A succession of surveys conducted by foreign and local agencies in 2013 in Pakistan anointed America as the country’s ‘enemy number one.’ The Pak watchers were not surprised. The relations between the long-time partners had reached its nadir with the US disgusted over the perfidious manner in which Pakistan was fighting terror—by offering all manner of help to the militants who were attacking US and NATO troops in Afghanistan while allegedly fighting them.
Cut to mid-December, 2014. The Pakistani army chief Gen Raheel Sharif makes an extended two-week visit to the US. He is much pleased at the royal treatment – meeting all the top military guns as well as the Secretary of State, John Kerry, a known friend of Pakistan. His hosts agreed to release $500 million from the Coalition Support Fund, and fulfilled the promise with a formal announcement soon after he returned home. Gen Sharif is all smiles.
The sum is not big when compared to the need to bolster up depleting forex reserves of Pakistan, but it signalled that many more good things will start flowing from the US—as they always did till 9/11 happened. The hysteric anti-US chants across the land of the pure vanished into thin air. The more familiar anti-India rants returned with religious extremists to ‘moderate’ politicians back at their old habit of holding India responsible for everything that is wrong with their country – from the melting glaciers in Northern Areas to spurt in vegetable prices in Lahore and Islamabad.
An even more heartening development for Pakistan has been the US tacitly agreeing to let Rawalpindi –Islamabad combine become the main foreign player in Kabul from the New Year. Afghanistan has just seen the transition from tough talking and India-friendly Hamid Karzai to Abdul Ghani, who either due to his own conviction or under US pressure, has opened channels to Pakistan. And on his first foray to the land west of Durand Line, he visited the GHQ headquarters thus became the first Afghan leader in recent times to be meet the Pak army chief on the latter’s turf. The ouster of Karzai had caused much jubilation in Pakistan, seen as he was as an anti-Pakistan leader even though during the Soviet rule in Afghanistan he and his family had lived in Pakistan.
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Ghani has agreed to send Afghan troops for training to Pakistan whereas his predecessor had resisted that very offer. High level exchanges have taken place between Afghanistan and Pakistan, including visits to Kabul by Gen Raheel Sharif.
All these developments, particularly the resumption of the old warmth in the ties with the United States have boosted the spirits of the Pakistani generals and ruling politicians alike; it has given them a confidence that had all but disappeared when the Americans had put them in the dog house. They are now confidently declaring that they have waged an all-out war against terrorists. Proof: bombing of alleged terrorist hideouts in North Waziristan.
The Americans are happy because Ops Zarb-e-Azb has been targetting some militant jihadi Islamists who are needling the NATO led forces in Afghanistan. Never mind, if Afghan Taliban leaders had managed with timely advance information to escape before the operation was launched a week after the Pakistan Taliban’s attacked the Jinnah international airport in Karachi on June 8, 2014. And for the record the ops code name in Urdu means “sharp and cutting strike”. It has a religious connotation too since it is named after the sword, Azb, Prophet Muhammad, had used in the battles of Badr and Uhud.
It is not going to matter to the Americans that the Pakistanis have no intention to catch the ‘good’ Taliban, the ‘assets’ of the ISI who target India interests in Kabul. It is happy as long as there is a semblance of peace during the present transition. Nor is the US perturbed by the fact that the civilian administration in Pakistan has handed over decision-making on terrorism front completely to the military. The US is always guided by short term goals – because of an inability to look beyond its nose. The ISI ‘assets’ have nothing to fear, yes, barring an occasional drone spotting over the clear blue skies of South Waziristan where the Good Taliban lives and North Waziristan where the Bad Taliban is holed up.
Take the case of Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi, the Lashkar-e-Toiba mastermind of the Mumbai attacks. On December 18, anti-terrorism court Judge Kosar Abbas Naqvi granted bail to him. Reason One: lack of evidence. Reason Two: prosecution lawyer did not turn up. Though hard to believe, he is not released after uproar in India and sent back to jail, only to receive relief from higher court. It is hardly important whether Lakhvi is in jail or a free man when the prosecution has failed to make any move against his trial in court. The magistrates are fearful of trying an ISI ‘asset’.
Lakhvi has since been arrested in an unrelated kidnapping case and shifted to Shalimar police station in Islamabad’s posh F-10 sector from Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail, where he has been lodged for his role in the 2008 mayhem in Mumbai. He was taken to the police station in a convoy of police vehicles, reportedly for security reasons. If he can obtain bail on a serious terrorism charge, why should he not expect the same when faced with what could be a trumped charge of kidnapping a man many years ago. More so, when the purpose of new detention is not to jail him for kidnapping as a Pakistani security official told the news portal, Rediff.com.
Like his soul mate, Hafiz Saeed, Lakhvi is a crucial figure in Pakistan’s proxy war with India. Saeed roams freely in the country, addressing huge rallies where he spews venom against ‘Hindu India’. The Pakistani Punjab government, headed by the brother of the country’s prime minister, gives him a handsome annual grant.
Contributing to the rebuilding of intense anti-India mood in Pakistan is the last military dictator, Gen Pervez Musharraf. On paper he is being tried on treason charges, but with the military behind him the outcome of that trial is a foregone conclusion. In the meanwhile, he is rediscovering his machoism by giving interviews in which he asks Pakistanis to get more active in the jihad against India.
As the US expert Michael Kugelman remarks, for Pakistan militants who can help pursue its regional interests are its strategic assets. It takes recourse to these assets to enforce its policy of weakening India or in keeping its presence minimal in the region.
-By Allabaksh
