March’s B-side
March is a historic month and the ides of March in particular is legendary. For Pakistan this March has lived up to its billing, as March 2009 has been a defining month with the Chief Justice being restored along with his brother judges. In the same March, President Obama announced his new strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, drones included free of course!
March’s B-side has a key focus on Pakistan-US-Afghanistan policy with alternative futures discussed. March’s B-side will be a prelude to April’s B-side which will focus entirely on US policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan as by then the NATO Summit will have decided on concrete steps and will be worthy of comprehensive debate and denigration more likely from commentators across the political divide.
March’s B-side contents are:
- A Race Against Time in Afghanistan by JOHN KERRY
- The Best Ally Against Extremism by PAULA NEWBERG
- Pakistan Hone Se Bachao by VARUN GANDHI
The first article is written by the present Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former Presidential candidate John Kerry. John Kerry is a respected voice in foreign policy circles and his article will shock readers as it has that unique quality missing till now amongst key American policy makers- words of wisdom.
A Race Against Time in Afghanistan by John F. Kerry
No foreign power has remained welcome in Afghanistan for a sustained period, and the British and the Soviets paid a bitter price for trying. Our goal has never been to dominate Afghanistan but, rather, to eliminate al-Qaeda’s haven and to empower Afghans to govern their country in line with their best interests and our national security.
We shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that we are in anything but a race against time in a region suspicious of foreign footprints. The United States is not in Afghanistan to make it our 51st state — but to make sure it does not become an al-Qaeda narco-state and terrorist beachhead capable of destabilizing neighboring Pakistan.
We must renew our original mission — and President Obama has rightly pledged to recommit to Afghanistan as the center of our global counterinsurgency campaign, beginning with the deployment of as many as 30,000 additional troops. In 2006, I argued that more troops were needed. I still believe that. But troops alone will not bring victory. Our military commitment must be matched with realistic goals, beginning with a comprehensive new bottom-up strategy acknowledging Afghanistan’s history of decentralized governance and recognizing the capabilities of our NATO and Afghan allies.
Last year was the deadliest since we arrived in Afghanistan in 2001. A senior U.S. commander warned recently that “it’s going to get worse before it gets better.” We will succeed only by maintaining bipartisan support and public backing at home and winning back the Afghan people through a sustained commitment of additional civilian personnel, reconstruction funds and diplomatic engagement. Equally important, we need to execute this commitment without raising the stakes and turning Afghanistan once again into a magnet for the world’s jihadists.
Our NATO allies have to shoulder a bigger burden, and we should continue to seek more combat troops with fewer restrictions. Jawboning reluctant allies has its limits; we will need to persuade countries unwilling to take on expanded combat roles to contribute more toward other aspects of the mission, including development and police training.
Afghanistan is not Iraq, and we should not expect the same results from a troop increase as occurred in Iraq. There, a broad Sunni tribal awakening was crucial. In Afghanistan, decades of war have weakened tribal structures, and the Taliban — unlike the brutal foreigners who comprise al-Qaeda in Iraq — have deep roots in Pashtun society. More troops, however, can create the conditions for enhanced reconstruction efforts and increase our leverage for the political solution sought by Gen. David Petraeus. Over time, increasing the number of reliable Afghan forces will be vital to maintaining security.
Corruption remains a powerful obstacle to progress. President Hamid Karzai promises to get tough on this chronic problem. But we need to insist on results — where more is given in blood and money, more is expected in return. Afghanistan lacks judges, lawyers and an effective and honest police force. An illegitimate and isolated central government in Kabul would doom our efforts and drive the people into the clutches of the Taliban. We need to expand our reach beyond Kabul, empowering women and working more closely with trusted provincial leaders to ensure that funds reach the people.
Real progress must start at the local level. One promising model is the National Solidarity Program, which employs Afghans in reconstruction projects requested by village elders. A similar approach in Wardak province helps the district government hire tribal members as community guards.
