The Pakistani Spectator

The Pakistani army’s fight against Taliban insurgents continues successfully in the FATA area and its surroundings. Despite many pledges from the friends of Pakistan only a couple of countries have made good their commitments whereas the other friends are yet to make good on their pledges. Despite the lacklustre response from the world on helping Pakistan eradicate the menace of extremism and terrorism, it is the resolute Pakistanis themselves that have taken on the Taliban head on. The repercussions have been the gravest. The toll has reached 2 million plus internally displaced, including tens of thousands tent-ed in desiccated environment; brave Pakistani soldiers battling thousands of well trained armed guerrillas, deaths already running in hundreds, mainly of the militants besides many of the valiant Pakistani soldiers who laid their lives so that their countrymen could live in peace and of course the civilians’ deaths through collateral damage.

Concurrently, it is comforting to know that Pakistan has adequately equipped itself to defend any onslaught from Indian misadventure. Especially the on-going jingoistic intentions of its Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor against the very integrity of Pakistan, ma-kes us more convinced about its intentions. During the last 61 years the Indians have waged two major wars against Pakistan i.e. in 1965 and 1971. More often they have engaged Pakistan in warlike situations through its proxies in Afghanistan and RAW sponsored dest-abilizing events against a standing Pakistani military. There has been a lot of evidence in its involvement in Balochistan also which the Pakistani Government has promised to put up to them at an appropriate time. It continues to bleed Pakistan through a network of its consulates in Afghanistan and Pakistan through rented terrorists by financially sponsoring them and the latest front opened is the water war. There has been no let up in Indian financing of Taliban attacks on Pakistani soldiers and civilians.

Despite many assertions by the United States that India does not possess evil intentions against Pakistan, the Indian actions against the interests of Pakistan have always proved to be otherwise. Also, Pakistan remains suspicious of India’s widening footprint in its next door neighbour Afghanistan as a sequel to Bonn Conference in November 2001. The Northern Alliance supported by India, Iran and Russia did not accept Taliban ascendancy even before the attack on World Trade Centre in 2001 and took an active part in fighting alongside the Western forces to evict them from power. It was an irony that the two affected nations Pakistanis and the Pashtuns were not even invited to the Bonn Conference and hence the prevalent instability in Afghanistan. The then UN’s envoy to Afghanistan who chaired the conference at Bonn later termed the folly as, “This was our or The year 2004 saw the American administration lured by the lucrative Indian market to resurrect its faltering economy and hence the change in the US foreign policy related to South Asia.

It saw the added benefit in making India an effective counterweight to China. The recent co-mments of General Deepak Kap-oor on taking on China and Pakistan simultaneously in a war speaks of the invisible pat on the back by the US Administration as it failed to take any notice of the General in this volatile South Asian environment. It also entered into a nuclear deal with New Delhi even though it is not a signatory to the NPT. Pakistan was not considered for such a privilege despite its acute requirement of energy. All that it has been taken so far is sort of a service provider to facilitate safe transit routes for Western supplies to Afghanistan in exchange for US aid, some military equipment and for fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda in its tribal areas.

President Obama was very vocal on the link between war in Afghanistan and peace in Kashmir. But that was before he took over the office of the President of the United States. Since then, he has doubted his wisdom on the issue. In the year 2007, he wrote in a Foreign Affairs article, “If Pakistan can look towards to the east with confidence; it will be less likely to believe its interests are best advanced through cooperation with the Taliban.” That was then. Come April 2009, the President termed Pakistan’s focus on New Delhi as paranoia. He said, “The obsession with India as a mortal threat to Pakistan is misguided because their biggest threat right now comes internally.”

Since the time he has taken over his office, the US drone attacks into the tribal areas have continued and under the new policy, the US Administration is itching to operate the same elsewhere on the false pretexts of presence of Quetta Shura in Balochistan. Whatever hopes this country had with Obama taking over the President of the United States, they are fast spiralling down. The Pakistan specific Kerry-Lugar Bill is also controversial for its contents.
More importantly, American policy towards Kashmir has become a hostage to India’s widening influence in the power corridors of United States of America. It is high time Pakistan asked the US leadership to publicly come out with the current views on Kashmir issue so that Pakistan does not remain under any false impression of American possessing sympathetic viewpoint towards the apathy of Kashmiris. Deletion of India and Kashmir with respect to Af-Pak from US envoy Richard Holbrook’s mandate is a testimony to that. Whatever nexuses created to deprive Pakistan of its instance on Kashmir would only backfire.

The only alternative is ‘talks’ with US pressure on India provided the United States is willing to. In this point of time New Delhi must enter into serious negotiations with Islam-abad to resolve the Kashmir dispute and other outstanding water and land disputes. Unless a solution is reached, peace in the region will remain elusive and the sacrifices made in Afghanistan either by Pakistanis or the westerners in blood would go in vain.