Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The West and particularly the US is, with good intentions, doing things that will only make matters worse in the long run in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The current policy is one of containment, whatever else it is dressed up to be. Pakistan is seen as part of the problem to be contained. It is instead part of the solution and without its full participation, there can be no solution.

Pakistan is at the epicentre of the conflict which is essentially a war of vengeance for 9/11. The secondary theme is to prevent terror attacks in the West. Military operations, especially drone strikes, have contributed to reducing the incidence of such attacks but not the risk that they will be attempted. The motivation for the various branches of militias and terrorist groups is the desire to force the West, in particular America, from having a military agenda in both the Middle East and in the combination of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Essentially this means that the West is in the trap facing generals throughout history; the campaign to end the conflict winds up as its cause.

No country has suffered more in this fight than Pakistan itself. Its tribal roots have from inception prevented this nation from establishing the same quality of stable democracy as its neighbour and rival India. Because of this, it has a highly advanced military, which is something of a state within a state and has many times taken power when the democracy has faltered through the temptations of corruption. The army is trusted by the people and seen as its final line of protection from tyranny. Within both the army and the highly effective intelligence service the ISI, there is not one consensus, but several strands of opinion, as to who, in the terrorist battle, is good or bad and how best to deal with them.

All of this is laid bare by the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Evidently the government did not know he was there, though, clearly, some people did. The Americans did not trust the Pakistani authorities sufficiently to tell them what was afoot, yet the military allowed an extraordinary incursion into the country whose borders it is supposed to protect, allowing the Americans to finally avenge their greatest national trauma since Pearl Harbour, 9/11. Pakistan’s government has been damned by the Americans for giving Bin Laden sanctuary, whether on purpose or by mistake does not matter; it is damned by its own people for allowing the Americans in to kill their most wanted man. The Taliban have mobilised revenge attacks on Pakistani security forces which has already cost scores of lives, with more attacks threatened. This is a mess.

What is now needed is to show Pakistan some respect as a sovereign country and to recognise that it and it alone, holds the key to open the door for a lasting accommodation between all the warring factions within its own territory and that of its neighbour, Afghanistan. A condition of that must be the departure of the US and NATO from the region. The last ten or so years have gained no real progress and caused a great deal of mayhem. Time to face the facts. Purged of its ache for revenge by the death of Bin Laden, this may be the moment for the US to open its eyes and see.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 14th, 2011 at 10:30 am and is filed under Malcolm Blair Robinson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.