Gerry Foley Archive | ETOL Main Page
From Socialist Action, October 2008.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan in 2020.
“America and Pakistan both deny it; but it appears that on Sept. 15 they fought a short war. America started it.” That was the comment of the very influential and very frank British Economist in its Sept. 18 issue. The Economist is close to ruling circles in Britain, and its patrons are evidently worried about the conflict that is developing between the NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistani military operating on the frontier that the government of Pakistan is unable to control.
The article in question was referring to a confrontation between the Pakistani military and a U.S. strike force trying to attack Taliban fighters inside Pakistan on Sept. 15. The strike force was reportedly being transported in two helicopters that were forced to turn back when a Pakistani unit fired toward them.
On Sept. 3, U.S. helicopter gunships landed at the Pakistani village of Musa Nika in the border area, and U.S. soldiers opened fire on a compound there, killing 20 people. That attack had been preceded by increasing missile strikes within Pakistan from U.S. drones. It also became known that U.S. President Bush signed an order in July authorizing unilateral U.S. ground and air strikes within Pakistan.
The Musa Nika attack aroused popular outrage in Pakistan, which forced the Pakistani army to issue warnings to the U.S. The Washington Post reported Sept. 16:
“Last week, Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, condemned the attacks, saying Pakistan is prepared to defend its territory ‘at all costs.’ Kiyani’s statement followed comments by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that increased U.S. incursions in Pakistan are likely.”
In Pakistan itself, the major English-language newspaper, Dawn, which has consistently defended the government’s claims that it is pursuing the war on Islamist terrorism with all its will, questioned why it was the commander of the military who responded to the U.S. actions and not the government:
“Who in Pakistan is in charge of the war against terrorism? On Wednesday, ... Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani issued a statement condemning recent violations of Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty by US forces and missiles and vowed to defend Pakistan ‘at all costs’. Gen Kayani was categorical: ‘There is no question of any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border.’
“On Thursday, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters that Gen Kayani’s statement ‘reflected the government policy’. Is the country to infer then that the civilians are taking their cue from the military top brass? Why must the army chief enunciate government policy rather than the prime minister – or the president?”
After the Sept.15 confrontation, Dawn could have asked who is charge of the military, since there were contradictory statements from different spokespersons of the military about whether or not the incident happened. Despite the top-level denial, however, local witnesses confirmed that it happened – and that is why The Economist assumed that it did.
The Sept. 13 Dawn editorial also noted that when the new president of the country, Asif Zardari, was installed, the only foreign dignitary he invited was Afghan President Karzai and that during his press conference Zardari “refused to take the many opportunities offered ... to categorically condemn US attacks in Fata [Federally Administered Frontier Areas], particularly the raid by US Special Operations Forces in a village in South Waziristan on Sept. 3.”
The Pakistani establishment is clearly in a bind over the conflict between the NATO forces in Afghanistan and the Islamists in its frontier areas. Pakistan was established as an Islamic state. A succession of reactionary military rulers have used Islam as a prop of their rule.
The state’s covert operations services have traditionally used Islamic fanatics as instruments of their policy in Kashmir and Afghanistan. At the same time, the successive military regimes have been backed by the United States, and the Pakistani establishment has become dependent on U.S. money.
A very long feature article in The New York Times Magazine on Sept. 7 dealt extensively with this contradiction. It also clarified early contradictory reports about a U.S. strike on Pakistan frontier guards in June. This was actually a previous “war” between Pakistan and the U.S., one that Pakistan lost. The U.S. authorities had claimed that the killing of 11 Pakistani border guards was a “tragic mistake.”
The Times article reported that however tragic it was, it was no mistake:
“The mystery, at least part of it, was solved in July by four residents of Suran Dara, a Pakistani village a few hundred yards from the site of the fight. According to two of these villagers, whom I interviewed together with a local reporter, the Americans started calling in airstrikes on the Pakistanis after the latter started shooting at the Americans.
”’When the Americans started bombing the Taliban, the Frontier Corps started shooting at the Americans,’ we were told by one of Suran Dara’s villagers, who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being persecuted or killed by the Pakistani government or the Taliban. ‘They were trying to help the Taliban. And then the American planes bombed the Pakistani post.’”
The author of the article, Dexter Filkins, argued that the incident revealed the basic contradiction of the long U.S. alliance with the Pakistan military:
“For years, the survival of Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders has depended on a double game: assuring the United States that they were vigorously repressing Islamic militants – and in some cases actually doing so – while simultaneously tolerating and assisting the same militants.
“From the anti-Soviet fighters of the 1980s and the Taliban of the 1990s to the home-grown militants of today, Pakistan’s leaders have been both public enemies and private friends.
