Published: January 20, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s ambitious civilian push in Pakistan and Afghanistan will keep thousands of Americans in those countries for years — rebuilding Afghan agriculture, rooting out corruption and using the local media to counter anti-American sentiment.

The steps, laid out in a 30-page policy paper to be released Thursday by the State Department, are the most detailed blueprint yet for the civilian part of the administration’s strategy in the region.

But the report — much like President Obama’s initial proposal for increased numbers of troops in Afghanistan — leaves important questions unanswered, including whether Congress will approve the financing to support such a high level of engagement over the long term, and what role the United States will play in Afghan efforts to draw people away from the Taliban.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is preparing to announce a package of incentives to lure Taliban supporters back into Afghan society. But American officials are skeptical of the Afghan government’s talk of trying to reconcile with the Taliban’s leaders, especially Mullah Muhammad Omar.

The formal introduction of a civilian strategy reflects the State Department’s frustration that this side of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been largely eclipsed by the Pentagon’s enlarged military operation.

“Everyone pays lip service to the fact that the civilian strategy is important, but then no one pays attention to it,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who is scheduled to testify on Thursday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In the report, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “Our civilian engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan will endure long after our combat troops come home.”

The United States has already tripled the number of civilians in Afghanistan, from 320 early last year to nearly 1,000 now. It plans to add 200 to 300 this year, putting many of those people outside Kabul, the capital, in agricultural projects or in government ministries, where they will serve as advisers.

Persuading farmers to turn away from poppy cultivation has emerged as the top American civilian priority in Afghanistan. The administration wants to reconstitute an agricultural credit bank in Kabul that could make loans to farmers to encourage them to plant fruit, nuts and other alternatives to poppies.

Setting up an agricultural bank would require about $500 million, administration officials said, with $50 million likely to come from the United States and $450 million from other countries.

There are nearly 100 American agricultural experts in Afghanistan, mostly in the south and east. They are helping to build new irrigation systems, picking up on work that Americans performed there in the 1960s.

Still, the big challenges in Afghanistan this year are more legal and political. The United States and Britain are helping the Afghan government set up a major-crimes task force in the Interior Ministry, which is intended to be the government’s main agency to crack down on corruption.

The administration also plans to combat anti-American messages carried by Taliban-controlled radio stations. It is hiring David Ensor, a former correspondent for CNN and ABC, to devise what it calls a communications and counterpropaganda campaign. The goal is to substantially reduce “enemy propaganda” by July 2011, when American troops are set to begin withdrawing.

Congress has approved $400 million to pay for the deployment of additional civilians in Afghanistan. But the American ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired Army lieutenant general, is asking for more, according to officials. General Eikenberry’s frustration with budgetary constraints spilled into the open last fall, when cables he sent to the State Department were leaked.

The sketchiest part of the report concerns the reintegration of Taliban followers into Afghan society. This Afghan-led effort will cost $100 million a year over several years, the report says, with the money likely to come from the United States, Britain, Japan and other countries.

But the State Department must obtain approval from the Treasury Department, because the Taliban are classified as a terrorist organization, meaning it cannot be linked to American financial support. Mr. Karzai is still weighing whether to ask the United Nations to remove Mullah Omar’s name from a blacklist. Mr. Holbrooke said that the United States opposed that idea.

Mr. Holbrooke was speaking on the way home from a trip to the region. As the administration begins carrying out its policy, he is emerging as the salesman for the strategy, traveling to Europe and the Middle East to drum up support from NATO allies and Persian Gulf states.

Mr. Holbrooke said he was now most concerned about Pakistan, which he thinks is not getting adequate international support. He said he planned to tell lawmakers that he hoped Congress would set aside even more money, beyond the current $7.5 billion in nonmilitary assistance.

“The Europeans are not giving enough aid to Pakistan,” he said.

Published: January 20, 2010

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For the first time in months, President Asif Ali Zardari is doing what presidents normally do — giving rousing speeches, traveling around the country and asserting himself publicly as the country’s chief official.

Skip to next paragraph This is unusual behavior for a leader who rarely left the presidential palace, except to travel abroad, and hunkered down in silence under a barrage of media criticism for months last year, leading many to conclude that he was losing his grip on power. “The doomsday scenario has not come to pass,” said Cyril Almeida, a columnist for Dawn, an English-language daily newspaper.

It now seems more likely that Mr. Zardari will survive in power. But he remains a weak, unpopular leader, leaving the larger question for Pakistan unchanged: When will its elected leaders be capable of solving the vast assortment of crushing economic, security and social problems facing the country?

It is an urgent question, too, for the Obama administration, which is depending on cooperation from Pakistan, its prickly ally, to help carry out its new war strategy for neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan’s western mountains are a sanctuary for militants, and the administration has been pressing Pakistan to do more to flush them out. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will visit Pakistan on Thursday for that reason.

While Mr. Zardari has been receptive to American overtures, championing the war against militants far earlier than any of his political opponents, his weakness has hobbled his ability to effectively defend the American policies he supports, like last year’s large American aid package.

As a result, American officials continue to rely heavily on their relationship with the country’s powerful military, a tradition that goes back decades, but that also serves to undermine the Obama administration’s goal of strengthening democracy here.

Mr. Zardari started his campaign on Dec. 27 in the province of Sindh. He then traveled to Baluchistan, a western province, and this week he has been in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province. He will travel next to Peshawar, the beleaguered capital of Pakistan’s war-torn North-West Frontier Province, his spokesman said.

Newspapers took notice. Daily Times, an English-language daily newspaper, went so far as to say in an editorial on Saturday: “All the hopes of the Zardari bashers have crashed to the ground.”

But while Mr. Zardari may have reclaimed some political space, rallying the grass roots of his party, and seizing headlines that even one month ago had belonged to voices hostile to him, many analysts see his belated outreach as a last-ditch attempt to fend off his enemies and salvage his presidency.

“He’s come to the conclusion that if judiciary or the military want to knock him out, they can,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, an analyst in Lahore. “But he wants to fight back. That has given him a new lease on life, but his basic problem remains the same.”

The most serious of those vulnerabilities has always been his strained relationship with Pakistan’s military, a powerful institution whose leaders have ruled the country for about half of Pakistan’s 62-year history. When he took office in September 2008, Mr. Zardari struck a conciliatory tone with India, the military’s nemesis. He angered the military again when he indicated that intelligence should be under civilian control.

He has since backed off those positions. This month he offered remarks praising the army. He removed another irritant in December, giving civilian control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to his prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, a pliable leader more palatable to the military. But another potential for confrontation looms this year, when the army chief’s term expires, as the power to appoint a new one is Mr. Zardari’s.

Perhaps the most immediate threat to Mr. Zardari, analysts said, comes from Pakistan’s top judge, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who gained national popularity by taking up the causes of human rights and fighting corruption.

In December, his court threw out an amnesty that shielded hundreds of powerful Pakistanis from corruption prosecutions, including Mr. Zardari and a number of his allies, opening the door for corruption cases against them. Mr. Zardari’s supporters argue that as president he retains immunity under the Constitution.

Chief Justice Chaudhry’s critics, including a prominent human rights activist, say he has overstepped his mandate and is using his popularity to meddle in politics, a charge he denies. Another clash is likely to come soon over the appointment of Supreme Court judges, analysts said.

