No. I am not going to write about a song Brook Benton sang in the early 1960s and had the same title. I am writing about Pakistan’s relationship with the USA as far as Afghanistan goes. I do not believe that Pakistanis who dislike the US of A intensely want it to disappear from the face of the earth. Similarly, the US of A does not want to see the same end for Pakistan but for the sake of convenience and a greater Pakistani effort in the quagmire called Afghanistan, be more respectful of them and listen to them especially about India and Indian intentions, also they would like to see Pakistan neutered. This was made very obviously clear to President Zardari by Senator John Kerry who asked Pakistan to enter into a Security Pact with India if it wanted a similar nuclear program as India’s nuclear deal with the USA and as a footnote, wanted access to Dr. A.Q. Khan. All this came to light in a recent “Wikileak”. I have never understood why Pakistan wants a similar program as India’s because Pakistan has its own Uranium Deposits that are quite substantial. In the interest of our safety, we must keep the US of A out of our nuclear program and as far away as possible because fragmenting Pakistan could be on the cards but our nuclear program and 170 million people have kept America at bay.
Yes, we are supposed to be allies but in reality, are very divided about Afghanistan’s endgame that is at hand. There is much that NATO wants to do in Afghanistan and has so far failed to make significant progress. Why is this the case? Why is it that Pakistan does not trust the US of A and the same sentiment prevails within the US of A and NATO? How is it that the most favoured Non NATO ally is mistrusted and always getting bad press internationally? The answer is very simple. President George Walker Bush and his Government gave his Pakistani counterpart President Musharraf, an either/or option in September 2001. This is something that the ex-President of Pakistan let on in 2006. He preferred Pakistan’s existence as a reasonable State that it was in, to being bombed to the Stone Age. The siding of Pakistan with the US of A just did not make sense to me at least. To break with those who became our lot, whom we had nurtured and guided over a period of time, is a matter of losing a lot of time and effort that we made and with their help, put India on the back foot in Kashmir.
Pakistan making a 180 degree turn around only made sense to me when I built in the threat factor and the Stone Age bit. It would pay to remember and constantly recall that we were coerced by the US of A into helping them in Afghanistan by being the conduit through which logistics flow even today and we in Pakistan, were not a willing party to this the latest ravishing of Afghanistan. To this day, we have diplomatic relations with Kabul and are not at war with Afghanistan and this is why Pakistan has not attacked the Jalaluddin Haqqani group, that is an Afghan entity parallel and in Afghanistan parallel to North Waziristan.
We do this despite America turning blue in the face trying to get Pakistan to take out this group. I say this lest we forget this important point. Let those who talk of strategic depth keep in mind we have a nuclear deterrent and we do not have a “no first use” policy. The concept of Strategic depth is an idea at best, and a very bad one. Afghanistan was never our client state and shall never be one. If you think Pakistan could colonize Afghanistan or interfere in their affairs overtly, then you must go back to kindergarten and start all over again.
What we Pakistanis want is a friendly State on our Western border. Pakistan has plans to become a trade corridor to Central Asian states and Eastern China on its own or as a full member of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization). All this is in line with Pakistan’s destiny that lies in the West and not by turning eastwards toward India. If India has dreams or visions of grandeur, we don’t believe them or share them. Instead of asking Pakistan to curb terrorism which incidentally is an euphuism to help India put down the insurgency in Kashmir and subsequently in Eastern India where they have the Naxal movement which is making it tough for them and not the Mumbai type terrorist attack.. So what we really desire is a friendly Government in Afghanistan that will permit us transiting facilities to Central Asia. This friendly Government is not the present power behind Hamid Karzai, the Northern Alliance. We would like to see a Pakhtun Government who have been Pakistan’s traditional friends.
Much water has flown by since the horrific days of September 2001 when the USA was a raging bull but in 2010, it has lost both it’s direction and its rage and is now seeking a way out of the quagmire it finds itself in Afghanistan. In 2010, the USA has reduced Afghanistan to a state somewhat better by a couple of degrees than the Stone Age, even after doing this, both NATO and ISAF have not been able to come to terms with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda(who are all but forgotten now) for all the destruction they brought about. There are no excuses left and very few believers in the ultimate victory in Afghanistan by NATO and the US of A. The war fighting they have employed would have been successful had they been fighting a semi-industrial power but for a state that was in shambles, it was the worst possible way for them to engage shadows in a war. This is what the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are today.
