Dan Qayyum, Editor PKKH
I remember meeting a young Pakistan Army captain early last year in Rawalpindi as he recovered from bullet wounds to his thigh. He was shot at during close combat while clearing a small town in South Waziristan. The man who opened fire on this soldier from close range may have represented the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, but the soldier had no doubts on who he held responsible.
‘We are very clear on who the real enemy is’, he told me. ‘Its the Americans in Afghanistan’.
The above assesment, blunt as it may be, echoes the sentiments of not just the man on the street but those in khaki too.
Pakistan has lost over 3000 soldiers, paramilitary forces and intelligence officials in combat and in targetted bombings since the occupation of Afghanistan began a decade ago. This is aside from over 30,000 civilian deaths resulting from terrorist acts in the last ten years, and a further 2,000 civilian deaths in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA resulting from the CIA’s drone programme.
Last friday two suicide bombers blew themselves up near a paramilitary academy in a town called Shabqadar, near Mohmand Agency in the tribal areas. Nearly 90 paramilitary recruits lost their lives in the attack that was claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as revenge for the US raid that reportedly killed Osama Bin Laden earlier this month in Abbotabad.
The US may have got rid of its old bogey in Bin Laden, but it is Pakistan and Pakistanis that will bear the brunt of the anger of Takfeeri terrorists such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
‘We know their supply lines come through Afghanistan. We know how we’ve been betrayed in the past by them (Americans) and still today’, said the Captain in reference to the US vacating its checkposts in Afghanistan’s Paktika province on the eve of Pakistan launching its military operation against the TTP in South Waziristan in October 2009. Paktika borders South Waziristan on one side, and the US vacating its posts provided an escape route for senior TTP leadership as Pakistani forces closed in from the other three sides.
Ofcourse this isn’t the only incident which confirms the belief within Pakistan’s armed forces that the time has come to stand up to the US. The killing of three Pakistani soldiers last year by a US gunship helicopter which resulted in Pakistan blocking NATO’s supply lines, the 6 week standoff over CIA contractor Raymond Davis’s arrest in Lahore this year, as well as the unilateral raid to kill Osama Bin Laden in which the US used stealth helicopters to illegally enter Pakistani territory while American F-18 jets stood by for possible military confrontation with the Pakistan Air Force, have forced Pakistan’s military planners to publicly call for formally ending the cooperation with the US in the ‘war on terror’.
Far from being a knee-jerk response, this appears to be a calculated shift in Pakistan’s military planning – one which sees the American presence in Afghanistan as the major cause for Pakistan’s deteriorating security situation as well as economic meltdown.
The US is increasingly seen within Pakistan as a bigger threat than Pakistan’s arch-rival India. Pakistan’s Air Chief said recently that the country had never felt the need to keep its radars on the western border in a heightened state of alert – as they are on the eastern border – until the May 1st raid by US special forces. Orders to engage have now been issued to PAF if there is a repeat.
The problem for Pakistan’s military isn’t just the US response to its tactical policy shift – but also the opposition from certain political figures and government officials. These officials are in power thanks to intense negotiations carried out by representatives of the American and British governments with ex President Parvez Musharraf – allowing some of the most corrupt and incompetent figures in Pakistan’s political history to come to power.
The ‘aid’ myth
Then there’s the myth of ‘billions of dollars of aid’, without which we’re told Pakistan cannot survive. The figure most commonly thrown around is around the 20 billion mark – roughly one third of the economic losses Pakistan has taken in the last decade thanks to its partnership with US in occupying Afghanistan.
To put this figure into perspective, Pakistan has suffered approximately $60 billion in economic, human losses, structural damages to roads and bridges, deployed more than 147,800 troops conducting combat operations in the tribal areas along the Afghan border. The armed forces have lost more than 3,200 soldiers, with another 6,400 injured. They sustain an average of 10 casualties each day. Added to this are the approximately 30,000 Pakistani civilians killed by suicide bombers and terrorism.
A big chunk of that ‘20 billion’ is the $7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar bill, which is meant to provide $1.5 billion a year for 5 years. It is this particular legislation which is being used to bash Pakistan with, by the US media commentators and political figures.
A major part of this $7.5 billion figure was to be spent on expanding US presence in Pakistan, increasing the number of staffers to over a thousand, paying their salaries and housing them, construction of embassies and consulates, and paying security contractors such as Raymond Davis who was found not only guilty of killing two Pakistani citizens but in contact with a number of banned terrorist organisations that the CIA is suspected of supporting in Pakistan. Even then, the total net spend under this legislation almost two years after it was announced, is barely over $200m – a cheap price to pay for the political mileage Americans have been able to extract from the ‘announcement’ of this package two years ago – with US political figures and media mouthing off about the ‘aid’ demanding that the Obama administration cuts all aid to Pakistan since Osama Bin Laden was allegedly being protected by the Pakistani state.
Winds of change are blowing in Rawalpindi.
On Friday, the head of Pakistan’s premier Intelligence Agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Ahmed Shuja Pasha addressed the parliament. The ISI which has already halted intelligence sharing with the CIA, quite rightly took the lion’s share of the blame for the undetected US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Abbotabad. While the briefing by Pasha was designed to apologize for the intelligence lapse that led to the US raid, it carried a strong message both for the political elite of this country as well as for the Americans.
“We know the names and faces of those in our midst who are on the payroll of the CIA. We have all the details and they can consider themselves warned”, Pasha is reported to have told parliamentarians during the marathon session.
“The fear that we cannot live without America has taken away our self respect. Are we to live in humiliation out of the US fear forever?”, he thundered amid applause and thumping of desks.
Responding to statements emanating from New Delhi that India can also carry out strikes inside Pakistan, Gen Pasha said any attack from the east would invite a befitting response.
He said a contingency plan was in place and targets inside India had already been identified. “We have also carried out rehearsal for it,” he told the joint session.
“We are at a point in our history,” he said, according to two parliamentarians, “where we have to decide whether to stand up to America now or have [following] generations come to deride us.”
Pakistan’s citizens and its armed forces seem to be on the same page with regards to the future direction Pakistan should take with its relations with US. The ball is now firmly in the court of Pakistan’s lawmakers and corrupt political elite.
http://www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com/2011/05/15/why-pakistan-needs-to-break-free-of-the-us-alliance/