“You have the judiciary emerging as a real force with populist ambitions,” said Najam Sethi, editor in chief of The Friday Times. “That is creating a huge gridlock.”

He added, “A clash between Zardari and the judiciary is very likely now.”

One possible effect is that Mr. Zardari will simply shrink to insignificance by giving up the expanded powers he inherited from former President Pervez Musharraf, something he promised to do during his political campaign.

Those powers have proved to be more a liability than an asset, becoming a lightning rod for Mr. Zardari’s opponents, including former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who have demanded that the president relinquish them and restore Pakistan’s parliamentary system.

So far, Mr. Sharif has refused to join the chorus of voices calling for Mr. Zardari’s resignation. But his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab Province, has taken a harder line. The Sharifs were conspicuously absent during Mr. Zardari’s visit to Punjab. In recent weeks, all the provincial assemblies, except Punjab’s, issued resolutions supporting Mr. Zardari.

Unlike in other times in Pakistan’s politics, it seems unlikely, at least for now, that Mr. Zardari’s political opponents will be his undoing. In a nation with a long history of military coups, even his most ardent critics want to see civilian governance survive.

Strangely, Mr. Zardari’s weakness may serve him in the end. The army seems to have less appetite to re-enter politics directly, having seen its reputation badly tarnished during Mr. Musharraf’s years of military rule. A weak civilian leader, on the other hand, presents no threat to its power.

Salman Masood contributed reporting.

In Iraq, 2009 was the year of relatively smooth transitions. Despite catastrophic attacks in August, October and December, and a continuing level of violence that keeps it a troubled place by normal standards, the year went reasonably well in statistical terms. Violence did not increase, even as United States forces left the cities and generally reduced their role.

In Pakistan, 2009 was the year of the offensives. The country was still very turbulent, but major government military initiatives in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan reflected a new determination against the Pakistani Taliban. Unfortunately, the Taliban responded in its own brutal way with an intensification of suicide attacks against civilians, killing hundreds.

But momentum may be shifting to the government’s side — helped by successful American drone attacks against top Taliban and Qaeda leaders. That said, in terms of the basic strength of its economy and society, Pakistan is far from out of the woods.

In Afghanistan, 2009 was the year of decisions — by President Obama, of course, by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and by the Afghan people as they re-elected Hamid Karzai as president. Afghanistan had a bloody year, with more than 300 Americans and some 500 international troops, as well as more than 1,000 Afghan security personnel, losing their lives.

However, as General McChrystal noted in recent Congressional testimony following President Obama’s decision to raise troop levels in Afghanistan, our operations have begun to change the momentum in parts of the country — though this momentum is bound to be halting, as last week’s horrific suicide bombing at a United States base made painfully clear. In the year ahead, the hope is that this fragile progress will continue, and that President Karzai will justify American support by accelerating his efforts to reform the Afghan police force and to root out corruption.

Fissures within the military could tear not just the army but the entire country apart. It’s coming sooner than you think.

BY SETH CROPSEY

As another 30,000 U.S. troops get set to deploy to war, most everyone in the White House and the Pentagon knows that the success of their mission won’t only be determined in Afghanistan. The most important battle is in fact next door in Pakistan, a country that, even more than Afghanistan, risks not just failure but utter collapse. The nuclear neighbor has become a haven for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, and its powerful military has been reluctant to take them on. Even when it has, its clumsy, heavy-handed tactics have displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians. All the while, the elected government of President Asif Ali Zardari has only grown weaker.

But here’s the really bad news. Pakistan’s military — the lynchpin keeping the chaotic whole together — isn’t getting stronger. It’s threatening to fracture from within. And today’s fractures may well turn into tomorrow’s chaos.

Back in the mid-19th century, the British set out to create a secular, professional Indian army that would neutralize warring ethnic groups and tribes. Pakistan was part of India then, and its army remained secular after the partition in 1947. Officer clubs served liquor. Religion and ethnicity were not proper subjects of discussion. Muslim society was something that existed outside the military. Pakistan’s generals looked to standardized testing and merit-based promotion, drawing on modernity, not Islam, as a model for their professional army.

When Gen. Muhammed Zia ul-Haq overthrew Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977, he had other ideas. Zia assumed the presidency in 1978 while still chief of staff of the Army — a position from which he encouraged greater religiosity in Pakistan’s armed forces as part of his broader Islamization of the state. Suddenly, military leaders were keeping tabs on which sects of Islam their soldiers belonged to. Members of radical Deoband and Wahhabi sects infused the military education system. Drinking at military clubs was forbidden, with a predictably chilling effect on camaraderie. Prayers once thought optional were strongly encouraged.

Some of this was merely a product of the times; Zia’s opposition to the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, for instance, was largely predicated on the religious fervor of the Afghan resistance. But Zia’s Islamizing policies within the Army were more deliberate. Whether motivated by piety or political calculation, he reopened the fissures within the contemporary Pakistani military that British colonial policy had never wholly succeeded in papering over. Indeed, when Zia died in a 1988 plane crash, the Islamization of the military and its most powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), continued. By the time Pervez Musharraf tried to return the military to its more secular roots as Army chief of staff, the trend was already too strong to reverse

In 1999, Musharraf removed from power Nawaz Sharif, who had been re-elected to a second term as prime minister. His coup reinforced Pakistan’s history as a military-run state, and 10 years later, the risk of a coup still looms. Meanwhile, the wave of officers who were recruited during Zia’s Islamizing years is moving into the leadership ranks. The youngest of them are now field-grade officers. Signs are emerging that this is far from a unified military, with widening splits between secular and religious officers as well as problems among different Islamic sects. With official encouragement, for example, some Sunni officers have decided to grow out their beards, while Shiite officers are markedly absent from Sunni-led prayers.

In Pakistan, all this means more than just a troubled fighting force. The Army is rightly seen as the country’s strongest institution — the glue that holds the state together. Though not officially in power, the military has a strong hold over the civilian government and retains de facto veto power over much that gets done. If infighting weakens or shatters the military’s cohesion, the implications for the future of the state itself are dire.

First, such events would be great news to Islamists looking to get their hands on nuclear weapons. Pakistan’s nukes are even more likely to see action if a military officer seized power and invaded Indian-held Kashmir, the territory that both Islamabad and New Delhi claim as their own. Such aggression might lead to a nuclear exchange with India, the country’s long-time rival and fellow nuclear state. The fallout, both literal and political, would be felt deep into Central Asia; indeed much of the region would be destabilized. India’s economic progress would be set back significantly, perhaps by decades, and the nuclear threshold will have been crossed.

A less apocalyptic (though still very bad) outcome would be for Pakistan’s paranoia about India to reach fever pitch. Islamabad has long suspected that the rise of the Northern Alliance, the mostly Tajik and Uzbek coalition that helped eject the Taliban from Kabul, or another anti-Islamabad political group in Afghanistan could be a boost to New Delhi. (India is playing a nasty game of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ the Pakistani leadership reckons.) Pakistan is already backing a host of violent groups in Afghanistan, and further meddling could destabilize the surrounding Central Asian states.

