EDITORIAL: Is Pakistan a threat to Afghanistan?

A very nice convincing article by dailytimes never seen it in the mood. May be it reflects the true feelings of pakistani authorities.

A House of Commons report published in the United Kingdom says that “the UK faced more threat from inside Pakistan than from Afghanistan’s Helmand province”. The Labour-chaired Commons foreign affairs select committee report also raises the alarming spectre of Al Qaeda, “which has shifted its focus into Pakistan”. The committee that issued the report was told by an expert that “a direct attack on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons infrastructure could not be ruled out”.

Clearly, there is pressure behind the comment “the threat in the form of Al Qaeda and international terrorism can be said more properly to emanate from Pakistan” that seeks to downplay the importance of Helmand where British troops face the Taliban attackers. But the committee was frank in outlining why the British force had taken such a drubbing in the southern province: the troops were thin on the ground and that the strategist could not estimate the full measure of resistance that would be faced in Helmand.

More reasons were given by the committee for lack of success: the government was distracted by Iraq during its planning of the Helmand operation, “made wrong assumptions about Afghan expectations and gave unclear direction to the armed forces”. Reliance on the Afghan police was undermined by corruption among the Afghan personnel and poor support from the local population because of “cultural insensitivity” among the British soldiers plus the perennial problem of collateral damage that the local people simply could not understand.

After all this, to say that threat is now from inside Pakistan is an allegation that few will take seriously. British soldiers never wanted to fight the war which the UK only took on because of its status of a close ally of the US. It would have preferred to be with the other NATO forces engaged in areas of low or no conflict. The Helmand “theatre” was ill-planned, too few troops were deployed to reduce the popular backlash back home where no one wanted to fight Al Qaeda even though the 7/7 bombings had been carried out in 2005 in the UK by Al Qaeda. The committee also says that some British soldiers are “too fat to fight”.

Pakistan says Al Qaeda leaders are not in Pakistan and those in the UK who think they are should give proof or information about their whereabouts so that Pakistan can go for them. Al Qaeda has owned up to directly attacking Islamabad when it bombed the Danish embassy and is obviously an enemy of Pakistan. That is why Pakistan says it faces a threat from inside Afghanistan where terrorists are being trained in special camps for infiltration into Balochistan. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mr Rehman Malik stated that President Karzai had promised action against the camps, but now Kabul has officially denied there are such camps inside Afghanistan.

Pakistan went through a bad patch when the nation was divided over the Taliban and thought Al Qaeda did not exist. Today, after the gelling of a national consensus, the Pakistan army is achieving more successes against the terrorists than the NATO forces have achieved in Afghanistan since 2001. But Pakistan has its old demons to contend with too — its demons of state-backed jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir, and the menace of non-state actors that are now affiliated with Al Qaeda. It is also reaching out to India to restart a dialogue that could lift the pressure it feels on the eastern border to mobilise more fully against the Taliban and any Al Qaeda elements.

The fact is that the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda is going far better in Pakistan than in Afghanistan where there is an international force equipped with sophisticated weapons that only the rich states can afford. Pakistan is doing a better job without the advantage that the NATO forces have with American drones. At this stage, the UK parliament should realise that its best bet is strengthening Pakistan in its war against the terrorists. Pakistan’s sustaining power will come from economic assistance and regional diplomacy that makes possible a realistic dialogue between Pakistan and India that moves the two old rivals beyond the Mumbai attacks, to normalisation and economic interdependence that the Indian prime minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, also clearly wants. *