Author: Arnaud de Borchgrave
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: November 7, 2003
URL: http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20031106-092339-7324r.htm
The predictable deluge of categorical
denials from Islamabad and less categorical versions from Riyadh flooded
the Internet on queue. This reporter wrote from Pakistan last week that
Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah and President Pervez
Musharraf had reached a secret understanding when they met on Oct. 20:
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal would provide the kingdom a nuclear "deterrent"
in case of need.
Saudi Arabia worries about (1) the
future of the House of Saud; (2) Iran's nuclear ambitions; and (3) Israel's
monopoly of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Pakistan has similar worries
about Israel's recent $1 billion arms deal with India, also a major nuclear
power and Pakistan's archrival.
Add to the volatile geopolitical
mix a sudden fear, shared by Gen. Musharraf and Prince Abdullah, that the
U.S. could go down to defeat in Iraq, as it did in Vietnam, Lebanon and
Somalia. The two leaders, which we did not know when we filed our first
report from Islamabad, decided they could not stand idly by and must respond
positively to Bush administration entreaties for troop contributions. For
this to happen, they would have to water down their preconditions of a
Security Council resolution and an invitation from an elected representative
Iraqi government. This is still too far in the future, and the need is
now.
Both Mr. Musharraf and Prince Abdullah
have concluded that a U.S. defeat - or anything that could be perceived
as a U.S. humiliation - would have catastrophic repercussions for their
regimes and for every other moderate government from Morocco to Malaysia
and Indonesia on either side of the Malacca Strait.
Under a scenario worked out by the
two heads of state in Islamabad on Oct. 20, the Saudis would be the first
to step up to the Iraqi plate with a token force, followed quickly by Pakistan
with a large force of approximately 15,000. But this would still require
an Iraqi governing council that stops squabbling over turf and begins to
think and act like a real government.
Mr. Musharraf's calculation is that
when the Saudis dispatch a token force to Iraq, he will then be in a position
to silence his own tough critics in Pakistan's two mainstream political
parties, as well as the coalition of six politico-religious leaders known
as the Muttahida-e-Majlis-e-Amal or MMA. Presumably none would dare criticize
Saudi Arabia since MMA's honchos are still receiving Saudi financial support
for both political parties and radical madrassas (that continue to disobey
Mr. Musharraf's orders for a modern syllabus). The clergy's recent fatwa
against any Pakistani soldier who sets foot on Iraqi soil with a weapon
would presumably become null and void.
Many things can still go awry. But
for now, Prince Abdullah has succeeded in making Mr. Musharraf accept President
Bush's Iraqi case as well as its own. The Saudis find it intolerable that
the only nuclear power in the Middle East (Iran is not an Arab country)
is Israel. They confide that as long as the strategic equation is skewered
in favor of Israel there will be no Palestinian state.
The Saudis were shocked in March
2002 at an Arab summit in Beirut when Prince Abdullah managed to get the
entire Arab League to approve normal diplomatic and economic relations
between Israel and 22 Arab countries in return for the pre-June 1967 war
frontiers - without so much as a beep out of Jerusalem or Washington.
Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia routinely
deny anything of importance their governments haven't released to the media.
For 11 consecutive years, the late Pakistani military dictator, Gen. Mohammed
Zia ul-Haq, dismissed stories about his secret nuclear weapons program
as either poppycock or balderdash. When this writer suggested to him in
1982 he would be better off going public instead of denying what every
Western intelligence knew to be true, he said, "You have my word of honor,
Arnaud, we are not developing nuclear weapons nor do we have any interest
in acquiring any."
During those 11 years, ISI (Inter-Services
Intelligence agency) agents had been dispatched to every country that had
built a nuclear plant "to spy or steal" for Pakistan's nuclear weapons
program. And after Gen. Zia was killed in a mysterious air crash, successive
Pakistani presidents and prime ministers continued Zia's tradition of the
big lie repeated often enough to demonstrate that artificial intelligence
is no match for stupidity.
In 2001, three months prior to September
11, 2001, Mr. Musharraf sent his foreign minister to Washington to deliver
Pakistan's word of honor that it was not assisting the Taliban. Two weeks
before that, this reporter traveled from Quetta, the capital of Pakistani
Baluchistan, and Kandahar, then the religious capital of Mullah Omar's
medieval theocracy, and saw scores of Pakistani supply trucks on the only
road into southwestern Afghanistan.
After September 11 and just before
the U.S. unleashed Operation Enduring Freedom on Oct. 7, Mr. Musharraf
dispatched ISI chief Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad to Kandahar to instruct Mullah
Omar to turn over Osama bin Laden to avoid war. Instead, the chief spook
of an all- powerful agency advised Mullah Omar to hang on to bin Laden.
Again, spirited denials and denunciations of a lying Western media. Two
days before the first U.S. bombs fell, Mr. Musharraf fired and retired
Gen. Ahmad.
President Musharraf has denied almost
everything of any importance that might lead Washington to question his
loyalty. The exchange of nuclear technology for North Korean missiles?
Never happened. ISI's links to al Qaeda? Bullfeathers. ISI-supervised training
camps for Kashmiri jihadis (holy warriors)? Horsefeathers. ISI's involvement
in the December 2001 terrorist attack against the Indian parliament in
New Delhi? Media garbage. ISI's knowledge of the executioners of the Wall
Street Journal's Daniel Pearl? Twaddle in all its unrationed splendor.
While Mr. Musharraf was meeting
with President Bush at Camp David on June 24, Gen. Aziz Khan, chief of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, a largely ceremonial post, denounced
the U.S. at a public gathering in Rawalakot, Kashmir: "America is the No.
1 enemy of the Muslim world and is conspiring against Muslim nations all
over the world." Pakistani papers were advised to spike the story. To inquiring
foreigners, the government said it was yet another anti-Pakistani lie.
Growing opposition to Mr. Musharraf
in the army? This is not denied because it hasn't been published yet. The
president's stated desire to continue as chief of army staff (COAS) - the
top military post - for at least one more year has led to scuffling in
the wheelhouse of the ship of state. Seven full generals are due to retire
before that time - without a crack at COAS. Aziz Khan, a fundamentalist,
is one of them. Denials to come.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at
large of The Washington Times and editor in chief of United Press International.
