India says that Pakistani jihadis have a hand in the Mumbai bombings. But it hasn’t provided proof. Similarly, the US and Afghanistan say Pakistan is responsible for the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan. But they haven’t provided proof. Pakistan denies these charges but counters that India, Afghanistan and “others” have a role in creating and supporting the Baloch insurgency. But it too hasn’t offered any proof. What’s going on?
After the jihadi attacks on parliament buildings in Srinagar and Delhi in late 2001, India reacted and rushed its army to the LoC to intimidate Pakistan. This compelled General Musharraf to pledge in January 2002 that Pakistan would not be used as a base for exporting terrorism. But the jihadi attacks continued in Kashmir in the expectation that an internationalisation of the Kashmir dispute would pressure India to resolve it. Under the circumstances, however, India’s reaction was two fold: it pulled the army from the border and initiated talks with Pakistan in 2003; but it also opened a counter-front against Pakistan by encouraging the disgruntled Baloch nationalists to launch an insurgency. Its logic was that if Pakistan wanted to talk directly and fight by proxy for maximum leverage, then India would pay in the same coin. India was able to tap the resentful Baloch nationalists because General Musharraf’s rigged pro-mullah 2002 elections had sidelined them in their own home province.
In post 9/11 Afghanistan, the same dialectic was at work. The US-Karzai regime was dominated by the Uzbek-Tajik Northern Alliance (NA) that was partial to India and hostile to Pakistan for historical reasons. General Musharraf urged Mr Karzai to ditch the NA, bring in pro-Pakistan Pakhtun elements and align with Islamabad. But this didn’t happen, partly because of Mr Karzai’s political opportunism and partly because of General Musharraf’s refusal to help Mr Karzai until India had been eliminated from the reckoning. In the event, when India’s footprint in Afghanistan grew large, General Musharraf edged closer to the Taliban. If Mr Karzai claims he didn’t partake of India’s developing secular “assets” in Balochistan, he at least turned a blind eye to them. Similarly, if General Musharraf claims he didn’t nurture the Islamic Taliban in Pakistan’s borderlands, he turned a blind eye to their revival. So there was a full fledged insurgency in Balochistan and a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan. None of the players talks of developing these “assets” because each is guilty of the same offence.
The problem, however, is that such “assets” tend to acquire a life of their own which inevitably leads to serious problems for their creators without fulfilling the original aims of the project. In such cases, the weaker and more dependent side is squeezed in the end. In this case, the scales are tilted against General Musharrf’s Pakistan because the sole superpower is on the side of India and Karzai’s Afghanistan. This is because the US is building a long term global-strategic relationship with India against China while merely trying to maintain a short term regional-tactical one with Pakistan. Thus, instead of Pakistan benefiting from an internationalization of the Kashmir dispute through jihadi attacks, it has suffered by being branded universally as a hotbed of terrorism. Similarly, instead of improving its bargaining position vis a vis Kabul owing to the Taliban card, Pakistan and General Musharraf have now got to contend with the dangerous and destabilizing consequences of the birth of Talibanism internally as well as a potential deterioration in its external relationship with the US.
The developing “squeeze” on Pakistan is manifest in other ways. Both the jihadis and Taliban have become so autonomous that they are now obstructing Pakistan’s path of dispute settlement with India and Afghanistan. Domestically, too, they have obliged General Musharraf to ally with the mullahs rather than the liberal parties for political survival.
Fortunately, though, there are signs that General Musharraf is becoming aware of the pitfalls of this strategy and may take steps to extricate himself and Pakistan from this mess. Unprecedentedly, over 200 Taliban were rounded up in Quetta last week. Pakistan has also provided American and British troops logistical support to combat the Taliban in Afghanistan. In exchange, the UK has banned the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the American ambassador to Islamabad has defended General Musharraf and criticized President Karzai. Significantly, Islamabad has denounced the perpetrators of the Mumbai blasts and urged India to keep the peace process on track. Incredibly, too, General Musharraf is finally moving to amend the Hudood laws and recently said that he wanted to make alliances with “progressive forces” in the country, a possible attempt to develop a broader policy consensus at home. But it should be noted that the UK and UAE have still not extradited the BLA leaders to Pakistan, and Washington is insisting on full democracy and civilian control over the military in Pakistan.
So time is short and options are fleeting. The jihadi and Taliban “assets” have spawned more powerful anti-Pakistan and anti-Musharraf “liabilities” at home and abroad. If these are not dismantled swiftly and decisively, General Musharraf and Pakistan will plunge into the eye of a storm.