U.S. Military Seeks to Widen Pakistan Raid

 

American commanders in Afghanistan have in recent months urged a widening of the war that could include American attacks on indigenous Pakistani militants in the tribal areas inside Pakistan, according to United States officials.

 requests have been rebuffed for now, the officials said, after deliberations in Washington among senior Bush administration officials who fear that attacking Pakistani radicals may anger Pakistan’s new government, which is negotiating with the militants, and destabilize an already fragile security situation.

American commanders would prefer that Pakistani forces attack the militants, but Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas have slowed recently to avoid upsetting the negotiations.

Pakistan’s government has given the Central Intelligence Agency limited authority to kill Arab and other foreign operatives in the tribal areas, using remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But administration officials say the Pakistani government has put far greater restrictions on American operations against indigenous Pakistani militant groups, including one thought to have been behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

(Continue reading: New York Times)

 

Musharraf swears in Pakistan cabinet full of foes

By Augustine Anthony

ISLAMABAD – Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf swore in 24 members of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s cabinet on Monday, six weeks after opposition parties won a general election.

There is strong speculation the new government will force U.S. ally Musharraf, who came to power as a general in a 1999 coup, to quit within weeks or months.

There has been some apprehension within Pakistani media and political circles that the United States could try to prop up Musharraf so that counterterrorism operations in the region are not disturbed by the changing of the guard in Islamabad.

“I expect from the international community that it will support democracy in Pakistan and will help us in strengthening democratic institutions,” the country’s new Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, told reporters after being sworn in.

Eleven of the new ministers, including Qureshi, belonged to assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s party, which won the most seats in the February 18 vote. A further nine were from the party of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

Of the other four, one was an independent member of parliament and three were from two junior coalition partners.

Members of Sharif’s party wore black armbands as they were sworn in, to protest against Musharraf, whom they consider an unconstitutional president.

“We took the oath because there is a larger objective and that is the restoration of the judiciary,” Senior Minister Nisar Ali Khan, who was given the communications and farm portfolios, said.

Musharraf purged the judiciary in November when he resorted to emergency rule for six weeks to stop the Supreme Court ruling his re-election by the outgoing parliament was unconstitutional.

Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who succeeded her as leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, and Sharif have promised to reinstate deposed Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and his colleagues through a parliamentary resolution within 30 days of forming a government.

That is likely to trigger a show-down with Musharraf, who will fear the judges will resurrect constitutional challenges to his re-election last October.

Pakistan’s stock market set a life high last Thursday and appears insensitive to the doubts lingering over Musharraf’s fate. The Karachi 100-share index lost almost 1 percent on Monday, but dealers said it was a temporary setback.

“Market fundamentals are still strong, and investors are cautiously optimistic about the new government,” said Ashraf Zakaria, a dealer at brokers Ali Hussain Rajabali and Co.

The rupee eased slightly to close at 62.70/76 on Monday, still stronger than the six-year low of 63.11/14 struck on February 16, just before the election.

INVESTORS OPTIMISTIC

As expected, Ishaq Dar, a member of Sharif’s party, was appointed finance minister, but he is taking over at a difficult time with inflation hitting Pakistan’s poor, fiscal and current account deficits widening alarmingly, fears of recurrent grain shortages and increasingly frequent power cuts.

“Our economy is currently facing a lot of challenges,” said Zubair Tufail, vice president, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

“We hope that he (Dar) and the government will give a solid plan to ease the pressures on the economy.”

Dar, 60, was appointed commerce minister in a pro-business Sharif government in 1997.

He became finance minister a year later, when he had to negotiate an IMF rescue package to tackle an economic crisis triggered by sanctions over Pakistan’s nuclear tests.

Dar was detained for nearly two years after Musharraf overthrew Sharif in a 1999 coup.

The four-party coalition is made up of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the ethnic Pashtun-based Awami National Party and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam religious party.

