SPY EYES

As the Saudi Arabia-Iran proxy war rages in Muslim world, the news of Pakistan changing its nonaligned stance in favour of an interim caretaker setup in Syria – and also of supporting Syrian rebels with arms supplies and even training – would be a dire signal that national policymakers have not learned from history. The consequences for the independence of Pakistan’s foreign policy, and ramifications for the trajectory of its standing in the comity of nations, are immense – especially among “brotherly” Muslim countries and neighbours with whom Pakistan shares land borders.

The Royal Visit

The Saudi crown prince, Shaikh Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, who is also the Kingdom’s deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, visited Pakistan from February 15 to February 17, and was given a red carpet welcome in Islamabad. He met with the civilian as well as the military leadership of the country, and – given the proximity of the ruling PML-N with the House of Saud, the monarchy that rules Saudi Arabia – this was a unique opportunity for both Sunni “brotherly nations” to bolster defence and security cooperation, sign MoU’s and agreements, and most importantly, “strengthen their relationship as the United States recalibrates its approach to the region”, as noted by Taimur Khan in the UAE newspaper The National.

The highest-level public meetings between Riyadh and Islamabad in six years began last month with successive visits to Pakistan by the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Al Faisal, and the deputy defence minister, Prince Salman bin Sultan. They were followed last week by the first overseas trip by Pakistan’s new COAS, General Raheel Sharif: during his three-day trip, General Sharif met King Abdullah and military officials to discuss plans for a “new era in strategic partnership”, according to a Pakistan army spokesman. Then came the crown prince’s visit, whose delegation included the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, the ministers of economy and planning, of commerce and industry, as well as Saudi businessmen who have been meeting with Pakistani business leaders.

Importance of Pak-Saudi Ties: Stabilizing Afghanistan after 2014 and Mutual Defence Assurances

Analysts say both countries are looking to deepen their strategic military ties as the US begins to shifts its resources. “In view of current challenges, there is a need to further strengthen defence cooperation between the two countries and a new era of strategic relationship needs to start,” Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said during Prince Salman’s visit. The visit, made on request of the Pakistani Prime Minister, was designed to promote the roles of the two countries to maintain security, stability and development at regional and international arenas, particularly Islamic issues and role of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. During the visit, the media rumour mill was focusing on the Musharraf trial as well as the Pakistani government’s talks with the TTP – the Saudi crown prince said that those were Pakistan’s internal matters, in which Saudi Arabia will not meddle or interfere, and that the Kingdom wants peace and tranquility to prevail in Pakistan. After Pakistan, the crown prince also visited Japan, India and the Maldives.

Even as Afghanistan is on the top of both countries’ agendas, a major worry for Saudi Arabia is the process of rapprochement started between Iran and the U.S. According to David Weinberg, who studies Saudi affairs at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defence of Democracies think tank, Prince Salman’s visit to Pakistan in particular was “an indicator that the warming of … security ties is genuine and not just for show, since [he] handles a great deal of the operational heavy lifting at Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry – including major initiatives on Syria, military procurement and regional cooperation”. Prince Salman was, until recently, the deputy to the Saudi spy chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who is also his brother, and was considered to be one of the key figures in Riyadh’s efforts to finance, arm and train Syrian rebels. Now he is the Defence Minister as well as the deputy premier.

For Pakistan, military and civilian aid from the U.S. has been crucial to help stabilize its teetering economy. Even though it is likely that the two countries discussed continuing U.S. support after its withdrawal from Afghanistan, “there is a lot of uncertainty with regards to aid from the U.S.”, said Arif Rafiq, president of Vizier Consulting, a political risk and security consultancy, and a fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. A complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan “means that Pakistan has to look to alternative sources to guarantee its own stability, that’s why the Saudis are being engaged,” Mr Rafiq said. “The Saudis are engaging Pakistan for their own reasons”. These reasons include short-term tactical goals (such as Syria) as well as long-term strategic goals (such as Iran).