Or, there is the prospect of ethnic, sectarian, and geographic implosion. Pakistan’s sense of nationhood is tenuous at best. In the military, Punjabis predominate in the enlisted ranks while Pashtuns and Mujahirs fill most officer posts. The few Sindhis and Baluchis who are national leaders (such as President Zardari, a Sindhi) are the exception rather than the rule. The North-West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the regions along the border with Afghanistan, resemble the worst drug-infested, gang-ridden parts of American cities — except that the Pakistani authorities have largely abandoned any pretense at control. It’s a nebulous group of ungoverned spaces held together by a center that itself is now fragmenting. When that gives way, it could launch the kind of tribal bloodletting and ethnic or religious strife that strategic forecasts and white papers around the world routinely posit.

Meanwhile, the Army itself is under attack. Punjab-based jihadi groups, often referred to as the Punjabi Taliban, recently claimed responsibility for attacking the Army’s general headquarters in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s equivalent of the Pentagon. Jihadi groups operating out of Punjab have traditionally focused on Kashmir and sectarian issues, so their willingness to target the center of Pakistan’s political gravity — as well as its most important source of military leadership — is unsettling.

In their coldest light, these attacks show the intensification and turning-inward of the struggle for the very character of the Pakistani state. The divisions pulling Pakistan apart at the seams are the same ones reflected in the military — and neither set shows promising signs of resolution.

Pakistanis understand these dangers. When Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister, was assassinated in Rawalpindi two years ago, rioters in Sindh chanted Pakistan na khappay, or “Pakistan no longer exists.” Zardari, her husband, tried to quiet the crowd, telling them Pakistan khappay – “Pakistan does exist.” He was right. For the moment.

For Mubashir Hasan — anti-NRO petitioner and a former Bhutto aide — the struggle for a just Pakistan is not over yet.
As the ruling Pakistan People’s Party scrambles to deal with the fall-out of the Supreme Court verdict annulling and voiding the National Reconciliaiton Ordinance, it can be no consolation to it or to President Zardari that the main petitioner in the case was none other than an old political associate of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and a co-founder of the party back in 1967.
Many in Pakistan are celebrating the verdict as the beginning of the country’s “moral renaissance”. The NRO was widely seen as legitimising corruption because it let off many charged with siphoning national wealth into their own pockets.
The Supreme Court has now reinstituted all those cases, as a result of which President Asif Ali Zardari, the most important of the NRO beneficiaries, now faces an uncertain future.
While Mr. Zardari enjoys constitutional immunity from prosecution, accountability courts have reopened old cases of corruption against several important government functionaries including ministers, many of them from his close circle of confidantes.
There is jubilation that a crackdown has been ordered on the brazen looting and plundering of the exchequer that went unchecked all these years.
But the 88-year-old Mubashir Hasan, whose petition against the NRO became a cause celebre in the country with the verdict setting off political tremors, believes the judgment will bring about no fundamental changes in Pakistan.
Over nearly five decades, Dr. Hasan has waged a long and mostly lonely battle for reordering Pakistan as a just society in which power truly rests with the people.
The Columbia University doctorate-holder dropped a lucrative career as a civil engineer in the 1960s to join forces with Bhutto, when the erstwhile lieutenant of General Ayub Khan started forming the Pakistan People’s Party. He believed that this new political entity could really change the face of the country for the better. Hopes were really high when the PPP took office in December 1971.
“Only later we discovered that we are in the Assembly, we are ministers, we are in the government, but we have no power. The power was in the hands of those who stay permanently, the combine of military-civilian services, and it remains there,” Dr. Hasan said in a recent conversation with The Hindu.
He recalled that one of the top functionaries against whom corruption cases were restored after the verdict, a former bureaucrat and a close confidante of Mr. Zardari, was someone he had suspended when he was the Finance Minister in Bhutto’s cabinet all those years back. The Bhutto government was ousted but the official remained, and faced little difficulty in making his way up the bureaucracy.
This is why, said Dr. Hasan, who was finance minister in Bhutto’s cabinet, he is not as excited about the judgment as the rest of Pakistan, even though he seemed not to mind the attention after years of trying to project his cause from the margins of public life.
When reporters surrounded the tall and lanky Dr. Hasan in the courtroom at breaks during the hearings, he was ready with the right quote and a charming smile; after winning the case, he took congratulatory telephone calls from all corners of the country and abroad, from friends and strangers alike.
“The people of Pakistan are extremely happy, so I’m happy too. But since I know the reality, I do not entertain the hope that this will stop the state of Pakistan from falling apart,” he said.
This, according to him, is not a drastic or dramatic overstatement. What is corruption, he asked, if not the falling apart of the state, where a person in public office tasked with holding the monies of the nation is looting it.
The judgment may delay the process, but Pakistan was destined to perish unless it underwent a radical reconstruction, he predicted, prescribing that the only thing that can stop it “is a genuine democracy in which power is transferred to the people”.
Taking a side-swipe, he said this was true for India and Bangladesh too, except that Pakistan’s condition was far worse.
“The present system of government in Pakistan, before the judgment and after the judgment, is incapable of taking the state forward under the rule of law,” he said.
Dr. Hasan, who parted ways with the PPP when Benazir Bhutto took charge of it after her father’s hanging, is seen as one of the few good men left in Pakistan, reputed both for his personal and political integrity and razor-sharp intellect. In a political culture — pervasive through South Asia — where even a few months in power is seen as enough opportunity to amass wealth, he does not own a house, and still drives an old Volkswagen Beetle.
Now a member of a tiny PPP faction, called PPP-Shaheed Bhutto, led by Ghinwa Bhutto, the widow of Benazir’s brother Murtaza, he is also a big votary of peaceful and friendly relations between his country and India.
Some months ago, Dr. Hasan released a 120-page booklet that he co-authored with 16 other “like-minded” people who call themselves the “Independent Planning Commission of Pakistan”.
The booklet, called “Making Pakistan a Tenable State”, calls for the forging of a new social contract between the State and the citizens for the transfer of power from the former to the latter. The test of a “genuine democracy”, according to its prescription, is simple: it is one in which the power to detain a citizen in custody, to determine whether someone is innocent or guilty of an alleged crime rests with the citizen. In other words, a state in which the police of an area work under the control of a local elected council, as in many western democracies.
There are fears, however, that despite being a staunch democrat, Dr. Hasan may have unwittingly placed whatever democracy Pakistan has at risk through the NRO case. Concerns have been expressed that the verdict has put Pakistan back on the slippery slope to military rule, as it has weakened the political leadership of the country and eroded its authority to rule.
But Dr. Hasan said such fears were akin to trying to prevent a doctor from amputating the legs of a man suffering from gangrene. The judgement gave the patient a “slight chance”, he said, “to reconstruct or perish”.
He reminded those who point a finger at him for becoming part of “a conspiracy” against Mr. Zardari and the present government, that his petition was filed in October 2007, days after the NRO was promulgated as part of a power-sharing arrangement between Benazir Bhutto and the former president, Pervez Musharraf, brokered by the US and Britain..
“I filed this case as the ordinance was promulgated. At that time, Zardari was not even in the picture. It was against the deal reached by the US, Benazir and Musharraf,” he said. “It was an evil deal and it was against the constitution.”
The real national reconciliation in Pakistan was the 1973 Constitution, Dr. Hasan argued. The process for framing it, in which he played a key role, started in the demoralized atmosphere in the aftermath of the 1971 break-up with East Pakistan and it brought together all disaffected sections of the West Pakistan polity.
Fittingly enough, one of the two lawyers who argued his petition against the NRO in the Supreme Court was his old cabinet colleague, Hafiz Peerzada, the law minister in Bhutto’s government and the chief framer of the Constitution. The verdict itself came on December 16, the anniversary of the day East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh.
But for Dr. Hasan, the struggle will continue. Unfailingly, every Thursday, at 11.30 am, this spry old man rallies a small bunch of Shaheed Bhutto activists in Lahore for a demonstration in one part of city or another, asking the rich to pay their taxes, urging an end to the exploitation of workers, or as he said, “awakening the people”. Next Thursday will be no different.

