Daily Times

Pakistan is very much in the news these days, though for the wrong reasons. In the midst of all the stuff about Osama bin Laden’s killing and who knew what, in Australia the visiting Bhutto family scion, Fatima Bhutto, here for the Sydney Writers’ Festival, made quite a splash. She was in great demand for interviews by the media. She came out as a very personable, articulate and passionate (for her people) young woman, making her points concisely without hyperbole. Even when she was critical of the US, she said her piece matter-of-factly without wanting to score points.

Her book, Songs of Blood and Sword, is a passionate study of a daughter’s love for her father, who was killed in mysterious circumstances when Benazir Bhutto (Fatima’s aunt) was Pakistan’s prime minister. And she does not hide her conviction, as she told a television interviewer here, that her aunt and her husband (the current President Zardari, Bhutto’s husband) might have had a hand in the ghastly deed — if not in the actual murder, or at least in the cover up that followed as she was the country’s prime minister at the time.

She said she had no plans to enter politics because dynastic politics (as with the Bhuttos) was against the spirit of democracy. She seemed to think that the Pakistani state was doomed. But she made a difference between the state (governed by a highly corrupt establishment) and its people who were resilient. She said that the US aid was not helping the country as it seldom reached the people, being pocketed by the corrupt establishment and its cronies.

Which brings us to the present crisis in US-Pakistan relations in the wake of the US military operation — executed without Pakistani knowledge — that killed Osama bin Laden. The US believes that some elements of the Pakistani establishment (principally military/ISI) were sheltering Osama, and are in cahoots with the terrorists. Pakistan acknowledges that there was some intelligence failure in the matter. But it strongly rejects any suggestion that it is soft on terrorism, pointing to the large number of civilian and military casualties they have suffered while fighting terrorism.

Islamabad is angry that the US chose to violate its sovereignty in executing the Osama operation. There are, however, reports that Pakistan and the US had an understanding that allowed the latter to go after the top al Qaeda leadership sheltering in Pakistan, with Islamabad reserving the right to condemn these incursions. In other words, there is a lot of shadowboxing going on in Pak-US exchanges, with neither side wanting to blow up the relationship.

But popular pressure on both sides is quite demanding. On the Pakistan side, the popular opinion is as much critical of their own establishment (the civilian government, military/ISI) as it is of the Americans for what people see as a brazen violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. On the American side, the Congress is seeking some answers from Pakistan and threatening to suspend aid that has amounted to nearly $ 20 billion over the last 10 years.

There are several factors that underpin relations between countries. In the case of US-Pakistan relations, Pakistan’s geo-strategic location in the midst of a war against terrorism in Afghanistan, which has also spilled into Pakistan, is the most compelling factor. In this context, there is a general view that both the countries are stuck with each other despite all the hue and cry. Pakistan is said to be indispensable to the US for its war against terror in Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistan is heavily dependent on US aid. It is, therefore, a marriage of convenience with no prospect of a divorce, as some will argue.

The question is: is this conventional wisdom so sacrosanct? In the short term, as long as the US is mired in Afghanistan, this certainly is true. But under the Obama administration, the US military engagement is time bound to withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1914, with the draw down of its troops starting middle of this year. With Osama bin Laden now killed, the domestic pressure in the US for withdrawal will be even more compelling. It is important to remember that the US invaded Afghanistan because its Taliban government refused to surrender Osama whom the US held responsible for the 9/11 US bombing. It might be argued that if Osama bin Laden had been handed over to the US, there would have been no Afghan war and Pakistan might have escaped being conscripted into it by the US.

With Osama bin Laden eliminated, the ostensible cause for the US military engagement is no more compelling. Of course, things have got complicated during 10 years of US military operations in Afghanistan. First of all there is a new Karzai government propped up by the US to democratise, stabilise and develop Afghanistan. If this were to be accomplished, Afghanistan will cease to be a terrorist hub posing a threat to the US and other countries. Of course, this seems improbable with the Taliban able to mount insurgency operations at will.

To deal with this, the US is seeking to eliminate the leadership of both the Taliban and al Qaeda through drone attacks on their hideouts on the Pakistani side of the Afghan-Pak border. At the same time, they are also conducting military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US is also putting pressure on Pakistan to mount further military operations against terrorists within its own territory. These multiple operations are designed to force the Taliban to seek peace and work within the parameters of Afghanistan’s constitution. In an ideal world, this is how it should be. But Afghanistan is hardly ideal. Therefore, things are not likely to work according to the US or anyone else’s script.

Another complicating factor is the US belief, indeed conviction, that Pakistan is playing a double game of simultaneously keeping their lines of communication open with the top leadership of the Afghan Taliban.

(To be continued)

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia.
He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au