One of our biggest challenges is eradicating narcotics cultivation, a major source of financing for the Taliban. We need to provide greater subsidies and technical assistance for farmers who abandon poppies, as we have done in Nangahar province. But we must also crack down on drug lords and reduce production, employing sustained force when necessary — particularly in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province.
Our strategy must also reflect the interconnectedness of the region. This requires redoubled efforts to strengthen Pakistan’s civilian government and support its efforts against militants in the lawless border areas and the factions that would sabotage its relations with India.
We went to Afghanistan to deny sanctuary to al-Qaeda and to replace the Taliban rulers who harbored it with a legitimate government strong enough to avoid destabilizing a vital and volatile region. Our goal hasn’t changed. Achieving it requires a more robust commitment of coalition troops and reconstruction aid. It is not too late to turn the tide, but only a comprehensive strategy, sufficient resources and bipartisan resolve will lead to success in Afghanistan.
The writer, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Published in The Washington Post
WASIM VIEW- John Kerry’s article is full of no-brainers. John Kerry is right in reminding us all that America has been the graveyard of foreign occupiers like the British, Soviet and American too I believe should they remain any longer.
Kerry’s choice of words are indicative when he warns that the US should not ‘delude ourselves into thinking that we are in anything but a race against time in a region of suspicious of foreign footprints’. The race analogy is quite apt as the Afghan people including the Taliban are very much long distance runners in this duel up against an American and NATO presence only equipped for a sprint at best.
John Kerry is no dove and not a new kid on the block either. Kerry is only too right in his words of warning that the war in Afghanistan runs the risk of destabilising Pakistan. In that context the new Obama strategy of dollars for drones is never going to be the answer, and is akin to fiddling while Pakistan burns.
The second article by Paula Newberg proves that US policymakers are not all neo-cons and that good sense exists and can even prevail in the States.
The Best Ally Against Extremism by Paula R Newberg
Last week, Pakistan turned its political clock back to the year 2007. Its lawyers’ movement forced President Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate judges dismissed by his predecessor, General Pervez Musharraf. After many broken promises and nasty personal politics, Pakistanis now confront the same governance problems that dogged them in the waning days of Musharraf’s rule.
This may not seem like progress. But the fact that the courts can now hold government to account is an enormous step for a state engulfed by terror and fear. Just as the United States is ready to unveil a new strategy for the region, Pakistan may finally begin to marshal a democratic response toward the Taliban and Al Qaeda that neither Islamabad nor Kabul could muster until now.
Why should a domestic dispute matter to the US-led war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda? Politics and a deep need for justice. The Supreme Court can certainly make life uncomfortable for Zardari, whose tenure is coloured by allegations of his corruption and the shadow of Musharraf’s policies. Before the dismissals, the Supreme Court was prepared to take up contentious cases concerning the security and intelligence services, the disappearance of hundreds of Pakistanis swept up in anti-terrorism campaigns and US rendition practices, Musharraf’s abuse of presidential powers to support US policies and state corruption.
Were the court to rule now, these cases could alter the balance of power within Pakistan and the direction of its foreign policy. Each also strikes at the heart of Pakistan’s misled governance. The courts will undoubtedly keep a close eye on diminishing parliamentary prerogatives and rising presidential powers as Pakistan wades into the new depths of the American-led war. This time around, the United States may have to deal with Pakistan, and if it were smart, Afghanistan, on terms set, at least in part, in the region itself.
The most pressing issue is negotiating with insurgents. The Taliban’s strength lies in border regions, but this is not a peripheral problem. Zardari’s decision to reach an agreement with them in the Swat valley – exchanging peace for the imposition of Islamic law – has infuriated Pakistanis who believe it trades constitutional principle for tactical expediency, and land for peace, bringing militancy close to the heartland without regard to public opinion.
The idea that there is a “moderate” Taliban has circulated since the movement’s rise in the 1990s, when the government of Pakistan formally recognised and international organisations engaged with its members in order to secure humanitarian supplies for Afghanistan. Who these moderates are, and how strong they might be, remains hazy.
