The media savvy Gen Pervez Musharraf expects to notch an important domestic success by getting himself elected for another five-year term as president of Pakistan despite his fast plummeting popularity with both the politicians and the public. But on the external front his joy may be short-lived as his strongest patron, the US President George W. Bush, who is unable to carry his people on his so-called war on terror, downgrades his estimation of his Pakistani counterpart.
Of late many officials, though not the top guns, in both Washington and London, have started showing open signs of annoyance with Gen Musharraf because of what is seen as his half-hearted efforts to dismantle the terror network spread across Pakistan and his refusal to discard the terror card as an instrument of his foreign policy. The result is an escalation of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan that is pushing the country back into the Taliban fold and prospects of ‘imminent’ strikes in the UK.
Western intelligence agencies and NATO commanders in Kabul openly acknowledge that the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan has become possible to a great extent because Pakistan is not willing to take action against the Taliban clones in Waziristan and the tribal belt of North West Frontier Province (NWFP). And as far as India is concerned, there is no hint that Pakistan has given up its policy of bleeding India with a view to wresting Kashmir from India.
It is very unusual for a country like Pakistan, which is no economic or military superpower-- not even an emerging one-- to receive high-profile visitors from the US and UK on a single day. On February 26 came from Washington the US vice president, Dick Cheney and from London came Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary. Cheney, in fact, brought along with him a deputy director of CIA, Stephen Kappes.
Their message was identical: support for Musharraf will depend on results shown in exterminating the terrorist camps in Pakistan, especially those run by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The usual Pakistani fib of ‘we have done more than anyone’ does not blunt these tough messages. The CIA official had his own ‘message’ for the Pakistanis. He presented ‘compelling’ evidence of terrorist resurgence in Pakistan in the form of surveillance satellite photos that pinpointed the locations of several new Al Qaeda camps in Waziristan.
True, President George W. Bush has still not said anything publicly to Musharraf that can be construed as blunt. Bush keeps on praising the General’s ‘brave’ stand against terrorism. It will also appear from what the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, recently told his hosts in London that the UK also continues to underplay the threat posed by Pakistan.
The British reluctance may be related to a more real danger that can be averted it is said, only with Pakistani ‘cooperation’. British intelligence agencies have been saying that there are literally hundreds of extremists in the island nation—almost all of them with Pakistani links--awaiting instruction from Al Qaeda HQ for the next big strike in the UK after the bombing of London transport system. The timely abortion of a plot to blow off planes over the Atlantic was possible only with the ‘cooperation’ of Islamabad, it is claimed.
But the US does not face such a grave or ‘imminent’ threat to targets inside America. The Bush posturing of bonhomie with Musharraf is nothing more than a diplomatic PR exercise necessary at a time when the US head remains desperately short of leaders supporting him in the Muslim world. Bush obviously decided to send a hard-liner like Cheney to deliver an unambiguous warning to Musharraf out of his domestic compulsions.
Since the time in 2001 when Musharraf buckled under a threat from Bush and abruptly renounced his government’s overt support to terror, the US has pumped in over $27 billion in various kinds of aid to Pakistan, according to Selig Harrison, a South Asia expert. It is doubtful if the economic ‘boom’ Pakistan is said to be experiencing would have been possible but for this American largesse. After blowing away nearly $5 billion annually in Pakistan for the past six years, ostensibly in the hope of mitigating the menace of terrorism, official America is revising its opinion of Musharraf.
On February 13, 2002, Musharraf had declared in Washington that he rejected terrorism ‘in all forms and manifestations anywhere in the world’. If he meant what he said, a US general who commanded Nato forces in Afghanistan would not have told a Senate Panel that it was ‘generally accepted’ that the Taliban headquarter is near Quetta. The Democrats in the US would not have insisted on a law that ties future aid to Pakistan on the action it took against terrorists. The ‘peace deal’ between the Pakistani government and ‘tribal elders’ in Waziristan that Musharraf personally blessed would not have led to a big rise in attacks in Afghanistan by insurgents crossing the Durand Line at will.
The vast US help was given to Pakistan to ensure that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are decimated and buried. The US was keen and perhaps hoping that with ‘cooperation’ from its ‘front line’ ally, Pakistan, it would achieve success in Afghanistan ahead of Iraq—in establishing ‘democracy’ and restoring peace and order in the war ravaged country. That seems unlikely at the moment as Afghanistan too plunges deep into an endless cycle of violence.
Last year was the worst since the fall of the Taliban regime in December 2001 with casualties numbering over 4000. Worse, the Taliban attacks on Afghan targets, including the US and Nato forces is expected to rise in the spring months because the insurgents have regrouped and regained their strength thanks to the overt or covert support provided by authorities in Pakistan to their hide outs in Pak territory.
After all the problems that he faces in Iraq, Bush is not likely to be in a mood to let Pakistan-based insurgents convert Afghanistan also into a quagmire for his forces.
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