When the Taliban insurrection in Pakistan began in earnest, in 2005, the Pakistan army did not have enough troops in North-West Frontier Province to combat the growing menace. It was not possible for the army and the paramilitary Frontier Corps to conduct operations without considerable reinforcement. In any event, the role of the lightly-armed Frontier Corps has always been more akin to policing than to engaging in conventional military operations. Dealing with inter-tribe skirmishes and cross-border smugglers is very different to combating organised bands of fanatics whose objective is total destruction of the state.

It was therefore decided to redeploy some units and formations from the eastern frontier to the west, but the main problem with the decision, no matter its appropriateness, was that troops facing India along the border and the Line of Control in Kashmir are skilled in conventional warfare tactics but not trained in counter insurgency (COIN). Retraining was essential if there was to be a properly conducted campaign against militants in the west of the country. The process requires much time and energy. (The British, for example, had to design a training programme lasting up to eight months before units were considered effective to fight the terrorist Irish Republican Army. The US belatedly dealt with a similar problem before deploying units to Iraq, having learned the hard way.)

But there is another important factor in Pakistan’s equation of redeploying troops: the attitude of India.

The Indian government and people reacted strongly to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in September 2008, and blamed Pakistan for fostering those who carried them out. Many in India considered that Pakistan actually had some formal and official role in assisting the attackers, and most Indians – spurred by an active media – now firmly believe that Pakistan was involved. In this atmosphere it was tempting for politicians, especially those of ultra-nationalist persuasion, to beat war drums and threaten Pakistan with dire consequences if there were another terrorist outrage – which there is almost certain to be.

Although there was no reinforcement or movement of troops on the Indian side of the border after the Mumbai atrocities, Pakistan could not forget the major deployment, Operation Parakram, that took place in 2002 following a terrorist assault on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. There was no reason to be complacent concerning Indian intentions, given the similarity of the Mumbai and Delhi attacks and the ensuing rhetoric, and Pakistan’s armed forces were required to remain vigilant. There could be no question of lowering guard on the eastern border unless there were assurance from India that it would not engage in military action. This was not given.

Even after the initial outburst of anti-Pakistan bellicosity had died down, there came carefully composed but confrontational statements by major national figures who could not be ignored, and they came in a period of especial concern to Pakistan – the very time at which it was necessary to continue relocating troops from the eastern frontier area in order to combat the menace of terror and insurrection in the west.

On 4 June 2009 the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of India’s South-Western Air Command, Air Marshal KD Singh, declared that “In case of a misadventure by Pakistan in shape of major terrorist attack or the attack like the one we had on the Parliament, attack on our leader, a major city, public or hijacking an aircraft, can obviously lead to a reaction from India, which could be a short intense war.”

Then on 1 November 2009 India’s Home Minister, Mr Chidambaram, was reported as saying “I’ve been warning Pakistan not to play any more games. Let Mumbai be the last such game. If they carry out any more attacks on India, they will not only be defeated, but we will also retaliate with the force of a sledgehammer.”

The threat from Delhi, which many of us observers had considered to have been negligible, given the apparent pragmatism of the government of Dr Manmohan Singh, was spelled out in blunt and menacing terms. Given the prominence of those who warned so clearly of conflict, the prospect of an attack could not and cannot be treated lightly. For this reason many senior military officers in Pakistan argue that withdrawing units from the border could have serious consequences if India decided to engage in a “short, intense conventional war,” as a result of another terrorist attack. If there were strident enough allegations in India that the culprits had been trained in Pakistan, then there could be war. The army, the senior officers felt, would be failing in its duty if it dropped its guard along the frontier; so there had to be compromise, which, in military affairs as in most others, invariably results in a less-than-desirable solution.

The recent operations in the tribal areas, concentrating on South Waziristan, have necessarily been affected by the requirement to balance east and west troop numbers. It is much to the credit of the Pakistan army that it managed to restore peace in Swat and appears to be well on the way to effecting the same in South Waziristan. But the main challenge is to maintain control and prevent the insurgents from again taking over. Concurrently there is the requirement to speedily rebuild the 200 girls’ schools that were destroyed by the fanatics, to implement a civilian-dominated justice system, and engage in large-scale social and economic development. This will take time, and, above all, commitment by skilled professionals whose security must be guaranteed, along with that of the population.

It should not be forgotten that there was no insurrection in the Tribal Areas before the US invasion of Afghanistan. Although the tribes were never pussy cats, and often there had to be firm action taken when they went over the top in inter-tribal squabbles or other mayhem, there was no Taliban control. That ascendancy developed as a result of a flow of vicious fanatics from Afghanistan who were displaced by US and ‘Coalition’ operations. It is absurd for US experts to loudly condemn Pakistan for “failing to seal the border,” when there are tens of thousands of US troops along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. If they can’t seal it from their side, with all their hi-tech gadgets, how can anyone expect the Pakistan army to seal the Pakistan side?

The other thing that US experts might consider is keeping quiet. For the White House National Security Adviser to pronounce that Pakistan must now conduct military operations in North Waziristan is not just bizarre, it is insolent. The Pakistanis have had enough of people telling them what to do. Their military operations are being conducted with professionalism. It would be a good thing if a bit of professionalism and discretion were to be exercised by all the clever Washingtonians who drop into Islamabad to lecture those who are trying to cope with an emergency for which the US is largely to blame.

————————
Our ignorance in Afghanistan
Tom Streithorst — 23rd November 2009
The beginning of wisdom: the illusion of control?

