Peace and Politics under the Praetorian Shadow — I
By Dr Mohammad Taqi
Florida
“In the summer of ‘96 we laughed. I can’t remember the sound.
Before that September when the Taliban came
we were no different than you.
Now we are the ghosts of Afghanistan
the women and the girls of a whole country
under house arrest.”
— From Sue Silvermarie’s poem The Ghosts of Afghanistan.
The events of the last few weeks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, though deeply disturbing and tragic, have helped clarify several things. It was a foregone conclusion that the All Parties Conference (APC) called by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani would end up opening his government’s flank to right-wing zealots. Whenever the unelected people are given a seat or vote at par with the elected parties, they inevitably make full use of the opportunity to squeeze the larger parties for everything that they can. No surprise there.
But somewhat baffling was the magnitude of capitulation by the political parties that presently have representation in parliament, to the charge of the unelected right-wing led by the sole proprietor of Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), Imran Khan. That a John Lennon song (Give Peace a Chance) was pushed to become the title of the APC’s solemn joint declaration was rather amusing until one realized that it could as easily have been Inayat Hussain Bhatti’s war anthem ‘Diyo inaan noo ragrra oye dhar ragrra’ (crush those enemies, thrash them indeed) and the elected parties still may not have made a whimper.
Perhaps Mr Gilani has perfectly good intentions for peace in the region but, as the old aphorism goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. His understanding of the complexities of Pak-Afghan-US relations apparently has not kept pace with his intentions. But there were others in the room who cannot claim naïveté as an excuse when it comes to Pak-Afghan relations but they either remained mum or worse — did speak up, only to sign on the dotted line in the end. The chief of the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, Mr Mahmud Khan Achakzai broke almost three years of silence and, according to media reports and interviews, was critical of the Pakistani security establishment’s misadventures in Afghanistan. Similarly, two-time former Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif raised serious concerns regarding virtually the whole world complaining about Pakistan harboring militants.
Neither leader in their subsequent media appearances clarified what changed their mind to the extent that they signed the document literally proclaiming the terrorists as ‘our people’. Granted that it was an in-camera session and lesser mortals may not become privy to what transpired there but, as both leaders have been open about what they said in the meeting, it is a fair question to ask. Were they satisfied with the briefings received from the foreign minister and the army officials that they affixed their names to what might become a template for Swat-like disastrous deals all over FATA and indeed the rest of the country?
It might be unfair to single out Mian Sahib and Mahmud Khan though. Pertinent to know would be Asfandyar Wali Khan’s stance — if there was one — at the meeting. His Awami National Party (ANP) had issued a written position statement after the recent row between the US and Pakistan erupted. On the whole, the document is quite balanced and pledges supporting a crackdown on the terrorists inside the country while closing ranks for Pakistan’s national security against any foreign aggression. Apparently, the media, except for one newspaper, did not report the ANP statement. One hoped that Asfandyar Khan had vigorously highlighted his party’s reasonable response to a complicated situation. But if the traditional media was negligent, the ANP chief, too, was remiss in making his point at a time when voices of reason were badly needed. If there were a will to convey his viewpoint, the multitude of contemporary media would have provided a way.
On the heels of the APC came President Asif Zardari’s opinion piece ‘Talk to, not at, Pakistan’, in the Washington Post. In a departure from his previous well-balanced op-eds, the current one oscillates between bravado and belligerence on the one hand, to lament on the other. Whoever advised the president on the content obviously did not have a good handle on the current mood in the US and the West, which clearly are its target audience. Needless to say that the piece has been received as fluff and John Podesta and Caroline Wadhams, writing in the same paper, were quick to note that the op-ed “underscored Pakistan’s perception that it had borne the heaviest costs of US policies, but they offered little suggestion as to a way forward”.
In the past, Mian Nawaz Sharif, the late Wali Khan and Shaheed Benazir Bhutto all tried to appease — or at least not confront — the security establishment vis-à-vis its designs on Afghanistan only to be dismayed later. Under the praetorian shadow, not only peace in Afghanistan remained elusive but the blowback also ravaged Pakistan and weakened its moderate political forces. Mian Sahib and the heirs to Wali Khan and BB’s legacy are not handicapped by the selective amnesia afflicting the PTI types. They know that from September 1996 through September 2001, the Pakistani establishment’s blue-eyed boys ruled Afghanistan with impunity, save a couple of enclaves, with full support from their handlers.
The Taliban were commissioned to fight a war that would end all wars in Afghanistan and provide a dispensation favorable to Pakistan. Instead, they unleashed a peace that literally ended all peace. The above-quoted poem by Sue Silverman was based on the experiences of an Afghan teacher, Zarghuna Waziri, who was one of the millions of women victims of the Taliban’s repression. Ironically, those who claim to champion liberal values and women’s rights in Pakistan have been shouting themselves hoarse to install back in Afghanistan the most brutal regime that women have ever faced in history.
John Podesta et al. were rather mild to suggest that the fluff coming out of Pakistan does not suggest a way forward as it effectively is an attempt to rollback all the way back to the Taliban barbarism of the 1990s and put Afghanistan, and especially its vulnerable populations, under house arrest. But those adopting a pugilistic attitude under the long, dark praetorian shadow seem to forget that instead of gaining strategic depth, Pakistan ended up giving ideological depth to the Taliban, putting its own population under house arrest too. (To be continued)
(The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/mazdaki)
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