Pakistan in Media

Editorial, Dawn, Pakistan
By Anwar Syed
Sunday, 17 May, 2009

PRESIDENT Asif Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently visited President Obama in Washington. Their conversations focused on the threat the Taliban pose to the good order of their countries.

President Obama is convinced that the threat is grave enough to imperil the very existence of the two neighbours and destabilise many others. He has declared his administration’s resolve to destroy the Taliban resisting or hiding in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan and wherever else they might go.

That the Taliban are a menace may be granted. Many in the US are apprehensive that if the Taliban do succeed in overthrowing and replacing the current political order in Pakistan, they would take possession and control of its nuclear weapons. These weapons in the hands of such fanatics could unleash unspeakable horrors.

American officials and other observers feel also that the Pakistani and Afghan governments are not strong enough to deal with the Taliban threat effectively, and that they must move to energise themselves, possibly with American help

The Taliban have their own version of Islam, which they wish to impose on others by force if verbal instruction will not work. They are extremist and militant enough to place those who do not agree with them outside the pale of Islam and hold that they deserve to be killed. They have no interest in the preservation of Pakistan, indeed they intend to undo it, if it chooses to stick to its own ways. President Obama is thus entirely correct when he says that the Taliban pose a threat to Pakistan’s very existence.

One must however understand that the Taliban are very difficult to eradicate. They are well equipped with modern weapons and they know how to use them. They are firm believers in their faith, firmer, it appears, than the Christian knights who came to Palestine as crusaders nearly 1,000 years ago. They have the will to kill and die for their cause. Before the launch of the current operation, the Pakistan Army went to throw them out of Swat but was unable to do so.

American army units and drones have been bombing the Taliban’s suspected hideouts in and around Pakistan’s tribal area. In each such attack a few of the Taliban and many more non-combatant civilians are reported killed and wounded. The Taliban are hard to catch: they are mobile, and, in addition, many of them have set up homes in villages and towns in the area where they can go and become indistinguishable from the rest of the local population.

If the Taliban are to be contained, if not eradicated, the governments concerned have to be strong enough to do it. President Obama says they are weak, and that they have to be strengthened. The government in Afghanistan is believed to be unrepresentative, corrupt, and incompetent. Its writ does not travel much beyond the city of Kabul, It does not represent the will of the Afghan people or or even that of the provincial governors and other power centres in the country. It was put in place largely by external forces. It summoned a grand jirga some years ago to get its endorsement but many influential tribal chiefs stayed away.

One may say that it is corrupt because it is unrepresentative; it has to bribe the various political notables to stay in power. They are willing to let President Karzai remain at the “helm” because he does not interfere with their administration of local affairs. Mr Karzai, on his part, is content with this state of affairs. The outside world recognises him as president of Afghanistan and there is no active opposition to him at home. He is entitled to all the prerogatives and privileges that go with his position as the head of a state and government. He has neither the incentive nor the capacity to further strengthen his government. President Obama will have to settle for the Afghanistan government as it is.

Certain western commentators have routinely and unthinkingly been saying that Pakistan is a failed state. This is nonsense. For one thing there is no generally accepted description of a failed state, no prototype to which one may refer for assessing the adequacy of a state. Pakistan is indeed afflicted with a certain amount of internal conflict and it faces problems that are hard to meet. But that is nothing novel: many other states are in similar situations.

The government of Pakistan is admittedly weak. There is no good reason why it should be that way. The ruling coalition at the centre, led by the PPP, has a solid majority in the National Assembly. There is nothing to stop its government, from being energetic. In fact it is neither. The reason has to be that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his colleagues do not wish to be dynamic. They are content with the prerogatives and perquisites that come with the offices they hold.

This government is in place for the next four years unless the president chooses to dissolve the National Assembly, and with it the present government, under Article 58-2(b) of the constitution. President Zardari, who is concurrently co-chairman of the ruling party, will not want to exercise this option. President Obama will have to settle for a weak government in Pakistan that has no desire to strengthen itself.

Bur it is to be noted also that it is the Pakistan Army, more than the government’s political managers, that President Obama has to work with in combating the Taliban. The army chief, Gen Kayani, has recently declared that impressions of any of his officers and men being ambivalent with regard to the Taliban are incorrect and that the army fully intends to defeat them, How the army’s ongoing encounter with the Taliban continues remains to be seen.

Normally the world changes only gradually, almost imperceptibly, in small measure. Planned change on a large scale does not always work. For the most part, we have to learn to live with the ground realities as they are. The Taliban have become one of these realities. President Obama and all the rest of us will have to coexist with them even if it is in contestation. The conflict between them and us is not coming to an end in the foreseeable future.