India's Permanent Problem

Peter Preston has had a long love affair with Pakistan, which began in the early 1970s when as a young reporter he covered the break up of the country and its devastating loss against India. Since then things have slowly slid downhill in Pakistan, bolstered briefly by US backing against the Soviets and Zia's uber-Islamism in the 80s.

So the former editor's cri de coeur in today's Guardian for India To Save Pakistan From Itself should not surprise. What does is that PP suggests India flies in to rescue Islamabad from the Frankenstein monsters it created.

It is disappointing to see PP reach for hoary old analysis. He says India's political chiefs on the hustings trail have shown feet of clay and thoughts stuck in a timewarp. To quote the piece

Where - in so much of the hustings talk - is there recognition of the peril that Pakistan's internal implosion might bring? And where is the resolve to stretch out a hand of understanding or positive aid? India's economic advance is new: India's political chieftains, though, are old, and set in their ways. They knew who to blame after Mumbai. They see the Taliban beginning to target Kashmir. They do not trust President Zardari or his army or his spooks. They welcome the announcement by Washington's special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, that India "is the absolutely critical leader in the region" with an enhanced role in Afghanistan, but they leave subcontinental relations frozen as usual. They do not realise they are not absolutely critical in Kabul, but in Islamabad itself.

This I am afraid is out of date by a decade or two. The Indian elections are not dominated by Pakistan because the two countries by mutual consent don't get involved in each others internal machinations. An endorsement by Delhi of a Pakistani politician ends careers in Islamabad. Former president Musharraf's bluster and swagger simply irritated the Delhi elite in March.

India and Pakistan have had hands outstretched for five years, ever since the breakthrough 2004 Islamabad summit. The prime minister of India, a respected economist born in what is now Pakistan, blamed official agencies in Pakistan after Mumbai because of the evidence he had seen. Manmohan Singh is not given to idle conspiracies. The gunfights on the Line of Control have got tougher and harder in recent months. Just before I left eight soldiers from one of India's paramilitary units were killed in a shootout in Jammu. This is a step change for Indian security forces. Hence the paranoia. And who does trust Zardari?

The fact is in the region India and Pakistan remain permanent neighbours. India's leaders have for years been warning anyone who cared to listen about the rise of militant armed jehadism. Delhi knows all about blowback - the LTTE and Sikh Fundamentalism were aided by Delhi until they bite the hand that fed them. Pakistan's army has yet to face up to what they have done in the name of saving their country. Until Rawalpindi Corps stops vetoing normal relations with India (because officers believe in bleeding India until Kashmir becomes theirs), there will be no meaningful talks, no substantive outcomes and no enduring peace.

The Return of the Mamluk empire

President Obama’s olive branch of talks with a moderate Taliban has furrowed brows in New Delhi. For India there is no good or bad Taliban only extremists bent on creating an Islamic state stretching across the subcontinent. India sees talk of talks with the Taliban as worse than appeasement. Already the media has picked up on the French foreign minister's innocuous comments on having to accept a possible Taliban's victory - if it came through the ballot.

True Obama has promised to raise troop levels in Afghanistan a la the Iraqi surge, but analysts worry in Delhi that this is simply a prelude to a phased withdrawal under the gaze of a US-installed regime.

For New Delhi this opens the way for the worst possible option: a soft Taliban in Kabul backed by Islamabad – which according to defence analyst Ajai Shukla would allow “the Pakistani army to run Afghanistan on its behalf”.

But Shukla undermines this thesis with a pertinent point.

“The unpredictability within Pakistan is multiplied, say Indian officials, by the fragmentation within Pakistan’s radical fringe. During the anti-Soviet jehad in the 1980s and 1990s, Pakistan dealt with just one jehadi leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2005, when negotiating a ceasefire in Waziristan, Pakistan had 17 tribal Shoora (council) chiefs sitting at the table. Now there are dozens of shooras, often with competing demands.”

Pakistan no longer has no single telephone number to call in the badlands along the Durand line. It could create one by boosting a single Islamic group with arms and cash so that it could wipe out its rivals.

But controlling - let alone unifying - the Taliban, who have an expansive ideological agenda distinctive from the Pakistani state, will be no easy task.

The cutting off of Nato supply lines in NWFP, the bombing of Shia mosques in Punjab and the razing to the ground of a police station point to a much bigger problem. One where imperial masters are toppled by former slaves. If this were ever to happen it would be a reprisal of the Mamluk age – when tribal vassals took over empires in South Asia and the Arab world.

The point is that Islamists do not want to be controlled. They want to control. They are authoritarians who will privilege a small percentage of Muslims to rule over all others. From where this Islamic vanguard springs will determine the distinctive vision of society imagined by Islamists in territory they acquire. Given the historical and geographical roots of the resurgent Taliban, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan have much to worry about.

Mercenaries of God

Machiavelli got it right: mercenaries bring nothing but loss. The cricket killings in Lahore are part of an unfolding tragedy for Pakistan. The terror groups cultivated first to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan and then to wage war against India in Kashmir have turned upon the civilian government. Loyal only to their version of religious truth and thirsty for power, these groups have morphed with parts of Pakistani elite - finding shelter and succour in high places. The result is bloody blowback.

The growing tribalism and lawlessness of even the country's great cities underlines how much the state has withdrawn in the past few years. Into the vacuum have sprung up huge charities, running schools and hospitals, funded by zakat contributions. The mullah, the military, the bureaucracy have been unwilling to counter hardline propaganda, seeing it as an essential service to a nation born to save Islam.