//reuters//

‘You Have to Rethink War’

By Jeffrey Bartholet

Henry “Hank” Crumpton has spent most of his career as a spy or spymaster for the Central Intelligence Agency. An expert on running covert operations in difficult regions of the world, he began tracking and battling Al Qaeda in 1998 and oversaw the CIA’s Afghan campaign to topple the Taliban after 9/11. Crumpton later served as the senior counterterrorism official in the U.S. State Department, a job he held until early 2007. He now runs the Crumpton Group, a private consulting firm in Washington and Warsaw that brokers information, access, and business deals in emerging markets. He spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Jeffrey Bartholet about the current war against Al Qaeda and the successes and failures of American policy since 9/11.

NEWSWEEK: How plugged in are you now on Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Hank Crumpton: Very.

The last time we spoke, you were telling me about what you would do if you were going after Al Qaeda. You said the U.S. had to make deals with the tribes in Waziristan and the areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and turn them against the Arab foreigners in their midst.
Exactly.

Do you see any of that happening? Did anyone listen to you?
No. [Laughs] But it takes time for ideas to percolate. Policymakers, not only in America but abroad, should reflect not only on what we did in Afghanistan but also on what [Gen.] David Petraeus has been able to do in Iraq. And Pakistan now is saying the right things. They’re talking about a more enduring counterinsurgency effort that reaches into the tribal areas.

What do you hear about that?
I’m hopeful, just because we have so many common interests. There’s going to be a period of coalition government in Pakistan, figuring out who’s who and how to work together with the Pakistani military and security services. That’s going to take a little while, which is unfortunate, because time is our enemy. But they may figure out an even better relationship with us.

Does Pakistan’s new army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, have more leeway to cooperate with the Americans, and perhaps to give the Americans more leeway to operate in the tribal areas, than Musharraf did?
That’s a good question, and though I don’t know, I wouldn’t rule it out. What’s perhaps more important than the military [aspect] are some of the comments made about economic investment, working with locals, and negotiating with some of the militants. I’ve spent my adult life talking to people I don’t agree with, and I encourage that because maybe half of them will come around.

In the past, that hasn’t worked in the tribal areas. Musharraf and his people have made deals with the militants and the militants didn’t follow through on their end of the bargain.
It was a disaster.

So why do you hope now that they may be more trustworthy or—
I think it’s less a question of trust and more a question of benefits. Coercive force is a variable in their thinking, but more important is positive reinforcement or positive incentives. An example is energy. The [tribes along the border] are desperate for energy. And with energy you could improve the quarries there.

What kind of energy do they need, what kind of quarries can they exploit?
They’ve got some wonderful stone, marble and granite …

This is in Waziristan?
Yeah, and all the way down to Baluchistan, in all the tribal areas. The way they mine it is by using explosives to blow it up. By some estimates they lose as much as 80 or 90 percent. And they pick up what’s usable and truck it out. You could go in there with some big wind turbines or solar panels, you name it, and generate some energy. Then we could bring in some first-class mining equipment. Their wages and productivity [would jump] overnight, creating more jobs, more wealth. That’s the way you have to wage war. You go in there and clean the enemy out of that district, then come in the next day with wind turbines and say this is what we’re going to do. They want it; they own it.

Are you involved in anything particular like this?
No. I’ve been talking about it for years, and people say, “That’s a great idea.” [But nothing happens.] The reason I focus on energy is because once you have that, people can set up their satphones and have good communications to the world. Then you’re talking about education, microfinance, and a connection to the global community of nations, which is the last thing Osama bin Laden wants.

Unfortunately, I think the majority of the militants trying to blow us up are very educated people who have lots of access to education, the Internet and so on. They’re not the poverty-stricken folks.
The educated ones are the leaders who are taking advantage of the poverty-stricken folks.

Did you see this report recently that the French had an informant who had been in Waziristan and who helped break up a Spanish terror plot?
Yeah, I read that in the press.

What do you make of that: having an informant among the jihadists in Waziristan?
That’s always been happening, with varying degrees of access and reliability.

That’s the first time I’ve heard of a tip from someone close to Al Qaeda central that led to [breaking up a plot in the West].
Yeah, well, I obviously can’t go into any kind of detail. But it happens often. It’s not a rare occurrence for global intelligence services working together to stop plots and save lives.

