TARIQ, ali - The Duel

by Ali, Tariq

  “Recognize me?” he asked.

  “Forgive me,” I replied, “I . . .”

  “I never forgave you when you were young. Why should I now? Look at me closely and try again.”

  I did as he asked. Slowly a picture formed of a pimply teenager who many decades ago used to hang out with my gang of friends during the delightful summer months we spent in the Himalayan foothills in Nathiagali. I remembered his mother first as cooking the best semolina halwa in the country, and that helped recall his name. He roared with delight.

  “What do you do these days?” I asked him.

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  “Try me.”

  “I was a senior security officer for Bhutto and later Zia.”

  “You served both.”

  “It was my job.”

  I sighed in despair. “And after that?”

  He was now an even more senior intelligence officer, on his way to a European conference to discuss better ways of combatting terrorism.

  “Is OBL still alive?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “When you don’t reply, I’ll assume the answer is yes.”

  I asked the question again. He didn’t reply.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  He burst out laughing. “I don’t, and even if I did, do you think I’d tell you?”

  “No, but I thought I’d ask anyway. Does anyone know where he is?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  I insisted, “Nothing in our wonderful country is ever a secret. Someone must know.”

  “Three people know. Possibly four. You can guess who they are.”

  I could. “And Washington?”

  “They don’t want him alive?”

  “And your boys can’t kill him.”

  “Listen, friend, why should we kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?”

  As long as Osama was alive, the official seemed to be saying, the flow of dollars would never stop. It sounded credible, but was it true? I shifted the conversation to another subject. Why had General Zia’s assassination never been properly investigated? He shrugged his shoulders, saying Washington wasn’t keen to dig any deeper. His own view was that the Russians were responsible. This is not an uncommon view among sections of Pakistani intelligence. For most of them the explanation is linked to Afghanistan: it was revenge by Moscow. I think this is pure fantasy. What my informant suggested was more original and contained a sting in the tail. According to him, the Russians owed the Indians a favor (he didn’t explain why), and Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi (Indira’s son) had asked for Zia’s head.

  “Why?” I inquired in as innocent a tone as I could muster.

  “In return for his mother’s death.”

  This was the only semiofficial confirmation I ever received from the Pakistani side regarding Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination.

  All this is in the past. The current obsession is with the nuclear status of both countries, which could, it is feared, lead to a wipeout of large parts of the subcontinent. The assessment of a “jihadi threat” to Pakistan’s nuclear facilities is particularly virulent and not simply on the blogosphere. Otherwise intelligent people are making regular statements that border on hysteria. The following three samples are representative of this overreaction, and numerous others are even less restrained. Matthew Bunn of the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard has said:

  If you can have over forty heavily armed terrorists show up in the middle of Moscow and seize a theatre. How many might show up at some remote Pakistani nuclear weapon storage facility? This is a country that has you know substantial armed remnants of Al Qaeda still operating in the country, that are able to hold off big chunks of the Pakistani regular army and the frontier provinces for weeks at a time. If a huge Al Qaeda force arrives at one of these nuclear weapon storage facilities, what do the guards do? Do they fight, do they help? This strikes me as a very open question.

  Art Brown, former CIA operations director, Asia, regards Musharraf as a vital asset without whom there might be serious trouble:

  I think that if Musharraf is removed from office, particularly if he is assassinated and there is a power grab, I think the control over the Pakistani nuclear program would obviously be a concern. We would be concerned over any government that had that kind of a program and lost its leader in a bloody coup. The laboratories themselves are probably less of a concern just because it would take longer to do something with those materials in the laboratories, take them out and sell them. We might be able to intercept that at some point, but the ready-made nuclear weapons that are sitting there in the Pakistani arsenal, those indeed could go out somebody’s door and appear in our opponents’ box overnight.

  Robert Joseph, from the Arms Control section of the U.S. State Department, is equally worried:

  What concerns me the most is that a terrorist has to be successful only one time in terms of acquiring the material and acquiring the nuclear device and detonating that device on an American city or a city anywhere in the world. So what we need to do is have a comprehensive approach for dealing with that threat. We are emphasizing two key elements. One of course is prevention. So that we deny the terrorist access to fissile material or other weapons of mass destruction of related materials. We also need to put in place, and we are working hard, the protection capabilities, the ability to detect the transfer of this type of material for example. As well as to interdict this material.

  Add to this the views of the nuclear historian Scott Sagan in his book and a new dimension emerges:

  Pakistan is clearly the most serious concern in the short run. Pakistani weapons lack the advanced Permissive Actions Link (PALS) locks that make it difficult for a terrorist or other unauthorized individual to use a stolen nuclear weapon. In June 2001, Pakistani officials also acknowledged that there were no specialized Pakistani teams trained on how to seize or dismantle a nuclear weapon if one was stolen. No dedicated personnel reliability program (PRP) was in place to ensure the psychological stability and reliability of the officers and guards of Pakistan’s nuclear forces. Instead, Pakistani soldiers and scientists with nuclear responsibilities were reviewed and approved for duty if they were not suspected of being Indian agents by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

  This is what partially explains U.S. support for Pakistan’s military leadership at the expense of democracy and democratic institutions. If we take each argument in turn, what is being said is either risible or applies to Israel and India as well. What if forty heavily armed ultra-right Jewish settlers tried to seize Israeli weapons of mass destruction? Or a small group of hard-core Hindu fundamentalists attempted the same in India? As in Pakistan, they would be apprehended and dealt with. None of these countries has a security force known for its softness to dissidents of any variety. As for “substantial armed remnants” of Al Qaeda, cited by Matthew Bunn, most intelligence reports put their number at well below five hundred. The Pakistan army is currently half a million strong.

