خون کے دھبے دھلیں گے کتنی برساتوں کے بعد
kab nazar main aaey gee bai_daagh sabzey ki bahaar
khoon ke dhabbey dhulain ge kitni barsatoon ke baad
کب نظر میں آیے گی بے داغ سبزے کی بہار
خون کے دھبے دھلیں گے کتنی برساتوں کے بعد
(After how many rains, shall the blood stains fade?
And when, in our sight, shall unspotted fields sway?)
Faiz’s couplet from his ghazal “hum ke thairey ajnabi” was written in the context of saqoot-e-dhaka, but after seeing the bloodbath in Peshawar yesterday, any human heart could relate to Faiz’s stinging prose.
The Peshawar catastrophe is fresh, many people, presumably dead, are still trapped under the rubble while the rescue operation continues. This incident once again reminds and asserts that the current government is not only incompetent but also not serious or interested in saving those very people who brought them into the corridors of power with their votes. The failure is not just the government’s alone, failure is shared, it is combined, the opposition parties and even us, the ordinary citizens of the country, we call ours.
The debate or the blame game at this point is a waste of time, it is not going to help to cry over spilt milk, Zia and Mushuraf are gone, blaming India or Blackwater or Xe for the unrest in Pakistan, too is irrelevant. Whatever good and bad has been done, cannot be undone, the need of the moment is very important to identify, now is the time to restructure and reset our priorities and policies, now is the time for reforms to save the country from going into a complete civil war and chaos.
Identifying the key players of this blood-spattered drama that Pakistan is witnessing today is perhaps the most important need of the moment. Are the strings of the perpetrators, moved from outside Pakistan or are the traitors within us, sold out to foreign masters? Or are they the misguided, brain-washed and ignorant Muslims who actually do it in the name of holy war.
We, as a nation, have no consensus among us; we are bitterly divided on deciding whether or not this is our war, almost as if it’s a matter of ego. We are hostage to our own opinions, insights and inclinations and none of us is ready to step back from our firm stands. This cacophony is causing further chaos. We are providing the world with enough material to make a mockery of our so-called democracy and the lack of unity. We like to drag personalities rather than coming up with the solution of our past, intentional or unintentional errors.
Whether or not we admit, this war has become our own war now, notwithstanding the fact that Pakistan was forced into this war. The loss of lives is for us to endure, our children are denied education as educational institutions are under constant threat, our daily lives are affected but for how long, is the question every Pakistani is asking each other while the hopeless and incapable accidental leadership of the country, revel and enjoy the throne. All they can offer is denunciation and promises, to catch the culprits.
Are we ready to come on streets to protest? If we keep looking at the elected government, we would be disappointed because they completely depend on Washington to proceed thus it is important that we take our fate in our own hands and expose the traitors like Rehman Malik. We strongly demand his dismissal as soon as possible, for failing to perform his duties as Home Minister. It is now or never, it is do or die situation for all Pakistanis.
Faiz said
بول کے لب آزاد ھیں تیرے
بول زباں اب تک تیری ھے
تیرا ستواں جسم ھے تیرا
بول کے جاں اب تک تیری ھے
Bol ke lab azad hain tere
bol zabaaN abb tak teri hai
tera sutwaan jism hai tera
bol ke jaan abb tak teri hai
Long Live Pakistan.
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Washinton Post: U.S. official resigns over Afghan war
The Nation: US official who resigned over Afghan war urges Pakistan stability
Matthew Hoh, a former Foreign Service officer and former Marine Corps captain who last month became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, has urged supportieve efforts towards Pakistan’s stability. He believes the goal of stability in Pakistan cannot be achieved through a huge military imprint in neighboring Afghanistan. “I feel that our two goals in that region should be the defeat of al-Qaeda and the stabilization of Pakistan (because of its possession of nuclear weapons and because of its history/relationship with India),” he said in an online discussion hosted by The Washington Post. Hoh said he does not claim to be a Pakistan expert but understood very well that “we need to dedicate resources (personnel and money-but not troops) to ensure Pakistan’s government remains successful.” “I don’t know if this means we toughen our stance with Pakistan (to the point we threaten our lack of support) or whether we provide support in total with no strings attached,” he added.