Then, as now, even limited talks with the Taliban raised fears that talking conferred legitimacy. And then, as now, negotiation was a quick fix without a clear sense of its consequences for the future of either Afghanistan or Pakistan. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto did little to stop the Taliban, her successor Nawaz Sharif gave them formal sanction, Musharraf and Zardari treated them as bargaining partners – and today the Taliban’s rise has raised anew the question of Sharif’s claim to a close relationship with those the US has spent seven years trying to destroy.
None of these efforts diminished the Taliban’s terror campaign, and attempts to cope with this challenge by acceding to its demands raise serious questions about the country’s future. Some Pakistani terror victims now ask if negotiation with insurgents might turn out to have been the right course. Others worry that such bargains might end Pakistan as they know it. All worry about the government’s alliance with the US, including its tacit permission for pilot-less drone attacks against insurgents inside Pakistan that undercuts its sovereignty and political legitimacy.
These are not questions about military decisions, but about political judgment, and affect the kind of political society that Pakistan can become. While the US debates Zardari’s utility, it’s worth remembering that neither Pakistan’s nor Afghanistan’s president has, or should have, sole authority to decide these questions. In both countries, much-ignored parliaments and courts have constitutional roles that could ease the future of future decisions for the region and foreign powers alike.
Like so many questions about legitimacy in a purportedly democratic state, these turn out to be about popular franchise. One year ago, Pakistanis voted against the parties and politicians who wanted to fight terrorism with authoritarian tools – an implied vote against both the Taliban and military decision-making. Now that Zardari has backed down and restored the authority of the judiciary, many Pakistanis are likely to hope that their government will think much harder about the consequences of handing territory and political power to anti-state insurgents.
The same can be said for Afghanistan, where an election is slated for later this year. Its security environment differs from Pakistan’s even if its enemies appear similar. The country’s history with its own Taliban and the profound weakness of the Afghan state may lead Kabul and Islamabad to take different decisions. The Karzai government allowed talks with the Taliban for several years when the US didn’t want them and continues them now, perhaps with US sanction. Few in Afghanistan have complained.
The primary lesson remains a critical one: Afghans need confidence in their own government, in its decisions about war and, ultimately, peace. Their votes need to be respected within the country and outside – not only when they suit the US and its allies.
Politicians don’t always take the right military decisions; neither do military leaders. The problems that trouble Afghanistan and Pakistan today began politically and remain political. Those politics are not solely national. Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to host transnational groups like Al Qaeda and cross-border movements like the Taliban.
But the region’s travails are both a cause and a consequence of long-standing problems of governance. Terror is not an overlay, but a part of the governance environments of both states, and will not disappear until each state can govern itself fully, representatively and justly. This is not about buying allegiance or manufacturing aid projects to stem extremism – it is about the legitimacy of political leaders and institutions.
The US has difficulty reconciling democracy with foreign policy in this region. It pushed Pakistan to send troops into the tribal areas to fight Al Qaeda, gained permission to fight directly on Pakistani soil and merged anti-insurgency activities across the Durand Line – all without the support of the Pakistani electorate.
In Afghanistan, the US and NATO control a war on the territory of an otherwise sovereign state whose elected leader has virtually no say in its conduct and, when he finally complained publicly, was derided by Washington.
This is one way the Obama administration’s policies can stem the tide of failure in the region: by ensuring that its own policies are supported in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not just by officers, presidents and technical experts, but by the electorates themselves. Only then can both countries can take hard decisions and hold them as their own. It’s called democracy, and deserves a chance. -yaleglobal
Paula R Newberg is the Marshall B Coyne Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University
Published in the Daily Times
WASIM VIEW- Paula Newberg’s article is a refreshing read as its full of that elusive beast missing in Pakistan- good news. The article is the equivalent of an oasis of hope against a sea of pessimism in terms of recent news stories in Pakistan and is the first that has championed the lawyers movement and their struggle namely ‘that the courts can now hold government to account is an enormous step for a state engulfed by terror and fear.
