Author: Jonathan Foreman
Publication: The New York Post
Date: October 22, 2001
URL: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/32215.htm
If it weren't already plain that
Secretary of State Colin Powell, for all his virtues, may be the wrong
man to be running U.S. foreign policy at this time, then his unfortunate
visit to South Asia last week should make it abundantly clear.
By the time he had left the region,
shells were falling once again in the high Himalayan passes as Pakistan
and India mobilized troops on each side of the cease-fire line in Kashmir.
And everyone - India, Pakistan and the Afghan Northern Alliance - was more
convinced than ever that America would somehow betray or fail them while
giving one of the others some special influence in postwar Afghanistan.
This is what happens when the means
is mistaken for the end - when coalition-building becomes more important
than the point of the coalition: winning the war against terror.
In what was presumably an attempt
to bolster the Pakistani regime's inadequate support for U.S. military
operations in Afghanistan, Powell said some ill-considered and possibly
dangerous things to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the leader of the military junta
in Islamabad, and pushed our diplomacy in precisely the wrong direction.
* He said that America would support
a new government in Afghanistan that includes "mod- erate" elements of
the Taliban - the ultra-fundamentalist ruling militia that Pakistan sponsored,
armed and continues to favor - despite the fact that the Taliban voluntarily
shelters and assists Osama bin Laden.
* Powell then gratuitously alienated
our powerful and increasingly important Indian allies by saying that the
issue of Kashmir was at the core of tensions in the region and that America
was open to expanding its military ties to Pakistan.
* And this comes as we let down
the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, declining to bomb Taliban forces
near alliance troops - again out of deference to Pakistani sensibilities.
The message is clear: Pakistan's
disastrous interference in Afghanistan is forgiven.
Yet the truth is that we really
don't need to be this nice to Pakistan - and shouldn't be.
Like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has
decided to become our ally only in a nominal sense, an "ally" whose interests
and actions are often hostile to our own. And its "help" in this campaign
- which doesn't include the use of key bases for military operations except
for search and rescue - simply isn't worth this degree of compromise.
All we really need from Pakistan
is the use of its airspace - and that is not something that Pakistan is
in any position to deny us.
The State Department will often
argue that Pakistan must be kept sweet because it has a small number of
atom bombs - ones that might even work. And an alienated Pakistan could
conceivably supply nuclear devices to its Islamic terrorist friends.
This is obviously a disturbing scenario.
But if we really believed that the Pakistanis were inclined to do such
a thing, we would have the right and obligation to destroy those weapons
immediately and by any means we felt appropriate.
Powell should have told his interlocutors
in Pakistan that Washington now has every reason to become much, much friendlier
with its rival, India. India, after all, is a democratic, pluralistic and
secular nation with which the United States has much in common - including
being a victim of terrorism, rather than, like Pakistan, a consistent sponsor.
Powell could even have hinted that
if Pakistan doesn't start being a more cooperative ally very quickly -
if it doesn't choose between our friendship and its ties to the Taliban,
if it doesn't stop backing Islamic terror against India - then America
might become so friendly that it gives India full permission to do whatever
that country thinks necessary to resolve all its problems with Islamabad.
After all, while the legalities
of the Kashmir issue could be debated endlessly, and while the Indian response
to separatist militancy has often been brutal, Pakistan has behaved far
worse. It has actively sponsored terror groups in Kashmir, including some
linked to bin Laden's al Qaeda.
It wouldn't be easy for Musharraf
to take a stronger stand against the Taliban and for America, of course.
His country is a corrupt, impoverished, and profoundly unstable hotbed
of Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Americanism.
By genuinely aligning with the United
States, Musharraf would risk being overthrown in a popular revolt led by
Islamist army officers or his country's powerful, sinister intelligence
service, the ISI. Yet, to date, he has used this an excuse to extract concessions
from America, and not as a reason to consolidate his grip on power.
So, in response, we should offer
him a carrot - substantial economic (not military) assistance, to help
assuage the poverty that feeds fundamentalism in his country and help build
real schools to replace the madrassas - the extremist Islamic schools where
fanatics are bred. But we must make it clear that we are set on ending
the Taliban state no matter how much Pakistan dislikes the idea.
It's premature anyway to talk in
detail about a successor state - we are far from victory in Afghanistan.
And Powell should explain carefully what he means by "moderate" Taliban
elements before offering them a friendly hand.
Any new Afghan government will indeed
have to include representation from the Pashtun-dominated South and East.
But it's not clear if any "moderate" Taliban officials even exist, or if
there are "moderate" Taliban officials only in the sense that there were
"moderate" Nazis in 1945.
True, the Northern Alliance's various
factions have their share of bandits, fundamentalists and heroin smugglers.
But the Taliban have behaved with a murderous cruelty - toward women, their
political opponents and members of the Hazara ethnic minority - which shocks
even their fellow Pathans, used as they are to war and blood feud. The
Taliban, more than anyone else, are responsible for the current humanitarian
disaster in Afghanistan.
If these crimes were not enough,
their regime has sustained and is sustained by the al Qaeda Arab terror
group that started a war with the United States on 9/11.
For all these reasons, the Taliban
must surrender power - and Pakistan must stop trying to protect it.