“Regardless, 60,000 troops in Afghanistan, does not stabilize Pakistan. If anything, evidence suggests our presence in Afghanistan has destabilized Pakistan,” he remarked. Hoh’s comments came as President Barack Obama’s war council neared a conclusion on a viable way forward in Afghanistan, where eight years after invasion of the landlocked country, U.S.-led forces are struggling to contain a fierce Taliban insurgency. The idea of troops surge, as proposed by top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen Stanley McChrystal, is one of the most hotly debated parts of the ongoing discussions and reviews in the United States. Obama national security advisers say they are alive to Pakistan’s concerrns about a massive military buildup on the Afghan side while Congressional leaders including Senator John Kerry have warned against destabilizing effect of such a move on Pakistan.
Huffpost: Troops In Afghanistan Outnumber Taliban 12-1
“McChrystal’s defenders say the U.S. has learned from Soviets’ mistakes.”
THEY NEVER LEARN FROM SOMEONE ELSE’S MISTAKES. They like to learn the hard way! Universal law that applies to all invaders anywhere in the world. Otherwise who in their right mind would ignore the history of Afghanistan.
What would make the Americans succeed where many before them failed? Jingoism about God’s Own Country wont even win over a hemlet!
100%
The lust for power is over whelming for the pompous USA.
By Zafar Hilaly: After they’re gone…
It sits on your back forcing, nay, nearly choking you, and then reassures you that she feels very sorry for you and wishes to ease your life by all possible means–except by getting off your back. That, many here feel, is how America treats some nations.
Most Pakistanis, I daresay, believed that the Americans had every right to come to Afghanistan to target those who killed 2,800 Americans in New York on 9/11. And as the Taliban harboured Al Qaeda and refused to give them up, they too became legitimate targets. However, having dismantled and dispersed Al Qaeda fairly quickly and chased the Taliban back to their homes and mountain redoubts, America had no cause to stay, or at best not beyond an additional year or two.
Staying longer robbed America’s action of moral legitimacy, made its motives questionable and tainted its actions with hypocrisy. Sending 15,000 or 40,000 troops now will simply be putting more Americans where they should not be in the first place.
Fareed Zakaria, America’s resident Muslim pundit, who is ever trying to find the middle ground between dissimilar strategies and fighting doctrines, feels that the Biden (counterinsurgency) and McCrystal (counterterrorism) strategies can both be accommodated with only a slight increase in the number of American forces. He feels that a further increase of 15,000 American troops would suffice, and that the 40,000 General McCrystal asked for is unnecessary. What he is saying is not that half a loaf is better than no bread, but that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf. In the cockroach world of compromise that may make sense to some, but not to many others.
The American presence in Afghanistan is not merely self-defeating but destructive of America’s own goals. Such is the xenophobia of the Afghans and so destructive to Afghanistan’s national culture and national impulses is the American presence that even beneficial programmes are failing. By their association with the Americans, a foreign occupying force, Afghans who cooperate with them are being alienated from their own society. Not only has the American presence energised the Taliban but even in Pakistan, where xenophobia as a phenomena hardly existed, the unpopularity of the Zardari government, because it is viewed as subservient to America, has reached alarming dimensions.
All of which would suggest, except to a blind man, that when the Americans do leave they will do so, if not chastened, then also not victorious. And the reason will not be the number of troops they deploy, or their failure to eradicate the drug trade, or warlordism, or nation-building, or because they were unable to conjure up an Afghan Army to fight on their behalf. America will have failed for no other reason than its inability to forge among the different Afghan stakeholders a power-sharing agreement and, most importantly, for not allowing that to happen the Afghan way.
But notwithstanding how America overcomes its present vicissitudes in Afghanistan, and assuming that the Americans will leave Afghanistan, as they are leaving Iraq, much the worse off after their disastrous intervention, what of Pakistan?
Initially, one imagines that with the departure of the Americans without an acceptable government in place to all sides, the civil war in Afghanistan will resume. The Taliban will want to rule from Kabul. They will be pitted against the Tajiks. From Pakistan’s badlands will flow a stream of Pakhtun fighters to aid their Taliban brethren. To expect Pakistan to control the flow of these fighters is impossible. The regional powers, much like in the 90s, will take sides. India, Iran, the Central Asian republics and America will line up with the Tajiks of the Northern Alliance, as they did earlier. The Tajiks are now a formidable force, well armed, fully regimented and experienced in warfare. Meanwhile, in case elements of Al Qaeda resurfaced, American bombers and Special Forces would likely follow in pursuit.
