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Emerging Changes In America’s Pakistan Policy

By Taj Hashmi

15 June, 2009
Countercurrents.org

Honolulu, Hawaii: There seems to be some impending changes in America’s Pakistan policy or as one may put it, in its India policy. What one gets in the media and can only guess about what President Obama’s personal letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conveys (hand delivered by Under Secretary of State William Burns) is that the US wants to play the role of an honest broker in India-Pakistan disputes, mainly over Kashmir. Is it due to Pakistan’s smart diplomacy, clever use of the “Islam Card” to outwit the Taliban or its skilful military manoeuvring to overwhelm the Taliban and the world at large? Can we also impute this stunning development to Obama’s “historic” Cairo-speech earlier this month, widely known as his attempt to seek new beginning in ties with the Muslim World?

One does not have to read too much into what William Burns stated at a press conference in New Delhi this Thursday, June 11th: “The Kashmir issue has to be settled in line with the aspirations of Kashmiris. It remains our view that a resolution of that issue has to take into account wishes of Kashmiri people.” India could take this as an affront to its well-established state policy which considers Kashmir “as integral as Bombay and Calcutta”, to paraphrase its first Prime Minister Nehru.

It is noteworthy that Burns made his comments on Kashmir the day after he had met the pro-independence Kashmiri Hurriyat [Freedom] Conference chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. What might be even more embarrassing for India diplomatically is America’s advising the country to “close or prune down” its consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar in Afghanistan, in close proximity to Pak-Afghan border, allegedly “fomenting trouble” in the NWFP and Balochistan.

It is noteworthy that by late April this year, to the dismay and surprise of most Pakistanis and the whole world, while the rag-tag Pakistani Taliban were in control of major cities and hamlets of Swat and only around sixty miles off Islamabad, Pakistani government and armed forces seemed like sitting ducks on the verge of unconditional surrender. Many if not most Western analysts and governments publicly registered their concern at the “impending fall” of Islamabad. Surprisingly enough, even the State Department bought some of the media and think tank gibberish about the “growing threat” to Islamabad. To them, it was no longer a matter of “if” but “when” the Taliban and their allies – including “rogue elements” in the Pakistani armed forces – would take-over the country and its nuclear weapons posing the biggest threat to the whole world, for the first time since the end of the Cold War.

However, what was most commonsensical and supposed to happen has happened. The well-trained, professional Pakistani armed forces simply repulsed the threat, and are routing and chasing out the bands of ill-trained Taliban fighters who have no air, armoured and artillery support. Most importantly, for various reasons, the Islamist militants had very little grassroots support in and around Swat, FATA and elsewhere in the country. Of late the local populace has raised their own lashkars or militias in support of the government and chasing out local and foreign Taliban-al-Qaeda elements from the NWFP. Consequently in the wake of the Taliban defeat and withdrawal from the Swat valley, alarmist Western analysts and “experts” have toned down their attacks on Pakistani government’s and armed forces’ “intransigence”, “inability” and “duplicity” in tackling the Taliban. It seems American government is no longer worried about Pakistani nuclear arsenal going to the wrong hands.

Presently analysts seem to be convinced that Pakistan’s signing the so-called “Taliban Deal” in February made with the Tahrik-e-Nisab-e-Shariat-e-Muhhammadi (TNSM), not with the Taliban, has ultimately paid rich dividends to the government. The NWFP government’s signing the deal with Sufi Muhammad, the estranged father-in-law of Taliban leader Mullah Faizullah was nothing more than a hollow promise to “implement Shariah” in the Swat Valley by the government . With hindsight, this hitherto widely criticized deal, often ridiculed as surrender to the extremists may be singled out as a major step taken in the right direction. Another successful gambit by the Government in April, the so-called Nizam-e-Adl which “provided” Shariah through the courts in the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) in the NWFP, almost totally befooled the half-educated Islamists and Taliban.

In fact, the Government promised to implement nothing different from what the 1973 Constitution (Article 227) already guarantees to the whole nation: “All existing laws shall be brought in conformity with the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah [teachings of the Prophet] and no law shall be enacted which is repugnant to such injunctions”. Taliban’s late realization about the triviality of the deals and their consequential retaliations against government forces and “non-conformist” locals cost them dearly. By rejecting the “Shariah Deal” the Taliban ironically projected themselves to the people as mere bandits and terrorists; fighting for something else other than Shariah, which people thought had already been provided by the government.

This, however, does not mean that Pakistan is free from trouble; terrorism will continue to haunt the nation for quite some time. In view of the recent extermination of the LTTE in Sri Lanka, once considered to be the most well-organized terrorist outfit in the world, one may surmise, the marginalized Taliban-al-Qaeda elements have no future in Pakistan. Consequently reposing absolute faith in Pakistan’s ability and interest in weeding out Islamist militants from its territory, America has been forthcoming in congratulating Pakistan considering it an important ally in the “war against extremism”, or what until recently was known as “war against terror”. Meanwhile the US government has come forward with several billion dollars worth civil and military aid packages to Pakistan.

One may attribute this shift in American policy towards Pakistan mainly to the latter’s successful political and military manoeuvring in the recent past. Pakistan’s resolve to weed out Islamist militancy its way is paying off; and is the main factor behind the impending changes one expects in America’s Pakistan Policy. However, Pakistan’s strategic location next to the more turbulent Afghanistan, which one does not know who would be controlling in the event of Western troop withdrawal, is an important factor in this regard. Afghanistan cannot have peace with an unfriendly Pakistan. And Pakistan cannot be converted into an American ally overnight, as it used to be during the Cold War years, unless America becomes re-assuring and friendly towards Pakistan, and most importantly, not perceived by the latter as “more friendly” towards its arch rival India than to itself, for the obvious security factors.

While Obama’s Cairo-speech is an important indication which way America will be going to win over the Muslim World. His emphasizing the importance of resolving territorial disputes in the Muslim World – rallying points for Muslim militants and extremists – may be an important catalyst in this regard. His asking Israel to stop further Settlements in the West Bank and William Burns’s advising India to resolve the Kashmir problem “in line with the aspirations of Kashmiris” are important indications of the forthcoming sea change in America’s “Muslim Policy”. Let us wait and see the short- and long-term implications of the “impending pro-Muslim tilt” in Obama’s foreign policy, especially towards Pakistan, in regard to the regional and global security perspective.

 


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