No, but having someone in Waziristan, presumably in close geographic proximity to bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri …
It’s not a rare event.

On the Abu Laith al-Libbi hit: [the senior Al Qaeda operative] apparently was killed by a predator missile … There was clearly good intelligence there. We’re led to believe that a lot of that [valuable intelligence] is electronic.
I can’t comment on recent history. What really works is all-source intelligence, the combination of human intelligence with technical intelligence. And grinding through that hour after hour, working that continuously. That’s how you have tactical success.

Do you get the sense that the tide is turning either way in the war against Al Qaeda?
If you see how U.S. intelligence, Special Operations, and law enforcement are working together on the battlefield, it’s breathtaking. It’s better than you see in movies. That part of the story is the good news. Where it really falls short is the strategic policy piece. You have one tactical success after another, but at the same time strategic weakness or a sense of strategic failure. What’s frustrating for a lot of the intelligence operators is that there’s an expectation of perfection on their part. You have to stop every attack, every infiltrator from coming to the U.S. And when you don’t have an effective overarching policy [including economic development and building civil society] to match …

In Afghanistan right now—where you mostly had success—has it become a strategic failure?
No, but it could become that. I don’t think it will. I think we will learn and adjust, although it’s certainly painful and taking a long time. But I hope some of the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan in ’02 will be applied. I’ll give an example: the poppy crop. Why don’t we subsidize wheat and barley at 10 times the price and wean them away from poppies?

I think the reason is that if you heavily subsidize wheat and barley, people start bringing in wheat and barley from elsewhere—Pakistan, Iran—and you really undermine the local farmers.
Well, it would need to be tied to local production somehow. My point is that we don’t think of conflict in those terms. Whether it’s subsidies or irrigation systems … The Taliban intentionally encourages poppy production, in part because it draws the farmer away from central authority. We need to do the opposite.

What we hear is that the system in Afghanistan is thoroughly corrupt, from ministers and warlords down to police chiefs and judges. The Taliban has been able to essentially buy their way out of prison. How do you change that?
Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister and a smart guy, estimates that for every dollar in international aid spent, about 10 cents gets to the Afghans. It goes to overhead, salaries, and some gets siphoned off. It’s a stunning figure. We talk about a narco-economy and criticize the Afghans, but we’re not doing too good a job ourselves, or setting a good example. We’re not approaching this with the endgame in mind.

Why is that?
We have an archaic way of thinking about war.

Which is?
Which is armies fighting armies and diplomats doing diplomacy. You don’t have an expeditionary foreign service or AID [Agency for International Development] department or department of transportation. Take the example of Justice. One of the best programs we have is to take U.S. attorneys and send them overseas to serve as an ambassador’s legal adviser and work with local governments. We only have a handful of these fellows around. We should have a thousand. Think of how smart they [would be] if they came back from two years in Jakarta and went to Phoenix. It’s a terrific education for our U.S. attorneys. That should be a robust program.

It sounds a little bit like a colonial service.
But it’s more about independence than a colonial mandate. It’s about building the partnerships and learning from others. It makes us a lot smarter in Arizona about Jamaa al-Islamiya. That’s the benefit for us.

We’ve heard reports that Al Qaeda is putting more emphasis on Afghanistan these days—more money from the Gulf, more Arab fighters.
I don’t have any empirical evidence or intelligence I could share, but I wouldn’t doubt it. They’re getting their butts kicked in Iraq. In Afghanistan they’ve got a lot of money they’re siphoning off from the opium trade.

Do you think Iraq is going well?
In a tactical sense, an operational sense, I’m really proud of what our people have done: the intelligence service, the military, what the Iraqis have done. But we need to do that [with the] other 80 percent … We need to reform our entire national security structure. The U.S. attorneys program is a part of that, but there are lots of other parts.