If such a scenario were to be allowed to play itself out over time, a number of dangerous possibilities arise. With a “jihad” in full swing next door, Pakistan will never stabilise. The battle will overlap formal borders, and it is not inconceivable that as fighting progresses attacks may target regional capitals. In the past Tajik terrorists have targeted Islamabad in response to Pakistan’s support of the Taliban. Further terrorist attacks against India, for example, whether or not committed from Pakistani soil, are not likely to go without a military response, which, in turn, will make retaliation inevitable.
Already taking advantage of the turmoil in the area, India is fanning the flames of revolt in Balochistan. And Iran has made no secret of its belief that America and extremist Sunni (read Wahhabis) elements are behind Jundollah.
It would appear, therefore, that an American presence, as much as a precipitate American departure, will be equally damaging to the prospects of forging peace in the region. But that is being intellectually dishonest. We know for a fact that the American occupation is bad for the Afghans while we are at best surmising that an American departure may also have the same impact. And that need not happen.
There is a road which has not been travelled on that may make all the difference. And that is a formal declaration by the regional states and other international stakeholders of not interfering in Afghanistan or tolerating such interference and the creation of an authority to monitor the agreement.
Left to themselves the Afghan tribes and ethnic groups have shown in the past an enviable ability to see the writing on the wall and come to terms with reality. Their jirgas and other forms of parleys have been reasonably effective in keeping Afghanistan at peace while their sharp nose for lucre derived from peace and pipelines could prove an added incentive.
Be that as it may, if the past three decades have demonstrated anything, it is that Afghan solutions to Afghan problems must be the way forward. Foreign models and the democracy that outsiders preach is just so much cant. We need, as a sensitive author recently wrote, to deal with the real Afghanistan, not the one behind the illusion.
Behind all the brave talk about an American departure from Afghanistan there is in the minds of some Pakistanis the fear that once the Americans and their awesome weaponry are gone Pakistan will find itself at the mercy of the extremists. And initially, seeing the flailing efforts of the Army at taking on the extremists, many of us were equally timorous.
However, all that has now changed. With the country united behind the policy of eradicating the extremists and the progress being made on the battlefield, courage has returned. It has been replaced with a determination and a desire to do the job on our own. In fact, if you look around there are many who would be willing to bell the cat themselves.
Geo News: Seven security men die in Khyber blast
KHYBER AGENCY: At least seven security men embraced martyrdom in an explosion of a powerful bomb which went off in Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency, Geo news reported on Saturday.
According to sources, the security forces kicked off rescue efforts shortly after the explosion was reported, meanwhile, some wounded security personnel are being shifted to hospital for medical attainment, sources added.
No claim of responsibility has come to surface as yet, sources added.
ARY: Clinton Faces Pakistani Anger At Drone Attacks
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came face-to-face Friday with Pakistani anger over US aerial drone attacks in tribal areas along the Afghan border, a strategy that US officials say has succeeded in killing key terrorist leaders.
In a series of public appearances on the final day of a three-day visit marked by blunt talk, Clinton refused to discuss the subject, which involves highly classified CIA operations. She would say only that ‘there is a war going on,’ and the Obama administration is committed to helping Pakistan defeat the insurgents and terrorists who threaten the stability of a nuclear-armed nation.
Clinton said she could not comment on ‘any particular tactic or technology’ used in the war against extremist groups in the area.
The use of Predator drone aircraft, armed with guided missiles, is credited by US officials with eliminating a growing number of senior terrorist group leaders this year who had used the tribal lands of Pakistan as a haven beyond the reach of US ground forces in Afghanistan.
During an interview broadcast live in Pakistan with several prominent female TV anchors, before a predominantly female audience of several hundred, one member of the audience said the Predator attacks amount to ‘executions without trial’ for those killed.
Another asked Clinton how she would define terrorism.
‘Is it the killing of people in drone attacks?’ she asked. That woman then asked if Clinton considers drone attacks and bombings like the one that killed more than 100 civilians in the city of Peshawar earlier this week to both be acts of terrorism.
‘No, I do not,’ Clinton replied.
