Militant Attack On Pak Naval Base

Pakistani security forces have reclaimed the Mehran naval base in Karachi after an 18- hour battle with militants who had earlier infiltrated it. The attack on the base by the Pakistani Taliban, which has claimed responsibility for the assault, left ten security men dead and at least twenty injured. This latest predicament in which Pakistan finds itself comes only days after some naval buses came under fire from the militants. In October 2009 , the headquarters of the Pakistan army in Rawalpindi came under a similar assault, leaving open the question of how much of a breach of security has occurred in the country's armed forces. The Mehran incident only reinforces the feeling that Pakistan is today in a most vulnerable state from the very militants its notorious inter-services intelligence has often been accused of patronising. There is little question that Pakistan's people are trapped in conditions their government is unable to handle. Certain regions of the country, such as Waziristan, have clearly slipped out of government control and into the hands of the militants. The mountainous borders between Afghanistan and the Pakistani provinces of Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (former North-West Frontier Province) have been easy routes for militant elements to move around freely. Add to that the recent sighting and killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad only yards away from Pakistan's elite military academy. Compounding matters further for Pakistan is the regularity with which American drone aircraft have been pounding militant positions. President Obama has held out the promise of more such attacks should they become necessary. The attack on the naval base is a patent reaction to the Osama killing. What is worrying, though, is the absolute inability of the Pakistani authorities to prevent the militants from operating so freely as to target the country's military establishments. It will be easy to suggest that the Islamabad government take adequate measures to halt the drift to further chaos. The reality, however, is that for now the militants clearly have an upper hand. And Pakistan's military, long the dominant voice in the country, salvaging its image. The picture is disquieting for Pakistan and the region. Pakistanis deserve a better deal.

Pakistan And It's Heroic Felon

Thieves sometimes follow in the traditions set by their politicians. When Abdul Qadeer Khan peddles the idea that had Pakistan been privy to nuclear arms in 1971 there would be no Bangladesh, he only reminds us of the flaws his country has systematically suffered from, to its eventual shame and regret. You think back on the killing and rape and pillage the Pakistan army indulged in so cheerfully in occupied Bangladesh forty years ago. And then you come to the present, to pity that same army which must now contend with the ( till recent) presence of a global outlaw residing within yards of its principal training academy for officers, which must watch horrified as armed men invade its headquarters in Rawalpindi and set chaos loose among its brave jawans. There is something of comeuppance there. So we are not surprised at A.Q. Khan's fulminations, for he is not the first Pakistani to display a propensity for the barbaric to be brought into a handling of civilised people elsewhere. Back in the 1960 s, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, always prey to delusions of grandeur, saw nothing wrong in threatening Bengalis with the language of weapons should the latter insist on carrying their autonomy movement forward. In case you have missed it, the fact remains that until its not too glorious defeat in the 1971 war, Pakistan consistently pursued policies distinctly racist in tone when it came to dealing with Bengalis. In the 1950 s, Iskandar Mirza made himself a silly spectacle when he spoke of shooting the very respectable Moulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani like a dog. Bhashani was to die a venerated figure in politics. It was Mirza who did not find a grave in his beloved Pakistan. Leading Pakistanis have not quite been known for their sophistication of language. As foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told the world that Pakistanis would eat grass but would have the atomic bomb. Well, Pakistanis did not eat grass. It was just that A.Q. Khan stole nuclear technology from the West and scampered back home. You now raise the question: is nuclear power so crucial as to have a nation eat grass to come by it? Bhutto's education, now that you think of it, had been misplaced. At the United Nations Security Council in 1965 , he described the Indian delegation led by the eminently honourable Sardar Swaran Singh as dogs. He got away with it, just as he was to get away with his puerile behaviour before the same forum in December 1971. Lyndon Johnson, Alexei Kosygin and Harold Wilson despised him. In early 1971 , he decreed that any West Pakistani lawmaker travelling to Dhaka would have his legs broken. In 1974 , he did have some legs broken -- those of his party colleague and minister J.A. Rahim and Rahim's son. Large sections of Pakistanis have not quite got over their time- honoured attitude to Bengalis. Any demand for political rights in East Pakistan was always, for them, an assault on Pakistan's integrity. Pakistan's break-up in 1971 ( and you can check it up in the history Pakistani schools teach their children) was the result of a conspiracy by treacherous Bengalis and India's Hindus. General Yahya Khan, having had the political negotiations in Dhaka aborted through stealthily making his way out to Rawalpindi on March 25 , 1971 , felt not a bit of embarrassment terming Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, leader of the party winning the elections three months earlier, as a traitor to the cause of Pakistan. Subsequently, he would refer to Indira Gandhi as "that woman." In the mid-1960 s, Ayub Khan would demonstrate his contempt for the short-statured Lal Bahadur Shastri, until Shastri taught him a lesson in September 1965. Language, then, has generally been a casualty at the hands of the mighty in Pakistan. Bangladesh's freedom fighters were "miscreants" (and these "miscreants" eventually ran Pakistan out of Bangladesh). For years on end, the Pakistani establishment promoted a lowly propaganda programme it called " Crush India." We now know who got crushed in the end. Pakistan has since its creation found itself regularly caught on the wrong foot. In January 1948 , Mohammad Ali Jinnah sent Pakistani soldiers, disguised as tribals, into Kashmir. It was a blunder that was to leave a dispute festering over time. In 1960 , Francis Gary Powers took off from an American base in Peshawar in a U2 aircraft and was soon shot down over the Soviet Union. The incident left Pakistanis red in the face. It was consistent Pakistani provocation in 1965 which impelled General J.N. Chaudhury to have Indian soldiers march toward Lahore. When Pakistan's air force attacked Indian bases in early December 1971 , the act swiftly led to conditions where, in addition to losing East Pakistan to the Mukti Bahini, Pakistan was threatened with obliteration in the west. In 1999 , Pakistan's army chief Pervez Musharraf kept Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the dark as he ordered his forces into Kargil, leaving Pakistan once more vulnerable to charges of aggression. In early 1971 , Z.A. Bhutto cheerfully described the hijackers of an Indian aircraft to Lahore as heroes. The Indians swiftly imposed a ban on overflights between West and East Pakistan. The Pakistani military, through Inter-Services Intelligence, beefed up the Taliban and cheered its ascent to power in 1996. In 2008 , the terrorists who hurled themselves on Mumbai came from Pakistan by sea. Abdul Qadeer Khan has only tried to build on this tradition. Why expect any better from a felon, one who should have been hauled up before the International Criminal Court long ago and put away for good?

