Pakistani Politicians Scared Of Baitullah, Want The Military To Get Stained

Category: Articles/Opinion
Written by: Ammar (on March 17, 2008 - 06:30 PM)

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—From being messy, it is now becoming outright dirty as the United States continues to stir a witch’s brew within Pakistani politics. The fact remains that after heavily manipulating the arrival of Benazir Bhutto for these ‘free and fair’ elections, Washington was not left with an alternate candidate to replace her after the assassination.

The arrival of Nawaz Sharif and Zardari has created a crisis for U.S. as one of them is considered a religious hardliner and the other the most corrupt man on earth even by the standards of the U.S. media and the Bush administration.

That makes Musharraf once again ‘their man’ in Islamabad. But Musharraf is losing power by the day under an increasingly vocal lawyers’ movement and a political alliance that is getting stronger is also signaling the restoration of deposed judges.

In the ruthless power-politics, multiple axis are brewing and U.S. is heavily involved to shape up the outcome of its choice. The scenario is so ruthless that no less than Henry Kissinger had to warn the Bush administration of the risks involved for U.S. as it can create very reactionary fallout within the Pakistani society which is already fragmented and stressed under various internal and external threat axis.

Let’s analyze the various axis at play within the system which are pulling the political process apart from its seams.

1.     The bitter internal turf war within PPP where Zardari wants to take all and deprive the old guard of their due share in the power setup. Makhdoom Amin Faheem is dagger drawn with Zardari and the fault line may threaten the very unity of the party. The game is so ruthless that Zardari is even willing to sacrifice President Musharraf to offer his post to angry PPP leader. President Musharraf would have been shocked at the offer which meant that he has been so easily considered disposable by Asif Zardari. 

2.     The U.S. had been working hard with Musharraf and Zardari to make PPP chairman ‘clean’ once again to take the lead role in national politics. This process is going on at a fast pace despite the fact that it is visibly nauseating and obnoxious considering what the world knows about the man and his dark past. The mocking tone of the media is very obvious and signals from Zardari’s party are clear about his actual intentions and U.S. desires. The one man who is losing his entire credibility in this process is President Musharraf himself. The same Zardari is now planning the ouster of the President!! How ironic! 

3.     PML (N) continues to take a hard line against President Musharraf and now surprisingly also against PPP’s potential PM candidate Makhdoom Amin Faheem. Basically what PML (N) has done is that they have cleared the way for Zardari to seize the moment and become the PM in the emerging scenario taking the excuse of objection by their coalition partners PML (N). The move by PML (N) has directly cleared the way for Zardari to become the next PM or appoint someone of his own choice. It makes us think that whether this move by PML (N) was done in connivance with Zardari? It definitely gives strong support to Zardari. In our assessment, Zardari has indeed cunningly sold this concept to PML (N) that Makhdoom Amin Faheem is closer to President Musharraf and in his presence as PM the chances of Presidential impeachment do not exit. We know now already that Zardari is planning to ditch President Musharraf from the offer he made to Makhdoom earlier. Obviously, PML (N) has fallen for the trap. This is the second time within a week that Zardari has been able to exploit the PML (N) on his own turf. 

4.     U.S. is now totally confused despite their aggressive involvement. The signals coming from the Washington are not very re-assuring for President Musharraf but also show the frustration of the Bush administration. We have no doubt that U.S. would continue to meddle in the Pakistani domestic affairs but events are almost out of their control as well. Now even the future of war on terror is doubtful for them as internal pressure on the new government is sure to force Islamabad to review its policies towards Afghanistan. This is the next major crisis for U.S. after the formation of government in Islamabad. 

5.     Judges is one issue which has baffled the U.S. planners. Despite the fact that lawyers were initially heavily backed by U.S., the movement was later hijacked by more ambitious players within the lawyer’s community to project their own image and stature. Now, it is an open field with lawyers emerging as a third entity besides the political parties and President Musharraf within the domestic political circus. U.S. has no option but to watch its dynamics unfold. There are strong suspicions that at least some of the players within the lawyers’ community have been hijacked by other foreign powers and perhaps India and are on more sinister game plan than just restoration of judges.
 
