On August 28, during an open-session discussion of the Taliban offensive in the Panjsher Valley in Afghanistan, the UN Security Council heard complaints that “Pakistani troops were fighting alongside the Taliban”. Pakistan’s UN representative denied the charge but conceded that “some Pakistanis on their own may have crossed the border to fight along with the Taliban”. This accusation came in the middle of similar charges leveled in the Moscow press regarding “Pakistanis who are taking part in the wahabi war against Dagestan”, in Russia’s North Caucasian region. The newspapers went so far as to even name the Pakistani commander who was training the Chechen-Avar rebels in the Caucasian mountains. This led, once again, to a swift denial from our ambassador in Moscow. A week later, a thousand “Islamic” guerrillas entered Kyrgystan from Tajikistan and took four Japanese workers hostage. Their aim was to enter Uzbekistan to fight the government of President Karimov and overthrow it. Interestingly, Kyrgystan was venue the same week to a CIS conference against “Islamic terrorism” in which China also participated.
All this seems to have happened in some kind of sequence. During the Kargil Operation, Pakistan was at pains to deny that its troops had taken part in the operations across the Line of Control. Our troops, we said, were in fact martyred by the Indians “on our side” of the LOC. Then India pulled off the high-seas capture of a North Korean ship allegedly carrying cases filled with Scud missile blue-prints meant for Pakistan “in return for Pakistan’s bomb technology”. Of course, Islamabad strongly denied that this was so.
Pakistan appears to be in a permanent mode of denial. Unfortunately, however, none of the permanent members of the Security Council, barring perhaps China’s diplomatic posture, seem to be convinced of our innocence. Outside the Security Council, Japan is increasingly inclined to heed the accusations against Pakistan, especially after the North Korean ship episode engineered by India. And now China, wary of pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism in its neighbourhood, has been compelled to join ranks with the CIS leaders against the business of jehad.
Pakistan should be greatly concerned about its negative global image as a country which happily plays host to all sorts of jehadi organisations. With regard to the Kashmiri mujahideen, while we deny “official” participation, we do not deny their training inside Pakistan. Likewise we do not deny that the Taliban youth studying in Pakistani seminaries regularly cross back into Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban troops. Denial of “official” participation therefore does not rule out that the “unofficial” fighters actually train in Pakistan before going for jehad in the neighbouring states.
This, too, is not a good image to flog. In fact this image stands squarely between us and the international reaction to what is happening in South Asia. While we attach blame to poor diplomacy and publicity in Islamabad for the success of India’s media campaign against Pakistan, the fact is that Pakistan needs to clean up the free-of-all jehadi environment at home if it wants the world to trust its word. No amount of verbal dueling will offset the basic weakness of our position.
A token move in this direction was discerned last week when a PML’s spokesman said in Peshawar that “the government was seriously considering closing down training camps including those run for collection donations for the mujahideen”. But the truth of the matter is that the bigger jehadi outfits openly publicise their training in Pakistan and their “adventures” in the neighbouring states. This Urdu journals have a big circulation and their “exploits” are given wide currency by the local press.
The policy of “plausible deniability” was born out of the Afghan war. It worked because it was backed by the US. But what was justified then because of the Soviet invasion is no longer justified today. The jehad in Afghanistan was followed by jehad in Kashmir. In fact, a long period of latitude to the militant groups infiltrating borders and lines of control freely has resulted in considerable diffusion of state authority. And there seems to be a veritable Pakistani jehadi diaspora in the lands adjacent t it. Leaders backed by their own militias threaten other states and issue warnings against foreigners. Increasingly they are also liable to threaten the legally constituted government of Pakistan when they see it acting in a manner hostile to their own warlike plans. Therefore some people in Islamabad fear that an effort to “wind up” the internal jehadi activity may tilt Pakistan into an unacceptable Algeria-like crisis.
But this analysis is wrong. In Algeria, the FIS won the elections and was deprived of power. But in Pakistan an elected government is in place. What needs to be changed is Islamabad’s policy towards the training and movement of militants. This needs to be done not only to improve Pakistan’s image abroad but to strengthen Pakistan’s own ability to firmly establish the writ of the Pakistani state. The sooner this realisation dawns on policy-makers in Islamabad, the better.