24 January 2003
Iraq strategy: grass for the cows
By Ayaz Amir
To presume that we have, or should have, an Iraq strategy is a piece of presumption in line with our national tendency to act bigger than our boots. There is nothing that Pakistan can do about Iraq, nothing the whole Muslim world can do about it. If Iraq is not attacked (a remote prospect) it won't be because of us.
More and more people are coming round to the opinion that all this is about oil and the massive reserves on which Iraq sits, Robert Fisk of the Independent writing perhaps the most brilliantly on this subject. Well, so what? The West has controlled and dominated Arab oil for the last hundred years. This is not about to end any time soon.
Mercifully, we are a bit removed from the scene of the impending action and so are unlikely to be called upon by our American friends to carry their bags in Iraq as was required of us in Afghanistan. On this score at least, our tender emotions will be spared.
The Pakistani public of course is likely to be upset because an attack on Iraq will not go down well with it. This is the real dilemma for the military government and the reason why it looks a bit defensive if not cornered on this question. Its pro-Americanism runs counter to the public mood, a factor behind the strong showing of the Muttahida Majis-i-Amal (the clerical combine) in the October elections.
But this is a cross Pakistan's supreme leader has to carry. The more the public mood turns against the US, the more grist will be added to the MMA's mills. Which is ironic considering that General Musharraf was supposed to make Pakistan safe for liberalism and here, unwittingly no doubt, he has presided over a fundamentalist revival.
To rework an old question, did Musharraf have a choice when he succumbed to American pressure post-September 11? On the main issue, no, but I am one with my friend Ataul Haq Qasmi in the Jang when he says that any democratic leader, even the pro-American Benazir Bhutto, would have got a better deal for Pakistan than a military ruler. The charge that will hold against Musharraf is that he accepted American demands too quickly and left the quid pro quo to American generosity.
A democratic leader would have had to go through the motions, if nothing more, of consultations. Which would have given Pakistan breathing space to ask for better terms. Egypt put a heavy price tag on its cooperation during the Gulf War. Turkey is asking for a stiff price for its cooperation in the coming war on Iraq. In comparison, we sold ourselves cheaply.
This is a theme running through our history. Another military ruler, Zia, sold Pakistan cheaply in the eighties. Yahya became a bridge between the US and China almost for nothing in 1971. A dismal tale throughout. Pakistan's democrats have been no angels but their mistakes are nothing compared to the miscalculations of their military counterparts.
Another point: Musharraf was in a weak position to hold his own against the Americans because of the skeletons in the army's cupboard: support for the Taliban and the general folly of our Afghan policy. Someone caught with his pants down is hardly in a position to mount the pulpit. This guilt complex, born of the knowledge that the masters running the show in Pakistan were close to the Taliban, paved the way for capitulation.
But why the art of the cheap-sell? To a great extent because our ruling cadres have always defined the national interest in terms of India. How to tick off India: provided only that we gain an advantage over India, we let other factors go down the drain. Our whole concept of national security is thus hostage to the India factor.
This is also one reason behind Musharraf's ready acceptance of American demands after September 11. He and his colleagues thought that by gaining American favour they were stealing a march on India. They have been disabused of this notion since then but that's another story.
To say that the army invokes the ghosts of national danger in order to justify its commanding share of national resources is to oversimplify the matter and judge the army too harshly. The army takes itself seriously as an institution. (Some would say, too seriously.) In the list of its commandments, the very first defines India as the enemy. There is nothing make-believe about this.
Pakistan was born with a huge sense of insecurity. The bloodletting and blind passions accompanying partition created a paranoid frame of mind. Survival was the first imperative and the first requirement of survival was to balance India's huge size, and mitigate the threat perceived as coming from it, by foreign alliances, in our case with the United States.
Our infant fears thus conditioned our first responses. But haven't we grown up after 55 years? Must we still live with the fears of childhood? Confrontation with India was once our most conspicuous badge of identity. It's now a millstone round our neck, forged in the cradle of insecurity and begetting more insecurity in turn.
It is not the United States which holds us in bondage and tramples on our sovereignty. We couldn't be more wrong about this. It is confrontation with India, and the arms race that this fuels, which has bankrupted our national finances, drained national resources, subverted our democracy and driven us into unnecessary or foolish alliances with the United States.
We have much to learn from the United States, the most powerful, technologically the most advanced nation on earth. We do ourselves no service when in our imagination we treat it simply as a counterweight to India.
All this to what end, to achieve what mighty purpose? Kashmir is no nearer our grasp. Our nuke status was supposed to make us invulnerable but we are now worried that after Iraq our 'strategic assets' may not become the next object of America's wrath. A far-fetched thought but even Musharraf brought up the subject in his recent remarks in Lahore. So there you have it, the ultimate weapon of national defence turning into the ultimate nightmare. No joke can be grimmer than this.
About Kashmir we could take a leaf from China's book which has not allowed the Taiwan question to impede normal relations with the US or the still unresolved dispute over the MacMahon Line to obstruct relations with India. We call China our greatest friend but have yet to learn anything from Chinese diplomacy.
All right, all right, Kashmir is more important than Taiwan and the MacMahon Line. It is the jugular vein of Pakistan, the unresolved business of partition. Agreed, agreed. But if a thing hasn't been solved for 55 years we could at least try some fresh approaches. How long must we continue living in cuckooland?
Another thing puzzles me. We got over the loss of East Pakistan with remarkable ease - a sangfroid that can only be called astonishing in retrospect. Yet we remain stuck on an issue which never formed part of the constitutional arrangements leading up to partition. East Pakistan was part of our very existence, Kashmir one of the afterthoughts or leftovers of partition, not one of its defining or central planks.
Should we then leave the Kashmiris to their fate? This is a touchy one but we should stop getting emotional about something which the futility of three wars (four if we count Kargil) have proved we can do nothing about. Why not let India stew in its own juice and live with the consequences of Kashmiri alienation?
Iraq is a fleeting phenomenon, its relevance for us a bit academic and remote. What should concern us is our own backyard where the detritus and refuse of 50 years are crying out loud for some efficient method of disposal.
© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2003