This saviour complex haunts the country in which many are simply in a state of denial about the men with guns. These mercenaries fight no holy war on poverty, illiteracy and discrimination. They see divinity in the wreck and ruin of human life. The powers that be in Pakistan need to understand that these are not armies of Allah. These are dangerous, disloyal and undisciplined condottiere. Sure they will trade bullets with the infidel armies of America and India. But at what cost? The price for Pakistan is being paid on the streets of Lahore.

Terror in India about the Taliban

New Delhi has reacted with unusual alarm about Asif Ali Zardari's peace deal with the Taliban. In Pakistan's Malakand area, three million people will be subject to the will of the Islamic movement under the leadership of Soofi Mohammad. To India this is supping with the devil. Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee today insisted the Taliban was nothing short of a "terrorist organisation." "Taliban believes in nothing but destruction and violence. In my assessment, Taliban is a danger to humanity and civilisation."

To make sure the message gets out there's been a blizzard of opinion. Here's the editorial in the Indian Express:

The deal struck in the valley is dangerous in its implications. It has virtually made the entire area over to the Taliban, where their hitherto illegal writ in the garb of Islamic Sharia laws is now being accepted as a fait accompli. Under the deal, those forced to seek justice from Sharia courts will now have no right of appeal in a higher civil court. How could you have two parallel justice systems running in the same country? And knowing justice, Taliban style, leaves one with cold feet. The intolerant and brutal tribal warlords know no mercy, and have no regard for human life and dignity. Summary executions of men and women who do not subscribe to their brand of Islam are the only justice they practise.

And equally trenchant view from the Business Standard

The question is who is controlling whom—are the Pak generals controlling the Taliban, or is the latter an independent Frankenstein that is beginning to gain the upper hand? After Swat, there is the very real possibility that it could be the latter, raising the prospect of a virtual obliteration of the Durand Line and the de facto formation of some kind of Pakhtoonistan. Those painting worst-case scenarios should do serious work on how the world will deal with the possibility of the Islamist elements getting control of nuclear weapons. It is no longer as remote a possibility as it might have seemed till the other day.

Unfortunately no one - not the US, EU, China, Russia or India - can do much to contain the crisis. Outsiders have no purchase on the Taliban, who bow to a different God. Is the Taliban a real threat to Pakistan? I am not so sure. The danger is that state institutions, essentially products of western thinking, are being infiltrated by the wider Islamist movement and their sympathisers. A dangerous tipping point comes when too many bits of the Pakistani state are ready to do deals with Islamists.

The Pakistani army is probably the country's key player. It has spent decades building up one group before knocking it down. It has armed militant outfits, such as the Lashkar and Jaish in the Punjab. It has come to the aid of political goons in Sindh. It is now securing a deal with the Taliban. The Rawalpindi command's aim is that no one group gets strong enough to challenge the military's hold over the state. It sets paramilitary organisations against each other while fuelling whatever particular prejudice - be it anti-Shia or anti-Pashtoon or anti-Indian feelings - drives the violence.

No doubt the army will attempt to snuff out a true threat to itself - witness the decapitation of the Baloch separatists. The question is whether the Islamists can put aside their differences and pull together to present a potent unified front. That would be trouble for everybody.

The illusion of power

At a talk the other night in Delhi to hear about Pakistan's forthcoming elections from various Indian thinkers - and a Pakistani diplomat - the mood was pretty somber. For the Indians Pakistan is either a failing state on the verge of collapse or a state about to fall into the hands of radical extremists. Either way it looks bad.

The elections were considered rigged - no independent judges, no independent election commission and local administration in the hands of feudal landlords. The caretaker government, which oversees the polls, is run by General President Musharraf's (GPM's) hand-picked PM. All true am afraid.

Almost uncommented upon by the western press are the millions of missing voters in this election. The election roll has shrunk in Pakistan by 20m electors since 2002 when the last (rigged) polls were held.

The Pakistani diplomat defended his country saying it was a victim of three historical earthquakes: the Iranian revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and 9/11. These had seen the rise of extremism. This is a brave defence and one that is hard to swallow given that the Pakistani army bred its own extremists to gain depth in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

But the Pakistani diplomat, from the NWFP cadre, put his finger on exactly the problem. The politics of Pakistan is too important to be left to voters. The casting votes are in foreign hands. Truly popular policies - like ending US influence and subsidies to cope with rising food prices - won't be considered.

That underlines the grubby little secret of the west's engagement with Islamabad. For the US, the impression that a "free and fair" poll will be enough. For the Europeans, facing Afghan ire it will also be enough to rubber stamp these polls as acceptable. Saudi Arabia and China need no convincing on the need to avoid popular mandates.

Pakistan's voters will not decide the government this time. Despite plummeting popularity GPM will not face impeachment - you need 225 plus seats in a 342 seat house. Punjab has about 150 seats. Sindh another 60. No wonder Nawaz Sharif, son of Punjab's soil, and Asif Zardari, Benazir's Sindhi businessman husband, are talking.

It will remain just that. GPM has only to get his quislings, the MQM and religious parties together for long enough to frustrate the Nawaz-Zardari bandwagon. In a few months, I suspect, GPM thinks the alliance will crumble - and he will be able to divide and rule a sham chamber elected under shameful conditions.