Korea Times
Time Is Short as U.S. Pushes a Reluctant Pakistan 2009-04-15
By JANE PERLEZ
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Obama’s strategy of offering Pakistan a partnership to defeat the insurgency here calls for a virtual remaking of Pakistan’s institutions and even of the national psyche, an ambitious agenda that Pakistan’s politicians and people appear unprepared to take up.
Officially, Pakistan’s government welcomed Mr. Obama’s strategy, with its hefty infusions of American money, hailing it as a“positive change.”But as the Obama administration tries to bring Pakistanis to its side, large parts of the public, the political class and the military have brushed off the plan, rebuffing the idea that the threat from Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which Washington calls a common enemy, is so urgent.
Some, including the army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the president, Asif Ali Zardari, may be coming around. But for the military, India remains priority No. 1, as it has for the 61 years of Pakistan’s existence.
How to shift that focus in time for Pakistan to defeat a fast-expanding Islamic insurgency that threatens to devour the country is the challenge facing Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy to the region.
Strengthening Pakistan’s weak civilian institutions, updating political parties rooted in feudal loyalties and recasting a military fixated on yesterday’s enemy, and stuck in the traditions of conventional warfare, are generational challenges. But Pakistan may not have the luxury of the long term to meet them.
Some analysts are already putting forward apocalyptic timetables. “We are running out of time to help Pakistan change its present course toward increasing economic and political instability, and even ultimate failure,”said a recent report by a task force of the Atlantic Council that was led by former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The report, released in February, gave the Pakistani government 6 to 12 months before things went from bad to dangerous.
A specialist in guerrilla warfare, David Kilcullen, who advised General David H. Petraeus when General Petraeus was the American commander in Iraq, offered a more dire assessment. Pakistan could be facing internal collapse within six months, he said. General Petraeus, in recent Congressional testimony, called the insurgency one that could“take down”the country, which is home to Qaeda militants and has nuclear arms.
Even before the insurgency has been fully engaged, however, many Pakistanis have concluded that reaching an accommodation with the militants is preferable to fighting them. Some, including mid-ranking soldiers, choose to see the militants not as the enemy, but as fellow Muslims who are deserving of greater sympathy than are the American aims.
It is problematic whether the backing of Mr. Zardari, and the Obama administration’s promise of $1.5 billion in aid for each of the next five years, can change the mood in the country, said a former interior minister, Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, who met officials now in the Obama administration in Washington last fall.
Fighting the insurgency is commonly seen in Pakistan as an American cause, not a Pakistani one, he said.
There are questions, too, of whether the Obama offer of nearly $3 billion in counterinsurgency aid can quickly convert the Pakistani military from a force trained to fight India on the plains of Punjab into an outfit that can conquer the mountains of the tribal areas, where the militants operate.
“After such a long time of being with the Americans, the country has been through such stress and strain and nothing good has come of it,”Mr. Sherpao said.“A cross-section of people is dead set against the Americans. Another section is not happy but not vocal. About 1 to 2 percent would say this policy of America should continue.”
The distrust has been heightened by charges from American officials, including General Petraeus and Mr. Holbrooke, that Pakistan’s spy agency is still supporting the Islamic militants who pour over the border to fight American troops in Afghanistan. A former director general of the agency Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant General Javed Ashraf, said the American opinions did not augur well. A spokesman for the Pakistani military called them“baseless”and part of a“malicious campaign.”
“You can’t start a successful operation with a trust deficit,”General Ashraf said.“Pakistan is an ally. But then you say we are linked with the Taliban. The serving army people will say,‘To hell with them if this is what we are going to get after laying down more than 1,500 lives.’"
That is the number of soldiers the Pakistani Army says have been killed fighting the militants in the tribal areas.
Then there is India. Its growing presence in Afghanistan makes Pakistan believe it is being encircled, said Ishaq Khan Khakwani, a former senator from the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party.
Pakistanis complain that even though Mr. Obama, during his European trip, called for dialogue between India and Pakistan, his plans fail to address this .
“The United States has to get India to back off in Afghanistan,”said Mr. Khakwani, who is sympathetic to the American position.“Then Pakistan will see Indian interference is diminished and that will give confidence to Pakistan.”
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges