[Reader-list] "Terrorism dilemmas come down to Kashmir"

[S. Jabbar]

Really? All dilemmas?

>From the News International, Pakistan
    
    
Time to eat humble pie
    
    
    
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Gibran Peshimam
 
Amidst unrelenting suicide attacks, audacious assaults on the armed forces,
Operation Rah-e-Nijaat in full flow and the NRO question reaching a zenith,
talking about the alarming situation in Balochistan may seem a bit trivial
and off-topic.

This has always been the case, hasn't it? Something always comes along
pushing the issue of Pakistan's perpetually troubled province into the
fringes. If it's not the secession of East Pakistan, then its Zia's coup; if
it's not the Afghan Jihad, then it's political subterfuge. Today, it's the
war on terror.

Well, it has been a mistake each time.

If there's one thing that history has shown, it is that Balochistan is a
problem that just will not go away despite being continuously being pushed
into the background. All those supposedly 'more urgent' issues have passed
and have been resolved in their own twisted ways. Yet when the dust settled,
Balochistan remained. Festered, worsened.

Balochistan is Pakistan's original sin. And that readily-ignored sin has now
taken a not-so-ignorable turn.

Today that luxury of 'we'll-get-back-to-this-later' approach may no longer
be available because the province is the limelight again for two fresh
reasons. One involves the US' concern regarding the activities of the Quetta
Shura and refuge for the Taliban leadership, and, more recently, Iran's
concern at the activities of Jundallah, and the attacks being launched
against it from Balochistan.

To accompany the already discomforting murmurs regarding the possibility of
the US expanding its targeting of Taliban leaders into northern Balochistan
("beyond FATA" as they would call it), there are now voices in Iran calling
for the chasing of Jundallah across the border into parts of Pakistani
Balochistan following a high-level suicide hit recently. This matter is
serious, and will only become more serious with time.

This is over and above the now traditional spectre of Balochistan's most
long-standing issue ­ its own indigenous nationalist movement. You now a
have troika of unique, mutually exclusive problems that will give the best
in the policy business nightmares.

Chess with Kasparov would be an easier and potentially less humiliating
task.

How does the government appease the US, whose money it needs, Iran, whose
gas and regional friendship it needs, as well as the nationalists, whose
antagonism will render it unable to do much about either Iran's or the US'
concerns to begin with?

If you think that the military and border security is overstretched dealing
with the NWFP-Afghanistan border on the west, the India-Pakistan border on
the East, and along the Line of Control in Kashmir, imagine what will happen
if you try to secure the rugged borders and unsympathetic heartland of your
country's largest province as well ­ that too amidst unprecedented hostility
on the part of vast majority of the local population. The NWFP situation is
nothing compared to the task of Balochistan.

The pressure is on Pakistan to act now in its largest province. So what do
we do?

This is how it stands: Iran has beef with the Jundallah, who they say are
supported by the US and Israel (some say they are supported by Saudi Arabia
as well) with the help of Pakistan. The US' problem is with the Taliban are
supported by anti-US groups, including Iran. Pakistan, meanwhile, complains
that the Baloch nationalists are supported by outside forces. The three
groups' agendas are not congruous with one another.

For starters, any attempt to conflate the issues of traditional nationalist
angst, quasi-ethnic/religious irredentism (or what is perceived irredentism)
and religious militancy will be a big mistake.

Another surefire thing is that the authorities cannot tackle each and every
issue separately. They do not have the military capacity given the currently
stretched resources, the political option given the Gordian Knot in terms of
agendas, or the credibility/ability to do it diplomatically.

The truth is that, though the three are mutually exclusive, the policy
regarding one will have to be strongly based on the policy regarding the
other two. There is one sustainable way out, which can, in fact, work well
for Pakistan in the long run. But this will require one thing that our
administrations have historically lacked: Humility.

Pakistan now more than ever has to first come to terms with the fact that
the nationalist movement that it has vilified for so long with barbs of
traitor is in fact a legitimate movement born out of legitimate concerns.
The sooner the government is able to abandon its age old policy regarding
the Baloch movement, the better.

Whether or not it is funded by foreign organisations is not the issue. Its
basic premise is and was legitimate. Foreign infiltration only came in after
the brutal suppression of Baloch rights in the past.

Remember that the Pakistani state, after all, has no say in huge swaths of
Balochistan thanks in no small part to the estrangement of the Baloch over
the years. If the Baloch were on board in the first place, infiltrating the
harsh terrain of Balochistan by foreign actors would have been a lot less
possible over the years. It is with this understanding that the current
situation needs to be tackled. Get back to the root cause.