6.     This brings us to President Musharraf who is now slowly being cornered from all sides – PML (N), Zardari and the lawyers, while the army is neutral and is not interfering at all to either protect his interests or sabotage him. The agreement between PPP and PML(N) over the restoration of judges has sent alarm bells within the Presidency and hectic brain storming is being done there to avert the “crisis”. The fact that Zardari has now moved to impeach the President was much unexpected for the President who was counting on “Mr. 10 percent”. Well, wrong choice to start with to be taken as an ally!

7.     President Musharraf has now called for the new National assembly inaugural session to be convened on Mar. 17. The ball will get rolling from that date for the formation of next government but Zardari is still reluctant to name the next PM for obvious reasons. The crisis is so serious that it can break PPP. Also, this will decide the futures of President Musharraf as well as two major parties are now bound to pass a resolution to demand the restoration of judges. A massive legal battle is brewing already where President Musharraf is bound to challenge the resolution in Supreme Court while lawyers would be confronting him head-on.

8.     In real sense, there is no government in Islamabad at the moment. Caretakers are gone and new government is not there yet. The political mad house is not expected to get resolved anytime sooner. With military not involved in the political process and unwilling to take difficult decisions alone without the support of political leadership, the militants are making hay while the sun shines. Some very harsh decisions are required to contain the menace of terrorism in the country but no political party is yet prepared to even talk about it. The attitude is to pretend as if the threat does not exist. Despite the fact that PPP chairperson was assassinated by militants and they have even been arrested, PPP is silent on the subject!!! Same is true for Nawaz Sharif and other parties who are not willing to name the man, his ideology or the organization which is responsible for all these terrorist acts in the country. The general pattern is to condemn the incident and blame Musharraf and that’s about it. No party is going any further to explain their strategy to combat the menace. In fact, they don’t know how to handle this threat. But for now, they are busy in mutual bashing and target practicing on President Musharraf.   

Terrorism: America, Army & The Politicians

Now we come to the issue of terrorism which has now crossed the definition of terrorism but has turned into a low intensity war against the Pakistani state, people and the armed forces of the country. But before we initiate our analysis, let’s briefly re-visit what we wrote last week for better perspective of this week’s analysis.

We had written:

1.     The military will maintain its direction in the war on terror in the tribal areas especially against Mehsud and Fazlullah in Swat despite the fact that there is a lull in the fighting at the moment in Waziristan. We expect a major military operation in Waziristan against Mehsud anytime in the near future. The regular suicide attacks against the army, especially after a bloody last week which saw the attack that killed the Surgeon General of the army, Lieutenant General Mushtaq Baig, have now created the environment where a major military assault against the militants of Al-Qaeda and Mehsud is inevitable. Presently, the intelligence and information warfare strategies are being deployed before the actual ground operations. We see no chance of any further peace deals between the army and the Al-Qaeda though selective deals will be made with local tribals to isolate the pro-Al-Qaeda elements.

2.     The aggressive U.S. demands to seek more access in Pakistan and within the national security environment are being met with caution and even contempt within the army as well as the  foreign office and there are signs to suggest that a policy rethink towards Afghanistan is being contemplated in Islamabad and the GHQ. U.S. is reading these signs and is extremely disturbed over these emerging ‘hostile’ signals from Islamabad.

The situation has become so serious that now the government is totally convinced that Indian and foreign players are involved in waging this low intensity war against Pakistan as it is not possible for the militants to sustain these levels of insurgency without external support. The fact that Americans have no desire to catch Baitullah Mehsud also raises many suspicions within Pakistan. Finally, the Pakistani Interior Minister even mentioned the Americans along with the Indians and the Israelis. The horror within the U.S. embassy and the U.S. administration was obvious.  

For U.S., it is extremely important that Pakistan does not change course in the war on terror after the elections. The flurry of diplomatic and military activity is breathtaking these days. They are putting all sorts of pressures even demanding concessions which amount to serious breach of national integrity and autonomy. The friction between the U.S. administration and the Pakistani security and foreign office management is very obvious now. U.S. will turn to President Musharraf and the Army Chief and not to political leaders in these times once again.

