The PCNS'?recommendations


Confusion, Confusion and then some


SALEEM SAFI



Arustic simpleton came to town for the first time. Here, he saw that a group of youngsters was protesting by staging a sit-in. Nonplussed, he asked what the point of this was. He was told that this was being done to register their protest with the government and that the closure of the roads and the consequent inconvenience would compel the government to accept the demands of the demonstrators. When he went back to his village, he had a fight with his father. Having seen what he had seen, the simpleton dragged his charpoy on to the road and perched atop it regally. When inquired about this, he twirled his moustache and said that he was ?registering his protest?. The false equivalence between the protest of the urban youngsters and his own exercise in futility was lost on the young simpleton.

Whenever I look at the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security on Pak-US relations and the chattering surrounding it, I?m repeatedly reminded of this incident. It is being quite erroneously presumed that the closure of the NATO supply routes is going to undo many well-laid plans of the US whereas the route no longer holds the same importance for the US and its allies that it did about a couple of years ago. Pakistani parliamentarians are forgetting the key fact that NATO has long transferred the key weaponry that it wanted to Afghanistan. Given their stock of weapons, they are well-set for a few more years. And even if they aren?t, the US administration has already taken the decision of pulling out its combative forces by 2014. Whereas, hi-tech weaponry such as drones are concerned, the US wasn?t using the Pakistani route for them to begin with. At the time of the closure of these routes, they were being employed for the supply of food and water and the Central Asian route is an adequate alternative route for these supplies. Moreover, the US has now outfitted quite a few Afghan air bases with runways where Galaxy planes can land.

This leaves the question of a route for return. That is not a very important concern as NATO won?t be transferring much of the weaponry back anyways. Moreover, not many quarters have qualms about letting the route being used for return. Even the erstwhile jihadi commander and leader of the Defence of Pakistan Council, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, has said that they would have no objections to NATO using the route for pullout. And where the pullout is concerned, even China is willing to offer its routes for that purpose. Hence, while the closure of the route may have caused the US and its allies significant inconvenience but it is not so grave or critical so as to become a matter of life and death. At best, it is a nuisance and not a matter of survival in the region as Pakistani parliamentarians are surmising.

More or less, the same reasoning applies to drone attacks. It is now a well-known fact that these attacks started with the complicity of the Pakistani establishment. Leave alone WikiLeaks, in my television show Jirga, PML(N) leader Sardar Mehtab Ali Khan accepted that the army leadership had told them in a briefing that Musharraf had not only formally agreed to these drone attacks but the US would actually come to him for approval after the target for each attack had been ascertained. It is another matter that the US stopped asking for this case-by-case permission after 2008. Again, certain sections of the media are making it out that, like the closure of the supply routes, these drone attacks are a matter of life-and-death for the US and critical to the survival of the US in Afghanistan. The reality couldn?t be much different. These drone attacks have killed no noteworthy leader of the Afghan Taliban. The targets have mostly been that from Al-Qaeda and TTP. Thus, these attacks have weakened and disrupted the coordination of the TTP, not the Afghan Taliban. Critical or not, the huffing and puffing of parliament has not had ? and will not have- any effect on the frequency and intensity of these attacks. Even after the closure of the supply routes after the Salala incident, three attacks have been conducted; all targeting marks wanted by Pakistan and not those from the Afghan Taliban.

The only possible use our patron and overlord, the US, has for us is to employ us as a conduit between itself and the Taliban for the purposes of reconciliation. Despite the downslide in relations, Pakistan is still doing this to an extent. Pakistan could have impeded the Qatar talks if it wanted to, but it chose not to. Now, the core groups of the three countries (Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US) are functional again and their first meeting (after they had been suspended after the Salala incident) took place in Tajikistan last week. It is important that Pakistan understands that it needs to bargain for its rightful position in the future configuration for the region and negotiate this endgame as such. But instead of doing that, the parliament is choosing to focus on other issues like the drone attacks.