One of the points you’ve made before is the need to give more power to people in the field. You’ve argued that the government is too bureaucratic, and Washington has too much control.
Yep. You can’t get “inside the enemy’s turning radius” from Washington. You’ve got small, flexible enemy cells making decisions at a very rapid pace compared to this process back here. But that means you need to select the right ambassadors and representatives, you’ve got to train them, hold them accountable. You have to rethink war. It’s that big a deal.

What is your view on Iran?
I’m very concerned about Iran. But I also have said repeatedly that there is a whole host of options between going to war, in a conventional sense, and not talking to them. We need to engage diplomatically, and also need to engage in other ways.

What are the other ways?
Everything [should be considered], from economic sanctions to covert actions to more forceful diplomacy. Mostly it’s about understanding and listening to the Iranian people and responding to them. You know opinion polls in Iran are very favorable to Americans. The last thing you want to do is push the Iranian people toward this terrible, corrupt regime. They have to import their gasoline because they can’t build refineries. They’re exceedingly corrupt, and the Iranian people know that, so there are huge opportunities if you look at the internal dynamics of Iran.

What do you make of the U.S. election campaign? Is anybody courting you?
Courting is probably too strong a word. Both Republicans and Democrats know that I won’t be drawn into that. I’m willing to talk to anybody. But I have no interest in going back into government.

One of the arguments going on now is that Barack Obama doesn’t have sufficient foreign policy credentials. And it’s true that he’s not surrounded by people who are considered the top tier of the foreign policy establishment, or from the military. He doesn’t have senior Army or Marine—
Let me ask you this: how wise have they been? I know your point, but most of these guys are still thinking in archaic terms.

Do you have a sense that he’s more prone to the kind of holistic approach to foreign policy that you’re talking about?
I don’t know for sure, but I’m hopeful. I’ve testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in public hearings, and I’ve been dinged a couple of times by Democrats. His questions were not only precise and deep, but the courtesy and respect he afforded me in that forum I was grateful for. He didn’t have to do that. It wasn’t necessary, but he listened; he asked good questions. I don’t want to read too much into that encounter, but it made a positive impression on me. [Crumpton considers himself an independent.]

When you say deep questions, what—
The nature of the enemy, what is their motivation? The kind of questions he ought to be asking. What’s driving the enemy, and what’s the enemy strategy? We didn’t get into this in the testimony, but this goes back to Sun Tzu: you’ve got to know what the enemy’s strategy is and attack the strategy. You don’t just attack the enemy. You don’t just attack IEDs. He was trending in that direction. And I didn’t get a lot of questions from [other] guys going that way. It was, “How come you haven’t got bin Laden?”

//newsweek

Surprising Outcomes in Pakistan

In an election replete with surprises, Pakistan’s voters have chosen wisely. Now it is up to the elected parties to rule wisely

In an election that produced many surprises, perhaps the greatest surprise was that it proceeded smoothly. In the weeks leading up to the polls, opposition parties and civil society alike had expressed fears that President Pervez Musharraf and his loyalists in the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) would rig the elections massively. As it happened, they didn’t–or couldn’t. Polling was largely fair and free. Intelligence agencies in Pakistan routinely manipulate national elections to produce results of their choosing. That the all-powerful army chose not to meddle this time is significant.

Since Gen. Yahya Khan presided over the dismemberment of the country after a humiliating war with India in 1971, seldom has the military’s stock been so low. Not only is the army loathed for the imposition of a repressive state of emergency, but its intelligence agencies are also widely believed to have been involved in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, leader of Pakistan’s largest political party. Conscious perhaps of the military’s increasing unpopularity, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the new army chief, had begun reducing the military’s encroachment into civilian life soon after taking office last November, withdrawing his generals from key civilian posts to which Musharraf had appointed them. Almost certainly a strategic retreat in the face of intense pressure from ordinary Pakistanis and increasingly impatient Western aid donors, this withdrawal nonetheless provides much-needed space for civilians to reassert themselves.