As both have much to gain from engaging each other in stronger defence ties, there have been many reports that Pakistan will help Saudi Arabia arm and train Syrian rebels – something that the Sunni kingdom could not convince the U.S. to do – and that even though there are hints that Saudi Arabia can obtain nuclear arms from Pakistan to counter Iran (unconfirmed reports state that two nuclear-capable ballistic missiles from Pakistan have already been stationed in Saudi Arabia), the latest moves in Saudi-Pak engagement are meant to send a message. Simon Henderson, an expert on Saudi Arabia and on Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Gulf and Energy Policy programme, says that the meetings are supposed to get both the White House and the Iranians to “pay attention”. This seems plausible, as the U.S. has continued its policy of engaging Iran – after a hiatus of three decades – despite criticism and anger from Saudi Arabia as well as Israel. As is obvious, Saudi displeasure and reservations on the U.S. role has not had the impact that it used to have in the past.

Pakistan’s Alleged “Policy Shift” on Syria

Pakistan’s (unconfirmed) decision (which is denied by the Foreign Office as well as the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Foreign Policy and National Security) to support the Syrian rebels via Saudi Arabia, and funnel arms to them via Jordan, is a huge but expected foreign policy move by Pakistan in the Middle East: it is synonymous with its role in the GCC, and how it has implemented its foreign policy in Bahrain as well, though it opted out of direct involvement in the Egyptian or the Libyan affair, for that matter. This move is bound to anger Iran and test Iran’s patience with Pakistan, which has been a U.S. ally since 2001, but had (or officially still has) adopted a policy of neutrality in the proxy wars that the Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Shi’ite Iran have been fighting throughout the Muslim world. As the ruling Alawite regime in Syria is allied to Iran – and Iran continues to invest heavily in propping up Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus by providing finance, weapons, and manpower as well – any move that would be aimed at tilting the existing status quo on the ground in Syria in favour of the Sunni militants would force Iran’s hand not only in the Levant and the Middle East, but also in other places which challenge Iran’s projection of power. Saudi Arabia wants Pakistan to supply “Anza Mk-I” or “Anz Mk-II” anti-aircraft rockets (known as MANPADS, or man-portable air-defence systems) and anti-tank rockets, which will be stored in Jordan before they are delivered to the Syrian rebels.

On February 24, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam denied reports of Pakistan intending to supply Syrian rebels with weapons and arms as “baseless and have no sense”. However, veteran journalist Amir Mateen wrote that, “the Foreign Office denied the report but was rather sketchy in explaining its side of the story. This had the National Assembly fuming on Monday”. The next day, on February 25, the PM’s Adviser on National Security and Foreign Policy, Sartaj Aziz, clarified this stance on the floor of the National Assembly: in a policy statement to the lower house of Parliament, he said that, “Pakistan fully honours national and international laws in its agreements and sale of arms”. He said that the government rejects speculations in the media about any change in Pakistan’s policy on Syria, or linking it with the visit of Saudi crown prince. Aziz reiterated that Pakistan “stands by its stance of quick solution to conflict in Syria and restoration of peace and stability” – while mentioning Pakistan’s international obligations to UN resolutions as well as the Geneva peace process, he added that Pakistan stood committed to its stance of withdrawal of foreign armed forces from Syria, lifting the siege of different cities and stopping bombardment in those areas, and enabling the people of Syria to run the affairs of their country. Aziz said Pakistan was also committed to its stance for protection of territorial sovereignty of Syria, stop atrocities and contribute to international efforts for restoration of peace in the restive country, respect to masses opinion and initiation of dialogue to defuse the situation. He said the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had also stressed at the United Nations and urged international community to restart the stalled political process in Syria to ensure peace and security.

The PM’s Adviser concluded his statement by saying that, “there is no change of stance, as it was manifested in Pak-Saudi joint statement at the time of the visit of the crown prince, and our written position. Our stance is clear; that we are not cooperating with anybody. It is not our policy to interfere into other’s affairs. Our policy is principled and neutral. We are not going to provide arms or assist anybody.” He also added that non-state actors must be controlled. However, Amir Mateen notes that, “Sartaj Aziz’s explanation sounded pretty plausible but a few questions remained unanswered. The timing was crucial; why should the government choose to announce our position in a joint communiqué with a powerful Middle Eastern country. After all, the Foreign Office had not expressed its Syria position so emphatically earlier. Also, Pakistan (as Iran) was not a participant to the 20 plus countries who were part of the Geneva Communiqué.”