  And if Musharraf resigns or is removed from the presidency, the military high command would not be affected in the slightest. They would continue to control the security of the nuclear facilities. As for the acquisition of nuclear weapons by “a terrorist,” this was much more likely in Russia under Yeltsin than in Pakistan today. After all, much of the fissile material obtained by Pakistan came from Western Europe. Sagan’s points are far more relevant, but since he wrote his book in 2003, all the measures whose absence he noted, according to Pakistan’s military security experts, are now in place, and the United States is aware of this. The loopholes that existed in terms of selling nuclear technology to friendly states have long since been sealed.

  As I have suggested elsewhere in this book, the only way any jihadi groups could penetrate the nuclear facilities would be if the army wanted them to. This is virtually excluded as long as the military does not split, though the possibility of a rupture in the armed forces would be real if the United States
insisted on expanding the Afghan war by occupying parts of Pakistan or systematically bombing Pashtun villages suspected of harboring “terrorists.” Continuous U.S. pressure on Pakistan’s stance toward Israel is also linked to the country’s nuclear status. Pakistani officials are told that were they to recognize Israel, some of the pressure on the nuclear issue would dissipate.

  Early in March 2008, Shireen Mazari, director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies, revealed that Washington had sent Pakistan a list of eleven demands. These included providing U.S. military and auxiliary staff the right to enter and leave the country without visa restrictions, to carry arms and wear uniforms throughout Pakistan; only U.S. jurisdiction would apply to U.S. nationals, as in Japan. They would also be free to import and export anything, as they currently can in Iraq. In addition to this they wanted free movement of all vehicles and aircraft and total immunity from all claims for damage of property or personnel. The demands were rejected. Mazari concluded her report with the following advice:

  So, for those who feel there is bonhomie and complete understanding between the Pakistan military and the US military, and the trouble only exists at the political level, it is time to do a serious rethink. The first step in dealing rationally with our indigenous terrorist problem holistically and credibly is to create space between ourselves and the US. As the US adage goes: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”*

  Two months later, Dr. Mazari was unceremoniously sacked from her job by the Foreign Office and given fifteen minutes to vacate her office. She was even more angered by a call from Husain Haqqani, ambassador designate to Washington, who arrived with a bouquet of flowers to bid her farewell and apologize for the manner of her dismissal. Mazari was blunt in her response. “I know my independent views have upset the U.S. lobby in Pakistan which dominates the PPP. That’s why I have been sacked.”

  If this is the prelude to something bigger, such as a partial U.S. occupation of the North-West Frontier Province, it could trigger a severe crisis in the army, already under strain carrying out CENTCOM instructions on the Pakistan-Afghan border. The fallout could have unpredictable consequences.

  AS FAR AS nuclear weapons are concerned, the double standards of the West are not helpful and are viewed with contempt in most parts of the world. Nonetheless it’s a fact that neither India nor Pakistan benefits from this weaponry, which has become a new form of sacred property. The figures speak for themselves. Following the nuclear tests of 1998 the Indian government announced an allocation of $9.9 billion for defense spending in 1999, an increase of 14 percent over the previous year. Pakistan, in turn, raised its budget by 8.5 percent to $3.3 billion. South Asia today is one of the world’s most heavily militarized regions. The Indian and Pakistani armies are two of the world’s ten largest war machines. There is a combined 6:1 ratio of soldiers to doctors. The social costs of arms spending are horrendous.

  It would be to the great advantage of both countries if the billions spent on nuclear weapons were used to build schools, universities, and hospitals and to provide clean water in the villages. Rationality, alas, is the first victim when these two countries quarrel. During the military skirmishes in the snow deserts of Kargil, nuclear threats were exchanged by both states on thirteen separate occasions within three months. This was followed by new terrorist attacks in India. Pakistan denied any responsibility, but New Delhi was unconvinced.

  On December 13, 2001, five suicide terrorists armed with automatic rifles, grenades, and explosives killed nine people and wounded two dozen others before being killed themselves in a forty-five-minute battle with security forces outside the Indian parliamentary building. Mercifully parliament wasn’t in session that day. Had Indian politicians been killed in the attack, another war between the two states would have been a near certainty.

  The Indian home minister, L. K. Advani, a leader of the Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was then in power, pointed the finger at two well-known Islamist terror groups—Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba—created and backed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. He described what had taken place as the “most alarming act of terrorism in the history of two decades of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India.... The terrorists and their mentors . . . [wanted] to wipe out the entire political leadership of India.” This was clearly an invitation to a military response, and it led to an intense and sharp debate within the Indian elite as to whether they should hit back with a surgical strike on training camps in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. In the end, thankfully, they decided not to do so.