Earlier, in a give-and-take with about a dozen residents of the tribal region, one man alluded obliquely to the drone attacks, saying he had heard that in the United States, aircraft are not allowed to take off after 11 pm, to avoid irritating the population.
‘That is the sort of peace we want for our people,’ he said through an interpreter.
The same man told Clinton that the Obama administration should rely more on wisdom and less on firepower to achieve its aims in Pakistan.
‘Your presence in the region is not good for peace,’ he said, referring to the US military, ‘because it gives rise to frustration and irritation among the people of this region.’
At another point he told Clinton, Please forgive me, but I would like to say we have been fighting your war.
A similar point was made by Sana Bucha of a private TV during the live broadcast interview.
It is not our war, she told Clinton. It is your war. She drew a burst of applause when she added, You had one 9/11. We are having daily 9/11s in Pakistan.
Capturing a feeling that Clinton heard expressed numerous times during her visit, one woman in the audience said, The whole world thinks we are terrorists.
The woman said she was from the South Waziristan area where the Pakistani army is engaged in pitched battles with Taliban and affiliated extremist elements – and where US drones have struck with deadly effect many times.
Clintons main message on Friday was that the US wants to be a partner with Pakistan, not just on the military front but also on trade, education, energy and other sectors. She stressed, however, that Pakistan needs to do its part in demonstrating a real commitment to democracy.
Clinton also was asked about her remark on Thursday that she found it hard to believe that Pakistani officials don’t know where leaders of terrorist groups are hiding in Pakistan.
On Friday she took a bit of the edge off that comment, saying, I don’t know if anyone knows, but we in the United States would very much like to see the end of the al-Qaeda leadership, and our best information is that they are somewhere in Pakistan.
In an interview broadcast Friday on ABCs Good Morning America, Clinton was asked about the bluntness of her remarks.
‘Trust is a two-way street. There is trust deficit,’ she said.
‘It will not be sufficient to achieve the level of security that Pakistanis deserve if we don’t go after those who are still threatening not only Pakistan, but Afghanistan, and the rest of the world. And we wanted to put that on the table. And I think it was important that we did.’
Asked if she thought Pakistan was harboring terrorists, Clinton replied, ‘I don’t think they are. … But I think it would be a missed opportunity and a lack of recognition of the full extent of the threat, if they did not realize that any safe haven anywhere for terrorists threatens them, threatens us, and has to be addressed.’
Later Clinton was to fly to Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf for a meeting Saturday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Afghanistan: Groundhog day
The dimensions of the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan are becoming bigger and more daunting by the day. Once-staunch defenders of the “good war” are starting to break ranks. Kim Howells, a former Foreign Office minister with responsibility for Afghanistan and current chairman of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, questions in our newspaper today the central tenet of the government’s case for fighting in Afghanistan: that it is the frontline of a war that would otherwise be conducted on British streets. Mr Howells said counter-terrorism would be better served by bringing the majority of servicemen home. Better, he argues, to concentrate on protecting our borders and gathering intelligence at home and abroad.
He is saying publicly what many in government must be thinking privately: that troops are dying needlessly in a war that is unwinnable, with a strategy that is unworkable, and that we should be thinking of the alternative now. We do not agree with everything Mr Howells says, but at least he is saying it, which puts him in a class above most other politicians. Mr Howells may have cast the first stone, but the current consensus is wearing so thin that it would not take much to shatter.
Afghanistan is a political failure, a fact over which the international community continue to be in denial. If they were not, neither America nor Britain would be toying with the notion that they can pressure Mr Karzai into forming a clean government. Flanked by two vice-presidents, including a notorious warlord that Mr Karzai accepted as a running mate, Mr Karzai vowed yesterday to tackle corruption. This was rather like a cat promising abstinence on the subject of mice. The election has been more than just messy – Barack Obama’s word. It has been oxymoronic. A process run by the UN has made a nonsense of the very standard the UN exists to uphold. The result has highlighted just how elusive the dream of a working democratic state is. It begs a serious question: what does territory cleared, even temporarily, of the Taliban look like? The families of the soldiers fighting for this territory are entitled to an answer. So are the Afghans, who have suffered disportionately more. They are far from getting one.
Mr Obama is now left clinging to one tarnished man – not an institution or national assembly of tribal chiefs – to deliver the central plank of his fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida. And while he clings to him, any hope of recentring aid efforts on local communities or on reforming parliament will be subverted just as the election was. Wait for the next announcement on troop levels. It will be groundhog day – all over again.