The Saudi Role in the Syrian Civil War

Of the roughly 23 million citizens of Syria, Sunni Muslims constitute 74% of the population, while other Muslim sects (including the ruling Alawite sect) form only 16% of the population. Therefore, the Syrian civil war – which started on March 15, 2011, and has been raging for almost three years now – is a scenario that is similar to that in Bahrain, but with one critical difference; in Bahrain, a Shi’ite majority population initiated an uprising against the ruling Sunni monarchy of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa on February 14, 2011, in the midst of the “Arab Spring” that was ongoing in Tunisia and Egypt at the time. The Bahrain uprising continues as a low-intensity political disobedience movement for over three years now, and aims at ensuring equality for Shi’ites in addition to political freedoms and fair elections. As protesters gathered around the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, the Bahraini capital, and encamped there, the government of King Hamad – fearing further instability and possible overthrow – declared martial law and imposed a three-month-long emergency on March 15, 2011: a day earlier, 1,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and 500 troops from the UAE arrived in Bahrain to assist the local security forces in quelling the uprising. They arrived on the request of King Hamad and the Bahraini government, and under the auspices of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Saudi Arabia has a strong influence on Syria’s southern front, where it coordinates with Jordan, and has helped unite the rebel fighters in the area; on the other hand, Qatar and Turkey are responsible for coordinating with the rebels on the northern front. Saudi Arabia has come to eclipse Qatar as the main supporter of the Syrian rebels, a development illustrated by the election last July of Ahmad Jarba, who has strong Saudi links, to lead the Syrian National Coalition, the main umbrella opposition group. The trend appeared to continue with the dismissal of General Selim Idriss, the top commander of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, in February. Idriss was considered close to Qatar, and the main criticism of Idriss was “bad distribution of weapons” and “errors in battle”. And after the Saudi crown prince visited Pakistan, Syrian opposition leader Ahmad Jarba told the media that “powerful arms will be arriving soon”. So Saudi Arabia is in a frontline position vis-à-vis the Sunni militants in Syrian civil war, especially in terms of countering the Iranian influence in the region, which is also immense:including Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and Shi’ite fighters from Iraq, to IRGC and Quds force specialistsnumbering in the hundreds if not thousands, to steady support in terms of weapons and ammunition to the Assad regime. On February 13 this year, Iranian Revolutionary Guard-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) Brigadier General Hassan Shateri was assassinated in Syria – ostensibly by the Syrian opposition militia forces while he was returning from Aleppo to Beirut via Damascus, although Iran alleged that Israel was behind the attack. General Shateri is the senior-most member of the Quds Force known to have been killed outside of Iran in the organization’s three-decade history; he had deep connections with Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran’s global force projection network. His death is considered to be a serious blow to the Quds Force, and his very presence in northern Syria revealed the depth of Iran’s involvement in that conflict. However, the position on the ground – as well as on the negotiating table in Geneva – has brought the civil war to a stalemate, with no side having the capacity or ability to strike a decisive blow against the other. This stalemate persists despite the parties to the Syrian conflict (the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition) being heavily supported in all forms by their allies from abroad, and despite the immense investment(s) of Saudi Arabia (and other Sunni allies) as well as of Iran to bolster their respective allies in the Syrian conflict.

Linking the Royal Saudi Visit to Pakistan’s Syria Policy

So it seems that the visit of the Saudi crown prince was to elicit and confirm Pakistani support for the Sunni position in Syria, particularly after failure in the Geneva process talks – the Saudi royal was neither in Pakistan to convince the leadership to let Musharraf go, nor was he in the country to give his two cents on the peace talks initiative with the TTP. It has been reported that the Saudi move has come after frustration in efforts to get the U.S. to train and arm Syrian rebels, and that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was earlier hoping for two entire Pakistani divisions to be sent to Syria – two divisions of the Pakistan Army have reportedly maintained deployment readiness and have been on standby position since 2011 to be deployed to Saudi Arabia “if the kingdom is threatened by Iran or the pro-democracy uprisings sweeping the Arab world”. It has also been reported thatPakistan has (allegedly) covertly supported the Saudi effort in the Syrian civil war for some time now.

Given the Saudi crown prince’s pivotal role in setting the Kingdom’s Syria policy, and that three important visits – two from Saudi royals to Pakistan, and one from the Pakistani Army Chief to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – preceded this trip, it was widely reported that Pakistan had been elicited by Saudi Arabia to train and arm Syrian Sunni rebels: as mentioned above, the “Anza Mk-I” or “Anz Mk-II” anti-aircraft rockets (MANPADS) and anti-tank rockets acquired from Pakistan will be stored in Jordan before they are delivered to the Syrian rebels. During the Saudi crown prince’s visit, a joint statement issued after high-level meetings stated that “The two sides reiterated the need for finding a quick solution to the existing conflict in Syria according to Geneva I Resolution in order to restore peace and security in Syria and prevent bloodshed of the brotherly Syrian people”. It has been alleged that Saudi Arabia “bought off” Pakistan’s foreign policy and enlisted its political support as well as assurance of weapons supplies to Syrian Sunni rebels for a credit of US$ 183 million for the import of urea fertilizer from the Arab monarchy.

