Securing victory
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Daily Times, Pakistan
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
analysis: Rasul Bakhsh Rais
The political consensus and national solidarity that we have succeeded in building against the Taliban can lead us to an enduring victory if we pay greater attention to the non-military components of reconstruction and rehabilitation
Battling warlords and religious militants cannot be a seasonal venture or an on-and-off operation. As indicated by the plight of millions of displaced persons from the conflict zones and the great sacrifices made by our security forces and civilians, it is an extraordinary situation that nobody would like to repeat.
The presence of militant groups, both religious and ethnic, their warlordism — coercive self-imposition — on local populations and holding them hostage under perpetual fear of violence poses a grave national security threat. We cannot leave people at the mercy of private armies and their gendarmes.
If we allow such situations to develop, as has happened in our western borderlands, not only would the sovereignty of the state erode, as it has, the successful warlordism of one group would encourage similar or other types of groups — sectarian or ethnic — to take up arms against the state and challenge its writ.
It is not only the logic of coherence and territorial unity of the state, but also a fundamental constitutional responsibility of the state to guarantee freedom and safety of local populations and free them from brutal warlordism.
The nation state and the warlords trying to run a parallel system of security and governance have a dialectical relationship. The two cannot co-exist; one has to eliminate the other for its own survival. Pakistan faces this challenge because violent groups have established little fiefdoms on the periphery that now threaten the peace and security of our major population centres.
Why have such groups emerged and how can we effectively defeat them?
There is a pile of well-argued explanations for the emergence of militant groups, from the residue of our support to the liberation of Afghanistan from Soviet occupation to the rise of militant political Islam. Also there happened to be a confluence of interests between an international coalition led by the United States during the Cold War to defeat communism, against which Pakistan was a frontline state, and the Islamist groups that had purely religious motivations against the Red Army.
The alliance between the two was opportunistic and accidental; neither ideological nor beyond the limits of Afghanistan. There was no clarity on what they would do after the common enemy was defeated, except for a vague expectation that the United States would stay on the ground and lead efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.
But Washington washed its hands of Afghanistan as soon as the Soviets began to withdraw, leaving it at the mercy of warring Mujahideen factions and Afghanistan’s predatory neighbours.
The international coalition that supported the Afghan Mujahideen gave no serious thought to normalising the devastated Afghan state and society. No one really bothered to consider the impact religious forces gloating over a historic victory against the Soviet Union and Afghan communists would have on regional security.
Being fixated just on humiliating and defeating the Soviet Union and not devoting political attention and resources to rebuilding Afghanistan and reintegrating Islamic militants peacefully back into society was a mistake of titanic proportions.
We now know the consequences of that neglect: civil war among Afghanistan’s social groups and the eventual emergence of the Taliban movement. Every neighbour of Afghanistan got sucked into the conflict, fuelling the fire of a war that demolished what was left of Afghan state and society.
The Taliban movement, backed by Pakistan and the Pashtun ethnic groups inside Afghanistan, routed other groups and warlords that were supported by Iran, Russia, India and some Central Asian states. That victory further contributed to two dangerous developments: rule by military conquest and transnational linkages among Islamist groups from an extended Central Asia to Pakistan.
It is a moot question whether it was the triumphalism of the transnational Islamists and their regional networking or the weakened position of countervailing forces like local opposition groups or the collapse of the state that facilitated the Taliban victory.
While making references to all other reasons related to the Cold War and Pakistan’s policy, let us not forget that militant religious groups and warlords have risen from the ruins of the states and their weak governing structures. In Afghanistan, there was no state left; only rival ethnic groups were left to fight the Taliban, and they couldn’t stand against the ferocious and determined Taliban force until the American-led international coalition with the cooperation of the Taliban’s ethnic rivals displaced them from power in 2001.
The governing capacity of the Pakistani state has gradually weakened in all areas, but notably more in the border regions because of the social, religious and political impact of the wars next door in Afghanistan.
Pakistan today faces the adverse consequences of the failure of the United States and other coalition partners in Afghanistan. After eight years of brutal and costly war, Afghanistan remains a fragile state, fragmented and in a state of perpetual war. The Taliban are now once again a rising force in Afghanistan as they have so far resisted the American efforts to pacify and rebuild the Pashtun areas.
There has indeed historically been a nexus between what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s western borderlands. In this part of the world, conflicts and groups involved in conflicts have often spilled over across borders on grounds of religion or nationalism or both. Now there is yet another malignant factor: the presence of our adversary across the border that acts with malicious intent to destabilise the country and make our war against the Taliban costlier.
The mission and determination of the armed forces, political leaders and the nation at large today is to defeat the Taliban and their affiliated militant groups permanently. The political consensus and national solidarity that we have succeeded in building against the Taliban can lead us to an enduring victory if we pay greater attention to the non-military components of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the millions of displaced persons.
More importantly, the very causes that have contributed to the rise of the Taliban militancy need to be addressed. We have to rebuild credible state capacity with a focus on strengthening the police, the paramilitary forces and intelligence, accompanied by transparent development and good governance.
As Afghanistan is largely an American baby and its responsibility in terms of security and reconstruction, we can only hope the US will do better than it has done so far. We have a direct stake in the peace and political integrity of Afghanistan because its failures are going affect our security very adversely.
One way we can isolate our borderland from the conflicts in Afghanistan is to integrate these regions into mainstream Pakistan with similar institutions, legal system and social services delivery.
It is time to rethink tribal exceptionalism and its outdated institutions. The Afghan wars and the rise of militancy have damaged Pakistan, and no amount of social repairing is likely to succeed. The solution lies in slow political integration, economic development and effective and participatory statehood. Only that will win us the current war and future peace.
Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk
Source
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
analysis: Rasul Bakhsh Rais
The political consensus and national solidarity that we have succeeded in building against the Taliban can lead us to an enduring victory if we pay greater attention to the non-military components of reconstruction and rehabilitation
Battling warlords and religious militants cannot be a seasonal venture or an on-and-off operation. As indicated by the plight of millions of displaced persons from the conflict zones and the great sacrifices made by our security forces and civilians, it is an extraordinary situation that nobody would like to repeat.
The presence of militant groups, both religious and ethnic, their warlordism — coercive self-imposition — on local populations and holding them hostage under perpetual fear of violence poses a grave national security threat. We cannot leave people at the mercy of private armies and their gendarmes.
If we allow such situations to develop, as has happened in our western borderlands, not only would the sovereignty of the state erode, as it has, the successful warlordism of one group would encourage similar or other types of groups — sectarian or ethnic — to take up arms against the state and challenge its writ.
It is not only the logic of coherence and territorial unity of the state, but also a fundamental constitutional responsibility of the state to guarantee freedom and safety of local populations and free them from brutal warlordism.
The nation state and the warlords trying to run a parallel system of security and governance have a dialectical relationship. The two cannot co-exist; one has to eliminate the other for its own survival. Pakistan faces this challenge because violent groups have established little fiefdoms on the periphery that now threaten the peace and security of our major population centres.
Why have such groups emerged and how can we effectively defeat them?
There is a pile of well-argued explanations for the emergence of militant groups, from the residue of our support to the liberation of Afghanistan from Soviet occupation to the rise of militant political Islam. Also there happened to be a confluence of interests between an international coalition led by the United States during the Cold War to defeat communism, against which Pakistan was a frontline state, and the Islamist groups that had purely religious motivations against the Red Army.
The alliance between the two was opportunistic and accidental; neither ideological nor beyond the limits of Afghanistan. There was no clarity on what they would do after the common enemy was defeated, except for a vague expectation that the United States would stay on the ground and lead efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.
But Washington washed its hands of Afghanistan as soon as the Soviets began to withdraw, leaving it at the mercy of warring Mujahideen factions and Afghanistan’s predatory neighbours.
The international coalition that supported the Afghan Mujahideen gave no serious thought to normalising the devastated Afghan state and society. No one really bothered to consider the impact religious forces gloating over a historic victory against the Soviet Union and Afghan communists would have on regional security.
Being fixated just on humiliating and defeating the Soviet Union and not devoting political attention and resources to rebuilding Afghanistan and reintegrating Islamic militants peacefully back into society was a mistake of titanic proportions.
We now know the consequences of that neglect: civil war among Afghanistan’s social groups and the eventual emergence of the Taliban movement. Every neighbour of Afghanistan got sucked into the conflict, fuelling the fire of a war that demolished what was left of Afghan state and society.
The Taliban movement, backed by Pakistan and the Pashtun ethnic groups inside Afghanistan, routed other groups and warlords that were supported by Iran, Russia, India and some Central Asian states. That victory further contributed to two dangerous developments: rule by military conquest and transnational linkages among Islamist groups from an extended Central Asia to Pakistan.
It is a moot question whether it was the triumphalism of the transnational Islamists and their regional networking or the weakened position of countervailing forces like local opposition groups or the collapse of the state that facilitated the Taliban victory.
While making references to all other reasons related to the Cold War and Pakistan’s policy, let us not forget that militant religious groups and warlords have risen from the ruins of the states and their weak governing structures. In Afghanistan, there was no state left; only rival ethnic groups were left to fight the Taliban, and they couldn’t stand against the ferocious and determined Taliban force until the American-led international coalition with the cooperation of the Taliban’s ethnic rivals displaced them from power in 2001.
The governing capacity of the Pakistani state has gradually weakened in all areas, but notably more in the border regions because of the social, religious and political impact of the wars next door in Afghanistan.
Pakistan today faces the adverse consequences of the failure of the United States and other coalition partners in Afghanistan. After eight years of brutal and costly war, Afghanistan remains a fragile state, fragmented and in a state of perpetual war. The Taliban are now once again a rising force in Afghanistan as they have so far resisted the American efforts to pacify and rebuild the Pashtun areas.
There has indeed historically been a nexus between what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s western borderlands. In this part of the world, conflicts and groups involved in conflicts have often spilled over across borders on grounds of religion or nationalism or both. Now there is yet another malignant factor: the presence of our adversary across the border that acts with malicious intent to destabilise the country and make our war against the Taliban costlier.
The mission and determination of the armed forces, political leaders and the nation at large today is to defeat the Taliban and their affiliated militant groups permanently. The political consensus and national solidarity that we have succeeded in building against the Taliban can lead us to an enduring victory if we pay greater attention to the non-military components of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the millions of displaced persons.
More importantly, the very causes that have contributed to the rise of the Taliban militancy need to be addressed. We have to rebuild credible state capacity with a focus on strengthening the police, the paramilitary forces and intelligence, accompanied by transparent development and good governance.
As Afghanistan is largely an American baby and its responsibility in terms of security and reconstruction, we can only hope the US will do better than it has done so far. We have a direct stake in the peace and political integrity of Afghanistan because its failures are going affect our security very adversely.
One way we can isolate our borderland from the conflicts in Afghanistan is to integrate these regions into mainstream Pakistan with similar institutions, legal system and social services delivery.
It is time to rethink tribal exceptionalism and its outdated institutions. The Afghan wars and the rise of militancy have damaged Pakistan, and no amount of social repairing is likely to succeed. The solution lies in slow political integration, economic development and effective and participatory statehood. Only that will win us the current war and future peace.
Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk
Source
Labels: FATA, Military Operation, Swat Operation, Tribal Areas, Waziristan
posted @ 10:53 AM,
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