The Nation:How the US Funds the Taliban
By Aram Roston
Despite U.S. pressures, Pakistan continues to follow its own road
The Pakistani government has some advice the Obama administration may not want to hear as it contemplates sending additional U.S. troops to neighboring Afghanistan: Negotiate with Taliban leaders and restrain India.
Pakistan embraces U.S. efforts to stabilize the region and worries that a hasty U.S. withdrawal would create chaos, but Pakistani officials worry that thousands of additional American soldiers and Marines would send Taliban forces retreating into Pakistan, where they’re not welcome.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s office said Friday that he told visiting CIA Director Leon Panetta of “Pakistan’s concerns relating to the possible surge of the U.S. and ISAF forces in Afghanistan which may entail negative implications for the situation in Baluchistan,” the Pakistani province that borders Afghanistan to the south.
The Pakistanis’ advice is almost diametrically opposed to the strategy outlined by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan: Don’t send additional forces to protect Afghan cities, but send them to outposts along the Pakistani border — where McChrystal has withdrawn troops.
It’s just one example of how Pakistan, a critical U.S. ally in the struggle against Islamist extremists and a major recipient of American military aid, continues to deal differently with the violence that threatens not only the U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but also impoverished, nuclear-armed Pakistan.
The two countries’ divergent views of the threat posed by Islamist extremists, and the Obama administration’s efforts to press Pakistan to move against groups that menace Afghanistan have produced strains between the two countries and between Pakistan’s civilian government and its powerful military and Inter Services Intelligence agency — and a growing drumbeat of Pakistani allegations about alleged nefarious CIA activities in Pakistan.
“The Pakistanis say some things in public — often for reasons related to internal politics, it seems — that they don’t focus on in private,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are classified. “That’s not to say that we see eye-to-eye on everything behind closed doors, but both sides realize that — whatever the disagreements of the moment might be — the long-term partnership is essential. After all, Pakistani contributions to counterterrorism since 9/11 have been decisive, and our government recognizes that.”
Instead of escalating the war in Afghanistan, however, top Pakistani officials are pressing the administration to try to negotiate a political settlement with top Taliban commanders that would allow the U.S. to exit Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials argue that that such a negotiating strategy can’t work unless the rebel leadership is involved, right up to Jalaluddin Haqqani, the head of the most dangerous insurgent faction, and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed founder of the Afghan Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s ally and host.
Because Pakistan is a longtime patron of the Taliban and of the Haqqani network, Pakistani officials think they could broker a deal to reduce Afghan President Hamid Karzai to a figurehead leader and divide power between the Pashtun Taliban and Afghanistan’s Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities.
U.S. and some Pakistani officials, however, are skeptical, arguing that the Taliban have little incentive to negotiate when their strength and sway in Afghanistan is growing and public and international support for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan is waning.
Najmuddin Shaikh, formerly the top bureaucrat in the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, said the Taliban could be brought to the negotiating table if they saw a greater American military commitment and more investments in the Afghan countryside.
“It’s a little premature for talks (with the Taliban),” Shaikh said. “There has to be a change in the ground situation, things happening in the next six to eight months that shows the ‘ink spots’ strategy (McChrystal’s idea of protecting Afghan population centers) is taking hold, that some foot soldiers are being weaned away, then talks become possible.”
Nevertheless, behind the scenes talks with mid-level Taliban officials already have begun, and Pakistani officials think they could rapidly accelerate now that Karzai has begun his second term.
“We’ve already been talking to them (the Taliban),” said a senior Pakistani official in Islamabad, who couldn’t be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. “If the U.S. helps the process, some arrangements can be worked out for political reconciliation. I’m not for a moment suggesting that it’s an easy task, but otherwise you will be fighting these people for the next hundred years.”
The United States and other NATO forces also favor talking to some Taliban, but they focus on “non-ideological” insurgents who can be peeled away, partly through bribery. Retired British general Graeme Lamb was appointed for this task in August, but so far the effort has produced little success.
“The Americans have wasted a lot of time over this ‘moderate Taliban’ idea. It is never going to pan out. It misunderstands the Taliban phenomenon,” said Simbal Khan, an analyst at Institute of Strategic Studies, a policy institute funded by the Pakistani government. “If you try to break off elements with cash, they’ll take your money and still fight you.”
