Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiWith Friends Like the US, Pakistan Doesn't Need Enemies
Washington's clumsy attempts to strengthen Pakistan's government only serve to stoke a conflict approaching civil war
Pakistanis might be forgiven for wondering whether, with friends like these in Washington, who needs enemies? The rumbling row over a $7.5bn, five-year US aid package is a case in point. Imperious conditions attached to the bill by a Congress reluctant to send more unaccounted billions "down a rat hole", as Democrat Howard Berman charmingly put it, were condemned as insulting and colonialist in Pakistan.
By linking the cash to tighter civilian control of Pakistan's military, Washington was trying, clumsily, to strengthen Asif Ali Zardari's government. But it achieved the exact opposite. The president was accused of failing to defend the country's sovereignty, much as he has failed to halt escalating American cross-border air raids, and the occasional covert ground incursion, on targets inside Pakistan.
After hurried consultations in Washington, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, obtained an "explanatory document" from Congress this week that he said effectively waived some of the bill's more objectionable caveats. But this is unlikely to silence critics who draw on deep anti-American sentiment among the Pakistani public dating back to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the launch of George Bush's "global war on terror".
"Poll after poll shows Pakistanis increasingly do fear the threat posed by Islamic extremists ... but they believe the US is an even bigger danger to their country," Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution was quoted as saying this week. Many Pakistanis rated the threat posed by the US to their independence and security above that from historical foe India, he said. "Any time you out-poll India as the bad guy in Pakistan you are in deep trouble."
Intense Obama administration pressure on Pakistan to root out the Tehrik-e-Taliban (Taliban Movement of Pakistan), close allies and collaborators of the Afghan Taliban, resulted in this spring's costly military offensive in Swat, in North West Frontier province, which displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Yet the Swat campaign is likely to be dwarfed by an imminent Pakistani army offensive in South Waziristan, in the ungoverned tribal areas adjacent to Afghanistan. Although senior Pakistani officials deny they are doing Washington's bidding, it's no secret that US commanders are increasingly focused on both sides of Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, where Taliban militants and their foreign jihadi and al-Qaida allies have staked out common ground ignoring national boundaries.
Pakistan's Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, who replaced Baitullah Mehsud after the latter was killed in a US drone missile strike in August, said in a recent video that attacks such as today's in Lahore would quickly cease if the government stopped behaving like a US lackey and broke its American alliance. If that happened, Mehsud said he would turn his guns on India, presumably in Kashmir. To many Pakistanis, that may not sound such a bad idea.
The realisation that Washington is stoking a conflict approaching all-out civil war is gradually dawning in the US. New York Post columnist Ralph Peters drew a comparison with post-invasion Iraq. "Civil war never quite happened [there]. Yet no one seems to notice that we're now caught up in two authentic civil wars – one in Afghanistan, the other in Pakistan," he said. By lumping the two together in one "Afpak" policy, the Obama administration had effectively made both problems worse.
Neither extra US troops, nor extra aid, nor more "hugs-not-slugs counterinsurgency nonsense" was the answer, Peters argued. "The only hope for either beleaguered territory (these really are territories, not authentic states) is a decision by its own population to fight and defeat the Taliban."
The impulse, fanned by this sort of imperial hubris, to get out of Afghanistan, or at least to narrow the fight to a counter-terrorism campaign against al-Qaida, has gathered US adherents in recent months. But a Washington Post editorial argued this week that with al-Qaida much reduced, the Taliban in both countries now constituted the main enemy. Pakistan was moving towards "full-scale war", it said. Pulling back in Afghanistan could have disastrous, possibly fatal consequences there, too.
By this measure and others, only one conclusion is possible: Pakistan is already so destabilised by US actions since 9/11 that it cannot be left to fend for itself. In such tortuous logic is found the death of empires.
10 Comments so far
Show AllThere is nothing that a few billion dollars in person to person friendly bribes and a generous distribution of greencards to the well connected cannot fix in Pakistan. US should put their money where their mouth is.
The terrorism in Pakistan is done by Pakistani nationals trained in Pakistani camps. In fact one can argue that most of the supplies and training for terrorism in Afghanistan and India is done by Pakistan-based groups. So how can the author keep blaming America? The bigger issues are how did Pakistan become a failed state in the last 2 years? Why did people tolerate such elements for so long? How can thousands of terrorists live, train and roam around so freely in major cities? Did it happen overnight or took years in making?
At some point in time, Pakistan has to take responsibility of what is happening in the country and not just blame others. These terrorists were actively supported by the army and everything was fine as long as they were blowing up innocent victims in India or the Indian embassy in Afghanistan. Now that these same terrorists have turned against their mentors, Pakistan is blaming America. If the aid bill funded by US tax payers is so unfair, why accept it? It is a charity...if u don't like the terms just say NO. Finally there is an aid bill that puts some conditions on how the money is spent, otherwise 90% would go towards training terrorists to blast bombs in India.
Nothing more than following long-term US policy.
Destabilize a country, then steal the resources.
