Opinion

Is Pakistan Ready for another 9/11?
By Ahmed Quraishi
Islamabad, Pakistan

Brahmdagh Bugti, a terrorist recruited and sheltered in Afghanistan, is planning a spectacular operation in Balochistan. The information coming from intelligence intercepts paints a picture of an attack on Pakistani Balochis by terrorists pretending to be soldiers of the Pakistani military. The objective is to spark a separatist uprising in the province. The timing of the plan is perfect. All ground reports indicate that terrorists armed and financed by unidentified backers in Afghanistan have strengthened their positions since March, exploiting political instability in the country.
This report is one of several that indicate a wide scale leadership failure in Pakistan on multiple levels. This failure is compounding Pakistan’s problems and emboldening the country’s adversaries. And the scope of this failure is stunning to say the least.
Pakistani foreign exchange reserves are depleting at a fast rate, the country’s nuclear capability is facing a fresh media attack, and calculated US media leaks are now suggesting that the Frontier Corps is a subsidiary of Al Qaeda and Taliban. This last leak, in a British newspaper quoting unnamed American officials, appears to be an advance justification for future attacks similar to the one on June 10. The report also appears to preempt a possible Pakistani decision to cancel an American plan to use the Corps as NATO’s claw in our tribal region.
Judging by the response of the politicians and the political parties in power in Islamabad, it is safe to say they are living on a different planet. Last week, the nation was hypnotized by an exaggerated ritualistic memorial to a slain party leader when a simple graceful ceremony would have sufficed, especially when the government has launched a campaign to rename everything under the sun in the leader’s memory. And as if the artificial crisis over the deposed judges was not enough to botch up our priorities and damage Pakistan’s stability, Pakistanis are now being pushed toward another crisis if and when an attempt is made to impeach the president. The confusion is so rife that when the country’s nuclear capabilities were facing a new US media trial last week, not a single Pakistani politician stepped forward to counter the attack. The planted media reports kept pouring in for a week until finally the buck stopped at the president’s desk. He intervened over the weekend with a strong commitment to maintain and expand Pakistan’s strategic capabilities.
The crass show of force by Pakistani politicians – first by PML-N in the lawyers’ march and then by the PPP on late Benazir Bhutto’s birthday – bring into doubt the hopes that Pakistani democracy will finally move toward some sort of maturity. Worse still, this type of frivolous politics is wasting the nation’s energy and is acting as a smokescreen blinding the Pakistani public opinion to the challenges ahead.
And one such serious challenge is the possibility of another major attack similar to 9/11. The growing American ‘chatter’ about an imminent attack on the United States originating from Pakistan’s tribal region is a serious concern within the Pakistani strategic community today. The Pakistani ambassador in Washington was put on notice early this month that the US would ‘retaliate’ if America suffered such an attack. No less than the US military’s highest ranking officer, Admiral Michael Mullen, came out to drive the point home. Part of the concern is that Washington is exaggerating Al Qaeda’s capabilities and that Pakistan could end up entrapped in a manufactured crisis that serves American strategic objectives. The American ‘retaliation’ in this case would definitely mean an invasion of our territories.
And the ground is being prepared for this. Karzai’s blunt threat was more than just a case of a roaring mouse. It is no coincidence that Pakistan is facing renewed nuclear blackmail at the hands of US media reports that make serious allegations without naming the US government officials behind them.
The transition to democracy has hardly brought any stability to our homeland. Ironically, the highest foreign currency reserves in Pakistan’s history were registered on Oct. 31, 2007, when a military ruler was preparing to implement emergency rule in the country. The point is that Pakistan’s real problem is stability and not what type of government is in Islamabad. So far the Pakistani military is watching this entire situation on the sidelines, having extricated itself from politics. But this position of the military can only be sustained if the politicians reverse leadership failures. It is safe to say that right now analysts in military think tanks must be worried at the twin possibilities of an internal political meltdown coupled with an external crisis. This remains a hypothesis at this stage and the situation is not anywhere near out of control. But this illustration helps in understanding what is at stake.

------------------------------------------------------------------------