The Pakistani military and ISI still consider archrival India, not militant Islam, the main threat, and unlike U.S. officials, Pakistani officials distinguish between the Taliban and other militant groups whose target is Afghanistan and groups that are seeking to impose their extreme brand of Islam on Pakistan.
Pakistan has for eight years declined to mount any serious pursuit of bin Laden and the other top al Qaida leaders who sought shelter in Pakistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion drove them out of Afghanistan.
Pakistan also has quietly tolerated the presence of Mullah Omar, who U.S. officials said is based near the Baluchistan city of Quetta and shuttling between there and Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and a key financial and logistics center for Islamic militants. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because intelligence on terrorist groups is classified. Officially, Pakistan denies that bin Laden and Omar are in the country.
Pakistan’s laissez-faire attitude toward al Qaida, Omar and Afghan militants such as Haqqani doesn’t appear likely to change in the face of stepped-up American pressure.
U.S. national security adviser James Jones last week delivered a message to Gilani and other Pakistani officials from President Barack Obama, who urged Pakistan to take action against Afghan militant groups operating from Pakistani soil.
The Pakistanis politely told Jones that Pakistan is doing all it can, and that it must concentrate on groups that are attacking Pakistan, rather than those that are a threat in Afghanistan. Gilani’s office said he told Jones that Pakistan’s “forces were over-stretched because of continuous tension on the eastern border” with India.
Gilani’s office said Friday that, “The new Afghan policy of the U.S. government should not disturb the regional balance in South Asia.”
Pakistani officials say that relations with India remain dangerously strained, requiring military resources on Pakistan’s eastern border. Pakistan is also concerned about India’s growing influence in Afghanistan, which Islamabad fears is part of a move to encircle Pakistan.
With Pakistani forces already fighting the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, the country fears opening too many battlefronts and furiously rejects Washington’s constant mantra of “do more.”
U.S. officials say the Pakistani military is obsessed with the Indian border, where they say there’s no active threat, and reluctant to address the threats that are a product of Pakistan’s refusal to quash the insurgency on Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan.
“When we get into the position of stabilizing, then we can help the other side (the U.S.),” said a senior Pakistani military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “There are limits of our power. You cannot be expected to use your force against all (militant) groups because then your power will be diluted. That’s exactly what’s happening on the other side (to the U.S. in Afghanistan), they’re all over the place and virtually in control of nothing.”
Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan
Zafar Hilaly: Driving the TTP out
For all their brave talk of fighting, dying and teaching the army a lesson, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in South Waziristan did what they always do when confronted by a larger force: they fled. A number, of course, stayed back, possibly as a rearguard to slow the army’s advance. That would make sense, as from their well-positioned locations they could extract a heavy toll from the army. As it happened, the death toll was relatively light. In all, 550 insurgents, less than five per cent of the estimated numbers of the TTP force, were killed at the cost to the army of 100 brave soldiers and officers.
The TTP in South Waziristan had behaved much in the same way as in Swat. In fact, they acted as insurgents do all over the world when confronted by a regular army, which is to avoid set-piece battles so that they may live to fight another day. That is not to say that the operation was not a success. In fact, a great deal was achieved by the operation, and at a far lower cost in lives than expected.
By driving the TTP out of their strongholds in South Waziristan the army deprived them of the use of a safe haven, training facilities, bomb-making laboratories, etc. They also forced the retreating TTP to abandon a sizeable amount of weaponry and explosives, all of which will have to be replenished at considerable cost and much travail.
Insurgencies are wars of attrition and also a test of stamina and morale. The loss of strategic territory and weaponry weakens the insurgents, lowers morale and correspondingly inflates the will, effectiveness and resolve of the army and the nation. While the army has emerged the victor in South Waziristan, to maintain its ascendancy it will have to pursue and engage the enemy wherever they retreat. The TTP must know that if they are not going anywhere, nor is the army; and that, until such time as they relent, surrender or are defeated, neither will the army.
What bodes well for the future is the acceptance by the public of the legitimacy of operation Rah-e-Nijat. Public “acceptance” and “legitimacy” are key elements in determining the eventual success or failure of anti-insurgency strategies, just as they were in the dozen or so similar operations elsewhere in the world. William Polk’s study of insurgencies further reveals that no matter how much alien occupiers wish to improve the condition of the local populace, when pitted against native insurgents the sympathy of the local population will invariably be with the latter. It is mostly for this reason that America cannot win in Afghanistan and why we can, even though we may not.
