A symptom of Pakistans maladies
The hounding of the doctor who helped the US catch Osama bin Laden shows that Pakistan is losing the plot in the war against terror.
By
Badar Alam
In 2002, Pakistani newspapers carried front-page ads promising a multi-million dollar prize for anyone providing information on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. For those who did not or could not have access to newspapers, the same message was disseminated through matchstick boxes available in grocery shops and roadside kiosks selling cigarettes across northwest Pakistan.
In 2011, however, someone who did help in finding Osama is being put to trial for high treason. Dr Shakil Afridi, an official of Pakistans health department who ran a fake vaccination campaign to confirm the al Qaeda chiefs presence in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, may get death sentence if found guilty of what in Pakistan is seen as collaboration with a foreign power against the security and sovereignty of his own country.
A lot has indeed changed between then and now. The early intimacy and intensity of the combined Pakistani and American drive against al Qaeda in the early 2000s has been replaced by an impasse in the ties between Islamabad and Washington in which each side is accusing the other of duplicity and backstabbing.
If nothing else, the tense Pakistan-US ties explain why the return for helping nab Osama has malformed from rich financial reward to a possible loss of life.
On a broader level, Dr Afridi and his circumstances symbolise the predicament that Pakistan is facing in its struggle against religious militancy on the one hand and its efforts to forge an equitable and dignified relationship with the US on the other. Most, if not all, in Pakistan agree that armed and violent religious and sectarian groups are a threat to the countrys security and stability. Though there is no consensus on how to deal with them, everyone seems to regard them as dangerous, barring a lunatic few. There is also a similar consensus that Pakistan doesnt need to accept a conditional relationship with the US.
Washington, not unlike the religion-inspired militants, is increasingly seen as a part of many problems that Pakistan is facing religious militancy and political instability rather than as a part of the solutions that it urgently requires in the fields of economy, energy, education, environment and employment. Perpetually threatened by violence in the name of religion and constantly squeezed under Washingtons selfish pursuit of its economic, diplomatic and strategic interests in Afghanistan in particular and South Asia in general, the State and the society in Pakistan are reacting in self-contradictory ways. It is in the context of such mutually conflicting expressions of public and private will in Pakistan that the recommendations to treat Dr Afridi without even so much as a modicum of leniency should be understood.
Consider the case of soldiers and officials in the countrys military who have launched numerous violent challenges to their own institution and its leadership over the past decade or so. Air force and military officials were involved in multiple terrorist attacks on former president Pervez Musharraf first in December 2003 and then in 06 and 07; a couple of mid-ranking army officers have been under detention and interrogation since 2009 for leaking sensitive information about an air force base to terrorist groups. In at least two most deadly terrorist attacks on extremely important military sites in 2009 and 11, the attackers were getting information and help from inside the security forces. Military spokesmen have confirmed that former and working soldiers and officers of Pakistans security forces have been arrested and being interrogated and tried for the 2009 attack on the armys General Headquarters in Rawalpindi and a May 2011 ambush inside a naval base in Karachi. A high-ranking army officer, Maj Gen Ali Khan, is facing a court martial for his affiliation to banned religious organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir that regularly invites the military to overthrow the democratic government and establish an Islamic caliphate.
In the otherwise highly disciplined armed forces of Pakistan that have lost more soldiers and officers in the fight against religious militancy than all foreign forces put together have in neighboring Afghanistan, such incidents are not just troubling. They are, in fact, emblems of dangerous ideological and policy faultlines within the security forces struggling with the double squeeze of mindlessly deadly religious violence and selfishly blinkered American policy towards Pakistan.
The other most visible manifestation of this double-layered straitjacket is the stance of the countrys political parties on issues such as the American drone strikes in Pakistans northwester frontier regions, the ways and means to counter and curb religious militancy and Islamabads diplomatic and strategic relations with Washington.
Across the political spectrum in Pakistan, drone attacks are universally condemned as counterproductive and violating Pakistans territory and sovereignty. Only late last month, an officially convened conference of all political parties unanimously resolved to oppose and stop them. The conference also declared that Pakistan was united behind its military against Americas real and perceived military, diplomatic and economic threats aimed at pushing Pakistan into action against certain Afghan militant groups. The participants also agreed that Pakistan needed to open dialogue with the Pakistani religious militant groups.
An almost similarly sounding joint parliamentary resolution in the wake of Americas successful operation in Abbottabad vowed to do whatever it took to stop similar breaches of the countrys security and sovereignty in the future without even so much as mentioning the man for whom the Americans had taken the risk of intruding into the Pakistani territory.
Many aspirants to political power regularly spew anti-America rhetoric to drum up electoral support with cricketer-turned- politician Imran Khan leading the pack. Many of the Opposition politicians indeed see America-bashing as a means to cosy up with the all-powerful military establishment whose stamp of approval is the most precious coin of the political realm in Pakistan. Rub the anti-America rhetorical flourishes of Pakistans politics and soon you realise that, barring a few lunatics, no one is advocating a head-on collision with Washington not even Imran Khan. In fact, most politicians understand the need to have normal diplomatic ties with the US even when the most radical types among them suggest joining a supposed Iran-China-Russia alliance against the West. Political parties and leaders in power at the national and federal level are even more acutely aware of remaining engaged with the West in general and Washington in particular. Unsurprisingly, they praise the American drone strikes as the only effective tool against non-Pakistani militants hiding in safe havens along the AfPak border that are otherwise inaccessible and where Pakistani military is reluctant to launch a security operation. If there is a single ideological thread running through all these self-perpetuating gaps between political rhetoric and private admission it goes something like this: The US has always used Pakistan as a tissue paper; it has never really helped Pakistan in troubled times; and it is arm-twisting Islamabad into submission to create a South Asia where India dominates everyone else and Afghanistan serves as its proxy. Such self-justifying anti-Americanism is, in fact, pervasive in todays Pakistan.
And it helps explain the curious case of Dr Afridi. By keeping the Pakistanis out of the loop on the Osama operation and then invading many hundred miles into Pakistani territory in the dead of the night, the Americans are seen to have betrayed Pakistans trust and backstabbed a State that is at the forefront of the US war against terrorism. This is, however, not the first time that Washington is perceived as having given preference to a cold calculation of its interest over the need to keep Pakistan and Pakistanis in good cheer. It is this lack of trust in the US that lies at the heart of official Pakistani proclamations to put Dr Afridi on trial for treason.
Compare this with the time when bilateral ties between Islamabad and Washington were not at as tense as they are now. Pakistani security and intelligence agencies then worked closely with their American counterparts to nab scores of al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and foot soldiers and dispatch them to Guantanamo Bay, but no one was ever criticised, let alone arrested and tried over collaboration with a foreign power. In fact, as Musharraf has acknowledged in his book In the Line of Fire, millions of dollars flowed to Pakistani individuals and institutions as a reward from Washington, no questions asked, no names mentioned.
Badar Alam is editor of the political monthly magazine, Herald.
badaralam@gmail.com