Another unexpected but wholly welcome result of this election was the humiliation of religious parties. Campaigning on the platform of anti-Americanism in the 2003 election (and allegedly assisted by some creative number-crunching behind the scenes by military agencies), a coalition of religious parties had, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, not only seized control of two of the country’s four provinces but also netted fifty seats in the national assembly. This election saw them routed. Not only did they lose Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP)–the two provinces bordering Afghanistan–but their takings at the center plummeted from fifty to three. News of the religious parties’ defeat in Peshawar, the capital of NWFP, triggered street celebrations. Inept, repressive and corrupt, the mullahs were eventually thrown out by an electorate that places prosperity and security far above religious rhetoric. This election, then, successfully debunks the notion that Pakistan is a nation of religious zealots. Provided the newly elected democrats do not disappoint, there is reason to hope now that the rise of liberal democracy will defeat the vestiges of religious extremism in Pakistan.

No less stinging was the rebuke delivered to Musharraf and his allies. The PML, commonly known as the King’s Party, lost two-thirds of its seats in Parliament, with twenty-two former cabinet ministers failing to get re-elected. Since the sacking of an intransigent Chief Justice and the subsequent crackdown on civil society last year, Musharraf and the PML had hemorrhaged support. What little goodwill they had built up through economic growth in the past five years was lost through recent microeconomic mismanagement, resulting in acute power shortages and spiraling wheat prices. Without the carapace of his military uniform and with his parliamentary support in tatters, President Musharraf stands exposed, isolated and deeply unpopular. He has no obvious role left to play in a democratic dispensation. If he were less autocratic, he would voluntarily step aside. But having dismissed demands from the victorious parties for his resignation as “way off,” this ex-commando is more likely to fight to the bitter end, resulting probably in his impeachment. George W. Bush, though he loathes to admit mistakes, also will find it difficult to continue backing his old ally in the war against terror in the face of such wholesale rejection from his own people. The next American government would do far better to ally itself with the people of Pakistan and their chosen representatives than with a discredited, illegitimate President and an unpopular army.

The fact that Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), has emerged as the overall winner and the only truly nationalist party with a footprint in every province, is no surprise. Indeed, the surprise is that it didn’t bag more seats. The sympathy vote generated by Bhutto’s murder was probably diluted by her party’s perceived readiness to do business with a dictator. Even after her assassination, Asif Ali Zardari, her widower, continued to claim that his party had no quarrel with Mr. Musharraf and obligingly did not mention Musharraf’s bête noir, the sacked Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. (But had it not been for Bhutto’s willingness to engage with Musharraf, perhaps this election would not have taken place at all.) The PPP has not received a sufficient majority to form government. For this it will have to enter into a coalition with another party, most likely the Muslim League of the Saudi-backed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the second-biggest winner.

Zardari, who was bequeathed the chairmanship of the PPP in Bhutto’s will, has a difficult task ahead. Having swept northern Punjab, Sharif’s party is resurgent. Coalition governments are notoriously hard to manage, but particularly so for these old adversaries. In the past their one imperative had been to achieve power and then jostle to keep it, at whatever cost to their own credibility and the democratic process. Indeed, Bhutto and Sharif habitually sided with the establishment to topple each other’s elected governments from power throughout the 1990s.

But more is at stake now than ever before. Both Sharif and Bhutto had been elected prime minister twice and dismissed twice on charges of corruption and misrule. Zardari and Sharif are aware that they are running out of political lives. Regional tensions are at a simmering point. Unemployment, inflation and lack of security has made the public less forgiving and more demanding, as seen in the defeat of the PML and the religious parties. There is real anger, which boiled over in the days following Bhutto’s assassination.

Much will depend on how the opposition parties conduct themselves after the election. Thus far both Sharif and Zardari have made all the right noises, but now they will have to put their talk into practice. Sharif, whose party did not win any seats in Sindh or Baluchistan, must recognize that if any single party can heal the rifts between the provinces, it is the PPP. Hence he must not try to strengthen his bargaining power in the coalition by accepting defectors from the ragtag remnants of the PML. Zardari in turn must respect Sharif’s mandate and not block his wishes to address the issue of the sacked judiciary. The mullahs may have lost at the polls, but Al Qaeda and Taliban-backed insurgents still prowl the border with Afghanistan. To fight them effectively, the army and new government will have to act in unison, the government rallying the people behind the army. The government of NWFP, dominated now by secular ethnic Pashtuns, will have a key role in rehabilitating an unpopular Punjabi army with their tribesmen.

