Zafar Hilaly

Ours is a sad predicament but we should not lose heart. We have a great cause to fight for. Besides, the moment of greatest humiliation often is the moment when the spirit is the proudest. Steadying the home front must take precedence over tackling foes abroad

Two years before his death Wendell Lewis Willkie (1892-1944), a well known US lawyer and businessman, remarked: “There exists in the world today a gigantic reservoir of goodwill towards us, the American people.” Scarcely a decade and a half later, William Lederer wrote his seminal tract on how Asians viewed Americans and appropriately called it The Ugly American.

Goodwill for the US in Asia has been haemorrhaging ever since. Iran, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and counting, are testaments to American folly. Even the odd success such as the China connection is souring. Not that the US seems to care. Beijing has replaced Moscow as the latest adversary. And because China’s economy is growing exponentially and its military prowess only a mite slower, it is considered potentially a more formidable adversary than the economically decrepit Russia. 

A string of US military bases located on China’s periphery are meant to hem it in. Choke points are being manned to deny China access to major trade routes if the need arises and, even if it does not, to flag the US’s determination to remain the sole superpower.

Meanwhile, India is being dressed up and courted as a countervailing force to China. American-supplied enriched uranium will enable India to augment its cache of nuclear weapons. Modern American fighter aircraft and sophisticated surveillance systems from US armouries will help offset the Chinese superiority in numbers. In a decade or so, and umpteen billion dollars hence, India expects to be on a par with China militarily. 

India is being assigned the role of a western sentinel in the region, a role that its leaders have gleefully accepted. Hence, the Indian intrusion in Afghanistan at the invitation of the US, India’s stance against Iran in the IAEA, the result of crude American pressure, and so too Delhi’s last minute refusal to participate in the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline venture. And though India’s refusal to countenance a sensible and doable border arrangement with China in the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) has more to do with Indian intransigence than American prodding, it melds with the American architecture of the new cold war.

Some nations are positioning themselves to cope. Japan, for example, is ever so slowly extracting itself from what was a cosy but is now viewed as a suffocating American embrace. Europe too is increasingly wary of the strategic perceptions of the US and prefers its own take of a situation. Pakistan also backs its own perspective but remains distracted by its own problems and dissensions and, as always, its economic compulsions. 

Here a sliver of fanatics has a moderate and tolerant Muslim population in their thrall, with the result that instead of being courted for its strategic location at the crossroads of Central Asia and the Middle East, and a nuclear power, Pakistan is shunned. Branded by the US and India as an “epicentre” of terror, Pakistan is threatened with invasion, intervention and disintegration. Its territories have on occasions been traversed by friends and foes alike; its laws trampled upon and its people abused, kidnapped and rendered as much by their own rulers as those who pose as their mentors. Its citizens are on every watch list. Stripped, questioned, harassed and insulted, they are paraded, stared at and shunned at airport queues. The financial assistance it receives from the US or other ‘friends’ is a morsel compared to what is required. Moreover, it is policed, supervised, audited, counted and recounted, withheld and then doled out sometimes with a sneer that conveys, more than words ever can, the condescension with which Pakistan is viewed. The fact is that today while foes view us with contempt, friends view us with a pity that alas seems all too closely allied with contempt. 

Ours is a sad predicament but we should not lose heart. We have a great cause to fight for. Besides, the moment of greatest humiliation often is the moment when the spirit is the proudest. Steadying the home front must take precedence over tackling foes abroad. Justice, good governance and autonomy are buzzwords in Pakistan only because they do not exist. But before we can even hope to tackle our problems successfully, peace within is the foremost priority; and specifically an end to the fratricidal conflict that now engulfs Pakistan. 

It is sad, therefore, that the progressive, tolerant and liberal lobby within the country is divided. Remarkably, those liberals who would have the Afghan government negotiate with the Afghan Taliban; Pakistan recognise Israel; conclude peace deals with India; assent in the plans of erstwhile dictators to arm the junta in Burma, turn apoplectic with rage at the prospect of engaging with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on the grounds that only a military solution is the answer to the challenge the TTP poses. Since when has engaging the enemy in negotiations amounted to conceding to his demands? Or fighting and talking become mutually exclusive activities for warring parties? And especially when history has shown that there is no enemy who can never make a friend or vice versa. Besides, if we can offer our services to try and placate the Afghan Taliban and endeavour to bring them within the ambit of civilised nations through negotiations, why not the TTP with whom the Afghan Taliban are organically linked? In any case, an attempt to do so, even as we war, cannot do harm. Peace, though never surrender, is worth great sacrifices.

Many in the establishment are fearful of a precipitate American withdrawal, i.e. before some sort of an arrangement of what a future government in Afghanistan would look like. They fear that the past era of refugees, strife and turmoil would return and that Pakistan will, as before, be left to deal with it alone. Indeed that is a possibility; however, it is one that can scarcely be avoided because ironically the Americans and the Taliban are, for once, in perfect accord: both want to control Afghanistan. 

In the circumstances no document or understanding reached between them will be respected. The North Vietnamese did not do so and, like them, the Taliban mean to have unfettered control of Afghanistan. What concerns us far more and what is less certain is whether they also want to control Pakistan. If so, Pakistan’s resilience will be tested as never before. Moreover, we will be on our own which, frankly, is just as well because only when we fight alone and win will we know true freedom. Of course, the Americans do count but only as a possible source of funds and war materials. In no other respect could they be a source of strength. Those who came to chase away the Taliban and are now beseeching them to return have, frankly, lost all credibility. 

Where Pakistan stands in the new scheme of things that is emerging in Asia will be determined by the skill and determination with which we handle what follows the inevitable American departure rather than what is happening now. There is no such thing as a great nation without great will power. There are no gains without pain.

The writer is a former ambassador. He can be reached at charles123it@hotmail.com