Author: B G Verghese
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: October 29, 2009
URL: http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?title=Taming+Pakistan+Army&artid=T9k8aIATL94=
Introduction: Someone is Washington appears
to have blown the whistle after years of political fraud and military double
cross in Pakistan that has brought the country to its Knees and strangled
democracy
Is Pakistan's rogue army in the process of
being tamed at last? Hopefully so. A few 'nationalist' commentators and angry
men in khaki have suddenly voiced anxiety and anger over the Kerry-Lugar Bill
adopted by the US Congress last month and now awaiting presidential signature
to become law. Someone in Washington at last appears to have blown the whistle
after years and even decades of political fraud and military double cross
in Pakistan that has brought the country to its knees and strangled democracy.
Dossiers seem to make for light reading in
Islamabad these days. But one such American dossier currently doing the rounds
has been wounding. It says that of $12 billion given to Pakistan in aid between
2002 and 2008, including $6.6 bn of military assistance, only $500 m reached
the military to fight terror. The rest was diverted to strengthen the military,
bolster terror against India and subsidise Musharraf's failing economy to
make the dictator look good. The Americans cite Pakistani generals, bureaucrats
and ministers as sources. More culpable are they as they willingly turned
away from the truth to prop up the 'frontline state' in all its ugly capers
for decades - something US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, termed as
the 'incoherence' of US AfPak policy. India bore huge collateral damage in
blood and treasure and was repeatedly advised 'restraint' by Washington.
Even as Pakistan stabbed India in the back
at Kargil with practised ease and the usual diversionary tales repeated since
1947, while A Q Khan cheerfully proliferated to all and sundry, not least,
China, Bill Clinton sold his biographer, Taylor Branch, a grim fairy tale
as reported after the volume was released in New York last month. He said
India and Pakistan were very casual about talking about nuking one another
during the Kargil war.
Now that its AfPak policy has begun to hurt
it, the Americans are wiser. The Kerry-Lugar Bill sets out the conditions
on which alone the US will give $7.5 bn economic assistance to Pakistan over
the next five years together with an undisclosed but substantial quantum of
military assistance to fight terror. The conditions are spelt in the Pakistan
Enduring Assistance and Enhanced Cooperation (PEACE) Act. This calls for annual
certification by the US Secretary of State that Pakistan is abiding by nuclear
non-proliferation norms and provides 'relevant information' and direct access
to nodal players and agencies. The secretary must also certify Pakistan's
remaining commitment to the war on terror and has ceased supporting terror
groups striking at US forces and neighbours (India).
More galling, annual certification will assess
whether any resources have been diverted to nuclear proliferation, the degree
of civil control over military and defence expenditure and the extent of any
military nexus with the civil administration. The clear purpose is to shield
governance from military dominance and to break the military-mullah stranglehold
over civil-democratic rule. While President Zardari and his government are
for the PEACE Act, the military and sundry ideologues are agitated. Unfortunately,
the ML(N) of Nawaz Sharif is reported to be lukewarm. Pakistan must shed military
dominance once and for all and shed the obscurantist tyranny of its rabidly
Islamist Wahabi mullahs and return to the humanistic Sufi Islam of the sub-continent.
Meanwhile, the second bombing of the Indian
Embassy in Kabul follows General McChrystal's warning that India's growing
popularity in Afghanistan on account of its beneficial reconstruction and
humanitarian aid might invite Pakistani 'countermeasures'. Close on its heels,
the Southern Taliban in Punjab struck at GHQ in Rawalpindi in an embarrassing
standoff.
Back home, the Maoist offensive has reached
new heights of barbarity and mindless violence epitomised in the bestial beheading
of a police official in Jharkhand. No theory of 'class annihilation' can explain
or extenuate this kind of savagery. Suggestions that the anti-Naxal operations
be militarised have been firmly rejected and the Union home minister has stated
that the Maoists will be firmly dealt with and rooted out but that the government
is ready to open a dialogue on grievances and development issues if they lay
down arms. This is the right course.
The government's approach, however, continues
to lean towards prioritising law and order in the belief that unless areas
and communities are secure, development cannot move forward. This is only
partly true. There is still an imperfect understanding of the underlying problems
at many levels, official, political, media and public. Poverty and deprivation
hurt, and widening disparities anger. But what rankles most is the denial
of dignity and social justice, both solemn constitutional promises.
The Fifth Schedule and PESA, which constitute
a social contract with tribal India, have been blatantly violated in letter
and spirit to this day and the elaborate machinery established for their implementation,
monitoring and evaluation callously disregarded. Governor's reports, as mandated,
are routine, low-grade documents written by lowly functionaries to satisfy
a constitutional requirement. There is little evidence of ground truthing,
analysis and application of mind. The reports are often delayed by years and
are never debated. The whole exercise has been reduced to a farce. Administrative
structures and personnel in the Fifth Schedule areas are often unsuited to
the tasks in hand and incapable of delivering development. These issues have
simply not been addressed. The failure has been comprehensive, continuing
and criminal. No one has been held accountable for this despite desperate
appeals by commissions, concerned individuals and groups.
The Centre cannot pass the buck to the states.
Both are equally responsible. Nor can or should each blame the other. They
have a shared responsibility and need to act in concert. NGOs should now come
forward to try and promote reconciliation, starting, if need be, in limited
peace zones, so designated by mutual agreement and subject to certain ground
rules, with no display or use of arms by the Naxals, and monitored by independent,
non-partisan peace committees composed of men and women of goodwill who enjoy
trust and respect on all sides. Schools and health centres would be natural
foci of such peace zones.
Why not the Centre take the initiative through
a national broadcast by the prime minister followed up by a more specific
invitation to dialogue by some chief ministers, Such broadcasts would obviously
need to be preceded by discussion and formulation of a strategy to develop
peace, justice and development with informed civil society inputs. This would
be a policy of democratic strength, not of weakness.