So there I was, in the graveyard at dusk, the little girl screaming. I couldn’t deny it, it was all my fault. Umm? Maybe I should start again.
December’s issue of Prospect features a perceptive article by Alex de Waal on the west’s failures in Afghanistan. De Waal suggests that western officials, comfortable with academic concepts like “nation building,” “civil society” and “rule of law” have a hard time understanding the nitty gritty of politics in places like Afghanistan. I think he is right. We in the west are so much richer—often so much better educated than the Afghans we meet—that it sometimes blinds us to our ignorance about their lives and country.
Back in the very early days of the “war on terror,” back when the Taliban still ruled Kabul, back when it was still all good fun, I was based in a compound deep in rural Afghanistan, near the Northern Alliance foreign ministry in Takhar province. We westerners, well trained as to the proper disposal of garbage, would always neatly put our trash in the little pails we had brought with us from Tajikistan.
Our Afghan houseboy, of course, was not so pernickety. He would take our overloaded garbage pails, walk to the wall surrounding the compound, and dump them over, into what happened to be a cemetery for Northern Alliance soldiers killed in combat. Litter though, is not really a problem in rural Afghanistan. In a place that poor, recycling isn’t PC—it is simple economics. Every day the children of the village would journey to the Heroes Cemetery, dig through our garbage and take almost all of it home. Even the empty apple sauce sachets from our military ready-meals, with tiny bits of sweet fruit still stuck to the tinfoil, were seen as valuable.
Afghanistan is stunningly beautiful, as are its people. One afternoon, as the sun was setting, I saw through my window two little girls sifting through our trash. I grabbed my camera, loaded a roll of film and raced over to the cemetery. Click, click, click. The girls happily posed for my camera, their arms around each other. I was pleased with the shots: great light, colourful clothes, stunning kids. And then I had a moment of guilt. I thought to myself, “These children are so much poorer than I and yet I am taking from them. I have these pictures of them and have given nothing in return.”
Of course the only thing I had of value was money. I reached into my wallet. The smallest bill I found was $5, a considerable amount in rural Afghanistan, where the per capita annual income is around $250. It is often pernicious for westerners to massively overpay when we visit poorer societies; our money can distort the native economy and I realised that giving a ten year old a man’s weekly wage was perhaps a bad idea, but what could I do? The girls had seen me look into my wallet.
I took the $5 bill and gave it to the prettier of the two girls. The affection between the two of them was clear. I figured they must be sisters. I figured they would share. I was wrong. Instantly, before I could react, the smaller girl smashed the pretty one in the face with her fist, snatched the money from her hand, and raced out of the cemetery, leaving the other girl howling in tears.
“Oh shit,” I thought. “What do I do now?” I reacted again with the only tool at my disposal. I reached into my pocket. This time the smallest bill was a $20. I handed it to her. She stopped crying instantly, and took off for home.
Is there any relevance in my bumbling ineptitude and ignorance to the general failures of the west in Afghanistan? Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its needs are straightforward. Building roads, digging wells, and providing irrigation would make peoples’ lives much better at minimal cost. Hiring Afghans to do the labour would put money in their pockets, stimulate their economy, and improve their infrastructure. And yet, despite huge western expenditures, the average rural Afghan is probably no better off today than he or she was five years ago.
Our NGO and government officials are responsible not to the people of Afghanistan, but to their masters in Washington or Brussels or London. So they pepper their policy papers with clichés that will play well at home and remember not to mention that they really don’t know what is going on. What they provide our governments is the illusion of understanding and so the illusion of control.
The beginning of wisdom is the recognition of our own ignorance. Bringing “the rule of law” to Afghanistan may well be beyond our capabilities. Hiring Afghans to dig wells probably isn’t.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the country entered into an alliance with the United States that it later claimed was the result of coercion. In 2002, Pakistan came to the brink of war with India after Islamic members of a Pakistani militant group attacked India’s Parliament.

The following years were tumultuous even by Pakistan’s standards, as its military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was forced from office and a combination of the Taliban and home-grown Islamic militants spread their control from country’s mountainous western border ever further toward the capital.

By May 2009, the insurgency appeared to pose a threat to the very existence of the state, and the nation’s military, which had stayed focused primarily on its tense border with India, decided to initiate a head-on fight to take back the regions seized by the militants. With strong public support — many Pakistanis who had previously seen the “war on terror” as an American import expressed revulsion against extremist acts by the Taliban — the army unleashed air and ground forces in tribal areas along the country’s western border with Afghanistan and areas like the Swat Valley and South Waziristan from the militants.

The military campaign produced massive refugee flows out of contested areas. While President Asif Ali Zardari sought to preserve American support and funding, many of Pakistan’s 173 million people remained furious over American drone airplane attacks, which were seen as breaches of national sovereignty. Anger at the Taliban, however, seemed to outweigh even their frustration with the military campaign that has crushed their houses and killed their relatives.

A new aid package for Pakistan passed by Congress in September 2009 unwittingly thrust the United States into the center of the uneasy relationship between Pakistan’s powerful military and its weak civilian governments by insisting on greater civilian oversight of the military as a condition. The conditions were seen as an infringement on Pakistan’s sovereignty, and rather than improving America’s relations with Pakistan, the bill threatened to undermine Mr. Zardari and lay bare the troubles at the heart of the two countries’ alliance.

During the same period, a wave of attacks against top security installations demonstrated anew that the Taliban, Al Qaeda and militant groups once nurtured by the government were tightening an alliance aimed at bringing down the Pakistani state.

At the end of November, Mr. Zadari abruptly ceded his position in his nation’s nuclear command structure to his prime minister. The political maneuver is widely seen as a fresh sign of turmoil on the eve of Mr. Obama’s strategy announcement for the region, which is expected in early December.

THE END OF THE MUSHARRAF ERA

In 2007, Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was forced from power. He was replaced by neither of his longtime rivals, Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto, who was killed by a bomb at a campaign rally. A tide of strong emotion swept Bhutto’s party into power in parliamentary elections in 2008, and her widower, Mr. Zardari, became president.

General Musharraf’s tenure was dominated by the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks, by political instability and the rise of Islamic extremist groups. Pakistan’s intelligence services and portions of the military had been backers of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. After 9/11, the United States demanded that Pakistan turn against the Taliban and al Qaeda. Mr. Musharraf agreed, but then walked a tightrope between satisfying the Bush administration without inflaming Islamic groups that strongly support al Qaeda. The mountains of western Pakistan became haven for Al Qaeda and the Taliban and a launching pad for increasing numbers of extremist attacks in Afghanistan and within Pakistan.

Mr. Musharraf’s downfall began with his attempt to force out the chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, in the spring of 2007, which was widely protested. Mr. Musharraf was forced to backtrack. Under pressure from the Bush administration, he began negotiations with Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister then in exile, about a power sharing agreement.

No agreement was reached, and on Nov. 3, fearing that the reinstated court was about to rule against him, Mr. Musharraf declared a state of emergency. Hundreds of political opponents were arrested and a majority of the Supreme Court was forced to resign. On Nov. 28, 2007, Mr. Musharraf gave up his military rank, and two weeks later ended emergency rule. By that time, Ms. Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Mr. Musharraf had deposed, were vigorously campaigning against Mr. Musharraf in the run up to parliamentary elections.

THE ZARDARI PRESIDENCY

On Dec. 27, 2007 Ms. Bhutto was killed by a bomb detonated as she left a large rally, throwing the country into deep mourning. A parliamentary election was postponed until February 2008, when Mr. Musharraf’s party was routed. Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif formed a governing coalition, which in August declared that it would seek the impeachment of Mr. Musharraf, who soon after announced his resignation.

Before then, the coalition had dissolved over the unwillingness of Mr. Zardari to reinstate Mr. Chaudhry and the other Supreme Court members forced out by Mr. Musharraf. In September 2008 Mr. Zardari was elected president, completing a remarkable swing from prisoner to exile to marginal political player to the country’s central figure.

