15 September 2001 Saturday 26 Jamadi-us-Saani 1422
All unquiet on the western front
By M.P. Bhandara
Pakistan has two long borders in a bad neighbourhood. An eastern border with India commencing from the icy profiles of the Line of Control in Kashmir traversing over a thousand miles to the deserts of Sindh. The western border is even longer. It faces a troublesome Afghanistan with whom Pakistan has unsettled borders, and also international borders with an Iran increasingly unfriendly in recent years.
Our more or less permanent hostility towards India has to be premised on the assumption that the western border must remain quite. This assumption has been in place for about two decades. But will this quietude continue? An answer to this question has profound consequences for Pakistan, indeed for the subcontinent. This may radicalize the chessboard in South Asia and even wider Asia in ways unforeseen at the moment.
The political equilibrium of yesterday is scarcely the status quo of tomorrow. One remembers the adage that the only constant of life is change. 'Nations don't have friends, only interests'. Sworn ideological enemies, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, coalesced when their interests coincided and then fought the most savage war in the history of mankind when the coincidence fell apart. Likewise, Turkey, once the world centre-point of Islam in the Ottoman days, counts Israel among its best friends today. Pakistan and China have little in common apart from a convergence of interest in South Asia.
In this scenario what are the chances of the country's western frontiers bec oming troublesome? If they do, we will have to raise another army to protect this border.
Historically Afghanistan's foreign policy posture has always been anti-Pakistan. Afghanistan was the only country to oppose Pakistan's admission to the United Nations. It has never to this day given up its revanchist claim to the Pashtun-speaking areas extending up to the Indus river. The British enforced the Durand Line, which demarcated the border between British India (now Pakistan) and Afghanistan under a 100-year treaty which lapsed in 1993. Mulla Omar, often referred to as 'Pakistan's creation' has refused to discuss the extension of the treaty on the grounds that his country is at war with the Northern Alliance. However, there are signs that portend trouble in the future.
Mulla Omar can wave a double-edged sword over Pakistan's head. If Pakistan's Islamic credentials are found wanting, for instance, for cooperating with the UN-appointed border teams for monitoring the observance of arms embargo on the Taliban, the gears of propaganda in the tribal homelands would be moved forward to show the government as lacking in Islamic spirit and character - a theme close to the heart of the right-wing religious parties.
In a world being restructured by ethnicity, Pakhtuns can easily be rallied against the artificial nationalism that divides them. Pakhtuns on either side of the border consider themselves Pakhtun first and everything else afterwards. Pakistan does not always figure in this matrix of loyalties.
To assess Pakistan's vulnerability in the north-west, we need to focus on the man who has the power and trappings of an ideological dictator. Is Mulla Omar a friend or a Frankenstein? Here we have to assess him and his regime in terms of real politik - the convergence or otherwise of interests and not necessarily in terms of what the world thinks of his regime.
Pakistan's most dreaded sectarian organization the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ), is given sanctuary in Afghanistan. So are a host of other militants and wanted criminals. Terrorism and a rejection of civilized values masquerade as a religious orthodoxy that counts Mulla Omar as its spiritual and temporal head. The LJ and other similar organizations such as Lashkar-i-Taiba, are dedicated to overthrowing the civil order in the country. Sectarian and ethnic extremists are busy undermining Pakistan's national unity and internal harmony. What sort of a friend is Omar if he is providing sanctuary to such elements?
Last July, according to an article appearing in the August 10 issue of The Friday Times, Lahore, about 95 Taliban, including their interior minister and top officials, entered Pakistan's Mohmand Agency ostensibly on a condolence visit. The delegation came in a convoy of 12-15 vehicles mounted with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns.
According to a local Malik of the Khoizai tribe, the Taliban expressed anger at the Mohmand sub-tribes' interest in getting Pakistani identity cards "This is our land. We will give you the identity cards," said a Taliban leader. The border in Mohmand is not demarcated. The incident, however trivial, may well be the beginning of a Taliban urge to remind Pakistan of its historical claims and borders which lapsed in 1993.
Take the case of the destruction of the great Buddha statues of Bamiyan. Pakistan's intelligence outfit, the ISI, is supposed to have a pervasive presence in Afghanistan and yet it never learnt of the Taliban decision to destroy the Great Buddhas. If Pakistan, being one of the three countries to have recognized the Taliban regime, could not even influence them on so sane a UNESCO proposal that the Great Buddhas - the priceless heritage of Afghanistan and an object of reverence for millions subscribing to the Buddhist faith - be shifted to some third country for safe keeping, what leverage would it have on them once the Taliban are fully established? The plain fact that emerges is that Pakistan's influence on the Taliban regime is very little even at this stage of their vulnerable existence.
Once this vulnerability lessens, Afghanistan is likely to resume its historic role of playing up the Pakhtunistan and allied border issues. This could take the form of a deadly mix of ethnic virulence and religious fundamentalism. India's Afghan card is waiting for just such an opportunity to come into play as it did during the rule of Zahir Shah and Daud.
The current brunt of the Taliban's ideological and ethnic excesses falls on Pakistan. It is once again facing the tide of Afghan refugees coming in droves. If the Taliban regime is Pakistan's friend, why do they impose this burden on it? After all, the world is willing to help them in every respect if they care to observe minimum international norms of behaviour. If they break these norms, it is Pakistan which has to be burdened with the human and other spillovers of a dire situation.
When does a freedom fighter become a terrorist? Or when does a terrorist become a holy warrior? The truth is that a terrorist is neither a freedom fighter nor a holy warrior. Pakistan is an Islamic state; the Council of Islamic Ideology should decide if private or political groups have a right to declare jihad? Is the state not guilty of ignoring Article 256 of the Constitution which forbids the creation of private armies? One wonders why the Supreme Court does not take notice of this breach in its original jurisdiction? we ignore the Constitution at our peril. The public knows next to nothing about how these private armies are funded. A white paper on this might prove revealing.
The day is not far off when these private armies will turn their guns on their creators and will create civil war-like conditions. Jihadi armies are usually commandeered by extremists who know not the language of political compromise. Any agreement with India, no matter how small a step in relation to Kashmir, will be labelled a sell-out by the ideological leaders of the private militias whose real agenda is to grab the levers of power.
Assuming the unlikely possibility of the Kashmir Valley being taken over by the freedom fighters and holy warriors, will its fate be any different from that of today's Afghanistan? We need to be reminded of a cardinal principle: it is the quality and propriety of the means that determine the shape and contours of the ends. Violent means will produce violence-prone ends. The prime examples are the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
The above analysis would suggest that time has come to review options on Afghanistan. Pakistan should not seek to circumvent the UN sanctions. It is in its interest that the sanctions apply to the Taliban in full compliance of UN resolutions. Its relationship to them should be governed by the principle of reciprocity. Thus far it has been a one way street. Islamabad should also open better lines of communication to the Northern Alliance and fully support the efforts of King Zahir Shah to hold a Loya Jirga.
Terrorism is not the weapon of the brave. Freedom won by terrorism usually ends up in a new form of slavery. The gun does not reason. To diminish the Mullah Omar clique is to strike at the roots of religious extremism and sectarian terrorism in Pakistan. The biggest threat to the country's future today is a gun culture as expressed in terms of daily murder, terrorism, sectarianism and virulent ethnicity. An act of terror in pursuance of a goal, no matter how just, reduces the validity of that cause. Herein lies the test of statesmanship. Our eastern and western borders are best protected by observing universal norms of civility. The writer is a former member of the National Assembly.
© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2001