Given their limited choices, the people of Pakistan have chosen wisely. Now it is up to the elected parties to rule wisely. Sharif and Zardari must usher in a stable, democratic Pakistan. They must ensure that they do not provide the army with the excuse for yet another coup. This is the time for healing, redemption and reconciliation. He who manages all three will be the ultimate winner of this election.

via//The Nation

New Pakistan Army Chief Orders Military Out of Civilian Government Agencies, Reversing Musharraf Policy

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The new army chief of Pakistan has ordered the withdrawal of military officers from the government’s civil departments, officials said Tuesday, an action that reverses an important policy of his predecessor, President Pervez Musharraf.

The order by the chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was his boldest step to disentangle the military from the civilian sphere of the government since he assumed the post after Mr. Musharraf stepped down as military chief in November.

An army spokesman said General Kayani made the decision last week, but the order was announced Tuesday, less than a week before parliamentary elections on Feb. 18. It was welcomed by Musharraf critics, who have long demanded that the military distance itself from politics.

Pakistan faces further deterioration of law and order in the northwestern tribal areas straddling the Afghan border, a refuge for the Taliban, Al Qaeda and their allies. Two technicians working for Pakistan’s atomic agency were reported to have been kidnapped there on Tuesday, and the police said they had no word on the fate of Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, who was reported missing on Monday after he tried to drive through the Khyber Pass headed to Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials said they, too, believed that the ambassador had been kidnapped, but blamed local criminals.

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, an army spokesman, said that General Kayani decided last week to recall military officers from civil departments and said that it would take three to six months to do so. “A letter has been written by the Ministry of Defense to work out the details of getting the release of military officers working in several civilian departments,” he said Tuesday.

As army chief, General Kayani has moved gradually to separate the military from civil affairs and politics, ending an unpopular policy of Mr. Musharraf, who had moved the military into running Pakistan’s affairs since taking power in a coup in 1999.

Last month, General Kayani warned officers not to maintain contacts with politicians.

Ikram Sehgal, a former military officer and editor of Defense Journal, said General Kayani’s actions were overdue and showed “the seriousness of the army in getting out of civilian affairs.”

Mr. Sehgal said he saw the withdrawal as “solely on the directions of General Kayani.” If Mr. Musharraf had wanted to do this, Mr. Sehgal said, “he would have done it many months ago.”

Local news media reported that army officers would be withdrawn from 23 civil departments, including the National Highway Authority, National Accountability Bureau, Ministry of Education, and Water and Power Development Authority.

Mr. Azizuddin, the Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan, disappeared after he left Peshawar, a Pakistani frontier town, and headed through the tribal areas to the Afghan border on Monday morning. He did not meet his security escort waiting in Afghanistan, said Muhammad Naeem, a the news media counselor at the Pakistani Embassy in Kabul.

The ambassador was in his official car, with a guard and a driver, Mr. Naeem said. The embassy lost phone contact with him half an hour after he left Peshawar.

Mr. Azizuddin’s vehicle was found Tuesday off the road in an area known as Spinkumar, where had last been seen, officials said.

The two abducted officials belonging to the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission were identified only as technicians, local news media reported.

They were seized Monday with their driver and five other local residents in the Sheik Badin area, adjacent to the Laki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan districts in North-West Frontier Province. No one has claimed responsibility, and Pakistani officials said they were unsure who was responsible. The five local residents were released.

“The technicians were going for some geological survey in the area when they were kidnapped at gunpoint along with their driver,” Reuters quoted Romail Akram, a senior police official, as saying.

via//New York Times

Backing Musharraf hurting US: Pakistan’s Khan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Continued U.S. backing of President Pervez Musharraf risks alienating Pakistanis and increasing extremism in the nuclear-armed Islamic country, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan said on Tuesday.