  The groups that attacked the Indian parliament were not only targeting India. Their aim was evidently to provoke a conflict between the two countries. They despised Musharraf for betraying the cause and siding with Washington after 9/11. Their hatred for “Hindu” India was nothing new and had been enhanced by BJP rule in that country. The tragedy is that they came so close to inciting a war. Senior Indian strategists argued that if the United States could bomb a country and change its government while searching for terrorists who ordered the hits on the Pentagon, why could India not do the same? The logic was impeccable, but the outcome could have been a catastrophe of massive proportions. Pakistan’s rulers responded with a nuclear threat: if their country’s sovereignty was threatened, they would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons. An ugly chill gripped the atmosphere.

  Washington sought to reassure India. Simultaneously, it pressured Islamabad to shift rapidly into reverse gear. On January 12, 2002, Musharraf made a landmark speech. He offered India a no-war pact, denuclearization of South Asia, closure of the jihadi training camps in Pakistan, and a total transformation of Indo-Pak relations. While hardline fundamentalist newspapers attacked him, the country remained calm. Not a bird twittered, not a dog barked. So much for the view that ordinary Pakistanis are obsessed with the “Islamic bomb.” Pakistan’s nuclear capacity had often been used by the jihadi groups as a guarantee of their untouchability. No longer. A positive response from India was vital and could have altered the entire political landscape to the benefit of both countries. But India refused to budge. Its spokesmen continued to mouth platitudes but insisted on “minimum nuclear deterrence” and refused the offer of a no-war pact.

  By rejecting Pakistan’s denuclearization offer, the Indian government exposed the hollowness of its professed commitment to nuclear disarmament. The folly was compounded by the test-firing of a new Agni missile on the eve of the Republic Day celebrations on January 26, 2002. Apart from being an irresponsible and provocative gesture, the test was a reaffirmation of New Delhi’s resolve to proceed with nuclear armaments.

  The advocates of a short sharp war against Pakistan are largely confined to the well-off, urban middle classes in India. The poor, in the main, do not favor conflict. They know the dangers it would create inside India with its 200 million Muslims. They know that wars don’t come cheap and that they would bear the brunt of the suffering. Three hundred million Indians already live below the poverty line.

  Even among the gung ho middle classes the desire for a war would fade were they faced with conscription and required to fight themselves. Unlike bin Laden’s followers, these are armchair fundamentalists.

  Meanwhile, the Pakistani and Indian armies are on full alert and confront each other across a mine-strewn border. The mines are especially concentrated in cultivated farmlands near the international border and the Line of Control in Kashmir. The local villagers will suffer the consequences for years to come. Already there have been numerous civilian casualties.

  New Delhi sees itself as a potential world power. It craves a seat on the UN Security Council. It argues that if small European countries such as Britain and France can possess nuclear weapons, then why not India? The simplest response would be to extend nuclear disarmament and for Europe to initiate the process. The West seems unlikely to oblige. The U.S. military budget remains inflated and accounts for one-half of the world’s expenditure on armaments. The old enemy no longer e
xists, but the Cold War scenarios remain in place. U.S. military planners continue to target Russia and China. The latest wave of NATO expansion that both preceded and followed the war in Yugoslavia hardened Russian opposition to nuclear disarmament. When NATO patrols the Black Sea, what price the “Partnership for Peace”?

  Herein lies the crux of the problem. Unless the West begins nuclear disarmament, it has no moral or material basis on which to demand that others do the same. Only a twisted logic accepts that London and Paris can have the bomb, but New Delhi and Islamabad cannot. India and Pakistan are only too aware that nuclear rain and radiation are no respecters of frontiers. It is unlikely that they would resort to first use of these weapons, but that is not sufficient reassurance for the citizens of either country.

  While Pakistan’s principal preoccupation remains India, its senior partners in Washington have been trying hard to shift Islamabad’s focus to the western frontier. This has briefly been discussed in an earlier chapter, but the impact of U.S.-occupied Afghanistan on Pakistan is such that it necessitates a more detailed mapping of the new turbulence afflicting the region.

  9

  OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM

  Mirage of the “Good” War

  THE BUSH-CHENEY ERA IS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, BUT THEIR replacements, despite the debacle in Iraq, are unlikely to settle the American giant back to a digestive sleep. The leitmotif of Cheney’s foreign policy was “either you’re for us or for terrorism against us.” The application of this line meant isolating, intimidating, or invading individual states that did not accept shelter under the U.S. umbrella.

  In 2004, as the chaos in Iraq deepened, the war in Afghanistan became the “good war” by comparison. It had been legitimized by the UN—even if the resolution was not passed until after the bombs had finished falling—and backed by NATO. If tactical differences had sharpened over Iraq, they could be resolved in Afghanistan. First Zapatero in Spain, then Prodi in Italy, and most recently Rudd in Australia compensated for pulling troops out from Iraq by dispatching them to Kabul.* France and Germany could extol their peacekeeping or civilizing roles there. For the Scandinavians it became a feel-good war.