Militants Might

In the latest blow to the Pakistan government in what looks like a season of embarrassments, heavily armed Taliban gunmen attacked a naval base in Karachi and destroyed two US-made surveillance planes valued at $36 m and killed 10 personnel. The country’s army yesterday regained control of the base, ending an audacious 18- hour militant assault, but the humiliation the incident has caused will live longer. It was the worst assault on a military base since the army headquarters was besieged in October 2009 , and comes three weeks after Osama bin Laden was found living under the armed forces’ noses. Terrorist attacks are nothing new in Pakistan and the government has failed miserably to either avert these attacks or bring down their frequency. But what is worrying is that with each attack the terrorists have been gaining supremacy and exposing with their own stunning efficiency the inefficiency of the government to curb them. With Sunday’s attack, the extremists have improved on their previous record and what is most worrying is that the Islamist fighters were able to access the airfield in the first place. Everything about the assault, from the methodical tactics to the targeting of sensitive aircraft suggests the attackers used inside information. If that doesn’t worry Pakistan’s armed forces, nothing will. There are reports that extremists are sprinkled within the lower ranks of the army, and their role was suspected in several attacks, such as the 2007 suicide attack on a commando base and the spectacular assault in 2009 on army headquarters in Rawalpindi. Air force officers were arrested for a separate plot against Musharraf in 2006. For ordinary Pakistanis and the outside world, it’s equally worrying that none of these attacks is jolting the country’s administration out of its stupor. The government is always in a state of denial and a sense of inevitability grips it each time an attack happens. One doesn’t have to be a defence expert to say that Sunday’s attack was the result of a glaring security lapse, but Interior Minister Rehman Malik denied it and in a bizarre analogy, compared the attackers to characters from a Star Wars film, dressed in Western clothes. The sophistication of the attack, the duration of the siege and the attackers’ apparent knowledge of the base expose the weaknesses in Pakistan’s military defences and should have made Malik think twice before making such a statement. Despite the terror and lawlessness that stalks large swathes of Pakistan’s territory, the situation is not beyond control. What the government lacks is determination and unity to take on the militants and there is no doubt that the people of the country will support their government in this mission.