For the Afghans who have been warring for the last 30 years or so, war is practically a natural order of things. I do not think they are geared for an immediate peace were it to come tomorrow or if it was a peace that was not on their terms. I would go so far as to qualify my statement by saying ‘there will be peace in Afghanistan if the Taliban can force NATO and ISAF to leave in defeat and also send the Al-Qaeda on its way. For them, the Afghan Taliban, it is a matter of honour, whereas it is a question of a trillion US Dollars and counting for the US of A coupled by the fact that they do not have the capacity to put sufficient boots on the ground to win their peace. This is a lesson the US Army should have learned from their Iraqi misadventure. The situation for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda is akin to something Bob Dylan sang some forty odd years ago “ You used to be so amused, at the Napoleon in rags and the language that he used. Go to him now, You can’t refuse. When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. You’re invisible now. You’ve got no secrets to conceal.” The Afghans say or think along the lines that go like this “we’ve been at it for thirty years another four years till 2014 won’t matter.” This cavalier attitude is something the West does not and cannot have or afford. You can bomb a country to the Stone Age once. After that, you are bombing rubble. Perhaps this should be kept in mind by the USA. Shock and Awe has had the opposite effect and they really haven’t fathomed that out as yet. Besides as long as the USA is involved in Afghanistan, it cannot graduate from taking our countries having some 20 million people to Iran which has a population of 70 million and counting. Forget surgical airstrikes. They will not work. The Iranians could make life very difficult for the USA and Europe and the Arab states that wanted the USA to take Iran out.
The war in Afghanistan today, is akin to a physical weakling like me, challenging the boxing heavyweight champion of the world to a fight. The World Champion loses the moment he accepts my challenge because I am not a heavyweight nor am I learned in the art of fisticuffs and am close to 72 years in age but most of all, I am an unknown. Whereas he is a younger and a fitter man and boxing is his profession and he is world famous. Were he smart enough to refuse my challenge, I still win because I had the gumption to challenge him to a fight and he backed out. His only option is to ignore my challenge. This it seems is the game the Taliban played and literally forced the USofA to retaliate and in turn make the Al-Qaeda a household word. How many people were acquainted with Al-Qaeda prior to the Embassy bombings in East Africa, the attack on a US destroyer USS Cole off Yemen? With 9/11, the Al -Qaeda became international bogeymen.
The US of A should now play smart and deny the Taliban both a moral and physical victory by dumping Karzai, the Northern Alliance and whatever warlords they have on their side. Then they must play the Taliban’s game further and attack the Northern Alliance territories if they need to. When the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda are in the transitional phase that will follow the total or partial withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, take them out because they would be at their weakest then and would not have expected it. I doubt NATO and the US of A have the necessary ruthlessness to do this. If they had this will to succeed, they would not be in the pickle they are in today. The US of A needs a fresh start in Afghanistan because as things stand, they have lost and are floundering, and the way I suggested would be a military victory and it would offer a face saving of sorts. In the end in wars, it is victory that has always to be sought and diligently because nothing less should suffice. If you do not seek victory, do not start a war especially a war of your choosing.
As for Pakistan, they will never be on the same page as the US of A over Afghanistan for the simple reason that Pakistan cannot change its geography even if the US of A decides to colonize Afghanistan. This Pakistani inability is a prime consideration for them and a source of consternation for their allies who think Pakistanis are bananas for thinking this way they are and not listening to them. What is beyond the US of A’s comprehension is why aren’t the Pakistanis on the same platform as NATO and ISAF? The answer is simple; it is because the US of A does not believe Pakistan has a sense of destiny for themselves beyond the resolution of the Kashmir problem and that Pakistan will not give up their claim to Kashmir under any circumstances and no amount of pittance or scraps the USofA throws to Pakistan and then feel letdown. That is an obvious and a short sighted way of looking at it. What the World’s only superpower cannot comprehend is, others may have a vision of the future that is different to theirs. What is also being totally over looked, is the fact that the West does not add up to 900 million people when you add up the US of A and the European populations. The Muslims total around 1.25 billion and counting and the rest of the World totals around 5 and one half billion souls.
