Last Thursday the sub-committee of the Committee on International Relations on International Terrorism and Non Proliferation in the US House of Representatives held a “hearing” on the subject of: A Q Khan Case Closed? It came to several significant conclusions. One, the information supplied by Pakistan on A Q Khan’s proliferation activity especially regarding Iran was “incomplete”; two, the US government should demand “direct access” to A Q Khan and interrogate him “verbally”; three, “criminal prosecution” should be considered against all such individuals involved in proliferation; four, the Pakistan government is “hiding” information about A Q Khan’s network because it has not prosecuted or punished its members; five, Pakistan had helped deliver to America two of the most threatening security challenges ever, namely Iran and Korea.
This hearing is significant for several reasons. One, it is the most damning American indictment ever of the A Q Khan network and the role of the Musharraf regime “in not fully cooperating” with the US on this issue; two, it wasn’t on the sub-committee’s announced agenda of debates and hearings, which suggests an untoward urgency in sending this message across to Islamabad; three, the sub-committee’s chairman, Edward Royce, is the former co-chair of the India caucus on the Hill. Indeed, 8 out of the 18 members of the sub-committee belong to the India caucus. Congressman Brad Sherman, who participated in the A Q Khan hearings, is a leading member of the India caucus too.
On the face of it, this development is in response to a recent statement by the Pakistan Foreign Office that the A Q Khan case had been “closed”. But two other factors may more realistically lie behind it. One, Pakistan’s increasing demand that it should be treated at par vis a vis the proposed US-India nuclear deal, and increasing opposition in the US to the deal, which may have triggered a response from the India caucus to neutralize these arguments of bracketing “good” India with “bad” Pakistan; and two, the Bush administration must have given the green light for the hearings because it is unhappy with the Musharraf regime for not doing “more” to put down the desperately ferocious Taliban who are taking a heavy toll of ISAF this summer.
This reasoning is strengthened by another development in Washington coincidentally on the same day of the A Q Khan hearing. The US Institute of Peace’s seminar on the insurgency in Balochistan was significant for several reasons. First, one of the two seminar speakers, Selig Harrison, is the author of a 1978 book on Baloch nationalism that is peppered with partisan notions of the subject. Mr Harrison is also reputed to be “pro-India” and “anti-Pakistan” if only because of the consistently critical positions he has taken on developments in Pakistan. His presentation was notable for demanding that the US should sanction Pakistan for using American helicopters against the Baloch insurgents. Second, the other speaker, Frederic Grare, also from the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, talked about the resurgence of Baloch nationalism and highlighted the region’s geo-political importance because a “huge part of the US military operations in Afghanistan are launched from Pasni and Dalbandin bases situated on Baluch territory and the Taliban also operate from Baluchistan.” He declared that “if the pressure on Western forces in Afghanistan were to become unbearable, Washington and its allies could conceivably use the Baluch nationalists who fiercely oppose the influence of the mullahs and also oppose the Taliban, to exert diplomatic pressure on Islamabad as well as Teheran”. Interestingly enough, Mr Grare notes pointers of the “Indian hand” in Baluchistan and the role of the US as a “potential troublemaker” in the region but is careful not to give personal credence to these signs. More ominously, he concludes that “unless Pakistan changes its policy towards Baluchistan dramatically , the possibility of Baluchistan eventually gaining its independence cannot be ruled out.” At the least, he argues, “this conflict could be used in Pakistan and elsewhere as a weapon against the Pakistan government. Such a prospect would affect not only Pakistan but possibly all its neighbors. It is ultimately Islamabad that must decide whether Baluchistan will become its Achilles’ heel.”
It should be clear to Islamabad that the A Q Khan case is not closed and the Baluchistan case has been re-opened in Washington in response to Islamabad’s policy of non-cooperation with the Bush administration in helping stabilize Afghanistan. Indeed, the recent change of Pakistani tack in Waziristan by opting for negotiation with the Taliban via their JUI political sponsors in the NWFP and Baluchistan could presage further US-Pakistan tensions if this policy hurts rather than helps American interests in Afghanistan. Should that happen, it is certain that Washington will weigh in with greater and more frequent demands for a return to democratic pluralism via free and fair elections in Pakistan. Certainly, think tank opinion in Washington has turned against the Musharraf regime. The conclusion is inescapable: if General Pervez Musharraf’s domestic policies squeeze him into no man’s land by alienating his chief foreign sponsor because of his continuing alliance with his sponsor’s principal religious detractors in Pakistan, he will have only himself to blame for his misfortune.