In November 2008, tensions with India returned to the forefront after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which were quickly linked to a Pakistani militant group, Lakshar e-Taiba. The country soon faced a financial crisis as well, as the global financial crisis cut Pakistan off from credit it desperately needed. The government reached agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a $7 billion loan.

In February 2009, the rivalry between the president and Mr. Sharif boiled over when the Supreme Court barred Mr. Sharif and his brother, the governor of Punjab, from holding office. The move was widely seen in Pakistan as a raw political maneuver engineered by Mr. Zardari to diminish the power of the two popular opposition figures. Mr. Zardari followed up by appointing an ally as the new governor of Punjab, the country’s most populous region and the heart of Mr. Sharif’s support.

As protests increased, in March the government banned a national protest march and arrested hundreds of political workers. As Mr. Sharif led a huge convoy toward the capital for a mass protest, Mr. Zardari capitulated and reinstated Mr. Chaudhry, but the episode left him weakened.

After the Supreme Court reversed its ban on Mr. Sharif, he emerged as the most popular politician in the country. Mr. Zardari has seen his popularity ratings plummet, largely because of concerns about Pakistan’s faltering economy and a general sense that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE TALIBAN

Pakistanis long supported the Taliban and other militant groups as allies to exert influence in neighboring Afghanistan and as a hedge against India. Unlike Afghans, they never lived under Taliban rule, and were slow to absorb its dangers. But the experience of those Pakistanis who have now lived under the Taliban has left many disillusioned.

After Mr. Zaradari took office, he agreed to launch an aggressive campaign against the Taliban in the western provinces. But American officials soon began to doubt whether he had made a real commitment to the project. In many ways, Mr. Zardari appeared to be walking the same tightrope as had Mr. Musharraf, seeking to appease both the United States, a military with close ties to militants and a populace angry at what was widely seen as American interference in the country’s government.

Through 2008 and early 2009 the influence of the Taliban spread from the remote mountains along the Afghanistan border. The region of Swat, formerly a lure for tourists not far from the capital, became the scene of infiltration, intimidation and constant fighting, and in early 2009 the government reached a truce agreement with militants there. Mr. Zardari signed a measure that would impose Islamic law in the valley. Taliban militants, most of them under the leadership of Mullah Fazlullah, continued usurping and attacking the government anyway. They used the let-up to press their hard line crackdown on morals even further, alienating many residents.

Soon afterward the Taliban took over Buner, an adjoining district only 60 miles from Islamabad. The conquest shook the central government, as well as the middle and upper classes across the country. It also caused American officials to apply enormous pressure on Pakistan to act.

The ensuing campaign, begun in May, seemed to be prosecuted with a new resolve, in what appeared to be a change of heart in the Pakistani Army, which had supported the militants for many years. Unaccustomed to urban guerrilla warfare, the military first concentrated on fighting in the rural and mountainous areas of Swat. The ensuing exodus of 1.3 million refugees was the largest mass migration of Pakistanis since the country was partitioned from India more than 60 years ago.

As the battle in Swat died down, the army’s mission turned to the rugged Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan, home to Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan’s enemy No. 1. Mr. Mehsud was killed in August 2009 in a United States drone strike, but thousands of fighters remained entrenched in mountain terrain that is nearly impossible for conventional armies to navigate.

TERRORISM IN THE PAKISTANI HEARTLAND

One factor that turned public opinion in Pakistan against the Taliban was a string of deadly terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities.

Units of the Taliban have linked up with militants in the province of Punjab, home to half of the country’s population. The deadly assault in March 2009 in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing in September 2008 of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign. Intelligence officials said the Taliban’s effort to move into the country’s heartland was motivated partly by the need to find new safe havens, as bombing by American drone aircraft increased in the tribal areas. But it also represented a decision by Punjabi militants to make common cause with the Taliban after the government’s siege of Islamic hard-liners at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, in mid-2007. The siege became a rallying cry.

Taliban leaders warned Pakistanis in May that they were preparing “major attacks” in large cities in retaliation for the military’s ongoing campaign against the insurgents. A suicide bombing in broad daylight in one of the busiest districts of Lahore killed at least 23 people. In June, in Peshawar, militants rushed a small truck packed with explosives through the gates of a five-star hotel, detonating the payload in the parking lot and killing at least 16 people.

As the military prepared the assault on South Waziristan in October, a wave of attacks against top security installations underscored the closer ties between the Taliban and Al Qaeda and what are known as jihadi groups, which operate out of southern Punjab.

Tolerated by the government for years, the Punjabi groups have entrenched domestic and political constituencies, as well as shadowy ties to former military officials and their families. Many Pakistanis consider them allies in just causes, including fighting India, the United States and Shiite Muslims.

The attacks included the suicide bombing of the headquarters of the World Food Program in Islamabad, which killed five people and led the United Nations to shutter its offices in Pakistan, and a 20-hour siege at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi that showed the deepening reach of the militant network, as well as its rising sophistication and inside knowledge of the security forces.

A suicide car bombing against a military vehicle in a crowded market in the northwest, killed 41. More than 30 people were killed on Oct. 15 in Lahore when three teams of militants assaulted two police training centers and a federal investigations building. Nine others were killed in two attacks at a police station in the northwest and a residential complex in Peshawar.

Despite the shift in the public mood against the militants, and what seemed to be a growing confidence to confront them, cooperation between the militant groups had made the threat to Pakistan more potent and insidious than ever, analysts said.

Mr. Zardari’s sudden move in November 2009 to cede Pakistan’s nuclear command structure to his prime minister was an all-out attempt to head off domestic political pressure as Mr. Zardari’s two-year presidency hit a new low. With the end of a political amnesty program on Nov. 28, the president and his allies face potential corruption and criminal charges, and the opposition is demanding that he relinquish many of his powers or resign.

Analysts did not expect the move to harm Pakistan’s nuclear security, but political stability in the country is critical for the Obama administration, which is set to announce its new strategy for Afghanistan in early December. Until his latest move, Mr. Zardari held the top civilian position in the organization known as the National Command Authority, which controls every aspect of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal — decisions to move or launch any of its 60 to 100 nuclear weapons, to expand the country’s nuclear stockpile and to oversee the security of the weapons and nuclear laboratories.

NOW that President Obama has recommitted the United States to stand with Pakistan and Afghanistan in our common fight against terrorism, extremism and fanaticism, it would be useful for Americans and Pakistanis to consider what has brought us to this point — and what the conflict’s true endgame must be.

Despite the noise created by an often hyperactive press in Pakistan (an essential and preferable alternative to the censorship that prevailed during my country’s military dictatorships), and the doubts expressed in America, Pakistan’s democratically elected government is unambiguously on the right path toward establishing a moderate and modern nation.

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and I are working closely with our national assembly and our military and intelligence agencies to defeat the Taliban insurgency and the Qaeda-backed campaign of terrorism. Simultaneously, we are pursuing policies that will re-establish Pakistan as a vibrant economic market and finally address the long-neglected weaknesses in our education, health, agriculture and energy sectors. This isn’t just rhetoric — it is an active policy with new budget priorities and a reoriented national mindset.