The world fashioned after the Second World War by the West began to unravel when the Soviet Union, the second party left standing at the end of the Second World War, just caved in. working on the principle that nature abhors a vacuum an enemy was needed to fill the space the USSR occupied. Being the World’s only super power is not an easy thing to be and having run amok, and bankrupted itself the USA finds itself in a mess that is of its own making and the temerity of the US of A asking China to revalue its currency is the icing on the cake. Today this World order is failing, it is sick and dying and it just a matter of time before it collapses. This collapse is now a civilizational something because the USA needs a scapegoat to explain why it is where it is and needs wars to keep its fence industries going. Today, it is the Muslim’s turn to get bashed around. It is most definitely not a manifestation of multi polarity in the world or a world that has a single pole and it is certainly not a carryover of the Cold War and the world of two Superpowers. It is a case of a hitherto defeated and dormant civilization, which is coming back to life again that is being chopped down because there is no dearth of toadies in the Islamic world.. Islam was aroused from its lethargy in the 1970s when they began giving up on Western ideologies and turned to rethinking Islam and developing a revised Islamic way of life. It was a dangerous something. They forgot that the Quaid e Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah who carved Pakistan out of the British Empire in India in 1947. He made and idea a reality and the Quaid was followed by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979 some 32 years later. It was Ayatollah Khomeini, who pointed out the direction that Iran was to follow, because he practiced what he preached. Today Iran follows an Islamic way of doing things and it scares the life out of the West who are not prone to liking other ideologies. As outrageous as it may sound, a coolheaded approach will show how right I am. This is a something Samuel Huntington had warned us about in his magnum opus pertaining to a clash of civilizations. In other words, it is a challenge to the established world order, something that needs to continue and function for the sake of the West as the world of today was fashioned by them after the Second World War. Who likes to give away power and loot?
When the Western media puts Islam down, they have gotten on to the back of a tiger. A tiger who is presently preoccupied with something else other than the rider on its back. Today, most people put this Islam bashing down to the West’s need for an enemy to survive. They cannot leave anyone alone “Let them be, it’s a phase that will blow over” to think along these lines is suicidal. But then, what would happen when the Muslims realize that it is for real and not a passing phase? Is Muslim Unity a prerequisite for this challenge in the making to succeed? I do not believe that such is the case but there is a case for Turkiye, Iran, Afghanistan, the Central Asian states and Pakistan to form an Asian Islamic unity bloc. There is no such thing as Muslim Unity or an Ummah despite this being our most cherished desire, but if there is to be an Islamic Unity, then let Asian Islam that separate itself from the Arabs politically. We have seen what the Salafi and other Islamic revivalist doctrines do whilst the propagators of Salafi thought are sitting in the US of A’s lap. I cannot understand how they could encourage the US of A to take military action against a Muslim Nation ( Once again thanks to a Wikileak). We would become a nothing and very similar to what the case of Kashmir occupied by India and Palestine. The Arabs are letting Israel hold on to the Dome on the Rock and the Mosque that the Caliph Umer Farooq built. The Palestine issue has become dependant on the whims and fancies of the West for the last 40 years Wasn’t the liberation of the Masjid Al-Aqsa the reason for forming the OIC? This body today is Dr. Mahatir Mohammad’s “Oh I see”. Would Saudi Arabia still be asking the USA to take out the countries that irk them as they do today? For sure, the West is not living in a post nuclear deterrent world. How many share that point of view in the West itself? How many will talk of a Second Nuclear Phase?
The fact that Pakistan is not on the same platform as the US of A with both feet and holding on to a rail should not be under estimated or misunderstood. Today we have had 3 sessions of a so called Strategic Dialogue with the US of A. What is beyond me is how can it be a Strategic Dialogue or Strategic until and unless the goal is the same for both parties? There should not be a divergence in what one would call, the way of getting there, but it exists. They just do not share the details of the end picture. They are seeing the same picture but the colours and details are different to the one we are seeing.
For one it is a question of saving face and leaving with some semblance of victory and a perpetuation of their bidding being done whilst they are elsewhere, whereas for the other, the invaders can be Satan’s guests for a long, very long time. As for Pakistan’s case, it is a question of it survival and of the future it has envisaged for itself.
This mismatch will continue because the West needs a gateway into Afghanistan and Pakistan provides them with one. Pakistan is not doing this for a high moral purpose. Pakistan was coerced into such a situation in the first place by te US of A so the question of morality does not and should not arise. Pakistan became the corridor to Afghanistan for ISAF and NATO and today, they need the money that this service provides and would love to ask for more, if they weren’t bullied and yelled at in the way the US of A does. Pakistan are however, trying to milk the US of A for whatever they can get from them because Pakistan has lost 30 years of development because of Afghanistan and its repeated invasions first by the Soviets and then by the US of A. In the time period when were not invaded, the Afghans had a civil war going to see who is the cock of the walk and sit in Kabul ruling this unfortunate country.
