Author: Ajai Shukla
Publication: NDTV
Date: January 2, 2004
URL: http://www.ndtv.com/columns/showcolumns.asp?id=920
"Whatever security measures are
required will be made. Whatever number of troops is required for the security
will be deployed."
The assurance by Pakistan's military
spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, resonates far beyond next month's
SAARC summit in Islamabad.
It is, in fact, an official acknowledgement
of what has been starkly highlighted in Pakistan over the last month: the
smooth surface of life in that country, is now being ruffled by a terrorist
threat that is comparable to what India has dealt with for two decades.
This was already clear in early
December from the elaborate security arrangements for the World Squash
and World Cup Polo matches in Lahore. Instead of the sports bodies, Pakistani
lieutenant generals were responsible for conducting these events.
Traffic was stopped whenever a team
moved on Lahore's roads, protected by truckloads of Pakistani Army jawans.
Ritwik Bhattacharya, India's top squash player, travelling back to India
after his matches, was escorted to the Wagah border by a Pakistani major
and twenty soldiers from the Baluch Regiment.
For the image of a country struggling
to appear normal it was vital that everything went off smoothly. Lieutenant
General Arif Hasan, the suave and sophisticated Pakistani general who conducted
the World Cup Polo told me, "We want to show the world what Pakistan is
really about and not what they think it is really about. We want to convey
it to everyone that things are okay, and things are normal here and, well,
we are really leading very normal lives here."
But just a day later, a powerful
five-charge tandem explosion on a bridge near Peshawar came close to killing
General Musharraf. And an even narrower escape eleven days later, when
two suicide bombers drove their trucks into General Musharraf's convoy,
has blown away Pakistan's façade of normalcy.
As Pakistan prepares for the SAARC
summit, Islamabad has been sealed off from the rest of Pakistan. Entry
and exit from that city are carefully controlled. But while the Pakistan
Army is capable of this one-time operation, protecting the Pakistani leadership
and society from an ongoing terrorist threat is a far more difficult task.
The truth is that unlike India, Pakistan is not geared to respond to such
a challenge.
It has taken Indian security and
intelligence services over two decades to reach their present level of
readiness. If Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee enjoys near-foolproof
security today, two Prime Ministers before him ( Indira Gandhi and Rajiv
Gandhi ( paid with their lives as India learned the ropes.
Indians today live with roadside
checkpoints, traffic stoppages and security pickets outside the homes of
anyone who could be a target. Pakistan, so far, has never needed such protection.
Both attacks on General Musharraf
took place within the precincts of Rawalpindi cantonment, where a large
chunk of Pakistan's army stays. According to some Indian analysts this
proves the involvement of the army and the ISI. But the truth is that Rawalpindi
Cantt is not the "high security zone" they imagine. Normal traffic flows
unchecked past the gates of Pakistan's 10 Corps. For two days I drove around
that area without once being stopped.
While contending that it is itself
a victim of terrorism, Pakistan has done little to gear itself to face
this threat. Part of the reason is the dichotomy in Islamabad's thinking:
while acting against several terrorist groups, it is not yet convinced
that it will have to act against all of them in order to be effective against
any.
Pakistan has still to realize that
the internal linkages between the components of Jehad Inc leave no room
for compartmentalization while acting against it. Mohammed Jamil, one of
the suicide bombers in the second attack on General Musharraf exemplifies
the fusion between terrorism in Kashmir, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Hailing from PoK, Jamil joined the
Jaish-e-Mohammed. He fought in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban before
he was captured in Kabul. Repatriated to Pakistan, he was interrogated,
declared 'white' and released. The next Pakistan heard from him was the
sound of his minivan exploding just 35 yards from General Musharraf.
But Pakistan still differentiates
between its operations against Al-Qaida, its crackdown on sectarian groups
like the Sipah-e-Sahiba Pakistan (SSP) and the restrictions that it has
placed on tanzeems operating in Kashmir. The administration believes it
is politically acceptable to stand alongside America in the War on Terror,
but not to cut off the lifeline to Kashmiri groups.
The Information Minister, Sheikh
Rasheed, a savvy grassroots politician, who is himself a Kashmiri, clarifies
the difference, "The Kashmir struggle draws its life from the way (India)
treats the people there. The threat to Pakistan stems from the role we
are playing in Afghanistan."
But if Kashmir is not yet an embarrassment
to Islamabad, the sectarian conflict between Shias and Sunni militant groups
clearly is. Most violent attacks within Pakistan have stemmed from the
sectarian conflict, between Shias and Sunni militant groups like the Sipah-e-Sahiba
Pakistan (SSP).
The head of the SSP, Azam Tariq
was recently gunned down in Rawalpindi by unidentified gunmen. The killers,
according to bazaar talk in that city, were from the 'agency', as Pakistan's
intelligence service, the ISI, is called there.
But if Musharraf is differentiating
between terrorists and freedom fighters, the jehadis see in him only a
traitor. Co-operating with the United States, secular in outlook and now
talking peace with India, for many jehadis in that country, there is now
a clear target: Musharraf, the Traitor to Islam. The general will certainly
face more attacks.
Pakistanis, from president to peasant,
all point to the enormous number of Indian soldiers in J&K as proof
of India's failure in Kashmir. Now, as large numbers of its own security
forces get tied up in security duties, Pakistan could get a more balanced
perspective of the manpower required to tackle terrorism.
And as Pakistan goes through the
learning curve in dealing with such threats, it will undergo the pains
that India went through in the last two decades.