Ramifications for Pakistan’s Foreign Policy Shift from a Nonaligned Stance

Though Pakistan officially denies that it has changed its foreign policy vis-à-vis Syria, the negative consequences and overall ramifications of such a shift must be analyzed and laid bare before the country’s policymakers – who have been taken to task by the opposition in both houses of Parliament – as well as the nation at large. By shifting from its status of neutrality and non-alignment in Arab-Arab or intra-Muslim conflict – overtly or covertly – in the form of supporting a caretaker setup in Syria instead of continuing its previous policy regarding the issue, Pakistan has also shown that it can take a significant departure from its existing and implementable policies in the international arena. The rationale behind this shift – if it has indeed taken place – should be cogent and should serve Pakistan’s own national security and foreign policy interests: otherwise the impression will be that Pakistan’s foreign policy is now being “dictated” by “Wahabbi petro-dollars” instead of “America’s dollars and aid”. Indeed, the political opposition in parliament accused the government of obliging “friendly Sheikhs” for their hospitality, but at the cost of national interests. Many more thought that this would unnecessarily bring Pakistan in the middle of two Muslim countries tussling and fighting proxy wars everywhere and, obviously, amounted to interference in internal affairs of Syria.

But one also must wonder why Pakistan does not share the apprehensions of the U.S., in that weapons sent to militants fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria could also be used against other states. While the United States could allow their allies provide the rebels with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons following the failure of Geneva talks and the renewed tension with Russia (especially over the evolving situation in the Ukraine and Crimea), provided those weapons to the rebels “relieves pressure on the US in the short-term”, there is always a danger associated with that as a policy measure: “the long-term political worry is that MANPADS (man-portable air-defence systems) will leak and be used to bring down a civilian airliner somewhere in the world”.

One must also remember – and remind Pakistan’s policymakers and policy implementers – that the results of Pakistan’s policy of supplementing non-state actors with weapons and financing – to whatever end – did not end up to be a fruitful policy for internal security (the state’s writ) or regional security (the state’s capability to project power) after 2004, and especially after 2007. This apprehension was acknowledged by the PM’s Adviser on National Security and Foreign Policy, during his policy statement in the National Assembly, when he mentioned that non-state actors should be controlled. It should also be noted that when Pakistan was about to send military forces to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in support of the U.S.-led First Gulf War in 1991, it was the incumbent PML-N in power that refused to interfere militarily – or allow the Pakistan Army to interfere and aid in shifting the power balance – in an Arab-Arab conflict.

It has been reported in July 2013 that the Pakistani Taliban are also partaking in the fight against the Assad regime – an apparent sign that the TTP has become a potent transnational threat, and that Islamic extremists and terrorists are actively involved in conflicts against the state so as to create a security vacuum (via revolt: khuruj) and then fill it with governance according to an archaic and apocryphal version of Shariah law.

In addition to the TTP, at least two Al-Qaeda affiliates/franchises (the Jabhat an-Nusra, and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb – now known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) are known to be taking part in the revolt against the Syrian government; at the same time, Al-Qaeda chapters in the Anbar province of Iraq (particularly inFallujah and Ramadi) have taken control of the cities and surrounding areas since January this year, expelling government, police and military from these Sunni bastions – now Nuri al-Maliki’s government is launching military counter-attacks in the run-up to crucial elections in the country. Al-Qaeda remains a threat to all Muslim states around the world: whether it is Sunni Saudi Arabia, or Shi’ite Iran or Syria, or multi-sectarian Muslim nations like Pakistan and Iraq (where it is more deadly in terms of increasing sectarian strife and supporting the Sunni or anti-Shi’ite militant extremists that already exist).

