The turning point —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

It is encouraging that civilian and military authorities are working together to fight the menace of terrorism. However, counter-terrorism should not degenerate into a
stalemate because that would provide an excuse to some people to return to a pro-Taliban disposition
The successful meeting of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan on September 24 and approval of the Kerry-Lugar bill by the US Senate on the same day reflect the growing
confidence of the international community in Pakistan’s counter-insurgency operations. All this acknowledges the Pakistani military’s successful operation in the Swat-
Malakand area, dislodging the Taliban.
April 2009 can be described as the turning point in Pakistan’s counter-terrorism policy. It was in this month that the civilian government and the top brass of the army came
to the firm conclusion that the Taliban offensive against the Pakistani state had to be checked through the use of hard power. On April 26, the army initiated the operation in
Swat-Malakand that reversed the Taliban tide that had assumed control of most of the area. Local administration was either non-existent or was at the mercy of the Swat
Taliban.
This operation was more carefully planned and executed with greater firmness and consistency than was the case during various operations in the tribal areas in 2003-2006.
Currently, the army is engaged in counter-insurgency actions in South Waziristan, Khyber and Orakzai agencies. The army and paramilitary have lost over 150 men and
officers in these operations since April. The Pakistan Air Force also made useful contributions by targeting Taliban hideouts and training camps, making it possible for the
army and paramilitary personnel to pursue ground offensives effectively.
The other positive aspect of the Swat operation relates to the efforts of the provincial and federal governments to care for displaced persons from the Swat-Malakand area.
Some friendly countries, voluntary groups from Pakistan and abroad and the United Nations provided assistance to cope with this humanitarian problem. The ordinary
people of Mardan and adjoining areas made the most significant contribution, who voluntarily hosted displaced people in their houses.
After the restoration of the civilian authority in the Swat area, the army and civilian authorities returned displaced people to their homes in an orderly manner. The current
challenge pertains to reconstruction or restoration of schools, hospitals and public facilities destroyed by the Taliban. This should now be possible as new economic
assistance for social development is going to be available to Pakistan in a couple of months. Another challenge is coping with remnants of the Swat Taliban hiding in
mountains that occasionally engage in violent activities to harass the people and the government.
The Swat operation enjoyed widespread support in Pakistan. This support increased as the army registered successes. However, Islamic political parties, especially the
Jama’at-e Islami, opposed the operation, describing it as the killing of Pakistanis at the behest of the United States, and that the Taliban are friends of Pakistan. They argued
that the people who burnt down schools and killed people were not Taliban but agents of India, the United States and Israel posing as the Taliban.
The JI had to dilute its criticism after it realised that the people were not receptive to their criticism. They then shifted their focus of criticism to the American role in
Pakistan, hoping that they would muster more support on this issue and embarrass the federal government on this issue if not on the Swat operation.
The counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency policy initiated in April has helped the military in general and the army in particular to partly retrieve its reputation and
image that had suffered during the last three years of General Pervez Musharraf’s rule, especially in the course of the lawyers’ movement in 2007 and the second
suspension of the constitution in November 2007. This action has also improved Pakistan’s diplomatic clout abroad because it showed the determination and capacity to
cope with Pakistan-based terrorist groups.
The April decision of the civilian government and the army top brass to work together against the Taliban and other militant groups was more significant than Pakistan’s
decision to join the United States in combating terrorism after 9/11.
Knowing General Zia-ul Haq’s model of US-Pakistan relations after the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, Musharraf, after 9/11, agreed to join the US effort
against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Musharraf supported the Americans on countering terrorism but continued to maintain links with selected Pakistan-based
militant groups and some elements among the Taliban. Pakistan’s security forces arrested around 600 people, including some leading Al Qaeda activists, for their alleged
links with that organisation. Action was taken against Pakistani militant groups and the Taliban but enough space was left for them to survive.
The Pakistani government and military authorities were divided on whether these groups were a liability or an asset for Pakistan. Their policy of maintaining links with
selected militant groups was also shaped by their fear of the US leaving the region after its main goal was achieved, similar to the US decision to quit the region after the
Soviets left Afghanistan. Both the military and the government lacked a shared clarity of purpose when the army resorted to military action from time to time in the tribal
areas in 2003-2006.
The change in the disposition of the civilian government and the army top brass occurred in April this year because the Taliban overplayed their hand in 2008-2009,
causing strong concern in official and non-official civilian and military circles that these groups wanted to undermine Pakistani state and society.
There were several developments in Swat and elsewhere during February-April 2009 that caused a high degree of insecurity in the society, including destruction of schools;
killing of people who defied the Taliban; the video of a girl being flogged in public; the Taliban’s refusal to abide by the agreement with the NWFP government; statements
questioning the legitimacy of Pakistan’s constitution and democracy; attempts to control Buner; and vigilantism by pro-Taliban hard-line Islamic activists in some of the
major cities, including Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi. The threat of their march from Swat-Buner to Islamabad haunted the government and people.
The army has pushed back the Taliban tide in the Swat area. However, the Taliban and their allies remain entrenched in various tribal agencies. If the army cannot quickly
dislodge them, it may get entangled in a long drawn out counter-insurgency.
Long inconclusive strife provides an opportunity to Islamic groups to become more active in propaganda against the military. Further, it seems ironic that some retired
army and intelligence officers publicly question the rationale of the ongoing security operations in the tribal areas. Some senior officers who served during General Pervez
Musharraf’s rule express varying degrees of scepticism, if not outright criticism, of the army’s current disposition on counter-insurgency.
It is encouraging that civilian and military authorities are working together to fight the menace of terrorism. However, counter-terrorism should not degenerate into a
stalemate because that would provide an excuse to some people to return to a pro-Taliban disposition and target the army and paramilitary personnel with the same kind of
demoralising propaganda that was proliferated in 2003-2006.
Begging with dignity —Rafia Zakaria

