Islamabad's black hole

Sometimes you wonder why these so-called experts on international politics state the bleeding obvious. Writing his column last week in The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens said Pakistan today is facing an “existential threat”. No kidding.

But Stephens is right about one thing, and let me quote him at length: ‘Somalia is a space not even pretending to be a country. The result is destitution, piracy and a sanctuary for Islamic jihadists, but little by way of ideas for how to change things.

‘Historically Afghanistan has always been a space, defined mostly by its power to repel: The Obama administration would be smart to take this into account by keeping its expectations for nation-building low. Whether post-invasion Iraq is a country or a space remains a question, though it seems to be leaning in the former direction.

‘As for Pakistan, we're about to find out.’

Indeed we are.

We know that since the break up of the so-called Indian sub-continent into several entities, and chiefly the creation of Pakistan led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah - old friend of Jawahalal Nehru and disillusioned friend of Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi - Pakistan has been a space.

If you read carefully the immediate pre-and post-independence history of ‘Pakistan’, you’ll see why Pakistan has remained a space since 1947 whilst pretending to be a country.

You’ll note that Jinnah, despite having at times spectacularly upstaged Gandhi (left), taking him to task many times over his confused policies and his brand of pacifist pro-independence protests against the British colonisers, Jinnah failed to create his ‘secular’ Pakistani state driven by his Muslim League.

The kernel of Pakistani political life has always been violence. That violence has been bred by a profligacy of confused ideas about the creation of a true Pakistani state. And the source of the confusion was Jinnah himself. Read his many speeches before and especially after 1947 and you’ll see how and why the pursuit of violence has black-marked every successive regime in Pakistan.

Each regime after Jinnah’s has promoted violence and anti-democratism. Over time the ideals of creating a secular state became deeply cut, or undercut, by Jinnah’s sudden rear-guard action against the forces of Islamic theocraticism by ambiguously promoting Islamist statism.

Before long even Jinnah abandoned his democratic idealism and promoted violence, first in forcing the annexation of Kalat, then against Baluchistani insurgents, others in between, and ending with Jammu and Kashmir.

All this while each successive regime has courted its own militancy on the one hand for domestic political control purposes, and on the other hand each has also courted Islamic militancy within and outside its borders.

Desperation in Pakistan

So if you’re wondering why Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari has suddenly ordered a large-scale military attack on Pakistani Taliban and their supporters, it’s not that difficult to digest his motives.

Zardari, like Jinnah, is a desperate man and Pakistan is in desperate times. In fact it’s on the edge of abyss. And it’s not difficult to fall into an abyss from a space that is without full, politically defined contours. With the vile, bloodthirsty Islamist Taliban trotting just 60 miles from Islamabad, there has been a sense that it was gearing up to take over Pakistan’s capital, and then all of Pakistan.

That would immensely worry neighbour India more, and no less Afghanistan. India’s tenuous politics has been run aground by the enfeebled Manmohan Singh - until his Congress party’s strong rejuvenation over last week’s protracted elections.

Now, though, with the decimation of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist left, the Congress government will go it alone against enemies of the state. Chief amongst them is Pakistan.

Yet, even before the election result, it has not stopped New Delhi from feeling nervous about Zardari’s incompetence to deal with the murderous Taliban in Pakistan. Through Washington, Delhi mounted huge pressure on the US to tackle Zardari’s complacency.

In Kabul, the situation isn’t that different. Harmid Karzai (right), the US poodle, is known more for sucking up US economic and military aid far faster than US hummers can suck up gasoline.

He has made a mockery of his so-called democracy whilst nurturing his highly corrupt regime. He has gotten away with murder, so to speak, simply because Washington had, for this long, chosen to turn a blind eye to Karzai’s downright ridiculous humbug.

But there’s precedence here. Remember the last vile Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf? No. Never mind. Neither does the rest of the world.

But because Pakistan and Afghanistan were the frontline states in the US-led so-called Coalition of the Willing’s war against Islamic terrorism, it was beholden to the spuriously called US national interest to provide succor to these vile men whilst US military bomb the living daylights out of large tracts of Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Islamic cowards hide out.

It was, in essence, a silent deal that allowed the US to conduct its military operations, irrespective of the scale of collateral damage in the process, as long as Washington unconditionally supported these despotic regimes.

