A suicide bomber has destroyed the Indian consulate in Kandahar and killed dozens. Another suicide bomber has killed 20 policemen in Islamabad during a conference of Islamists at the Lal Masjid. And a string of smaller bombs have shaken Karachi. Amidst this, the Taliban are rampaging in the Frontier and FATA and Dr AQ Khan is protesting his dubious innocence at the cost Pakistan’s national interest.
Clearly, the Taliban attacked the Indian consulate. But at whose behest? India has a big financial and political stake in Afghanistan, thanks to the Karzai government and NATO/ISAF forces. It has four consulates and has pledged US$750 million to rebuild the country’s shattered infrastructure with several thousand Indian workers. So it is a natural target of the Taliban, who have attacked the Indian consulates in Herat and Jalalabad in the past and also abducted and killed several Indian workers on construction sites.
But the Pakistani national security establishment is also concerned about India’s rising influence in Kabul. Pakistan has also accused the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad of fomenting strife in Balochistan by giving funds and training to the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army. Therefore, if the Pakistani charge against the Indians is true, it is conceivable that there is a joint Pakistan-Taliban message to New Delhi in the Kandahar attack. But this simmering conflict between the “agencies” via Taliban and Baloch proxies could derail the peace process between the two civilian governments.
The suicide bomber in Islamabad on the anniversary of the Lal Masjid operation last year is a stark reminder that the Lal Masjid mindset is alive and kicking in Pakistan. What is inexplicable is why the federal government meekly permitted thousands of radical clerics from across the country to congregate in Islamabad, hold a memorial conference at the very site of the bloody Lal Masjid operation, extol the virtues of the “martyrs” of radical Islamism and denounce the Pakistan government and army as the enemies of the people of Pakistan. If the government was looking for trouble it couldn’t have chalked out a better move.
The bombs in Karachi have been attributed by the Pakistani “agencies” to the Indian and Afghan “agencies”. But no one buys this explanation. The MQM sees a Pakhtun-Taliban hand in cahoots with local seminaries and Taliban who have publicly threatened to disrupt the NATO goods traffic from Karachi to Afghanistan via the Khyber Pass. The PPP concurs, refusing to be provoked into an ethnic conflict with the MQM over differences with President Pervez Musharraf, an MQM ally. But the religious parties say this is a warning shot from the MQM across the PPP’s bow, signaling its ability to plunge the city and province into bloody strife if the PPP joins hands with the PMLN to remove President Musharraf from office. Whoever is behind it, one thing is clear: Karachi will face more bloodshed if the war on terror doesn’t get underway and the politicians and military, along with their domestic and international allies, don’t establish the rules of the game and play fairly
Meanwhile, Dr AQ Khan’s new found freedom is creating ripples at home and abroad. The PPP’s attitude is that he is the national security establishment’s man and the same establishment should “look after him” now that he has become a rogue and is bent upon embarrassing his former bosses. But the military establishment says the civilians are now in command and they should take “ownership” of the mess and clean it up. Unfortunately, all the Pakistani players, especially Dr Khan, are playing directly into the hands of the hostile anti-proliferation lobby abroad which wants to re-open the issue of Pakistan’s culpability in spreading nuclear technology abroad. The sympathies of the Islamist-nationalist section of the media for Dr Khan, added to the abiding hostility of civil society and the political parties towards President Musharraf and the military, are complicating the issues and making matters worse.
In the midst of all this confusion, uncertainty and worry, the more inexplicable fact is that Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif are holding court in Dubai and London instead of in Islamabad and Lahore. Are they afraid the terrorists will assassinate them like they did Benazir Bhutto? Do they think the military establishment is tapping their every word at home so that they have to find safe houses abroad?
The tragedy is that the more this perception of civilian ineptitude, drift and fear seeps into the popular imagination, the more it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy at the merciless hands of the media. Certainly, President Musharraf’s daring re-entry into the political arena recently – “I’m not going anywhere”, he says stridently, “the army is with me” – has shaken everyone. The refrain that the civilians are failing to provide solutions to Pakistan’s myriad problems is becoming common enough, even though it is barely four months since the last elections. More dangerous is the supplementary comment that is trembling on many lips: “someone will have to step in soon to save the country”.
The army has tried to “save” the country three times in the past. Each time it has left behind a bigger mess than the one it inheritedfrom the civilians on assuming power.