December 10, 2014
Among the things that don’t change in this town no matter how high the price is American policy towards Pakistan. There is always a reason to swallow the lies, close your eyes and carry on in the highest bureaucratic tradition of ignoring the past and in the American case, even the present, and continue the pretense.
It’s easier than devising new policies to force behavioural change. So you get not a peep out of the US government against a known terrorist flamboyantly addressing a massive rally protected by Pakistani police to which his followers came in trains specially arranged trains by the government.
What is this if not state sponsorship of terrorism and “mainstreaming” of it?
Both the White House and the State Department failed to condemn Hafiz Saeed’s twoday carnival of extremists at the Minar-e-Pakistan, where Atal Bihari Vajpayee had once stood to profess friendship and give confidence to the ruling elite that India accepts Pakistan’s existence.
That the symbol of the Pakistani nation became the site of a congregation of jihadis speaks volumes on where the country has travelled. And it became the stage for a call for Ghazwa-e-Hind or the final conquest of India by Muslim armies. Incidentally, this concept of a so-called final battle of India is a largely Pakistani creation promoted by a couple of former generals. It has the thinnest of connections to any edict from the Quran, according to those who know their Book.
This concert of militants from a group banned by the US government should have jolted a soul or two into wakefulness in the Washington establishment. American diplomats, who never miss a chance to call out Vladimir Putin for stomping around his neighbourhood or Iran for its nuclear ambitions, somehow go numb on Pakistan. And this is a country complicit in killing US soldiers ‘and’ pocketing billions of dollars in US aid.
Then came the attack by Pakistani terrorists on an Indian military camp in Uri on December 5 in which 11 soldiers and policemen died. The six terrorists killed were well-armed, well-trained and seemed wellequipped with intelligence information.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf dismissed suggestions of a link between Pakistan and the Uri attack even as India said the terrorists seemed to have had Special Forces training, making the role of the state obvious. Once again the US establishment rose to protect its non-NATO ally and by implication the “sub-conventional” warfare – a rationalising term for terrorism used by Washington wonks.
Our American friends should know better and they do but obviously they had cooked something with Pakistan’s army chief, Raheel Sharif, who had a long, lingering two-week visit to the United States recently. It ended with a “productive” meeting with John Kerry.
The smelly optics of a US secretary of state meeting an army chief aside – the Americans are good at holding their noses when they want – a modus vivendi seems to have been worked out.
Within days of Sharif returning home, the US transferred Latifullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban leader, to his custody. Mehsud was snatched last year by US forces against Afghan wishes and kept at the Bagram Air Base in Kabul.
With Mehsud in hand, Pakistan army suddenly spotted a senior al-Qaeda operative in South Waziristan to kill. Adnan El Shukrijumah, a Saudi-born, America-bred man was on FBI’s most-wanted list and had most likely been in Pakistani sights for years.
The old pattern in the relationship has resurfaced. The Pakistan army will continue to miraculously find a high-value terrorist when it needs to cash an American cheque.
Why Pakistan uses the Americans is obvious but why the Americans allow it is more difficult to understand.
Scholarly research on how Pakistan is getting radicalised is now abundant. Experts predict the country will become more and more violent with time for its neighbours and within itself.
Christine Fair, an eminent academic, says Pakistan needs a new ideology to get off its negative trajectory. Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador and author of two seminal books on his country, has called for an end to the “injections of Islamic steroids” such as the one recently delivered by Hafiz Saeed. But US officials keep playing the same low cards despite the massive leverage of American aid and weapons.
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