The New Nation - Internet Edition

S Khan

This is a proxy war which we are fighting on someone else's behalf; it has bathed our country in blood," stated a bystander on 'Bolta Pakistan' AAJ TV on 11 March.

On March 11, a week after blasts at Lahore's Naval College claimed the lives of 6 people and injured 19, two closely timed explosions wreaked renewed havoc in this historic city.

The first and deadliest to date in the sequence of attacks against military, paramilitary, and police personnel and installations occurred when a van packed with explosives rammed into the offices of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Temple Road in the city's bustling heart. The blast wrecked the 8-storey building, which housed the Special Investigations Unit, an anti-terror cell established following President Pervez Musharraf's decision to back George Bush's invasion of Afghanistan. Such was the blast's ferocity that its reverberations resounded 20 kilometres away. Claiming 23 lives, among them 3 children and 15 FIA officers, and injuring over a 100 others, it was followed by another explosion staged in parallel fashion at the premises of an ad agency. Mystification at the choice of target ebbed when news emerged that the agency fronted a safe house used jointly by FIA anti-terror agents and overseas investigative teams, currently probing the Naval College bombing.

The sharp intensification in the bombing campaign as it fans out from the tribal areas into major cities has stunned and angered the people, heightening the disconnect between their approach to their predicament on the one hand and that of the diminished Musharraf clique and its Neo-con patrons on the other. The disconnect had been a key factor in the rout of Musharraf's allies in the February elections as the electorate sought a reprieve from 8 years of military rule, including a departure from his Afghan policy. The post-election period has enhanced their hopes as the winning parties and former political rivals, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Muslim League-N have pledged to form a coalition with the Pushtun ANP, and prioritise the search for new policy directions.

The disconnect has its roots in conflictual understandings of the Afghan invasion. The public's opposition to the war was rife from the outset, and did not emerge as a by-product of Pakistan's collapsing security situation. The decision to submit to Neo-con ambitions came from a dictator unaccountable to his nation, but in need of international legitimation. Regardless of their disagreement with the Taliban, Pakistanis found no joy in watching daisy cutters rain upon a Muslim neighbour, especially one ravaged by two decades of conflict through superpower invasion and civil war. Moreover, they attributed responsibility for the latter to policy failures by the US and Pakistan.

Relatedly, given that the 50-year legacy of Pak-US alliances had strengthened dictatorships in Pakistan, people remained unmoved by the promises of 'Enduring Freedom'. Echoing other critical voices around the world, Pakistanis recognised the US push into Afghanistan as driven by long-term energy and security interests, including the containment of Iran and China and the potential exploitation of Central Asia's vast energy resources.

Tragically, Pakistanis find themselves at the sharp end of a war they had always opposed, which has spilled over the border and rages in their homeland in the form of an armed insurgency. Neo-con policy pundits may technicise the insurgency as a series of unfortunate events perpetrated by 'terrorists', and 'extremists. They may console its grieving people that these are containable through increased military action and further security measures such as expanding the scope of foreign surveillance operations within Pakistan. However, Pakistanis take a less sanguine view of asymmetric warfare, which, they argue, can continue for decades. They also note that the combination of military means and 'actionable intelligence' has functioned as a euphemism for a war on one's own people, the slaughter of innocents by Musharraf's helicopter gunships or American Predators and Drones, the displacements of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands, the disappearance of hundreds perhaps thousands, the militarisation of a semi-autonomous tribal region where other Pakistani generals, folly and bravado notwithstanding, never ventured in their jackboots.

Pakistanis connect Musharraf's military-security package to the radicalisation of the border Pushtuns. With linguistic and ethnic cross-border ties, Pushtuns were doubly aggrieved at Musharraf's support for Bush, but once at the mercy of the general's firepower, they hit back without mercy at the emblems of his power. Making common cause with their kinsmen across the border, they came to see Musharraf as the local face of global power. Hence the rise of the 'Local Taliban', and as in Afghanistan, some speculate that they may form part of a nexus that includes al Qa'ida.

Other theories see the insurgency as a bid by external powers to destabilise and denuclearise Pakistan, but the emphasis remains on seeing Afghanistan/ Waziristan as the nub of the problem.

Accordingly, while Neo-cons view Pakistan almost exclusively through the lens of expediency coloured by their Afghan venture, Pakistanis seek new terms of engagement in which they no longer subsidise Musharraf's fetish for Bush's imperial quest. Its excessive costs may be seen statistically.

In 2007, approximately 1,700 Pakistanis died through various incidents of violence. From January-mid-March 2008, 600 Pakistanis died in 71 incidents. From 2001-2008, coalition fatalities in Afghanistan totalled 775. Of these the greatest losses are American at 486 whereas estimates of Pakistani soldiers' deaths range from 1,500-2,000.

The public's call to review current policy is echoed by many defence and foreign policy analysts, retired generals and ambassadors, academics, journalists, lawyers, and newly elected parliamentarians. Although no single blueprint for salvation has emerged, there is agreement that a bold multi-pronged political initiative by a government with national legitimacy may prove effective, especially as a precursor to a wider regional settlement on Afghanistan. Proponents of political dialogue often cite Britain's success with the IRA as an example. However, such is the imperial oversight of Pakistani affairs that the day after the Lahore blasts, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice found it necessary to foreclose the possibility of dialogue, saying that another way was needed. Concurrently, if in support, US forces staged a 'precision guided' strike in Waziristan killing two women and two children.

Rice's intervention complements the Bush administration's assiduous efforts to prevent Musharraf's ouster. Whereas Washington sees him as 'indispensable' to the pursuit of the war, Pakistanis see his departure or at minimum his bowing to parliament as indispensable to Pakistan's stability. Graced by plummeting ratings in the twilight of his presidency, Bush is determined that the inconvenience of an electoral verdict must not be allowed to displace his protégé. The chorus of US officials in DC and the frenetic diplomatic forays in Islamabad into post-election coalition building have managed to rile even pro-western liberals in Pakistan. In a recent newspaper article, former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger corroborates these attempts saying, "Any attempt to manipulate the political process that we have urged is likely to backfire. A wise policy must recognise that the internal structure of Pakistani politics is essentially out of the control of American decision-making."

But 'wise policies' are unlikely to emerge as the legacy of Bush's imperial despotism.

Bloodshed and chaos are. As such breaking with Musharraf's legacy on Afghanistan presents a formidable challenge for the new government.

(Source: Muslim News, London)