Khan said he came to the United States “to try and convince the politicians in Washington that the policy they have adopted is a disaster for Pakistan and it is a disaster for America.”

His main message to senior U.S. lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was that Washington must apply more pressure to make Musharraf reinstate the senior Pakistani justices who were sacked under emergency rule late last year.

“Sadly, the U.S. administration talked about elections, but did not talk about the reinstatement of the judges, which is the key to holding free and fair elections,” said Khan.

“This flawed policy has not only increased anti-Americanism in Pakistan but it has also inadvertently fueled terrorism in the country,” he added.

Khan’s small Tehrik-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice) party is boycotting February 18 elections, which he accused Musharraf of planning to rig to ensure a compliant parliament.

Khan, who led Pakistan to victory in the 1992 Cricket World Cup and founded his own party with Islamic overtones a decade ago, was among thousands of opponents and lawyers Musharraf detained after he imposed emergency rule on November 3.

Although the politicians were released and emergency rule was formally lifted in mid-December, the Supreme Court Chief Justice and other sacked judges have not been reinstated and remain a popular rallying point, Khan said.

He said President George W. Bush’s backing for Musharraf, regarded as a valued U.S. ally in the fight against al Qaeda, is compounding Pakistan’s problems.

“The strategy should be that only a genuinely elected government should be able to deal with terrorism by mobilizing the people and marginalize the terrorists,” said Khan.

Musharraf took power in a military coup in 1999 but was embraced by Washington after the September 11 attacks.

via//Reuters, Boston Globe

The west has not just repressed democracy. It has aided terror

Pakistan has as many paradigms as pundits. What is clear, however, is that meddling will only ever foment disorder

Simon Jenkins in Lahore
Wednesday January 9, 2008
The Guardian

The Pakistani senator gazed at the headline in despair. It read: “US weighs new covert push in Pakistan”. Washington was authorising “enhanced CIA activity” in the country while US Democratic candidates declared they were all ready “to launch unilateral military strikes in [Pakistan] if they detected an imminent threat”. Hillary Clinton wanted “joint US-UK oversight” of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. In a country where anti-Americanism is almost a religion, said the senator, this is “an answer to a Taliban prayer”.

I am convinced that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first curse with foreign policy. For the third time in 20 years, the west is meddling with the world’s sixth most populous state. It did so to promote the Afghan mujahideen against the Russians in the 1980s, then to attack al-Qaida after 9/11, and now to “guard” Pakistan’s bombs against a fantastical al-Qaida seizure. Needless to say, the sole beneficiaries are the Taliban and the forces of disorder.

That said, few other conclusions can be drawn from a country that, more than any I know, is Churchill’s riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Pakistan has as many paradigms as pundits. You can take your choice. Thesis A is that President Pervez Musharraf is a well-meaning dictator who sought rapprochement with Benazir Bhutto to “transit” to democracy, and who still remains the best hope for guiding his country to civilian rule. Thesis B depicts him as a popinjay dictator who kills people, locks up judges, censors the media and runs a brutal fascist party, the MQM. He had no intention of working with Bhutto, whom he detested, and has so much blood on his hands as to be easily capable of consenting to her death.

Thesis C has Bhutto herself as a perfidious and corrupt hereditary monarch in thrall to a monster husband whose base was limited to Sindh province and London’s media drawing-rooms. She indulged Washington’s John Negroponte in his ham-fisted attempt to prop up Musharraf last year, but only so as to escape corruption charges and enjoy a modest taste of power. Thesis D says this is outrageous. Bhutto was the one Pakistani politician with experience and stature at home and abroad. She knew she could rule only with army permission but could have faced down the military, negotiated with the Taliban districts and steered Pakistan to democracy. Her going is a catastrophe.

Forget that, says thesis E. The US-backed Pakistan army, responsible for almost a quarter of the country’s economy, will never cede power. It is the sole embodiment of central control in this 60-year-old federal state, and its guarantor against another partition like Bangladesh in 1971. It cannot afford to trust unruly politicians such as Bhutto and her ilk and must be trusted by Pakistan’s allies abroad.