How China Can Fix Pakistan

Purpose of Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani’s recent visit to China was maybe to celebrate the 60 th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the real focus is bound to be on how Pakistan can shore up ties with its most reliable ally after Osama bin Laden was found on Islamabad’s doorstep. Contrary to what some might think, such meetings could be a good thing, because the United States will need China’s help to stabilize its troubled partner. Since September 11 , US officials have tried to constrain Pakistani support for the Taliban and other terrorist groups, while relying heavily on its backing for the military campaign against al- Qaeda. But bilateral ties have remained tense, because of both Pakistan’s assistance to Islamist extremists and popular Pakistani anger over US drone attacks along the Afghan-Pakistani border, which many Pakistanis believe stoke the terrorist danger in their country. No amount of economic aid by the Obama administration has been able to ease Pakistani concerns over US counterterrorist policies and Washington’s ties with India, with opinion polls showing that Pakistanis now overwhelmingly view China more favorably than the United States. Indeed, Americans are only shielded from the harsh reality of Pakistan’s views by distance and by the fact that its ruling coalition is led by the Western-oriented Pakistan People’s Party, which has traditionally enjoyed good ties with the United States. The opposition parties are generally, let’s say, less well-disposed toward Washington. Enter China, whose officials are quick to defend Pakistani policies, including its commitment to counterterrorism efforts—even after the bin Laden affair. While US officials have indicated that they couldn’t trust their Pakistani counterparts with advance news of the raid, the Chinese government has called for even greater support for Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts as well as respect for its sovereignty. Such views are based on a history of security cooperation. China has become one of Pakistan’s leading suppliers of conventional arms, and as well as selling weapons systems such as the Chengdu J-10 fighter planes and Zulfiquar class F-22 P frigates, Chinese and Pakistani firms now engage in the joint production of important military hardware, such as the JF17 Thunder (FC-1 Fierce Dragon) fighter. Bilateral security cooperation has also extended to include the training of Pakistani defense personnel, the sharing of military intelligence, and the holding of joint military and counterterrorist exercises. But perhaps most importantly in Pakistani eyes, the Chinese have, unlike the Americans, provided Pakistan with weapons that Islamabad can use against India. Chinese strategists, for their part, are happy to indulge Pakistan’s concerns over New Delhi as a way to keep a rising India distracted. Beijing’s most significant assistance, though, came in the 1980 s and 1990 s, when China transferred considerable nuclear technology to Pakistan, allegedly including the designs for a nuclear bomb as well as the components to make it. China has certainly improved its nonproliferation policies in recent decades. However, it remains the only major nuclear power willing to help Pakistan to develop its civilian nuclear energy sector, providing technical and other dual-use assistance that could potentially assist Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. In fact, just this month yet another Chinese-made nuclear reactor, based at the Chashma Nuclear Power Plant, began operations. But it’s not just military assistance that has left Pakistan so well- disposed toward China—Beijing also plays an important role in the Pakistani economy. Bilateral trade remains modest at less than $10 billion annually, and Beijing provides much less economic assistance than Washington, but thousands of Chinese nationals— engineers, advisors, laborers, and others—work in Pakistan. Chinese firms have invested heavily in Pakistan’s infrastructure projects such as road networks, electric power generation, and telecommunications. This focus on infrastructure reflects the Chinese perception that Pakistan serves as a key energy and trade conduit linking China with Central Asia and the Middle East. All of this assistance from Beijing comes with fewer strings attached than Washington tends to add. The official Chinese position is that China’s aid is for peaceful purposes, meets Pakistan’s demonstrable need for more civilian energy, involves only legally permissible items, and escapes Nuclear Supplier Group ( NSG) restrictions because it began before Beijing joined that body. Unofficially, Chinese representatives