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Miles to go and promises to keep

Miles to go and promises to keep

Author: Editorial
Publication: The Daily Times [ Pakistan]
Date: September 18, 2003

Two events took place this week which must be carefully studied. The first was General Pervez Musharraf's appearance on a Q&A programme on the BBC (shown on PTV Tuesday) in which he made some interesting remarks. The second was a lecture in Islamabad by an ex-ambassador to Pakistan and current president of the US-based and influential Asia Society, Mr Nicholas Platt.

To take the second matter first, Ambassador Platt said that American interests in the region were threatened by four factors -- "Taliban remnants trying to undermine Afghanistan's reconstruction, the possibility of Indo-Pak nuclear conflict, the danger of Pakistan succumbing on political and economic fronts and the rising tide of Islamic extremism." He also outlined the recommendations of a joint Asia Society-Council of Foreign Relations task force to the Bush government. Briefly, this task force has proposed an early Congressional authorisation of the proposed five-year US $3 billion assistance package to Pakistan; but it advises a linking of this package to Pakistan delivering on its campaign against terrorism, stopping the use of Pakistani territory for pro-Taliban activities across the Afghan border; social and economic reform; reduction of the Pakistan's army's role in civilian institutions; support to mainstream political parties; reform of state institutions, especially an end to the ISI's 'interference' in the electoral process; enlargement of education specially in the Pushtun areas; and an end to cross-LoC infiltration 'permanently.'

In addition to the aid package in exchange, Mr Platt wants the US government to ease restrictions on Pakistani textile exports to the United States. He seeks backdoor State Department diplomacy to get India and Pakistan to talk without saying what kind of solution the two should apply to the Kashmir problem. He also thinks that Washington, while pressuring Pakistan to end cross-LoC infiltration, should tell India to move forward on reaching an understanding with the elected government in Held Kashmir and address the aspirations of the Cashmeres.

Since India and Pakistan are equally in the ambit of the Asia Society, Mr Platt's statement is finely balanced among the three parties involved. First come the 'concerns' of the US government which he has presented as a 'given.' Second come the good things he wants the US to do. (It is, of course, anybody's guess whether Congress will heed the Asia Society's recommendation of speeding up the passage of the $3 billion assistance to Pakistan. The record elsewhere in the world, including Afghanistan, is not so good.) Third come the 'linkages', that is, things that General Musharraf will have to do to deserve it. Compared to this, what India has to do is negligible, which is understandable, because India is not seeking US assistance.

Interesting, though, the Asia Society comes across as tending to think along the same sort of lines as the many people who rang up General Musharraf on the BBC programme. While his claim that substantial progress has been made against terrorism is fairly credible, it is doubtful if anything he says on the permanent removal of extremism from the body politic of Pakistan can be wholly correct.

He admits to presiding over a country that is full of extremism. But the battle against it will have to be long-term and will have to come from a government in Islamabad with better democratic and liberal credentials than the PML-QA. (Of course, one will have to be fair and say the problem belongs to the entire Islamic world and relates to the way most Muslims have begun to think in the past decade or so.)

It is also true that the next step from extremist thinking -- terrorism -- has subsided in Pakistan, except that in Balochistan last month one saw a frightening rerun of the sectarian mayhem we saw at the peak of Talibanisation in 1998-99. Therefore General Musharraf can't say that he has succeeded in taming the seminaries where the sectarian brainwash flourishes. Then there are the jihadi militias.

True, he has banned some of the jihadi militias under UN Security Council resolution 1373, but all of them are still around under changed names. The leader of one such dreaded organisation may be at large on a point of law but his provocative rhetoric can and should be stopped, which General Musharraf has not done. Also, the general should have got rid of, or diluted, the notorious Blasphemy Law but he hasn't done so. And so on.

Of course, General Musharraf will vehemently deny that there is infiltration across the LoC. And it is true that much of it has gone down from the peak of the mid-1990s. But, regrettably, the world finds India's point of view more credible that it hasn't stopped.

Everybody understands that some infiltration will always take place, given the terrain around the LoC, but the fact that the demand is included in Mr Platt's statement can only mean that he has an 'independent' source that is telling him that Pakistan is still sponsoring it. Thus, while it is generally accepted that whereas General Musharraf has delivered considerably on the Western front, he has not done so well on the Eastern front in relations with India.

One might add here that there is much bloody-minded stonewalling on the part of India also to squeeze advantage from the lemon of the international campaign against terrorism. Also, General Musharraf's reference on the BBC to the 'Pushtun factor' in the old Afghan policy was misplaced because it smelled like India's Tamil factor in its failed Sri Lanka policy of yore. Surely, it is in Pakistan's interest to extricate itself from both eastern and western involvements to be better able to focus on the internal problems impinging on its security.

Ambassador Platt's message is that a strategic and mutually profitable US-Pakistan engagement can be built if Pakistan moves in the 'right' direction at home and abroad. General Musharraf has come some way down that road. But he still has miles to go and promises to keep.
 


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