“When the game works, it reaps great rewards: billions in aid to boost the Pakistani economy and military and Islamist proxies to extend the government’s reach into Afghanistan and India. Pakistan’s double game has rested on two premises: that the country’s leaders could keep the militants under control and that they could keep the United States sufficiently placated to keep the money and weapons flowing. But what happens when the game spins out of control? What happens when the militants you have been encouraging grow too strong and set their sights on Pakistan itself? What happens when the bluff no longer works?”
The Sept. 18 Economist article noted:
“Since soon after America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, it has paid the Pakistani army to wage a counter-insurgency campaign in the tribal areas. To sustain 120,000 Pakistani troops in the field, at the latest count, including a 60,000-strong locally-raised frontier corps, America has given some $12 billion.”
But, the British journal concluded, the U.S. has not been getting “value for its money,” and the reason was not just a double game of the Pakistani military command:
“An opinion poll last year found only 48% of Pakistanis backed military action against the Taliban. The army may be just as divided. Several hundred demoralised soldiers surrendered last year to militants in South Waziristan and Swat, a mountainous region of NWFP north of the tribal areas; some said they refused to fight their brother Muslims. Many Pakistani leaders espouse similar views.”
This is despite the fact that some analysts have claimed that the feeble Pakistan economy is supported by American money and would collapse if the aid were withdrawn. In fact, many public opinion polls show that the U.S. regime is hugely unpopular in Pakistan and that the NATO forces have become hated in Afghanistan, at least in the Pushtun areas where they mainly operate and which are the historic base of the Taliban.
A large part of the Pushtun nation lives in Pakistan, in the frontier areas, approximately 3.5 million. There has been a long-term trend for the Pushtun to develop the consciousness of being one nation. This has been a persistent threat to Pakistan. It is now a threat to the NATO-backed regime in Afghanistan. After the latest U.S. attacks cross the border, Pushtun tribal leaders in Pakistan have threatened to mount a united war of the Pushtun nation against the NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Already the NATO commanders in Afghanistan have been expressing worries that they will not be able to contain the resurgent Taliban. Obviously, they will face a much more difficult situation if they have to confront a united Pushtun insurgency. And an open conflict with Pakistan would be a conflict of vastly greater scope. Pakistan is a country of 150 million people.
The United States is putting more and more pressure on Pakistan. That is indicated among other things by the fact that such an influential newspaper as The New York Times ran a major article documenting a two-faced policy on the part of the Pakistani establishment. And some U.S. politicians (including “the peace candidate,” Barack Obama) have been making jingoistic noises about unrestrained attacks on the Pakistani border areas.
Conversely, there are plenty of signs that the U.S. authorities are reluctant to take the chance of extending the Afghan war to Pakistan. However, after their adventure in Iraq, no one can be sure that they will not risk huge gambles, especially in a vain attempt to save their previous bets.
The accumulated heritage of corrupt Pakistani regimes backed by the United States has built up an explosive situation at the foundations of the country. The Pakistani establishment has very little credibility.
The government of Pervez Musharraf, which was basically a military dictatorship, was one of the most stable and longest lasting that the country had known. Before Musharraf was forced to step down, public opinion polls showed that 85 percent of the population opposed him.
According to the well-informed writer on Pakistan, Tariq Ali, in an interview on the public radio program Democracy Now on Sept. 16, Zardari is not starting with any better credibility than Musharraf – an approval rating of 14 percent. He was chosen president by an extremely undemocratic indirect election.
Tariq Ali described the situation of the Pakistani establishment as follows:
“This is the most callous, uncaring elite you have in Pakistan today; they don’t care about the people. Human life is cheap. A figure I quote in this book, a UN statistic, that a majority of children born in Pakistan today are being born stunted because of malnutrition. Now, this, for me, is a horrific figure.
“And no government under the sun in that country has ever cared for the needs of the people or done much for them. And that is the duel which goes on. And the surprise is that more poor people don’t turn to religious extremism. It would be comprehensible, but they don’t do it.”
Perhaps the majority don’t turn to the religious radicals, at least not in the urban areas, but many do, and that apparently includes a very large part of the population in the frontier areas. Obviously they do so out of well-deserved hatred for the United States and the Pakistani government – which is seen as a U.S. dependent.
In fact, in the last elections the religious parties that had ruled the frontier areas suffered a decline to the benefit of nationalists. But there is no indication that the hostility to the U.S. was any less; it was simply that the religious parties had no answers to the material problems of the people.
And that is an indication that as they become even more alienated from the U.S. imperialists and their Pakistani clients, the masses in Pakistan will look for deeper-going solutions to their dilemma.
Clearly, a majority of Pakistanis do not support the U.S. war on the Taliban. And an even larger majority would react to U.S. attacks on their country. Moreover, such provocations could be sufficient to ignite the social time bomb that is smoldering in Pakistan. If that happens, the U.S. will face a challenge incomparably greater than it has in Iraq and a war far greater than any that it could force the American people to accept.
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Last updated: 19 January 2020