Rubbish, says thesis F. Pakistan’s army makes Saddam’s Republican Guard seem a bunch of pansies. Its Punjabi oligarchs and their agencies kill at will and feud even with their Taliban allies, as in last year’s slaughter at Islamabad’s Red Mosque. It has failed to curb the Taliban and nobody, not even Musharraf, is safe from it.

As for Pakistan in general, thesis G has it teetering on the brink of breaking apart, as the army readies itself to nullify next month’s election with rigging and corruption. A bloodbath will follow, in which Sindh province breaks away and the north-west becomes an al-Qaida enclave, lowering over Kabul. No it will not, says thesis H. Pakistan is made of rubber, bouncing back from every reverse. It has a mature “civil society” of lawyers, businessmen, politicians and even some generals, sensitive to their image abroad and deeply ashamed of their dictatorship. The elections may be a mess but they will somehow move Pakistan, stumbling and trembling, to eventual civilian rule. Religious parties are supported by barely 10% of the electorate, and even the army is overwhelmingly secular. An Islamist state is inconceivable.

Since there are grains of plausibility in all these theses, much turns on the fate of next month’s elections. Musharraf, weakened by his November 3 coup, still has 60 top judges imprisoned, including the nation’s chief justice, locked up with his disabled son. With the charismatic Bhutto dead and the Negroponte intervention shattered, he is in a tight spot. He may yet cancel the vote and invite mayhem on to the streets.

There is certainly an openness to Pakistan’s dictatorship compared with other Islamic states, and some westerners have appeased Musharraf as “our” dictator, operating a “doctrine of necessity”. But there is nothing in this man’s track record to suggest that he is not a paid-up member of the dictatoring classes. His agents treat democrats with contempt and he funnels huge sums into his pockets and those of his generals. About 80% of US aid to Pakistan since Musharraf came to power has gone on military assistance, less than a quarter of it used even remotely against the Taliban. The virtual collapse of the state school system has followed a fall in education spending from 4% to 1.8% of GDP, one of the lowest in Asia. In its place have mushroomed the free madrasas, from a few hundred to over 10,000, financed by Wahhabist Saudi money and formerly in league with American-financed mujahideen training camps. Intended to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, they have since become a network of “faith training” for the poor, teaching little but the Qur’an. This is Musharraf’s (and America’s) most lethal bequest to Pakistan’s political economy.

America’s clodhopping sponsorship of Musharraf drove him to renege on the treaties with the tribal states, fomenting a Pashtun insurgency. The Afghan frontier has duly proved al-Qaida’s juiciest hunting ground, aided by every American bombing raid and every Pakistan army atrocity. The Pashtun mujahideen (whose American backers are well-documented in the film Charlie Wilson’s War) is a Frankenstein monster that has turned its vengeance on Musharraf, Afghanistan and Washington alike.

Whatever the defects of democracy, and in Asia they are legion, it remains the least worst way of curbing authoritarian power. There is no alternative. America’s handling of Musharraf since 9/11 – essentially to capture one man, Osama bin Laden – has rendered swaths of his country, from Baluchistan in the south to Swat in the north, wholly insecure. Even the Grand Trunk Road from Islamabad to Peshawar is patrolled by the Taliban. The idea that Musharraf’s troops, let alone the CIA or the US airforce, might suppress a people who have worsted every empire from the Mughals to the British is ludicrous. Modern armies are no agents of pacification. Civilian negotiation in a context of democratic assent is at very least worth a try.

Backing Musharraf has always seemed “a good idea at the time”. The next person to be cursed with Washington’s favour appears to be Musharraf’s successor as army chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani. However, by opting for the realpolitik of dictatorship the west has not just repressed democracy but aided insurgency and terror. It has yielded no security benefit to anyone. If Pakistan becomes a “failed state”, the failure will, in large part, be one of democratic imagination in Washington and London. We simply refuse to practise what we preach.

via//Guardian Unlimited