For the U.S., this is critically a serious time as the spring offensive of Taliban is about to begin in Afghanistan and U.S. is sensing that rising casualties in Pakistan may force Islamabad and the army to rethink their policies, hence maximum pressure is being deployed on Islamabad. Pakistan on its own was planning a major operation against the militants especially after the assassination of the Surgeon General in Rawalpindi. It is going to be a bloody war but a necessary one to do some serious surgery this time.

Now we come to this week’s analysis:

With the Saturday night’s explosion in an Islamabad restaurant which killed and wounded mostly American and foreign citizens, the war has now entered into the very heart of Pakistan. Last week we had done detailed assessment of the changed strategy of Al-Qaeda backed militants within the last few weeks when softest of targets were also attacked along with the security forces. Funeral processions and peace Jirgas as well as unarmed NGOs were the next target of choice for these terrorists. It was only a matter of time when foreign assets would also be targeted and on Saturday this barrier was also broken. It is confirmed beyond doubt that Baitullah Mehsud and his club of militants from Lal Masjid to Swat as well as the Al-Qaeda are behind these attacks. Al-Qaeda backed militants have acknowledged that they have turned Pakistan into a battle ground!! With the statistics so far, 2008 is on its way to becoming the most ruthless year of Pakistan’s history.

So why has the army not yet launched its planned operations against Baitullah when he is attacking the entire country with impunity? The answer is simple. The army wants the political government to take the decision for the operation after evaluating the Afghan and tribal policy. Politicians have been criticizing the military operations against Al-Qaeda and Baitullah Mehsud and have been shifting the entire blame on to the army for the campaign of terrorism in the country. There is no doubt that the policies of President Musharraf are solely responsible for this messy state of affairs but there is also no doubt that the politicians have no solution to the present crisis except cursing the past government and blaming the army. All political parties are almost hostage to fear due to the fact that Baitullah could be targeting them next as we have discussed above. The sheer ruthlessness of Baitullah’s campaign and his assassination of BB has sent enough signals to the politicians to stay silent! So much for the political courage.
 
If the political parties had gotten their act together at least on terrorism and had supported the operations against Baitullah, the army would have been in much more comfortable position to initiate the military as well as psy-ops in the region. With such harsh and ruthless attitude of incompetent politicians, the army is under tremendous stress to take on the operations on its own especially when there is no political government in Islamabad and no one is willing to take the responsibility. If the going gets tough, everyone will blame the army but no political party has the courage to change the Afghan and tribal policy and find the right balance between Taliban and Al-Qaeda ideology. With U.S. coming down extremely hard on political parties as well as on army to maintain the course, we can understand the desire of the army that the political government should also share the burden of decision making. But this political vacuum and lack of decision making is costing the country dearly.

On its part U.S. is also playing a sinister game. U.S. desires that Pakistan should use more brute force in the tribal regions without discriminating between good or bad militants. In the tribal areas, there are two major types of militant groups living within the local tribes and population.

1.     Those who have waged war on the State of Pakistan. Like Al-Qaeda, Baitullah, Uzbeks and their likes.

2.     Others are loyalists or Afghan Taliban who do not wan to wage war against Pakistan but are more focused on fighting the U.S. and NATO forces inside Pakistan and are just using Pakistani tribal regions as base areas for support.

In the past, Pakistan and U.S. have not been discriminating between these two types of militants and ruthless fighting was seen between Pakistan army and these groups. Now, in a changed strategy, Pakistan has been more selective in isolating the problematic groups and targeting them while making deals with the less problematic ones or those who are actually sympathetic towards Pakistan. Obviously, U.S. is not amused at these developments and have been doing all in its means to sabotage the process.

So, whenever Pakistan signs a peace deal with a tribe or a militant leader, U.S. either kills the man or attacks the region to create misunderstandings between Pakistan and the militants. On the other hand, those militants who are waging a war against Pakistan army and are vowing to fight Pakistan and not U.S. forces in Afghanistan are actually left alone and not targeted by U.S.
 
That is why we see U.S. killing Nek Muhemmed in South Waziristan, Abu Leith Libbi in North Waziristan and now attacking Haqqani in North Waziristan. All these men were willing to sign peace deals with Pakistan or were avoiding fighting Pakistan army.

On the other hand, Osama, Zawihiri or Baitullah Mehsud are never attacked by U.S. and have been given a free hand to operate in those regions with even a huge supply line open from the Afghan side which is fully supplied by Indian secret services for explosives, communication equipment and weapons.