Over the last weeks I have moved forcefully to re-establish the traditional powers of the presidency as defined in the parliamentary model on which our Constitution is based. Our Constitution was distorted and perverted by military dictators who usurped the legal powers of Parliament. In accordance with the manifesto of the Pakistan Peoples Party, I am working toward strengthening the separation of powers of the presidency from those of the prime minister. Recently, I voluntarily handed back the chairmanship of the National Command Authority that exercises control over Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Contrary to some of the commentary on the subject, this is not a sign of weakness, but rather a demonstration of the vitality of Pakistani democracy.

As President Obama has noted, Pakistan’s military has courageously executed important actions in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan against terrorists who threaten all of us. Pakistan has paid an enormous price in blood and treasure. But this is a price we are willing to pay. Every day across our land, cowards distort our religion of peace, Islam, by slaughtering innocent people. Three thousand civilians, including my wife, Benazir Bhutto, and 2,000 soldiers and police officers have been killed in the last eight years. Just last week 40 people died in a mosque while at Friday prayers, including 10 children. This is our war as well as America’s.
Yet in both countries there is deep suspicion toward the other. Many Americans still wonder, despite our sacrifices, if Pakistan is doing all it can to fight terrorism. Some resent what they believe is an absence of gratitude in Pakistan for American aid. But consider the history as seen by Pakistanis.

Twice in recent history America abandoned its democratic values to support dictators and manipulate and exploit us. In the 1980s, the United States supported Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq’s iron rule against the Pakistani people while using Pakistan as a surrogate in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. That decade turned our peaceful nation into a “Kalashnikov and heroin” society — a nation defined by guns and drugs. In its fight against the Soviets, the United States, as a matter of policy, supported the most radical elements within the mujahedeen, who would later become the Taliban and Al Qaeda. When the Soviets were defeated and left in 1989, the United States abandoned Pakistan and created a vacuum in Afghanistan, resulting in the current horror.

And then after 9/11, the United States closed its eyes to the abuses of the dictatorship of President Pervez Musharraf, providing support to the regime while doing little to help with social needs or encourage the restoration of democracy. For Pakistanis, it is a bitter memory.

Public mistrust of the United States also stems from regional issues, specifically policies concerning India. I know it is the conventional wisdom in Washington that my nation is obsessed with India. But even to those of us who are striving toward accommodation and peace, the long history and the unresolved situation in Kashmir give Pakistanis reason to be concerned about our neighbor to the east. Just as the Israeli-Palestinian dispute cannot be resolved without accommodating the Palestinian people, there cannot be permanent regional peace in South Asia without addressing Kashmir.

The recent upset in Pakistan over the Kerry-Lugar legislation, which President Obama signed into law and which requires the secretary of state to report to Congress on military and civil progress in Pakistan, shows how sensitive many here are to what they see as unfair treatment by the United States. It would be helpful if the United States, at some point, would scrutinize India in a similar fashion and acknowledge that it has from time to time played a destabilizing role in the region.

The perceived rhetorical one-sidedness of American policy often fuels the conspiracy theories that abound here — theories that blame the West for all of our ills. Pakistan’s elected democratic leadership is itself a victim of some of these conspiracy theories, but our American partners must understand their origins and work with us to turn public opinion around.

Although we certainly appreciate America’s $7.5 billion pledge over the next five years for nonmilitary projects in Pakistan, this long-term commitment must be complemented by short-term policies that demonstrate American neutrality and willingness to help India and Pakistan overcome their mutual distrust. It could start by stepping up its efforts to mediate the Kashmir dispute.

In recent days, I have thought often of something my wife, Benazir, wrote in the days before her death: “It is so much easier to blame others for our problems than to accept responsibility ourselves.” Benazir added that conspiracy theories and “toxic rhetoric” were “an opiate that keeps Muslims angry against external enemies and allows them to pay little attention to the internal causes of intellectual and economic decline.”

The free world stands with President Obama in the effort to defeat the extremism that threatens us all. Pakistanis are on the frontlines in this battle.

But we need help. We need the support of our allies in war but also to help build a new Pakistan that promises a meaningful future to our children. We are not looking for — and indeed reject — dependency. We don’t need or want (nor would we accept) foreign troops to defeat the insurgency, and we seek trade more than aid from you in the future. It is an economically viable and socially robust democratic Pakistan that will be the most effective long-term weapon against terrorism, extremism and fanaticism. This is the necessary endgame. And this is how history will judge victory.

Asif Ali Zardari is the president of Pakistan.

Even in its waning days, 2009 continues to be a ‘Year of Decision’ in Pakistan, as its fractured polity struggles to right the ship of state while tackling the rising insurgencies inside its borders. This was the year that Pakistan took the battle to the insurgency, first in Swat and Malakand and then into the heart of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Pakistan Army’s decisive actions in South Waziristan deprived the Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan of its tribal base in Mehsud territory. Public sentiment against the violent insurgency helped the military’s decision to take the battle to the TTP’s home turf. And although the TTP’s leadership has apparently escaped into adjoining areas, the logistical heart of the insurgency was damaged. The militants retaliated by stepping up attacks on soft targets inside Pakistan, attacking mosques and markets alike, killing innocent civilians and children.

On the economic front, after decades of wrangling about revenue sharing between the provinces, the National Finance Commission under former Citibanker Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin produced an agreement on a new formula that increased the share of Baluchistan and rearranged the shares of other provinces in a more equitable manner. The NFC award will help reduce the centrifugal forces that threaten the federation.

Then, on December 16, 2009, the Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned the infamous National Reconciliation Ordinance under which former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari could return to Pakistan, having been absolved, along with thousands of other beneficiaries, of all past crimes and misdemeanors, real or imagined. Then-President Gen. Pervez Musharraf had promulgated the Ordinance on October 5, 2007 and when that was challenged by numerous petitions on the basis that it was discriminatory and favored selected individuals with whom Musharraf wished to make deals, Musharraf responded by declaring an emergency on November 3, 2007 that sent Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and the senior judiciary packing for the second time. He then, under a Provisional Constitutional Order, forcibly inserted the NRO into the constitution of Pakistan. These actions were often referred to as Musharraf’s “second coup,” this time against his own government. His intent was to facilitate a return to a controlled civilian system under which he would remain president while Bhutto could return as a potential head of the government. That was not to be: Bhutto was assassinated. Musharraf was hounded out of office. Zardari became president. And the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Chaudhry was reinstated on March 16, 2009, for the second time, promising to return the judiciary to its rightful place as a key pillar of the state.

Among the key cases that were reopened by the Supreme Court was the NRO and the absolution it provided to Pakistan’s tarnished political elite, including the new President Zardari. Yesterday’s decision reinstates all the cases that were dismissed and significantly, directed the government to set up courts to resolve the pending cases speedily, including the revival of a bribery and corruption case in which the Government of Pakistan had been a complainant against Zardari and Bhutto in a Swiss court. Lawyers and supporters will have a field day invoking presidential immunity for Zardari. But public pressure will surely mount against him and his party as well as other politicians who have been tarred with the NRO brush.

