Opinion The Pakistan tangle
Pakistan has owned up to the obvious but what direction will US strategy take?
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After refusing for weeks to accept that Ajmal Kasab,the lone captured terrorist from the Mumbai attack,was a Pakistani citizen,the Pakistan government has finally conceded the fact. Since a FBI team is to visit Pakistan and investigate the killing of seven US citizens in the attack,Pakistan has no alternative. India had wisely permitted the FBI full access to the sites,personnel,records,and wireless intercepts relating to the terrorist attacks and therefore,Pakistan finds it difficult to refuse similar access.
The US government has no doubts about the origin of the Mumbai attack. The US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley,in an interview to the Wall Street Journal on January 6,said: there is some evidence,increasing evidence terrorism that may have originated from its territory…….They obviously have to take responsibility in two respects. One,they need to get to the bottom of who was responsible for the actual incident in Bombay. And secondly they need to deal with the problem of Taliban,al Qaeda and other militant groups like the LeT operating within their territory.
Hadley also said you cant really solve Afghanistan without solving Pakistan. And that is why I think Pakistan is at the centre. Solving Pakistan wont solve all of Afghanistan. But you wont get where you need to be in Afghanistan if you havent solved that problem of the border areas with Pakistan. He characterised Pakistan as the biggest foreign policy challenge for the incoming Obama adminisration,bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan. The significance of this formulation is not likely to be lost on Pakistani army.
Till now the view was the US had an Afghanistan problem to deal with,for which Pakistans help was vital. This helped General Musharraf to milk the US for eleven billion dollars over eight years without contributing significantly to the solution of Afghanistan issue. In fact the Pakistani army aggravated the problem by enabling the Taliban to expand and providing a safe haven for al Qaeda. Now the US is changing focus,and viewing Pakistan as the central problem.
Hadley now asserts that unless the Pakistan problem is solved,Afghanistan cannot be effectively addressed. He also highlighted the parlous state of Pakistani economy and the support that US extended to enable Pakistan to obtain IMF help.
Coming back to terrorism against India while Pakistan under US pressure may accept that the terrorists originated from Pakistan,they are not likely to accept any links with the ISI. As in the A.Q.Khan case,they will try to delink the terrorists and their handlers,or even stage a trial as they did in the Omar Sheikh case,for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. It is extremely unlikely the terrorists handlers will be handed over to India.
In the history of state-sponsored terrorism there has been only one case of a nation surrendering its terrorists and paying compensation to the relatives of victims. That was Libya in respect of the Lockerbie airliner bombing case. But that came about after more than a decade of stalling,through which the international community kept up ceaseless economic pressure. Though Libya had oil earnings it succumbed,and Pakistan is far more vulnerable to such pressure than Libya was.
If President Obama accepts the Hadley proposition that Pakistan itself is the central problem for the US,then the leverage the Pakistani army can exercise on US will be significantly reduced. The Pakistan army,as revealed in ISI chief Ahmed Shujaa Pashas interviewto Der Spiegel has already agreed to the US launching its drone-launched missiles on Pakistani targets.
Therefore the US has enormous economic leverage over Pakistan,if they choose to exercise it. The US-NATO operations on the Afghan border and the Pakistan army being compelled by US to act against the Taliban and others are bound to lead to a confrontation between the army and the jihadis. One wonders whether the Obama presidency will allow itself to continue to be taken for a ride,or will Pakistan become the focus of attention?
The last month has demonstrated that India and the US can effectively cooperate on counter-terrorism efforts. Obama,in his letter to the prime minister when he was still the Democratic candidate,had highlighted the need for Indo-US cooperation on military,intelligence and law enforcement matters. The Indian diplomatic effort should focus on the paradigm shift envisaged by Hadley.
In the next few days,the home ministers visit to the US means there is an opportunity to discuss the problem with both the outgoing and incoming administrations. It should be obvious to the US that the central problem of Pakistan cannot be solved without Indian cooperation. That calls for a comprehensive Indo-US strategic dialogue on aiding the development of democracy in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region and elimination of jihadi terrorism.
The writer is a senior defence analyst.
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