Al-Qaeda is not fighting inside Afghanistan!!! This is important to note. They are waging a war against Pakistan to create an impression that Pakistan is about to fall to the militants and hence are planning to draw international attack on Pakistan to ‘secure’ its nukes. Here we have no doubt that Al-Qaeda as well as Mahsud have now turned into effective Israeli and Indian assets.

The Al-Qaeda game plan fits perfectly well with the Indian and Israeli game plan; hence their existence is of critical importance for their larger strategic objectives against Pakistan. U.S. as well as the Israelis and Indians are actually working to create an environment in which they can move in to attack Pakistani nuke assets.

The idea is so bizarre and fraught with dangers that former CIA officers are warning their government against it. But the problem is that former CIA officers are not calling the shots now and the present ones are actually hands in glove with international terrorists to create environments to attack Pakistani nuke assets. The plan is already in advanced stages.  

It is now very understandable as to why US drones fail to pick Baitullah Mehsud’s satellite phone signals when even a whisper of other pro-Pakistan militants is picked and located by their satellites for immediate attacks from drones!

So when U.S. again attacked Haqqani’s base in North Waziristan this week, Pakistan did protest.

The U.S. actions inside Pakistan, especially when they are directed to sabotage efforts of army to isolate and neutralize the problematic tribes through peace deals with loyalists, are creating serious frictions between the armies of the U.S. and Pakistan.

But that does not mean that the Pakistani military is not keeping the pressure on the militants. Both in the tribal areas as well as in the mainland, militants are being chased and hunted but the ruthlessness of the terrorist campaign is regularly taking its toll across the country with Islamabad taking the latest hit.

One of the biggest failures of the government and its information ministry is the fact that they have not been able to give a name, face and identification to the terrorists waging this campaign. Despite the fact that Zawihiri, Osama and Baitullah are directly responsible for the atrocities, the government machine does not name them nor bring their captured comrades on media to show the nation their real faces.

This increase the fear factor in the society as a faceless enemy is scarier than a known one. Why the government is not using the media in the war against terror is beyond us and is one of the greatest debacles in this war especially when hundreds of terrorists have been captured along with suicide vests and explosives.

Secondly, the judicial system has totally collapsed and no terrorist convictions or their executions are taking place. The existing judicial system is not capable to handle this war and hence has collapsed leaving the terrorists free to act with impunity without fear of law or convictions.

The next government is about to take shape as it seems now though political crisis is not expected to finish off sooner. This means that a weak and indecisive government will take effect in Islamabad in the coming days which will not be in a position to take difficult decisions required to handle this cancer of terrorism by A-Qaeda. The judiciary which the lawyers are trying to “liberate” is actually part of the problem in this war than being a solution because of its notoriously corrupt long system and scared judges. As such, we see no role of judiciary or the political parties in near future to assist the army in taking tough decisions. It will all fall back on the army to clean the mess and get the blame for it as well while politicians would remain busy in petty issues and self preservation.

Eight years of lopsided and imbalanced policies heavily tilting in favor of the Americans without any national security and safety considerations are now coming back to haunt Islamabad. The initial failure (which continues to this day) of not making any distinction between Taliban and Al-Qaeda is perhaps the most paramount and disastrous one. Also, the fact that Pakistan never defined terrorism and never set any rules of engagement with the U.S. in this war. It was an open ended relationship in which the U.S. gave instructions and Pakistan simply obeyed and now is paying a heavy price for this unholy alliance.

The burden of sin rests heavily on President Musharraf and his political and diplomatic advisors while the army and the country is paying the cost with their blood. One must give credit to the Indians and Israelis for exploiting these Pakistani blunders to their advantage with such success through Afghanistan.

As we wrote last week as well, in Balochistan also, the second low level war against the State continues though not as viciously as we see being launched by Mehsud’s men. The BLA is also backed by Afghan and Indian governments and is now getting more sophisticated in its attacks targeting security forces and State assets.

Extracted from a situation report released by BRASSTACKS, a security and defense analysis service based in Islamabad. Mr. Hamid is its Founding Consultant.

Source: AhmedQuraishi.com 

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