PAKISTAN AS A RATIONAL STATE Are you joking?

PAKISTAN AS A RATIONAL STATE Are you joking? Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd), Jan 20, 2015, In a recent article, former police officer KPS Gill wrote, “Terrorism does not arise in a vacuum. It is the product of years, even decades, of ideological mobilisation, of radicalisation, and of a transformation of the cultural context of religious, social and political discourse”. Applying this to Pakistan’s security perception and to its internal conflict we can deduce that what we are witnessing there is years of strategic preparation for perceived security, suddenly going awry. Zia ul Haq’s careful preparation of the radical labyrinth was supposed to have secured Pakistan from the Soviet onslaught while ensuring that it would help create enough internal turmoil within India to marginalise its conventional superiority. Thirty years down the line with the strengthened structures of that religious, social and political discourse, Pakistan is burning in its own fires. Peshawar was the symbolic high point on the graph of negativity which that nation faces, paralysed by the rigours of horrific ideological violence. The question the world is asking is – will it spell a review, a change of heart or an expression of regret which will see a downward curve on that graph? As the virtual core centre of Islamic radicalism and a society emotionally distraught with rigours of violence, can a cosmetic compromise mean a retraction? On the face of it, Pakistan has sounded the clarion call against terrorism promising to target every radical terrorist group, including the Haqqani network based inside its western borders and the Punjab based JuD; both have apparently been banned along with ten others in the wake of John Kerry’s visit to Islamabad. How seriously will this translate on the ground needs examination from the angle of Pakistan’s strategic interests, its internal polity, security fears and sheer common sense? The last is a necessity given Pakistan’s repeated history of irrationality. The decision of the Pakistan government is purportedly that of both the civilian and military authority. It is not supposedly a tweaking of policy but the wholesale policy reversal. Both the Haqqani Group and the JuD (along with the LeT) have always been treated as strategic assets to counter India. The former to negate Indian influence in Afghanistan, especially in the new dispensation after the International Security Assistance Forces’ (ISAF) withdrawal, and the latter to execute the policy of bleeding India by a thousand cuts. The deduction which screams at the face is really a simple question – do nations change their strategic vision and destroy the carefully nurtured strategic assets on the basis of a single event which, at best, draws temporary emotional upsurge? We need not look for an answer to that. Pakistan’s civil society was once a force to reckon with. Even institutions such as the Pakistan Supreme Court have been unsuccessful in reining military influence over the polity. They have also been instrumental in closing their eyes to all that has been happening over the years in Pakistan’s ideological cauldron. There are three players in this sordid game; the Pakistan civil society led by the civilian government which is not wholly in control, the military which calls the shots on foreign and security policy, and the ideologists who are hand in glove with the perpetrators of violence. Belligerent nuclear neighbours Any change in policy in strictly strategic terms would involve all three. In the confusion that Pakistan is in, this is least likely to happen especially when it comes to compromising its position vis-à-vis India. With a visibly rising India and its continuing hyphenation with more influential nations, Pakistan’s only recourse is to marginalise this rise. If this is not possible, Pakistan must ensure that it remains hyphenated with India from the angle of potential conflict between two belligerent nuclear neighbours. It will not allow itself to be hemmed in by allowing India a freeway of influence in its strategic neighbourhood in the West. For both these, it needs the assets it has nurtured. The polity of Pakistan is sometimes its worst enemy. Imran Khan, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf chief, will continue enhancing his influence on the back of the Haqqanis who have major links in his bastion and Shahbaz Sharif can hardly turn his back on Hafiz Sayeed. Political bankruptcy, Pakistan’s bane for years, can hardly facilitate a change of heart. This is realism in its truest form. What about the foreign players? The US wants stability in Afghanistan after spending a trillion dollars on its mission. It knows the limits of its capability, harshly brought home in the last 14 years. As long as the Haqqanis are under marginal control, and Pakistan can ensure that, it would really not be concerned about what Pakistan does on its eastern borders. There are no black and white or clear cut dispensation in any strategic great game; ambiguity within reasonable control is the name of the game. A packaged, nuanced turn of policy towards Afghanistan will win for Pakistan a position of a strategic surrogate there; its eastern borders, be damned. The US has enough on its hands in West Asia to rock the boat violently in Af-Pak. The rational approach would have been a complete breakaway (not just a hairline fracture) from the use of ideology as a weapon and from violence as a state policy; rebuild Pakistan’s institutions, its polity, and adhere to the requirements of civil society. But then, since when has Pakistan been a rational state? It has always employed irrationality as a weapon and will probably be tempted to do so one more time. India’s strategic community need not look beyond this conclusion, at least for the moment, unless something more transformational evolves.