OIL!!!!!
in August 2001, the Taliban refused to let US build pipeline across Afghanistanto Indian Ocean. In November, we invaded and removed them from power.
In early 2008, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkistan signed an agreement for a pipeline against US wishes. In 2008, US increases 'boots on the ground' to occupy Afghanistan and starts using drones to attack Pakistan , knowing that such actions in both places will destabilize them as punishment for not doing as the US demands.
But I could be wrong !
I find it very interesting that you agree with the Wall Street Journal's editorial today about how bad the Kerry-Lugar bill is. I got through reading the Dawn of Pakistan, which is one of the most influential news outlets in Pakistan yesterday, and they were defending the bill.
In my opinion, business as usual in Pakistan for the United States has meant imposing the worst aspects of colonialism and imperialism. The structure of the government in the past has been called Military, Inc. Every general has his own slice of the economy, and it is the generals we have benefited in the past. President Ali Bhutto was executed by Gen. Zia Hak, and the US tacitly stood by. The US also tacitly stood by while Pakistan developed its nuclear weapons.
The Kerry-Lugar bill has a strong emphasis on limiting corruption, a regular feature of all of our previous foreign aid in that country. And the bill devotes the vast majority of resources to badly needed infrastructure projects instead of military toys. The WSJ editorial was no doubt done at the behest of defense contractors. But the Kerry-Lugar bill's support of schools, health care, and water lines is bad?
Knee jerk liberalism is bad. Kerry-Lugar is intelligent. Do your homework before you pen a bill actually trying to make a difference in Pakistan.
---"The Kerry-Lugar bill has a strong emphasis on limiting corruption, a regular feature of all of our previous foreign aid in that country. And the bill devotes the vast majority of resources to badly needed infrastructure projects instead of military toys."
They can put anything they want in the bill and its meaningless. This has gone on for decades and the rules dont change. Kerry and Lugar are deluding themselves if they believe the money is going towards infrastructure projects.
A majority of the aid money invariable lands in the pockets of the Military establishment for arming themselves against India as well as lining their own pockets. This has been exposed several times ... more recently in the New York Times as well as by several independent journalists.
To continue this charade of pumping billions of dollars into Pakistan is exactly what Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and now Obama are doing. Its like giving crack to a drug addict. The addicts in this case are the Pakistani Military and ISI. Pakistan will spiral even deeper into an abyss while Obama tries to win a war.
US imperial bribery comes not with strings attached, but with vise grips attached. The check is really a gift certificate exclusively for USan war machinery, with various other requirements that the recipient behave like a hoodlum, against its own people, and others. US elites know they won't "win the war" but they will succeed in further demoralizing Muslims, and destabilizing their governments. A large number of USans still believe US imperial bribery is going to help someone besides US war profiteers. But US elites harbor no such illusions.
--"If that happened, Mehsud said he would turn his guns on India, presumably in Kashmir. To many Pakistanis, that may not sound such a bad idea."
Really ?? Provoking a nuclear conflict with India doesnt sound like a bad idea ? Are Pakistanis really that stupid or is it just another wish list from British creeps. Pakistans worst enemy is Pakistan itself. The very same 'turrists' who bombed Lahore were 'comrades' of the ISI a week ago. Instead of painting Pakistan as the victim why not ferret out the true criminals (Pakistani Military, the ISI and ofcourse the U.S.).
Westerm media reports need to be thrown in the trash where they belong. Bowback is a bitch. Watching Pakistan succumb to its own Frankenstein is not pretty, but absolving it of blame is just plain stupid and naive.
Peters is an ex-colonel, in the usaf i believe, in intel. a fascist creep.
we are going to try and grab the 200 muslim nuclear weapons. the isi is leagues ahead of us though.
Of course Pakistanis find the US the main danger: the US is bombing them.
Of course Pakistanis find the aid package insulting: what would you feel if someone bombed your country, attempted to buy off your concerns, and nervously attached conditions to that hush-money?
IF the NYT's columnist Peters is to be taken as an example of "dawning," 'tis gradual indeed. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are all wars against the United States, a foreign oppressor. To call any one a "civil war" obscures the main point of conflict.
People in all three countries resist their nominal governments primarily because these actively collude with American violence against their populations.
This situation is worse than advertised in the States, even by most anti-war commentators. The US government knows quite well that it is destabilizing Pakistan. Though that does not mean it wants Pakistan to collapse, it clearly does mean that it considers not only the collapse of Pakistan but the acquisition of fissile materials by guerrilla forces - the so-called 'terrorists' - that have no fixed location and so cannot be deterred by the kind of massive force that the US is prepared to deliver.
Essentially, this means that the government is fully willing to risk the loss of an American city or two for the sake of hydrocarbon adventurism.
This should be weighed in consideration of the US government's general noncooperation and outright sabotage of global warming treaties and green movements in general.
The major difficulty in criticism of US adventurism is the persistent assumption of benign intentions. They exist, sure -- in a few individuals. They are used by policy makers and wonks. But they do not drive policy.