Pakistan, cannot under any circumstances, see both its eastern and western borders destabilized. Now after 30 years an element of fatigue is beginning to set in. It is not a fatigue of the body but a more dangerous fatigue. It is a fatigue of the soul. In this state, Pakistan would turn on itself and the first target would be the Pakistani Government. It would be a calamity that could start with a civil war if the Government cannot get further away from the US of A and the establishment change its looting habits.. Should the Pakistani politicians fail to do this, are we going to see a full blown revolution with people’s rising up against the politicians and the establishment. There is no love lost between the people and the politicians and the establishment that have taken away from the people their status of being a citizen of Pakistan and replaced it by being a subject of the Pakistani establishment and their politicians. If you think I am talking nonsense, then consider this, the Pakistani establishment is so corrupt that they even steal from the pilgrims who are going for Haj. It seems nothing is sacred to anyone in power except making money and that is their primary aim of Government service or coming into power as a politician, you may put aside being a democracy, all the blah blah, and the rest about quality and justice as pure and simple hogwash that is strictly for public consumption. And when it comes to acquisition of power our politicians will use any means to get elected and it is considered fair and permissible something including the submission of bogus Collage and University Degrees have been submitted to the Election Commission to enable the crooks to come into power. So, Pakistan has been on a slow boil for some time and any undue pressure could set it off. Today a near bankruptcy of the soul prevails in the country. We have become a people who disregard the real meanings for rituals Will Pakistan keep aside its present state of misery to help fulfill their dreams, hopes and aspiration? I will not hazard a guess and let time do the answering. I will only say the stakes are too high to fail and a responsible nuclear weapons power doesn’t act in this manner.
Being a prophet of doom is the easiest thing going. What is difficult is explaining why the person has such a point of view. Most of the people who know me are quite amazed at the 180 degree about turn I have taken. From being a man who threw people out of his house if they spoke ill about Pakistan to one who is quite happy to rue the present situation and curse his fate. There is nothing left barring the Army, the judiciary and the media that keeps us Pakistanis going. We are very tired of holding a dream or even believing that something good can happen for us. Pakistan for many of us, who love their country we are sad to see our homeland, as a has-been and nearly a footnote in History. All indications are that it is where we are heading. The thing that galvanizes us is our intense dislike of the USA. This then is Pakistan today.
The first thing that you see about Pakistan, is a beggar with his begging bowl preceding him while he cries “Aid Aid Aid give me some Aid”. It is a sad state to be in but this is what we are. In our present state, we are an aspect of weariness for donor states and after being a frontline state for the last 30 years, we are fatigued. We need peace and to be left alone for a long time to come. Ms Clinton should give up on the strategic dialogue bit and her staged town house meetings. Let her go on the roads in cities around the country and ask a Pakistani what he or she thinks of the situation, if she has the courage or the gumption to seek the truth. Pakistan has never been so tense. It takes next to nothing that can be termed insulting, and blood will flow. Burning and beating people to death by spontaneous vigilantes groups that arise for that one moment or one incident and then disappear into being the frustrated beaten down subjects of Pakistan who believe they were justified in doing what they did. Thieves rob us and the police take the rest.
America did not need to bomb us to the Stone Age. It just helped to tear and nearly destroy the social fabric of Pakistan and turned a fairly civilized people into to nation of semi literate hooligans and barbarians. It is a shame that Pakistan has begun to stagger from one crisis to another all because we befriend the US of A. With friends like that, who needs enemies? If what I have said hurts, then it is meant to hurt. It is being done in the hope that somehow and from somewhere Pakistanis will find the strength to see the Afghan imbroglio settled. And after that, we should reduce America’s Embassy to a Consulate status restrict the number of Diplomats they can bring and ask them to go far, very far away. Let them thrive and prosper in India. It won’t take the Indians very long to throw them out. I will take a couple of lines from Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again” where he says “I believe we in America are lost, but we shall be found.” I would replace the word America by Pakistan. We must find strength to ensure our goals are realized with utmost speed and dispatch. We must retain our power to dream. If we lose that power, then we will certainly be lost because we would have given up hope and we have accepted our destiny and we will be doomed. This season in Hell shall pass but we hopefully, shall survive. Of this, I am quite sure and it is in the end, its just a matter of time.