The reason for the utter confuddlement of the Pakistan?s political leadership in the matter is that the formulation of the foreign policy, especially relations with the US, India and Afghanistan, has been the exclusive prerogative of the military establishment (partially in the early days and in entirety since the last four decades). When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto tried to intervene, he was sent to his final resting place. When Nawaz Sharif tried to stick his nose into the matter, he was courted off to Attock fort and then Saudi Arabia. This preserve of the foreign policy was forbidden fruit for even the chief executive, let alone the parliament. Thus, it is the inexperience of the current lot in parliament that is handicapping them. Their greenness and naivet? is quite apparent from the recommendation that the great minds of our parliament have put together. They are so half-baked and contradictory that even the leadership of the parties whose own members have formulated these golden rules are not on board with them.

There is another reason for the parliament ? and resultantly the public ? being a picture of perplexity. That is that Pakistan is the ill-fated country where state institutions bargain over and political leaders politick over issues of national security and foreign policy. The world over, whether in developed or developing countries, politicking is conducted over internal issues and the government and opposition present a united front on external ones. Quite the opposite in our fair republic. Most of the political parties formulate their stances based not on merit but partisan concerns. Once an expedient stance has been formulated, it is retroactively swathed in the garb of nationalism, patriotism and/or religion. For instance, when the ANP is in the opposition, it holds long marches against drone attacks. But when it is in government, it chooses a suspicious silence on the issue. When JUI and JI are in power in KP and Balochistan, the same NATO supply routes are operational in their domains. Nary a thought of their closure crosses their mind, until they reach the opposition benches when they become protest personified.

Be it drone attacks, suicide bombings, the Taliban, or matters related to Afghanistan or Kashmir, most political and religious parties? private musings are concertedly different from their public posturings. This is why now that the matter of relations with the US has by an accident of fate ended up in the hallowed halls of parliament, most parties are bamboozled. The Pakistani public, and the world at large, awaits the decision of parliament as each passing moment is precious whereas the fate of the region is concerned. But rather than be cognisant of this ticking of the clock, there was an inordinate delay by the parliament; first in formulating the recommendations, then in calling the joint session and then in finalising the recommendations.

The seed of the self-destructive element, the reaping of which is our faulty foreign policy and flawed national security paradigm, was sown in the time of General Ayub. It was General Zia who nurtured this crop with the blood of Pakistanis and Afghans and bore it to fruition. But it was General Musharraf who introduced the fertilisation of duplicity and all-around-confusion into this unholy crop and harvested it in the worst possible manner. On the one hand, he lied to the Pakistani public while playing a game with the US and its allies. He made a Faustian bargain with the US to secure his seat but blatantly perjured to the public by saying that it was Pakistan?s interest that he had secured. Drone attacks were conducted with his approval but it was lamented publicly that they were not. On the one hand, he cemented his rule and secured his institution?s interests by cooperating with the US. On the other, he created the MMA and gave it power and fuelled anti-Americanism through the media.

Unfortunately, these policies continued even after General Musharraf?s exit. The same people who had sanctioned the drone attacks egged the religious parties and important media representatives to wax wroth against them. The same people who had let American agencies enter Pakistan leaked stories of their activities to media sources and organised sit-ins against them. The same people who had approved the May 2nd operation came out spouting rage against it and called it an attack on Pakistani sovereignty.

This duplicity had to take its toll sometime, somewhere. Now, we are well and truly beleaguered. The external world is no longer willing to trust us. While on the internal front, our tried-and-tested pawns are either worthless or also unwilling to do our dirty bidding. Which is why the buck has now been passed to the parliament. The decision to close the supply routes and vacate the Shamsi airbase was taken on an executive level. But now that the time has come to withstand US pressure and bargain with it, it is suddenly the parliament?s turn. The government gained a lot of mileage by throwing the ball into the parliament?s court. But now both the parliament and the establishment are in a spot of bother. If the parliament had been asked to just provide the guidelines, it would?ve gotten off easy and the establishment too wouldn?t be in this fix. But since the ?game? of giving this to parliament was about something else to begin with, the guidelines were deliberately encumbered by a melange of administrative matters.