If 2009 was the Year of Decision for Pakistan, 2010 may well be the Year of Tumult. And it could not come at a worse time. The army is still battling a vicious insurgency in the western borderland. The United States is counting on a stable Pakistan to help it exit from Afghanistan gracefully. U.S. drone attacks on the border and Taliban bombings in the hinterland alike have enraged the Pakistani populace. The army is under pressure from its U.S. allies to open a fresh front against the Afghan Taliban in Baluchistan, an action that makes no sense to the army. The roller coaster U.S.-Pakistan relationship seems heading for another deep dive, unless cooler heads prevail. Now the government faces a test of its ability to function while acceding to the Supreme Court’s annulment of the NRO.

Kudos to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s government for choosing not to defend the NRO before the Supreme Court, nor to present it for passage as a law before parliament. And kudos to the Supreme Court for restoring the constitution to its rightful place in Pakistan’s polity. But the tumult unleashed by this decision will make for a difficult transition to the rule of law, especially as opponents press for Zardari’s departure. So this may be an opportunity for the untainted few among Pakistan’s political leadership to take charge and for the friends of Pakistan to support them, and this is not time for business as usual nor for half-measures. Insurgencies rage, while uncertainty rules in Pakistan as it enters the New Year.

Shuja Nawaz is Director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC.

The New York Times’ David Rohde writes about the seven months he was held hostage by a group of extremist Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and conveys this observation about what motivates them:

My captors harbored many delusions about Westerners. But I also saw how some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charged.

Apparently, when we drop bombs on Muslim countries — or when Israel attacks Palestinians — that fuels anti-American hatred and militarism among Muslims. The same outcomes occur when we imprison Muslims without charges in places like Guantanamo and Bagram. Imagine that. Recall, according to Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, what prompted 9/11 “ringleader” Mohammed Atta to devote himself to a suicide mission, as recounted by Juan Cole during the Israel/Gaza war:

In 1996, Israeli jets bombed a UN building where civilians had taken refuge at Cana/ Qana in south Lebanon, killing 102 persons; in the place where Jesus is said to have made water into wine, Israeli bombs wrought a different sort of transformation. In the distant, picturesque port of Hamburg, a young graduate student studying traditional architecture of Aleppo saw footage like this on the news [graphic]. He was consumed with anguish and the desire for revenge. As soon as operation Grapes of Wrath had begun the week before, he had written out a martyrdom will, indicating his willingness to die avenging the victims, killed in that operation–with airplanes and bombs that were a free gift from the United States. His name was Muhammad Atta. Five years later he piloted American Airlines 11 into the World Trade Center. (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 307: “On April 11, 1996, when Atta was twenty-seven years old, he signed a standardized will he got from the al-Quds mosque. It was the day Israel attacked Lebanon in Operation grapes of Wrath. According to one of his friends, Atta was enraged, and by filling out his last testament during the attack he was offering his life in response”).

On Tuesday, the Israeli military shelled a United Nations school to which terrified Gazans had fled for refuge, killing at least 42 persons and wounding 55, virtually all of them civilians, and many of them children. The Palestinian death toll rose to 660.

You wonder if someone somewhere is writing out a will today.

One could — and should — ask that question every time the U.S. or Israel engages in another military strike that kills Muslim civilians, or for that matter, every day that goes by when we continue to wage war inside Muslim countries. Rohde adds this about what motivates these Taliban:

America, Europe and Israel preached democracy, human rights and impartial justice to the Muslim world, they said, but failed to follow those principles themselves.

One of the taboo topics in the American media is how the U.S. Government routinely violates the principles we espouse for, and try to impose on, the rest of the world. We systematically torture Muslims and then cover it up and protect our torturers while preaching accountability and the rule of law; we condemn deprivations of due process while maintaining and expanding lawless prison systems for Muslims; we demand adherence to U.N. dictates and international law while blocking investigations into U.N. reports of war crimes and possible “crimes against humanity” by our allies; we righteously oppose aggression while invading and simultaneously occupying numerous countries, while threatening to attack still more, and arming countries like Israel to the teeth to wage still other attacks, etc. etc.

As a result of the media avoidance of such topics, many Americans don’t ever think much about the huge gap between what we claim about ourselves and what we do. But much of the rest of the world — certainly including the Muslim world — sees that discrepancy quite clearly, often up-close. That’s what accounts for the radically different, even irreconcilable, perceptions that Americans and so many people in the rest of the world have about who we are and what we do (“why do they hate us?”). Is it really surprising that young Taliban fighters, surrounded by a foreign occupying army and lawless prison system for the last eight years, are “fixated” on such things and are radicalized by it? Shouldn’t that, by itself, make us think about not doing those things any longer, since they only exacerbate the problem we claim we are trying to solve?

Finally, Rohde describes his treatment at the hands of the Taliban during his seven months of captivity as follows:

They vowed to follow the tenets of Islam that mandate the good treatment of prisoners. In my case, they unquestionably did. They gave me bottled water, let me walk in a small yard each day and never beat me.

Rohde explains that the Taliban automatically believe that journalists — especially American journalists — are spies. Despite that belief, the Taliban never waterboarded him, never hung him naked in a cold room to induce hypothermia, never stuffed him in a coffin-like box as punishment, never deprived him of sleep to the point of severe disorientation, and instead adhered to their commitment regarding “the good treatment of prisoners.” We might want to think about what that means about us. That many of the Taliban are inhumane, brutal and barbaric extremists only underscores that point further.

* * * * *

UPDATE: From Bryan Bender, The Boston Globe, October 9, 2009 (h/t CarolynC):

Nearly all of the insurgents battling US and NATO troops in Afghanistan are not religiously motivated Taliban and Al Qaeda warriors, but a new generation of tribal fighters vying for control of territory, mineral wealth, and smuggling routes, according to summaries of new US intelligence reports.

Some of the major insurgent groups, including one responsible for a spate of recent American casualties, actually opposed the Taliban’s harsh Islamic government in Afghanistan during the 1990s, according to the reports, described by US officials under the condition they not be identified.

“Ninety percent is a tribal, localized insurgency,’’ said one US intelligence official in Washington who helped draft the assessments. “Ten percent are hardcore ideologues fighting for the Taliban.’’

US commanders and politicians often loosely refer to the enemy as the Taliban or Al Qaeda, giving rise to the image of holy warriors seeking to spread a fundamentalist form of Islam. But the mostly ethnic Pashtun fighters are often deeply connected by family and social ties to the valleys and mountains where they are fighting, and they see themselves as opposing the United States because it is an occupying power, the officials and analysts said.

One of the most astounding feats in propaganda is how we’ve managed to take people who live in a country which we invade, bomb and occupy — and who fight against us because we’re doing that — and call them “Terrorists,” thereby “justifying” continuing to bomb and occupy their country further (“We have to stay in order to fight the Terrorists: meaning the people who are fighting us because we stay”).

UPDATE II: The second installment of Rohde’s story is now available, describing the first couple of weeks after he was taken to Pakistan, and it includes this:

For the next several nights, a stream of Haqqani commanders overflowing with hatred for the United States and Israel visited us, unleashing blistering critiques that would continue throughout our captivity.

Some of their comments were factual. They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges.

To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law.

When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?

Note how it is the very policies undertaken in the name of fighting Terrorism that actually exacerbate that problem. Note, too, the vast gap in terms of how Americans perceive of the conduct by the U.S. (those are mere “aberrations”) and how much of the rest of the world perceives of them, especially the people targeted by them.