argue that, since the United States and other countries are waiving NSG rules to provide India with nuclear assistance, Beijing has the right to provide comparable aid to Pakistan. The United States, in contrast, can be painted as a villain—US opposition to Chinese-Pakistan civil nuclear cooperation makes it appear as if Washington is indifferent to Pakistan’s genuine energy needs, even as it faces a major shortage of electricity and the additional nuclear plants would help relieve this shortfall. Yet although the United States must continue to oppose disruptive Chinese nuclear assistance to Pakistan, US policymakers should still be much more enthusiastic about encouraging China to assume a greater role in supporting Pakistan’s economic development and conventional military power. Aside from their differences over nuclear nonproliferation, China has generally supported US policies toward Pakistan, even if Chinese spokespeople don’t trumpet this fact. And while the Chinese government has parried Western pressure and repeatedly refused to contribute even logistical support to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, its leaders don’t challenge the legitimacy of the NATO military operations there. Indeed, they want the alliance to continue to promote the country’s economic and political reconstruction as well as protect China’s growing investment in Afghanistan’s natural resources— even if they have yet to endorse a long-term Western military presence in their region. Like the Americans, Chinese leaders are also concerned about Pakistani links with terrorism, whatever they say publicly. The difference with China is that disagreements are normally expressed in private, as Beijing relies on its ties with the Pakistani government and military to dissuade Islamist terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan from attacking Chinese targets or from assisting Uighur militants seeking to weaken Beijing’s hold over Xinjiang. Chinese officials have actually repeatedly complained to their Pakistani counterparts about the presence of East Turkestan Islamic Movement cells reportedly based in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In return, Pakistani leaders have strived to appear responsive to Chinese concerns, more so than with US complaints. Since assuming office in September 2008 , Pakistani President Asif Ali Zaradari has traveled to Beijing about once every three months, largely to reassure Chinese policymakers who presumably preferred dealing with his authoritarian predecessor, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Meanwhile, if the United States and NATO were to withdraw from Afghanistan, Chinese officials would presumably seek to leverage their ties with Pakistan’s security forces and political parties to act as mediators with the Taliban to work out a deal whereby the Taliban would defend the China commercial and strategic interests in Afghanistan. According to media reports, Pakistani leaders are already calling on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to switch his primary allegiance from Washington to Beijing. Yet the reality is that Chinese officials would prefer if Western governments continued bearing the costs of making Afghanistan safe and profitable for Chinese investors. Although NATO has committed to fulfilling China’s wishes for the next few years, the growing strains between Washington and Islamabad will require Beijing to compensate by playing a greater role in keeping Pakistan economically viable and militarily secure. Beijing certainly has sufficient capabilities and interests to warrant increasing its efforts. A half-century of close collaboration between Chinese and Pakistan gives Beijing sufficient weight in Islamabad to pressure Pakistan’s military and intelligence services to curtail their support for Islamist extremists. In the past, China has used its ties with Pakistan’s security forces to suppress militant groups that have attacked Chinese workers in Pakistan or supported Uighur separatists. So far, China hasn’t employed its influence to promote security sector reform, the rule of law, or other needed reforms. Yet although we (sadly) can’t expect China’s authoritarian leaders to promote democracy and human rights in Pakistan, the United States and its allies might still be able to persuade Chinese policymakers that Pakistan needs to reform its security sector to become a stable and prosperous country. As long as Pakistan’s military and intelligence forces indulge in terrorist ties, the country will remain a potential threat not just to the United States and its allies, but to China as well. It’s up to Beijing now to make Islamabad see the error of its ways.

