Obama’s plan on South Asian terrorism

By Kazi Anwarul Masud

(April 01, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) One is perplexed like George Packer (The New Yorker­27-03-09- Interesting Times) that former members of The New American Century who squeezed Bill Clinton to sign the Iraq Liberation Act and then unsuccessfully appealed to him to attack Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and finally realized their dream as functionaries of Bush administration has now launched The Foreign Policy Initiative. Surprisingly FPI are in favor of an international engagement, human rights, strong alliances, against isolation and retreat. The soft landing of this ideological grouplet has been without thunder but unmistakably, writes George Packer, has the mission “to beat the new Democratic Administration for its craven appeasement of evil”.

One would be reluctant to forget Robert Kagan’s words that “the real division of labor consisted of the US making the dinner and Europeans doing the dishes”. His scathing remarks about Europe’s contraction of influence and power after decolonization and the end of Cold War when Europe lost its centrality in global politics (Power and Weakness) and Donald Rumsfeld’s disparaging observations on Europe’s contribution during the NATO intervention regarding Kosovo was not well received by the Europeans. Robert Kagan, Billy Kristol and others would have liked the “unipolar” moment to continue that they felt was threatened by the “explosive forces of ambitious nationalism” of Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India and Iran.

But President Barak Obama’s pledge to revert American policy towards multilateralism and consultation with allies and opening up with adversaries (e.g. .Iran) contest Kagan’s (The Return of History) thesis that a new conflict has emerged between Western liberalism and eastern autocracy championed by Russia and China. In effect the US muscularity by the Bush administration particularly in the US defiance of the UNSC in launching the invasion of Iraq had a disquieting effect throughout the world, particularly among the Islamic nations. The so-called war on terror came to be transformed as war against Islam. Forgotten was the basic premise that war could be fought either in self-defense or if sanctioned by the UN. Bush administration’s indifference towards the rest of the world was encapsulated by Francis Fukuyama in the words that the Americans “tend not to see any source of democratic legitimacy higher than nation-state”. The neo-cons were strengthened by the intellectual muscle of the “new sovereigntists” who fully endorsed Bush administration’s rejection of comprehensive test ban treaty, Rome Treaty on International Criminal Court, refusal by then administration to submit Kyoto Protocol on climate change for Senate ratification, and most importantly considered international law as too amorphous to justify US consent, found international law as intrusive into US domestic law and as a challenge to the US constitution. Joshua Marshall remarked that rarely in the US history had such a cohesive and distinct group managed to exert so decisive an influence on such an issue as the invasion of Iraq as the neo-cons did during the Bush administration.

If Madeline Albright felt the tectonic shift from Clinton administration to Bush administration in the US foreign and defense policies as had happened never before in the US history, then the change over to Barak Obama from George W Bush has come as a welcome change to most of the developed and developing worlds. It is, therefore, not surprising to see Barak Obama speak of trilateral dialogue among the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight the al-Qaeda, establishing a “contact group” and a regional security and economic cooperation forum, urging US allies to work bilaterally and through “Friends of Democratic Pakistan” to coordinate economic and development assistance to Pakistan and Afghanistan. President Obama has correctly diagnosed that the epicenter of terrorism is in Pakistan and not Afghanistan. In his words ‘the core goal of the US must be to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaida and its safe havens in Pakistan and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan”. He continues that that al-Qaeda and extremist threat of obtaining fissile material was all too real.

Luckily for the international community the US appears to be aware of “trust deficit” it faces in Pakistan and Afghanistan and indeed in many Muslim countries. Trust deficit also exists on the US side. Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen and General David Patraeus have accused Pakistani military intelligence of links with al-Qaeda and demanded that such links must end. The New York Times (25-3-09) reported that Taliban's widening campaign in southern Afghanistan was made possible in part by direct support from ISI, Pakistani intelligence. One of the reasons is because of different definition of al-Qaeda by the US and Pakistan. Pakistanis, despite being attacked by the Islamic extremists with increasing frequency and venality to the extent that led counterinsurgency expert KimCullen to predict that Pakistan may become a “failed state” with months, consider a part of terrorists fighting Indian forces in Kashmir as “freedom fighters”. Only ten of these “freedom fighters” who were nothing but terrorists caused the massacre in Mumbai bringing the two adversaries eye ball to eye ball to an almost inevitable conflict prevented by the US and her allies, and the restraint showed by the Indian government in the face of public outcry for revenge.

Pakistan, despite initial bravado, had to bend down to international pressure and finally acknowledge that the plan for the Mumbai massacre had been done in Pakistan and promised to apprehend the culprits. Al-Qaeda styled terrorism that has overtaken the world, the Muslims being no exception notwithstanding inter-religious millennial rivalry propagated by historian Bernard Lewis, would be difficult to contain only through hard power. This fact has been acknowledged by Obama plan that states that in a country that is 70% rural and the Taliban recruits being from unemployed youths agricultural sector job creation has been given utmost importance. President Obama plans to increase Afghan army to 134000 and police to 82000 to be trained and equipped by the US and her allies over the next two years. His plan includes weaning away the mercenary Taliban and war on narcotics in Afghanistan. For Pakistan President Obama plans to give $1.5 billion every year for the next five years that would include direct budget support, development assistance, infrastructure investment, and technical advice.

One, however, is not certain how far Obama plan to reverse Taliban momentum in Afghanistan can be achieved if one considers the circumstances that literally forced the Pakistan Federal government and the NWFP government to hand over Swat and Malakand agency to Baitullah Meshud and his Taliban rule. It cannot be denied that most of the Muslim countries do not practice democracy thus giving credence to the remark by Bernard Lewis that democracy is a particular form of governance adopted by the developed countries to conduct public affairs that may or may not be suitable for others, as well as Francis Fukuyama’s concession that the revival of religion in “some way attests to a broad unhappiness with the impersonality and spiritual vacuity of liberal consumerist society”.

Though implicitly, as President Bill Clinton did, one can reach the conclusion that forces of reaction are fed by poverty, disillusionment and despair, empirical study of terrorists and Islamists found them to belong to “significantly above the average of their generation”. In the case of Pakistan if dismal poverty is discounted to be the sole reason for Taliban resurgence one can trace the root to the bewildering complexity of ethnic and religious divisions that makes Pakistan so fragile’. The constitution of a country by different ethnic and linguistic groups do give rise to “identity politics” based on group interest seen as superior to the interest that would serve the greater interest of the people as a whole.

As it is, Pakistan is bedeviled by religious sectarian conflict. Given the fact of sectarian conflict between the Shias and Sunnis that claims lives of innocent people at a bewildering rate the Sunnis themselves are divided into two groups­ one following Deobandi school and the other Barelvi school of thought. Deobandis are anti-Shia and want the Shias to be declared as infidels and demand constitutional amendment to that effect. The ethnic-religious divide among the people had been taken full advantage of by Pakistani military by promoting Islamist political parties in order to marginalize moderate political forces. Added is the view of Leon Hadder (of Cato Institute) advising Washington to view Pakistan “as a reluctant supporter of US goals at best and as a potential long term problem at worst”. “Pakistan today” writes Ashley Tellis (of the Carnegie Endowment), “is clearly both part of the problem and the solution to the threat of terrorism facing the United States”. Indeed the 9/11 Commission had more or less highlighted Pakistan’s deep involvement with international terrorism and recommended a long term US commitment to provide comprehensive support to Pakistan.

Additionally the complexity of Pakistani tribal society that is patrimonial and feudal, despite the rise of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan replacing the traditional elders, the replacing batch of leaders are younger, trigger happy and more vicious than their predecessors. If the Taliban rule in Swat is any indication then it is not easily understood how the Obama plan is going to succeed. But then it must.

The world cannot be held hostage to a group of people who cannot be reasoned with and would inflict death and destruction with impunity. All countries of South Asia have a stake, principally Pakistan, India and Bangladesh who continue to be subject of mayhem of suicide bombers

One hopes the fire inflamed by George Bush would be put down by his successor in the White House.

(The author is a former Ambassador and Secretary of Bangladesh. He can be reached at kamasud@dhaka.net)

-Sri Lanka Guardian