The establishment couldn?t have continued with the course it had taken for long. There was increasing US pressure compounded by the burden of the impending decisive moment in the Afghan endgame. Hence, the-powers-that-be couldn?t have feigned indifference for long. Thus, to bide time, they bargained behind the scenes with the US on the basis of these parliamentary guidelines (which were obviously drafted on the-powers-that-be?s pointers). While this parliamentary charade went on, the intelligence apparatuses of both countries remained in perpetual close contact. Cooperation also continued in the matter of the Qatar talks. There was already a broad agreement on the reopening of the NATO routes and the parliamentary guidelines were made to fit that pre-meditated bill. Since there was no agreement on the drone attacks even behind-the-scenes, the public stance was also kept stringent.

The US had been assured that these recommendations would pass through parliament by the end of March. But here?s the catch. Many things in these recommendation do not agree with the ostensible policy stances of the PML(N), JUI and JI. If they were to agree with them, how would they save face with their voters? But while the opposition can?t relent, neither can the government. It can?t make the changes that the opposition desires because if it does, then resumption of ties with the US and NATO will become a lost cause. The establishment too is in a conundrum. It doesn?t want to square off with the US. But now, if it bypasses the parliament to negotiate with the US, all this show will have been for naught. Its entire game plan will be spoiled and it will be the one to take all the future flak. Hence, the government, the establishment and the opposition: stuck, stuck and, you guessed it, stuck. All tripped up by their own ploys. One way to get out of this pickle of a situation is, as I mentioned earlier, to let the parliament merely provide the guidelines on the matter and let the government flesh out the matter in the context of the ground realities, diplomatic niceties and the establishment?s all-important mood.

The flaw in the PCNS? recommendation is that they are economical with the truth and skittish with the facts. The public doesn?t know what the nature and terms of engagement with the US were up till the Salala incident. The conditions on which the NATO supply routes will be reopened have been explained but what conditions were these routes open on beforehand is kept under many wraps. The future tack to be taken about drone attacks is now open an obvious but what the real policy was about them previously is unknown. Similarly, the need for transparency in the matters of private security contractors has been stressed but no one knows under what conditions they are currently operating in our territory. Either the committee doesn?t know these facts itself or doesn?t want to tell the wider public. These guidelines merely present remedies without outlining the diagnosis. One would think this is a deficient way of going about curing something.

The biggest failing in our national security policy is that the distinction between friend and foe isn?t clear. Our policy is a farrago of contradictions. The public is confused: Is the US ally numero uno or enemy numero uno? Is the Afghan government friend or foe? Are the militant useful proxies or useless pains? The committee rather than addressing this confusion has perpetuated it. The said committee is not one of ?foreign policy? but one of ?national security? but it has not even touched on any matters of internal security.

Because if we analyse closely, many aspects of our relationship with the US and Afghanistan are determined by matters of internal concern. For instance, be it the matter of drone attacks or the attack on the Salala checkpost, it is inextricably linked to the establishment of the government?s writ in the tribal areas. Similarly, the matter of Balochistan also impacts our relations with these two countries. Other key internal problems that have a definitive impact on our foreign issues are the role of the security establishment and the lack of coordination amongst state institutions. How can we sort out our external issues without bringing our internal house in order? But the committee has neatly dovetailed these issues. The way out for the parliament given the problem at hand is that it should not entangle itself in parts of the problems and deal with the whole instead. It needs to do first things first: it needs to access all the facts and figures about the situation and bring them forward for the public; it needs to come up with a transparent mechanism to reach decisions on the matter; it needs to devise new rules of the game for civil-military relations and define the ambit of the establishment?s role. Then it can devise basic rules for relations with the US, Afghanistan and India. And as these are linked to matters internal, the committee also must focus on those.

The writer is a seasoned journalist and hosts the programme Jirga on Geo TV.

?

facebook

cartoon-1