How it will be done is a subject that is too vast to state in mere columns.
It is a subject worth a thesis-sized discourse. It will have to involve a
whole lot more than a hollow Balochistan package ­ that is for sure. It will
require drastic concessions; a major change in rigid archetypes. It will
require ditching non-representative leadership for short-term gains.

Those who argue that we will lose Balochistan in this effort should realise
that at the moment, the centre does not 'have' Balochistan to begin with. In
fact, keeping the province in its current political state will be only hurt
the country further by allowing outside operatives to continue to infiltrate
as well as marking a huge bulls-eye for neighbouring forces.

Give Balochistan to the Baloch and you secure Pakistan.  As it stands, there
may be no other option.

Time to eat humble pie.



> From: Sanjay Kak <kaksanjay at gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:01:39 +0530
> To: Sarai Reader List <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Subject: [Reader-list] "Terrorism dilemmas come down to Kashmir"
> 
> Terrorism dilemmas come down to Kashmir

Brian Till

Sun, Oct 25, 2009 (2
> a.m.)

http://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/oct/25/terrorism-dilemmas-come-down-
> kashmir/

The most vital region in this world today, for U.S. interests
> at
least, remains a maze of cloud-shearing piles of rock and sweeping
valleys,
> both checkered by impoverished towns and men clutching AKs ‹
but this pile is
> hundreds of miles from Kabul.

So the logic follows: One can not tolerate an
> unstable Afghanistan for
fear that it will become the Mecca of a perverted
> Islam once more;
and, one cannot hope to stabilize Afghanistan without also
> addressing
Pakistan; and Pakistan, we must understand, has almost no hope
> of
winning its internal battle with a radicalized Pashtun militia known
as the
> Taliban unless it engages its entire military in the exercise.

But the bulk
> of the Pakistani military remains tied down in the
Punjab, protecting the
> heartland from an Indian invasion; according to
Farukkh Saleem, executive
> director of Pakistan¹s Centre for Research
and Security Studies, 80 percent to
> 90 percent of Pakistan¹s military
assets are in use countering the Indian
> threat.

Sameer Lalwani, a colleague of mine at the New America Foundation,
> has
put forward a net assessment of the nation¹s capacity to wage a
counter
> insurgency (COIN) campaign in the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas and the
> Northwest Frontier Province.

Leaving aside the strategy of COIN for the
> moment, Lalwani ‹ comparing
the terrain, population size, language difference
> and a range of other
factors ‹ contends that an effective campaign will
> require 370,000 to
430,000 more troops than presently involved. It¹s a
> redeployment
that¹s unconscionable to the Pakistani military; such a move
> would
leave Pakistan vulnerable to its vicious rival.

Thus, Kashmir, the
> dispute at the center of the bloody fissure between
India and Pakistan,
> remains the most important region to the U.S.
interests ‹ and, ironically, it
> exists as one of the few conflicts
over which we cannot wield significant
> influence.

There has not been a call for U.S. mediation, the boisterous
> Indian
population likely won¹t stomach American pressure, and there is no
need
> to reiterate the loathing Pakistanis feel toward the United
States.
> Particularly, the Pakistani military ‹ with whom power
ultimately resides and
> which has the capacity to undermine any
progress ‹ is well steeped in distrust
> of the U.S.

The conflict was born from the bloody partition of India and
> Pakistan
as the queen¹s bankrupted empire sought to liquidate following
> World
War II. Though it receives less attention than the sister conflict
born
> from the death of the British realm ‹ Israel/Palestine ‹ it is
likely the more
> severe of the pair. Between 35,000 and 50,000 have
died since 1989, when the
> Mujahadeen victors in Afghanistan sought to
make the princely state into the
> next theater of holy war.

Kashmir is the most important example of why the
> U.S. cannot afford to
accept the anarchy we find and allow to simmer in many
> parts of the
world. Somalia, Juarez, Haiti: We have become too globalized and
> are
combating problems too transmittable for the humble foreign policy
that
> George W. Bush espoused as a candidate.

Indeed, the defining struggle of our
> time ‹ unlike those of previous
generations, which pitted competing imperial
> aggressions and ambitions
and competing capitalist and communist ideologies
> against one another
‹ our challenge and foe exists outside the state system;
> it is the
battle against lawlessness, backwardness and statelessness.

One
> can¹t help but think: Had John F. Kennedy¹s attempt to negotiate a
solution
> with Prime Minister Harold McMillan for Kashmir in 1963
proven fruitful, we
> might be living in a substantially less terrifying
world. Perhaps it ought to
> be a lesson to us. Mediate and assist more,
even if interests do not appear to
> be at stake ‹ who knows when they
might be.

Brian Till, a columnist for
> Creators Syndicate, is a research fellow
for the New America Foundation, a
> think tank 
> in Washington.
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