynamic and inexorable process, with Pakistani duplicity, intransigence, and the collusion of its armed forces and intelligence agencies with the jehadis - including the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda - provoking harsh US reaction; and US reactions feeding the street anger and the resentment in Pakistan's security forces. Countering this process will require a radical reassessment of American policies and orientation on Pakistan, as of the course and character of the 'war against terror' since 9/11. The conciliation and appeasement of 'moderate Islamist extremist' forces - if such a formulation is conceivable - has been integral to the US policy on Pakistan. America winks continuously at the sustained support to international Islamist radicalism and terrorism by Pakistan, as well as at the persistence of a vast terrorist infrastructure on Pakistani soil, as long as these are not seen to be directed against American targets, or to be currently engaged with the Al Qaeda - Taliban combine. This is myopic in the extreme, and has created the space precisely for the 'plausible deniability' that has allowed the Al Qaeda and Taliban survivors to relocate themselves in Pakistan, for the country to grow into the most significant centre of Islamist terrorism, and for these forces to increasingly direct their resources and attacks against Western targets. Much of this orientation has been based on a miscalculation regarding the risks of political collapse and anarchy if the 'indispensable' Musharraf 'loses control'. The spectre of anarchy and collapse in Pakistan, however, is the more real if current trends in appeasement and the consolidation of the forces of Islamist extremism and terror persist. If these processes are to be neutralised, the hard option will have to be seized, and a clear obligation placed on those who claim to 'rule' Pakistan: that they bring the conduct of their affairs in conformity with international norms; dismantle and destroy the infrastructure of terrorism; and cease provocation of, and support to, extremist activities within the country and across international borders. Failing this, the fullest force of international sanctions and direct military intervention should be brought to bear on a lawless nation that now not only jeopardizes the future of the South Asian region, but the possibilities of peace in the world at large.