Hit and run
Monday, May 04, 2009
Shakir Husain
Husain Haqqani has always reminded me of Baldrick from Black Adder because he is a man who always has a ‘cunning plan’. Writing an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on April 29, ambassador Haqqani calls for employing the ‘pacification’ model used so successfully in Fallujah in Iraq in Swat. Was it just me or did other people also bat an eyelid? Ambassador Haqqani, Pakistan is not Iraq and Swat is not Fallujah. It gets better though: “The recent spike of international concern about the threat in Pakistan seems to stem from the recent dialogue between the government of the Pashtunkhwa Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan and a local movement that supported Islamic law but did not join the Taliban’s violent campaign. The goal for this dialogue was twofold — first, to restore order and stability to the Swat valley; and second, to wedge rational elements of the religiously conservative population away from terrorists and fanatics.” Ambassador please. Firstly, the ‘spike’ of concern is not just international, it’s within Pakistan as well. Within the last week religious parties, opposition parties, respected clerics and members of civil society have all spoken against the ‘deal’. With the exception of Ayaz Amir and the MQM no politician spoke at the so-called parliamentary debate on the deal. Sherry Rehman and a few others managed to break party lines and speak their conscience. But on the whole our elected representatives let down the people of Pakistan – yet again.
Secondly, ambassador Haqqani has been away from Pakistan a bit too long which has led him to forget much about his motherland – most importantly, the facts. Swat’s local population has never been ‘religiously conservative’ and have never supported the Taliban given that the majority of people earned their living from tourism. The ‘Taliban’ came in from neighbouring areas and when the people of Swat begged the government to step in there was no help or assistance. I’m sure the folks in Swat wondered why they paid their taxes since no law enforcement agency was able to help them. The ‘deal’ seemed attractive to them after months of fighting, murder, pillage, and loot by the Taliban. Not to mention beheadings, floggings, and decapitation thrown in for good measure. What ambassador Haqqani and a lot of his colleagues in Islamabad should know is that a lot of what is happening in Northern Pakistan has absolutely nothing to do with religion; rather a lot of it is about economics, power structures and money. Every criminal gang is now adopting the ‘Taliban’ persona to carry out their business because they know that the state has capitulated to the Taliban; so why not give it a shot? This is not to say that the Taliban do not exist or that their brand of religion doesn’t. But there are several groups who are operating under the banner who have no ideological loyalty to them. Is it a surprise that the emerald mines in Swat were the first spots that the Taliban decided to squat on? Pakistan is dealing with gangsters who happen to have beards and rudimentary knowledge of Islam which they can enforce with their guns in the absence of any opposition.
Ambassador Haqqani speaks about peace with the more moderate elements in his op-ed column. Perhaps it is nostalgia from his days as a card-carrying member of the Jamaat-e-Islami at the Punjab University in Lahore which drives ambassador Haqqani to think that the government can actually negotiate with these thugs we see in action. But these folks are of a different ilk. Gone are the days when the moral police of the Jamiat used to use sticks to enforce their version of morality on college campuses across the country. The folks we are dealing with make the Jamiat look like pot smoking liberals. There can be and should be no negotiation. There should be no illusion that the writ of the state has been rolled back due to negligence, incompetence and corruption. Much has to change for the state to make amends with its disgruntled citizens. And while money can sort some of the problems, most of them have nothing to do with money. How do you buy resolve, backbone and competence?
“Recent developments offer us an opportunity amid crisis. More Pakistanis are now convinced of the need to confront the extremists”, offers Ambassador Haqqani. Pakistanis have always been convinced that the religious parties cannot deliver for them all that they want and need. It is for that reason that religious parties have never gotten more than 10 per cent of the vote in any free and fair election barring the one held under General Musharraf.
The Taliban are using the state’s weaknesses against it to gain popular support blended with their terror tactics. By using Robin Hood tactics they’re taking on feudal structures apart; yet the people are smart enough to know that this is temporary. No Mr Haqqani, the people of Pakistan have always known that this is not the way forward, yet the state has never been able to develop a clear position against the growing extremism in the country. The recent National Assembly session where no major party except one spoke against what’s happening in the country is a testament to this.
Ambassador Haqqani wants the US to give us counter-terrorism training which we have been stonewalling against until very recently. He wants the US to give us night vision goggles. I would like him to know that they are being sold in Peshawar as I write this. It would cost the government of Pakistan $3.6 million to purchase 1,000 AN-PVS 7-3, third generation, night vision goggles. My napkin math tells me that this could be financed by selling 22,500 square-yard plots in Islamabad. He wants equipment to knock out FM transmissions from the extremists, yet he forgets that during the 1971 war, the government of Pakistan was blocking the BBC World Service. Blocking FM transmissions is a high school science project at best. The ROZ’s are another example of the ridiculous. These regional opportunity zones are designed to give market access to these regions.
I want to know which entrepreneur is going to invest his/her own money into areas where even the armed forces are scared to go into. With the melting snows, the summer promises to be hot in more than one way on the Pakistan Afghan Border and I doubt if factories are going to be opening any time soon. Pakistan should be talking about access to US markets so that the people in our cities can find jobs instead of renting themselves out by the day to the Taliban. Just like Rehman Malik keeps appearing on television from Islamabad warning the extremists not to ‘challenge the writ of the state’ without really knowing what’s going on, ambassador Haqqani should also do a better job of positioning Pakistan and its interests in Washington DC.
The writer lives in Karachi. Email: shakir.thenews@gmail.com
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