Later in the article, Newberg highlights the folly of present US and NATO policy in the region. Indeed who can doubt that US Afghanistan policy was and still is dreamed up and executed by leaders living in the comfort of their drawing rooms and power corridors be it in Washington, London, Kabul, Islamabad and is bereft of public backing in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The masses or electorate in Pakistan and Afghanistan must own the war conducted in their name via Parliament and other institutions is Newberg’s central point. The one-man show of Musharraf yesterday, Zardari today and whoever tomorrow is doomed to fail.
As I said before dollars for drones is not the answer Mr Obama and this is not the change Pakistan can believe in. Indeed President Obama needs to think again his Afghanistan policy and work to formulate a respectable and regionally negotiated US withdrawal that secures US interests in the region. Ignoring such advice promises only defeat and ignomy- Vietnam style.
I finish with a video clip showing up Varun Gandhi whose recent hate speech included a warning to his Hindu extremist supporters about Indian Muslims ’Pakistan hone se bachao’. I have chose to include the video, not to give oxygen to sickos like Varun Gandhi but as a reminder this March on why the dream of Pakistan was dreamt in 1940, namely to rid the Muslims of India from Hindu hegemony. Thank you Varun Gandhi for proving Pakistan was right.
Pakistan Hone Se Bachao by Varun Gandhi
Varun Gandhi’s communal remarks against Muslims and Sikhs have landed him in jail and created a furore in not so shining India and the wider region. The following video from an Indian media outlet shows the up till now forgotten fakir both naked and bare:
In addition to the video clip, Indian Express has published excerpts from the speeche with translation and they are shown below:
- Yeh panja nahi hai, yeh kamal ka haath hai. Yeh kat** ke galey ko kaat dega chunaav ke baad. Jai Shri Ram! Ram ji ki jai! Varun Gandhi kaat daalega! Kaat denge us haath ko, kaat denge, kaat daalega! This is not the (Congress symbol) ‘hand’, this is the hand of the ‘lotus’. It will cut the throat of the (derogatory reference to a Muslim) after the elections… Varun Gandhi will cut… Cut that hand, cut it, cut it.
- Apne jao, apne gaon mein jao aur halla karo ki saara Hindu ek tarfa ho jao, chhetra ko Pakistan hone se bachao, aur saara Hindu ek tarfa ho jao! Go to your villages and give the call that all Hindus must unite to save this area from becoming Pakistan..
- Kya yeh sach nahin hai… ki usko bola gaya ki mataji aapka naam kya hai… agar usne bola ki Bimla Devi, to usko kahaa ki dekhenge, sochenge… pehle paanch hazaar rupaye do… aur agar uska naam hai Saira Bano ya jo bhi Begum Hukum Begum… hum to jaante nahin hain… badey daraawne naam hotey hain inke… Karimullah… Mazharullah…. agar raat ko kabhi dikh jaayen… to darr rahen hain…Is it not true… that if (a woman) is asked her name and she says Bimla Devi, she is told we’ll see, we’ll think (about giving Government aid), give us Rs 5,000 first… But if her name is Saira Bano or whatever begum Hukum Begum… I don’t even know… These people have such scary-sounding names… Karimullah, Mazharullah… If you ever encountered them at night, you’d be scared…
- Meri ek behan hai… to ek pamphlet chhapa tha jisme saare pratiyashiyon ka picture likha hua hai… toh meri behan… us bitiya ne kaha… Bhaiya mujhe nahi pata tha ki aapke chhetra mein Osama bin Laden chunaav lad rahein hain… Maine kaha beta Osama bin Laden ko to America pakad nahi liya lekin Varun Gandhi ke to pakad mein bahut aane waale hain chunaav ke baad! I have a sister… there was a pamphlet with pictures of all the candidates… so this child told me, ‘I didn’t know that Osama bin Laden is contesting from your area.’ I told her, ‘America couldn’t get Oma, but Varun Gandhi is going to get a lot of people after the elections.’
WASIM VIEW- As I said at the start, I thank Varun Gandhi for proving Pakistan was right in demanding partition and freedom from Hindu hegemony. I feel I need not say anymore as this is a case where the less said is the more said.