In The Line Of Fire : The Pak Army, Post Osama

Not only is the Pakistani public angry, but this is the first time in the country’s 63 years that the Army chief and the head of the ISI have had to appear before the legislature to offer an explanation. Dear Friends,” read the SMS, “ Please don’t fwd any jokes that ridicule our army.” The message, among several sent out in Islamabad a week after Osama bin Laden’s killing, struck a plaintive note. Another read, “We were there for you in 1948 , 1965 & 1971. We were there on Indian Tiger Hills (sic) in Kargil…Be with us when we have been stabbed in the back.”All were ostensibly trying to counter the flood of messages in the week before, from “Please don’t honk, the army is sleeping,” to “Second-hand Pakistani radar for sale — can’t detect US helicopters, but gets Star Plus just fine,” all pointedly targeting the army over Operation Osama. For Pakistan’s military establishment and particularly its chief, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the humour has just added to the serious pressures he faces, and while many predict the army will soon be able to put the episode behind it, evidence points otherwise. It is not so much Osama’ s killing, as the reactions that have followed that could become the game-changer for Pakistan since, for one rare moment, it is Pakistan’ s army alone that is the focus of the intense scrutiny. To begin with is the pressure of the US warnings to the military to investigate the “support structures” that allowed America’s most wanted to live in Abbotabad. Visiting US officials have reinforced the tough messages with threats to cut off aid. Since 2002 the US transferred about $20 billion to Pakistan, two-thirds of which has gone to the army’s coffers. For 2011-2012 the Obama administration has indented for another $3 bn as aid, plus $2.3 bn for counter-terrorism. All these figures are now being questioned by the US Congress, with a bill calling for Pakistan’s government to “certify it wasn’t aware of bin Laden’s presence” in the works. Washington has also been cutting reimbursements to Rawalpindi, rejecting a whopping 40 per cent of all claims made by the military for expenses in the war on terror last year. Trust levels between the two countries are at their lowest ebb, but the US need for Pakistan hasn’t changed with the circumstances of Osama’s death. With time, the hunt still on for other Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders, Washington’s drawdown plan in Afghanistan, and the need to keep China at bay, could all see the US return to form, keeping friends close, but Pakistan closer, as it were. The real break from the past, instead, is in Pakistan’s public mood. On a visit to Pakistan days after Operation Geronimo, it was clear that the people’s anger at the US was rivalled only by the open rage at the Army. While the rest of the world asked, “How did Osama live in Pakistan without being caught?” people on the streets were only obsessed by the humiliating question, “How did US forces sneak in and out for the operation without being intercepted?” In one of Islamabad’s bazaars we were accosted by one visibly upset shopkeeper. “It’s one thing that the army has starved us all these years in the name of national security,” he railed, “but where was all their technology and intelligence when the Americans were flying into our country?” Another man questioned why ISI chief Shuja Pasha had been flying back and forth from Washington. Surprisingly, few doubted the American claim that if Osama lived in Abbottabad for years, he must have had some support from officials. The signs of a shift in public perception could not have escaped Gen. Kayani, known to read newspapers and magazines extensively. Many are now even likening the post-Geronimo fall from grace of Pakistan’s strongest institution to the post-1971 war, calling for a White Paper on what the Army knew and when. Despite the public mood, the only change in the balance of power inside Pakistan will come if the politicians push for it. And it is on this count that Kayani has the most to think about. Many reported the confrontational scenes involving Lt-Gen. Shuja Pasha in the National Assembly, but few noted that it was the first time in Pakistan’s 63 years that the Army Chief and the ISI chief had to appear for an explanation before the legislature at all. Eventually, the words that won applause from across the political ranks came from MNA Javed Hashmi, who asked Pasha and Kayani, “We know you are burdened with responsibilities…how about you give some of them back to us?” Even PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif has signalled that despite his differences with the ruling PPP, when it comes to holding the Army accountable, the politicians are closing ranks. Ironically, it was Kayani who tried, at the beginning of his tenure, to give back some of the army’s powers, withdrawing his officers from running 23 public concerns, including National Highways, Education, Water and Power. He also submitted to the PPP government’s decision to institute the first-ever parliamentary oversight committee on national security in 2008 , and in an effort to show he would not go the way of previous military-chiefs- turned-rulers, ordered his officers to avoid contact with politicians. In the past two weeks Kayani has shown he is not unaware of the flak his force faces — the SMS campaign was only one part of a counter-strategy. He has also met with newspaper and television editors on two separate occasions in the past month, and conducted town-hall style meetings with his officers in at least five garrisons. It seems unlikely that other options open to his more adventurous predecessors when under pressure — of toppling the government, or upping the ante with India — would help Gen. Kayani’s cause at present. Eventually, it is the mood of his own men that will be the cause of the most worry for the Army Chief, particularly the deep schisms of mistrust that seem to be building between a professional, liberal rank, and an extremely devout, anti-american file. In his book Pakistan: A Hard Country, British author Anatol Lieven, known for his deep access to the military, says ‘ the single most dangerous trend’ he found was the difficulties parents faced in finding a bride for sons in the military, as in villages, they were increasingly viewed as ‘ slaves of the Americans who are killing fellow-Muslims.’ Conversely, there is the worry within other ranks of growing jihadism, one that will not allow the military to sever its bonds with groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Afghan Taliban, giving rise to the fear that radicalised officers perhaps also protected Osama bin Laden at his Abbottabad home. With each successive bomb blast, many within the military are making the connection that the groups they’ve fed and nurtured are now eating into the army’s own structure. Whatever the end, the army’s introspection following the discovery of Osama bin Laden is throwing up a rare moment for Gen. Kayani. And as he deals with the growing pressures from the world, Pakistan’s public and polity, the army’s debate over its national role, post-Osama, is in fact, a fight for the future of Pakistan.