If you’ve forgotten history, read up on Latin American politics in the Cold War era and how the US bankrolled corrupt dictatorships from Mexico to Argentina as it conducted its warfare against leftist revolutionaries backed by the then Soviet Union, China and ideologically by Cuba under Fidel Castro.

Here’s the thing, though: Whilst all this was going on in Latin America, drug barons and their drug cartels became multinational businesses in their own right. They infiltrated Western and Asian societies, flooding these markets with addiction and death, often in cahoots with local and regional drug lords. They made hundreds of millions of dollars.

Even the police forces and politicians were in on the loot. Then came the public campaign to stop the drugs and drug enforcement agencies took to hitting back. US forces led commando-style attacks on drug operations deep in the heart of South American states. But the regimes were still protected by Washington and its financial largesse.

Just as the drugs lords had made inroads into Western societies, surreptitiously whilst Washington was kept busy with mounting counter-revolutionary, ideological warfare from South America to Asia, so, too, the Taliban in Pakistan these last few years.

But the problem here is that sections of Pakistan’s military and especially its intelligence apparatus has always backed the Mujahiddeen in Afghanistan against Soviet invasion and occupation, and then the Taliban against the Mujahiddeen regime after the Soviets scurried out of Afghanistan with their tails between their legs, just as the Americans had from Vietnam.

Why the US reacted

But now the Taliban has been seizing control of large sections of Pakistan that are - or were - the frontline positions against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. The notorious Northwest Frontier province had become the bastion of militant Islamic forces, easily over-run by Taliban and al-Qaeda.

They moved swiftly eastwards. Even the port city of Karachi is increasingly under the sway of Taliban. The Swat Valley is swamped with Taliban. And being just 60 miles from Islamabad, the old deals between Washington and Islamabad had to be scuttled.

The US, frustrated with Zardari’s hot air, his personal corruption and that of his regime, did not want to suffer the ultimate humiliation of yet another historical defeat against its cultural and ideological enemy.

Long after being caught out for lying that Iraq had harboured terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, the real battle fronts were Afghanistan and Pakistan. India had long said this to the Americans, but Washington had ignored Delhi. Until now.

Delhi told Washington and President Barack Obama to think, and think very hard, of the consequences of the marauding hordes of Islamic Taliban murderers should they capture Islamabad and destabilise Pakistan politically.

It wouldn’t be difficult for Taliban, given Zardari’s inherent weaknesses. He’s clearly out of his depth. Some in Pakistan quietly wish for the return of Musharraf. It won’t happen. But Pakistan’s economy is as dead as a door-nail. So Pakistan’s collapse would be simple but spectacular.

And dangerously frightening for the region and the world.

Indian foreign service officials then whispered in the ears of Washington’s defence and intelligence services about the spectre of the Taliban coming in control of the 75-100 nuclear weapons that are hidden throughout Pakistan. Or even the spectre of the Taliban gaining plutonium to make atomic weapons.

That’s when the US scrambled, hauling in Zardari to Washington no less than twice since Obama became president. Zardari was even given space in The Wall Street Journal to air his views on Pakistan’s delicate balancing act, when, reading between the lines, he had gone to Washington with a begging bowl in hand.

The US has dangled tonnes of carrots in front of Zardari to act and act quickly against the inroads the Taliban have made in Pakistan. That has been good news for Zardari, whose virtues are greed through corruption and not much else. That’s the only language he speaks, as does Karzai. And Karzai is just bad news although he’s an operator, like Zardari.

Pakistan’s military may have launched a massive operation to take out the Taliban, but time will tell just how long this operation lasts. Perhaps until the US dollars run out and Islamabad cuts yet another deal with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

But what pressure has Washington put on Zardari to worm out pro-Taliban sections of Pakistan’s military and the notorious intelligence service? For a clue, watch India’s next response, even if this comes quietly.

Because India knows that the carrot that Obama has dangled in front of Zardari isn’t big enough to save the latter’s corrupt hide and incompetence from turning the Pakistani space into a country of any importance and credibility.

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MANJIT BHATIA, an academician and writer, is also research director of AsiaRisk, a political, economic and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. He specialises in international economics and politics, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific.