Daily Times

Last Tuesday’s article, ‘Killing carte blanche’ (Daily Times, December 23, 2014), elicited a great deal of interest with regards to the domestic application of sovereignty, which entitles the state exclusively to maintain legitimate means of using force in a territorially limited population. Along with this prerogative of the state is the responsibility that goes with it. Entities such as non-state actors have no legal place in such a dispensation. If a non-state actor violates international law and carries out terrorist activity in another country, the state from which it originates bears responsibility for such a crime. The US invoked its right to respond to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by holding the Taliban regime responsible for them even if a non-state actor, al Qaeda, had masterminded it. What happened subsequently we all know.

Similarly, the November 26, 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai belong to the same category and India and Pakistan almost were drawn into an armed showdown that fortunately did not materialise. Under international law, India would have enjoyed the right to respond to the terrorist attacks. In short, states cannot shirk their responsibility of preventing their territories being used to commit violent actions in another country. We know that states do dispatch hit squads to eliminate perceived enemies and the secret services of several countries commit such crimes, but then they are blamed for violation of international law. In other words, the term non-state actor does not absolve the state from responsibility for actions that emanate from its territory to hit targets in other countries.

I think the international community understands by now that the Pakistani state has not been in complete control of the extremist groups within its territories; the attack on the GHQ some years ago is one example and the attack in Mumbai in 2008 is another of that same absence of control. However, it is important to note that those groups that attack targets within Pakistan are not the same that choose targets in other countries. Both act criminally and can be prosecuted under domestic and international law.

We also need to review our sovereignty in the external sphere. External sovereignty means the right of the state to freely function in the international arena. Of course, no state is completely free either in the internal or external domain but the legal presumption is that there is no limit to sovereignty except that which the state voluntarily agrees to. In the external domain, such restraints derive from the prevalent norms of international law and the treaty obligations the state enters voluntarily. Additionally, and perhaps even more importantly, external sovereignty includes the right of the state to legitimately maintain the military means to ward off external aggression. Given the gross asymmetries of economic, industrial and military power in the external arena, the weaker states can assert their sovereignty only to a limit. Nevertheless, the UN Charter upholds their sovereignty. For example, it outlaws the interference of foreign powers in the internal affairs of countries; the exception is when genocide and massive crimes against humanity are taking place.

However, Pakistan has been saddled with the legacy of a peculiar type of dependence that compromises its sovereignty. It originated even before Pakistan came into being, when the Muslim League leadership launched a hectic campaign to convince the US that it should not oppose the creation of Pakistan because it would play the role of a frontline in South Asia against the spread of Soviet Communism. The US was sceptical but gave in in 1951. In 1954 and 1959 we signed military pacts with the US and began to proclaim ourselves as the “most allied allies of the US”. The military and economic aid that poured in did help Pakistan acquire military capacity to assert itself against the much bigger and stronger India, but it also created false complacency.

I have argued in my book, Pakistan, the Garrison State: Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), that the US, from day one, was clear in its assessment that India was the paramount power in South Asia and under no circumstance would they favour Pakistan at the expense of India. This truth seemed lost on the Pakistani leadership, civil and military. In any case, we did play the role of a frontline state on the US’s behalf. The Soviet Union was driven out of Afghanistan and soon afterwards disintegrated. It is doubtful if the Soviet Union was planning to invade Pakistan; its intervention in Afghanistan was a decision it took with some hesitation. The beleaguered Communist regime in Afghanistan needed help against the growing resistance among conservative sections of Afghan society and hence the Red Army marched into Afghanistan in December 1979. In any event, from the US’s point of view, this was a spectacular achievement as its major rival ceased to exist without a single shot being fired or a single US soldier dying. More importantly, it extracted those services for which it had been giving aid to Pakistan.

However, the jihadi culture that the US-Saudi sponsorship promoted in Pakistan brutalised Pakistani society and we are now paying a very heavy price for renting out our services to foreign powers. I have never felt more ashamed and insulted as when special agent Raymond Davis calmly shot dead two Pakistanis and then walked away free by a weird manipulation of the Islamic laws that allows killers to pay blood money and escape punishment. Similarly, we need to review our relationship with other states and reduce our dependence on them. Indeed, in this troubled world, we will always need friends; one can establish a clean and dignified relationship with the US and other powers but we should reduce our dependency on them. Cooperation on education, human rights and peace building with external powers is to be welcomed but on other matters we need to be very careful.

If now Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and General Raheel Sharif are determined to eradicate the curse of terrorism in Pakistan, they must also develop a strategy that reduces our dependence on foreign powers. This problem can only be tackled dialectically. A coherent and comprehensive strategy needs to be developed to make Pakistani sovereignty substantive, both internally and externally.

The writer is a visiting professor, LUMS, Pakistan, professor emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University, and honorary senior fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications: Winner of the Best Non-Fiction Book award at the Karachi Literature Festival: The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, Oxford, 2012; and Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Oxford, 2013. He can be reached at: billumian@gmail.com