The Pakistani Spectator

George Orwell’s novel “1984″ described a world where ‘war is peace’, ‘freedom is slavery’ and ‘big brother is watching you’. These Orwellian words truly depict our totalitarian world of today.

When confronted with the dismal record of occupations and interventions, the common gung-ho American refrain nowadays is that history is for losers and that history never repeats itself, historians do.

All interventions that end up in occupations stem from such a fundamental ignorance of history. In the recent past, hoping it is not deemed as Biblical history, the American decision to stand with Saddam Hussein against the Iranian regime led to the two Gulf Wars. Their strategy to arm, train and fund the Afghan mujaheddin led to the establishment of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

During his campaign President Obama, deeming it politically expedient, dubbed the Afghanistan War as a ‘good’ and necessary’ war. He agonized for nine months to figure out the McChrystal report, the author himself having said in September: “I do not see indications of a large al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan now.” The choice of West Point as a venue to announce the troop increase, proved yet again, the militarization of US politics. In doing so he owned the war, the exit date of 2011 a mere fallacy.

“If left unchecked,” Obama declared, “the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.” “Failure in Iraq,” said President Bush in 2007, would mean that “our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people.”

What about the safe-havens that India has found on our western borders? Is it a mere coincidence that the weapons in the possession of militants here include U.S. made M249 automatic machine guns, U.S.-made Glock pistols, Indian hand guns, FN Browning GP35 9mmx19mm, Indian automatic machine pistols GLOCK 17 9mmx19mm, Indian machine guns Heckler & Koch MP5A3 9mmx19mm, Indian made Sterling L2A1 sub machine guns, Israeli licensed Indian made UZI 9mmx19mm sub machine guns and German Walther-P1 pistols. Also found were Indian army used Vickers-Berthier (VB) light machine guns.

What has been done by the US and India, perpetually breathing down our necks, about the dossier handed over at Sharmal Sheikh by Prime Minister Gillani to his Indian counterpart and by the evidence given by DG ISI to Director CIA Leon Panetta containing proof of India’s use of Afghan soil for blatant involvement in subversive activities in Pakistan. Also presented was the dubious role of the US in the same. This dossier/evidence also covered evidence about the Indian connection to finance terror in Pakistan.

The dossier/evidence also mentioned Indian training camps in Kandahar where Baluch insurgents, were being trained and armed for sabotage activities in Balochistan. There were also photographs of meetings between these people and their Indian operatives. It also provided evidence about Indian connections with those involved in attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team and the Manawan police station.

After his Islamabad yatra Panetta arrived in India and held meetings with Indian National Security Advisor MK Narayanan, RAW Chief KC Verma and Intelligence Bureau Chief Rajeev Mathur. What has followed was even greater carnage in Pakistan.

The United States has already lost the War in Afghanistan. They went in to fight on the military as well as the political front. The military war has been lost in the face of an increasingly resurgent and effective Taliban. The present Pentagon/State Department mindset believes that numerical superiority over their adversary is a precondition to victory. The history of war tells us otherwise; it is strategic superiority that usually prevails.

The political war of winning hearts and minds and establishing a stable government was flawed from day one. It culminated into a total failure in the recent elections termed a fraud even by independent Western observers. The Kabul ‘municipality’ is plagued with extremely corrupt and incompetent people (Islamabad and Kabul seemingly twin cities in this regard). Hamid Karzai lacks any following among the masses and is tainted by allegations of corruption; his brother Ahmed allegedly being a leading drug dealer.

The American policies regarding Pakistan have always been crafted with the conviction that their dictates be met with little or no resistance. That we have remained servile for so long eliminates whatsoever little inhibitions they may have had in this regard. The announced surge, yet another one of these policies where its fallout on Pakistan was ignored, is bound to bring yet more mayhem to our homes.

It will be counter-productive with the spill-over effect greatly exacerbating our perilous and bloody journey to peace. The West made a mistake of waging a proxy war to bring down the Soviet Union. The flames never subsided. Now they are making an even greater mistake of forcing the flames to spread into Pakistan. A weak or fragmented Pakistan has the potential to burn the whole world.

This war, never our own but forced down our throats, has cost Pakistan dearly. It is a price fathomed by those only who have buried their own with their trembling hands; by those parents, wives and children, whose beloved will never come back home again. It is the absence of a clean and strong government honestly committed to the welfare of the people that is the malady we suffer. No military ‘victory’ can be an antedote to this fatal flaw; the loss of so many valuable lives just a terribly tragic waste. It is an obscene affront to those who made the ultimate sacrifice and their near and dear ones who are forced to think ‘what for’?

After making a series of ignominious decisions to escalate the war in Vietnam, the then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ‘eventually’ learned that “wars generate their own momentum and follow the law of unanticipated consequences.” Afghanistan will prove no exception to that rule. President Obama has committed himself to “finishing the job”, of all the places, in Afghanistan; the setting of the “Great Game” chronicled by Rudyard Kipling. No outside power has ever finished the job in Afghanistan; the forces of history are not on his side.

Gorbachev, wiser from history, drew on his experience in a recent CNN interview urging Obama to pull troops out of Afghanistan. “I think that our experience deserves attention,” the former Soviet president said. He recommended that the U.S., in the hope of bringing an end to “the long suffering of the Afghan people,” focus on “dialogue” and that “withdrawal from Afghanistan should be the goal.”

When Gorbachev came to power he, like Obama, inherited a war that was not in the interest of his nation. It took a Soviet dictator, pariahs to the West, to end it. Would it be too much to expect the same from the ‘enlightened’ torch-bearer of the ‘free and democratic’ world who was elected on the premise of ushering in a promised change?