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There's something about Pakistan. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s almost surreal. The only thing that does seem to alter is popular perception. Myths are made, unmade and then remade about Pakistan.
Since September 11, 2001, there’s been a lot of remaking going on. Most of it has to do with the unravelling of Afghanistan and changing Kashmir policy. The international community has fundamentally shifted its policy towards Pakistan. Most recently US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld was supportive of Pakistan’s role in the war against terror.
This is, curiously, an attempt at remaking the myth that Pakistan under a military dictator is an ally that needs to be defended. A fairytale that says dictatorships are better than civilian governments in Pakistan.
Most US commentators contest these assessments. They believe the US government ‘‘privately’’ tells Pakistan the opposite of what we hear in public. At least one of them, Selig S. Harrison of the Centre for International Policy, believes Washington must speak publicly about its position and this ‘‘lionising’’ of Musharraf can’t always be helpful.
While we wait for that to happen, there’s a group of people who have been working on the ground in Pakistan to come up with a report that takes a closer look at the reality there. It resembles Grimms’ tales, nevertheless. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group is chaired by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, the same man who held those long monologuist meetings with Slobodan Milosevic during the Kosovo air campaign. The report has multiple funding sources, government and private, and close scrutiny reveals that India was not among them.
The report, published this month, lends western cognisance to a symbiotic relationship between Pakistan’s military and security services and Islamic extremists in recent years as well as the desire of the country’s generals to maintain their institution’s central role in political life.
The famous Pakistani street of angry jehadi protestors has failed to rise. The report details how, in fact, Pakistan’s military government has carefully used the extremist phenomenon as a tool to justify its hold on power, improve its standing with the West, resist restoring democracy and as a tactical means to advance its goals in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
But most significantly, the report answers the one question that eludes South Asia experts: the role of the ISI. Harrison calls it the ‘‘most difficult question to evaluate’’. Others are reluctant to say how far Musharraf can control the ‘‘rogue elements’’ in the ISI. Even India, which is keen to blame everything from Kargil to Godhra and all else in between on Pakistani intelligence, sees it as a somewhat schizophrenic reality. Now it is part of the establishment, now it is not.
The ICG’s assessment is clearer: The events of September 11 appear to have done little to fundamentally shift the Pakistani military’s approach to Kashmir despite tactical adjustments... given the close scrutiny by both India and the US to activities across the LoC, this (curtailing cross-border raids) appears more expediency than goodwill and not real abandonment of proxy war. Research indicates that the ISI will continue to support insurgent groups in Kashmir while reducing cross-border raids.
According to the ICG, the ISI’s independence is clearly overstated. The ISI falls firmly within the military’s chain of command that traces back to the chief of the army staff: that’s Musharraf. This is how it works: Communications minister and former director general of ISI, Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi, says ISI officers are regular military personnel who are rotated for no more than three years and then returned to their unit.
Musharraf’s own role is incriminating
according to the ICG analysis. He removed Lt Gen Mehmood Ahmed as chief
of ISI not because of his support for the Taliban, but because Ahmed was
a threat to Musharraf himself. As for helping the Taliban, Musharraf was
DGMO at Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi in 1995-1996, the same
years the Taliban advanced rapidly from Kandahar to capture two-thirds
of Afghanistan. So, he clearly played a key role in Pakistan’s all-out
support to the Taliban, very little ISI assistance to the Taliban would
have happened without his consent. Ergo: the general is clearly in charge,
the buck must stop with him.
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