Gravy Train to Pakistan

AID SWEETENER TO FIGHT TERROR

The aid conference held in Tokyo last week with the agenda of salvaging the Pakistani economy has come up with an impressive pledge of $ 5.28 billion. The US and Japan promised one billion dollars each to Pakistan over the next two years while Saudi Arabia committed $ 700 million and the European Union $ 640 million. Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, saluted the conference as “an extreme success” and added: “I think Pakistan should consider this a very good day”.(??)

A spate of media reports in recent weeks attributed to nameless ‘experts’ served to project an apocalyptic vision of imminent meltdown of the Pakistani state. These exaggerated and alarmist reports certainly helped generate a sense of urgency worldwide—importantly, in the US, where domestic opinion is increasingly disenchanted with the war in Afghanistan—about building up Pakistan as a frontline state against Islamic extremism.(?) Perceptions, after all, matter in politics. Even our television channels naively began debating about the prospect of Taliban cadres pouring across the Wagha border.

Holbrooke’s Case

THE complex “psywar” apart, Holbrooke deserves full credit for squeezing the notoriously reluctant donor community, which is chary of indulging in charities. But then, Holbrooke has a way of presenting his case. “The terrorists in western Pakistan are planning other attacks around the world…so we need to work hard to strengthen the Government of Pakistan.”(??)

By the time the Tokyo conference concluded, he felt so encouraged that he reminded his audience the “problem is far from over” and hinted he might return holding a much larger basket that could hold as much as $ 50 billion. His audience didn’t demur when he said: “Will it be enough? No. Pakistan needs more. Pakistan needs the world’s help.” He pointed out that “even in great cities like Karachi, which I would point out is the world’s largest Muslim city, 17 million people (live) with only a few hours of electricity a day”.(??)

Of course, the Barack Obama Administration’s bill pending in the US Congress intends to pump $ 1.5 billion a year into Pakistan for at least five years. This will be in addition to the massive military assistance programme for Pakistan. All in all, therefore, Washington is embarking on an odyssey in South Asia almost as audacious as the Bush Administration’s by-now-forgotten mission to build up India as a first class world power.

In bits and pieces, the Obama Administration’s Pakistan policy is sailing into view. Washington maintains that its massive assistance to Pakistan will be made strictly accountable and will be conditional on the latter’s willingness to fight the Al-Qaeda. But Pakistan is enormously experienced in getting its way with its American mentors. Its capacity to pull wires in the Pentagon and the American security establishment is legion. In the 1980s when America fought another war of epic proportions in the Hindu Kush against the “evil empire”, Pakistan ultimately took over the gravy train.

Yet, the Obama Administration is pressing ahead. The compulsions are quite obvious. In Tokyo, Holbrooke underscored the importance of reconciling the ‘moderate’ Taliban. The aid offered by Saudi Arabia and the UAE at the Tokyo conference merits attention. These two countries had accorded diplomatic recognition to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Evidently, Washington expects the two countries to pick up the threads of their association with the Taliban leadership and to use their good offices to reconcile the Taliban.

The US intelligence has been discussing with former Mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (who coordinates with the Taliban) a deal whereby he would be coopted into the power structure in Kabul in return for his help in rounding up the “foreign fighters” and sending them back to their native countries.

In the period since 1996 all the way up to 2001, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had consistently urged Washington to engage the Taliban as a means to influence them to severe their links with the Al-Qaeda. Indeed, the Taliban leadership too had offered such cooperation repeatedly to Washington. (??)

‘Afghanising’ the War??

THERE is growing speculation that Hekmatyar might climb on board as the “executive” Prime Minister in the new government that takes shape in Kabul after the presidential elections in August. Clearly, the dice is cast. The US will not be distracted from the set course of reconciling the Taliban.
Washington has concluded that the strategy of “Afghanising” the war — that is to say, to get the ‘moderate’ Pashtuns kill the irreconcilable ones and to crack down on the foreign fighters who bond as the Al-Qaeda—is the only way to bring down the Western casualties and ensure that NATO doesn’t pack up and leave. All this is also linked to Obama’s re-election bid in 2011.

Thus, the business at hand is a very serious one. Yet, it is a dangerous assignation to galvanise the moderates within the Taliban and try to unseat the hardliners and rid Afghanistan of Osama bin Laden. The Taliban’s intelligence is good and bin Laden’s may be even better. This is where the Generals in Rawalpindi come in. The success of Holbrooke’s enterprise depends critically on the Pakistani military’s willingness to cooperate.

Surely, the Pakistani intelligence continues to have hold over Hekmatyar. The Islamic parties in Pakistan favour him. The Saudi role virtually guarantees that Nawaz Sharif will not act as a ‘spoiler’, either. Pakistan estimates that Hekmatyar’s ascension will severely delimit Indian influence. But imponderables remain. A political settlement without the underpinning of an intra-Afghan dialogue that includes the non-Pashtun groups will be inherently flawed. Besides, the US-British-Saudi-Pakistani blueprint carries no regional consensus.

As Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who attended the Tokyo conference, put it, “a regional approach is necessary in form, content and framework, which rests on regional pillars”. But that involves the US jettisoning the past seven years’ unilateralist approach. There is no evidence of that happening yet.

(Courtesy: Deccan Herald)

Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.