September 26th 2009 in Daily Times, English Columns, Rafia Zakaria

Begging with dignity —Rafia Zakaria
In our sixty-second year, perhaps it’s time we came to terms with the reality that we are and have always been a nation of beggars. Ironically, it is only in embracing this
grim reality that we can find the opportunity to change our future
If the recent summit in New York is a reliable gauge, then Pakistan, or rather “democratic” Pakistan is doing pretty well in the popularity contest otherwise known as the
General Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
On Thursday, the “Friends of Democratic Pakistan” met to discuss the promotion of stable governance and economic development in Pakistan. The group includes
Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, the United Nations and European
Union. President Obama, who co-chaired the meeting, announced the passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, which will provide Pakistan with $1.5 billion every year for the next
five years.
The meeting and accompanying announcement of aid disbursement have provided much fodder for discussion in both the United States and Pakistan. The United States has
expectedly tried to announce passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill as well as the meeting itself as a major commitment that substantiates its long-term interest in Pakistan.
Coming as it does, in the footsteps of an expected change in US policy toward the region, the announcements provide the Obama administration a means to deflect attention
from its woes in Afghanistan by pointing to the potential of success in Pakistan.
For the Pakistani government, led by President Zardari, the task in New York is markedly more difficult. It must tread the delicate balance of being both gracious for the
assistance while at the same time drawing attention to the holes in the Obama administration’s beneficence. One attempt to do just this was President Zardari’s demand,
made a day before the meeting, that the United States reimburse the $1.6 million that Pakistan has spent fighting the War on Terror in the tribal belt. The demand was
programmed ostensibly to emphasise the fact that aid disbursements to Pakistan are in exchange for services rendered in the US-led war against Al Qaeda rather than an act
of magnanimity by the United States. In other words, the Pakistani delegation tried to paint as “payment” what the Americans would present simply as an act of generosity.
This delicate dance between grantors and receivers of aid is not in itself new. In the last few decades, as globalisation has become an economic and security challenge rather
than an abstract theory, this dynamic has become a repeated accompaniment to most global summits. The rich nations controlling large chunks of the world economy have
packaged their security interests as moralistic efforts to assist the poor without any strings attached. At the same time, poorer nations have sought to expose the security
interests and consequent challenges to sovereignty that lie beneath the Global North’s commitments to economic and social development in the Global South.
The duelling narratives that emerge from the above dynamic mean that rich nations always have the task of presenting their aid as magnanimous while poorer ones always
have an interest in presenting the aid amounts as emerging out of rich countries’ self-serving security interests.
In the current case, the challenge for the Pakistani government becomes more complex in light of ideological currents at home that present this dynamic as an inherent
attack on the country’s sovereignty. Conservative commentators, especially those belonging to Islamist parties, present the need for aid as a failure by the current
administration to safeguard the sovereignty of the nation. In doing so they disregard both the facts of Pakistan’s precarious economic existence in a world beset by financial
crises but also the fact that whether we like it or not, the world market is controlled by countries like the United States.
In fomenting this attitude towards aid in general, these critics present the acceptance of aid as a choice rather than the necessity it has been for many governments past and
present. Gullible Pakistanis are thus fed the myth that it is a particular government’s greed rather than the nation’s need that makes aid a requirement, and that the only
thing keeping Pakistan from true self-sufficiency is the corruption of one or another administration.
The fact is that the acceptance or rejection of aid by Pakistan is not a facet peculiar to the Zardari administration. Governments past, present and future have been and are
likely to remain tied to the disbursement of foreign assistance for many decades in the future. The scale of current security challenges and the inability of our weak state to
respond to a growing insurgency necessitates that we accept any help that we get. The particular ravages of the global financial crisis on our economy and the mounting
costs of a civil war that has led us to become a world leader in suicide bombings are recent precipitators of our hapless condition.
Idealistic notions of self-sufficiency that suggest that we deny how integral foreign assistance has been to our precarious existence these past sixty odd years indicate a
blindness to both our local challenges and the place we hold in the international sphere. Pakistan is not and has never been a superpower, militarily, morally or
economically. We do not have the infrastructure to create self-sufficiency in either our agricultural, industrial or manufacturing sectors. We do not have the natural
resources to provide for all our energy needs or the capabilities to sell what we do have on the global market. Yet, instead of accepting these challenges and their
consequent impact on our place in the world, we live imbued in nationalist myths and pretend that our current reliance on aid is solely a product of temporary mistakes or
greedy politicians.
A novel argument for us as we poke fun at the unfortunate officials charged with the task of begging for this aid in New York would be to consider not the hokey notions of
becoming the next global powerhouse fuelled by our un-availed (and largely imaginary) natural resources but rather a realistic assessment of what our capabilities and
challenges really are. Not once in our sixty-two year existence have we survived without the assistance of foreign governments.
In our sixty-second year, perhaps it’s time we came to terms with the reality that we are and have always been a nation of beggars. Ironically, it is only in embracing this
grim reality that we can find the opportunity to change our future.
Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com