The Pathankot attack proves that it is utterly naïve to attempt a détente with Pakistan, a divided state, where the radicalised Army rules the roost
Though a cliché, the fact is that no real peace can be negotiated with Pakistan without the tacit nod of its Army. America itself acknowledges the Army's overwhelming role in Pakistan's foreign policy; it factors this in its own plans and strategies; it hosted Army chief General Raheel Sharif soon after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif completed his US visit. The Pakistani military is the largest owner of agricultural land, and has massive investments in manufacturing, banks, trade, transport, real estate and sundry other businesses. There is an old Pakistani banter that while most countries have an Army, the Pakistan Army owns a country!
In the 1980s, America supported General Zia-ul Haq, an Islamic fundamentalist, whose intelligence service sponsored the mujahideen, who eventually toppled the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. Inevitably, backing Frankenstein landed ‘Frankenstein's monster' in their lap. Is it just their innate naïveté that Americans allow themselves to be fleeced of their dollars and weapons by PakistanIJ Didn’t they see the double game that General Pervez Musharraf was playingIJ The latter railed against extremism and terrorism but his policies reflected the Army's institutional view, that Islamic fundamentalists were patriotic allies and strategic assets who could help keep India at bay and liberal democrats in check.
Pakistan fails to understand that it is impossible to promote jihad in India and Taliban in Afghanistan without inadvertently promoting perilous schism and sectarianism in Pakistan itself. Former American Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter aptly said, “If you grow vipers in your backyard, you're going to get bitten”. Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, explains Pakistan's double game as such: Taking American money to kill some militants, while nurturing others who serve its strategic ends in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency created a broad ‘Talibanised belt’ in the Federally Autonomous Tribal Areas that kept the pressure on Afghanistan to bend to Pakistan wishes, kept US forces under threat, and created a buffer zone between Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns.
After the Peshawar school carnage, civil society as well as the establishment in Pakistan showed signs of realising the futility of their passive acquiescence of terrorists, with facile labels ‘good’ or ‘bad’ terrorist. The Army was seen resolving that it will tackle the menace. Military courts were soon put in place, which have carried out a summary execution of a number of proclaimed offenders. However, the ban on terror outfits was greeted with justifiable cynicism because Pakistan is known to let the proscribed bodies soon resurface under altered identities. For example, Jaish-e-Muhammad operates as Khuddam-e-Islam or Al Rahmat Trust.
Citing several incidents of “a systematic and pervasive system of ISI collusion”, eminent journalist Ahmed Rashid explains in Descent into Chaos, how Pakistan's ISI has run “Pakistan's covert wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir.” Farzana Shaikh, in Making Sense of Pakistan, elucidates how many Pakistani officials are obsessed with Afghanistan and viewed the neighbouring country as its fifth Province to provide Pakistan with “strategic depth” in any future conflict with enemy India.
Explaining Pakistan's jihad culture, Jessica Stern at Harvard University shows, no matter what the militant groups call themselves, the epicentre of their activities is Pakistan, and the fountainhead of their inspiration a dreadful nexus between the ISI, Al Qaida and drug and narcotics traffickers. The business of jihad, described by the scholar Eqbal Ahmad as “Jihad International, Inc” attracts foreign investors, mostly wealthy Arabs in the Persian Gulf and from amongst the Pakistani diaspora. Islamic religious schools, funded by organisations like Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, constitute veritable nurseries, the jihad factories, creating in Stephen Philip Cohen's words, “a class of religious lumpen proletariat”. These madarssas are the supply line for jihad — mired in the malevolence of a medieval milieu.
Summing up today's fragile Pakistan as a “toxic jelly state”, MJ Akbar exhorts its Army to extricate itself from its paranoia. Pakistan's obsession with India has harmed it — given too much power to its military, shaping its dealings in Afghanistan, and leading it to foster Islamist terrorism.