Of course, these are as yet early days of the civil war that is fast enveloping Pakistan. The TTP leadership is alive and yelling revenge. They have responded with a spate of bombings in Peshawar; although when they realised that the public reaction was hostile their spokesman chose to blame the bombings on the Americans.
Public anger against the Taliban is often accompanied by ire against the authorities for failing to protect the population. And because it is always difficult to acknowledge our own failings the public places the blame on foreign conspiracies. Actually, the public seem not as much lost as bewildered. They have no idea what to believe, let alone who. They cannot comprehend what is happening to their world and resent the fact that they cannot mend it.
Unless, therefore, the suicide bombings are thwarted more effectively, current support for the government will dissipate, giving way not only to anger but worse: hopelessness and a feeling that the government is helpless. And it is precisely when the public’s pity at their own fate turns to contempt for the government that the insurgents step forward and offer themselves as alternative rulers, promising peace and an end to the slaughter, in return for the loyalty of the populace.
We saw this earlier in Swat when the police ran away, local officials were killed and the TTP stepped in to take on the job of maintaining law and order and dispensing justice. We also witnessed the absurd spectacle of TV channels broadcasting the speech of Sufi Mohammed proclaiming a new order that ironically would have made TV channels and Parliament redundant.
Although it was sobering to be confronted with what the future would look like if the TTP prevailed, more troubling was the fact that the whole nation viewed the spectacle being enacted in Swat so passively. Not a single man took to the streets against the brutalities of the TTP. And Parliament actually called for negotiations with the TTP, undoubtedly out of a sense of fear and foreboding, rather than patience and wisdom. Sadly, terror and force, the means that wins the easiest victory over reason, was being allowed to prevail.
The feeble and flaccid public response to the happenings in Swat was a revelation. It gave the enemy hope and showed how close we, as a society, are to the abyss. And were it not for the media’s incessant screening of the young woman squealing while being whipped, would anyone have bothered or the army worked up the resolve to act? It is said that the army can only act with the support of the people. One discerned no such support among the people of Dacca in 1971. Luckily for the Jews, Moses did not conduct a poll before he set off. The fact is that when great changes occur in a nation’s history, when great principles are involved, the majority are often wrong. Remedies often lie not in the ceaseless deliberations of many but the actions of a few.
As a result of the current vacuum in leadership, the clear direction which the nation so sorely requires is missing. The sarkar is rudderless. Mr Zardari feels wronged because people are laying the blame for the confusion that prevails at his doorstep. Yes, they are, but only because he not only errs, he blunders. Mr Zardari has responded by accusing people of jumping the gun and writing his political obituary. Actually, not only are they jumping the gun, they have hurdled the cannon; and what is being written now is not his political obituary but an epitaph which normally follows, and not precedes, an obituary. In other words, they are writing what they sense he has become—history. What, then, does the future hold? Who knows? Except, that it does seem dark and, at times, irretrievably so.
But if Mr Zardari, though more so his American mentors, display a mite of common sense and read the writing on the wall and depart—in the case of Mr Zardari, from office, and in the case of the Americans from Afghanistan—perhaps the darkness we are in will not stretch beyond the first light of day. Were the Americans to depart from Afghanistan the song that Al Qaeda, the Lashkars and the TTP sing will have little resonance. The Al Qaeda variety, in particular the Arab lot, who have had a hand in the murder of as many as 800 tribal maliks of FATA, can expect a cruel end when the tide turns, as it will. The Laskars, Jaishes and the TTP are more the concern of the establishment. They created them and now should snuff them out.
All this could happen, given time and proper leadership in Pakistan; and less paranoia and more imagination on the part of America. It is a shame, therefore, that the government is urging the Americans not to leave Afghanistan. How can those who, when they came should never have stayed on, be urged to continue a while longer? And after eight years, is Pakistan still not ready to cope on its own with the challenges it faces? Why should our leaders who act as if they are not afraid of God be scared of the adversary? Told that all Europe had fallen to the Nazis and asked how England expected to defend itself, an English cartoonist replied, “Very well, then alone.” Are we up to it?