Latest reports indicate that the newly formed Syrian rebel group “Southern Front”, which has received Saudi support and whom Riyadh intends to arm with advanced weaponry, has openly collaborated with Al-Qaeda affiliates and allied jihadist militia factions in Syria – even though this rebel group was preferred over the “Islamic Front” so that arms provided to Syrian rebels would be “less likely to fall into the hands of Al-Qaeda”. The “Southern Front” is led by Bashar al-Zoubi, who is the commander of the powerful “Yarmouk Brigade” that operates near Daraa – elements of the “Yarmouk Brigade”, like those of the “Islamic Front”, are known to have collaborated with Jabhat an-Nusra.

Giving India a Golden Opportunity?

The shift in Pakistan’s foreign policy does not only invite the threat of relations with Iran going from bad to worse: it also gives India an opportunity to play the role of balancer or peace-maker between Iran and Saudi Arabia – a role that was custom-built for Pakistan, which enjoys friendly ties with the Sunni monarchy and shares a border with the Shi’ite theocracy. As Pakistan ceases to be non-aligned in this Sunni-Shi’ite proxy warfare being waged throughout the Muslim world, India hosted Saudi crown prince for a three-day visit from February 26 onwards while it was concurrently hosting Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif who visited India for a two-day trip starting February 27. Former Indian foreign secretary, Kanwal Sibal, postulated that, “It helps (India) to balance the relationship since both (Saudi Arabia and Iran) are pitted against each other in West Asia, in context of Sunni-Shia conflict… It is wise to have political communication with both sides. It is also optically good to have both visits in the same week.”

Since the Middle East region hosts around 7 million Indian expatriate workers who send approximately US$ 30 billion back home in remittances on an annual basis, Mridul Kumar, joint secretary (Gulf) in the Indian ministry of external affairs noted the importance India gives to forging stronger ties with countries in the Gulf, “This is really one of the most important relationships that we have across the globe. The Gulf countries provide almost 60% of our energy requirement. The Gulf countries are our largest trading partner by far as a regional group. And we are looking at an annual trade of over $180 billion, which is almost 26% of our global trade.”

Commentaries by Elizabeth Roche and Saeed Naqvi regarding India’s renewed focus on “West Asia” are particularly insightful and discuss reasons as well as intentions for India playing the role that it played in February (and that it might continue to play, until it is hindered by the U.S. or by China in doing so).

The Saudi crown prince also signed MoU’s (what the Hindustan Times’ Shishir Gupta termed “a major defence agreement”) with India on joint military exercises, hardware sales and transfer of technology. “Riyadh has signed a similar agreement with Islamabad” in the preceding weeks, Gupta noted, saying that “Riyadh has in the past indicated that it wants the Indian Army to train Saudi Arabian troops in mountain warfare by setting up a combat school [and it] also wants joint counter-terrorism exercises”. According to Gupta, a senior Indian official said (on condition of anonymity), “The [defence] MoU [between India and Saudi Arabia] provides for a proper bilateral defence policy group with defence ministries on both sides setting the agenda. Given the status of Saudi Arabia in the Islamic world, this is no mean achievement. It signals that Pakistan is no longer the only favourite nation for Riyadh in South Asia.”

As dangerous as these developments are for Pakistan’s international relations and its role in regional security – especially in terms of the traditional hostility between India and Pakistan in every dimension – Tridivesh Singh Maini of The Diplomat says that India has the chance to develop friendly relations with “key” Middle Eastern countries, but still needs “skill” to achieve a foreign policy trajectory that will achieve this objective. Maini says that a Modi-BJP-led Indian government may find it difficult to keep friendly ties with Saudi Arabia, but while a Modi government “may not find it difficult to accelerate economic cooperation and trade”, it will have to keep a “close watch on the turbulent geopolitics of the Middle East”.

Conclusion

As India has now started playing the role of non-aligned peace promoter between Saudi Arabia and Iran, Pakistan has badly damaged its position in the eyes of Iran as well as of Pakistani Shi’ites – as the government dispels criticism and says that there has been no policy shift because the government is merely committing to the agreements reached in the Geneva process, the opposition in the Senate as well as National Assembly has formally taken up the matter and given the government a tough time on its increased closeness with Saudi Arabia at the expense of its ties with its Iranian neighbour. PPP’s Naveed Qamar was quite vocal in his arguments when responding to Adviser Sartaj Aziz’s policy statement and clarification; he said, “we are calling for a regime change and opposing military operations in other countries at a time when our own military is conducting air strikes on terrorists … We should get our own house in order before interfering in the affairs of others” (the last statement being an apparent “slap in the face” to the PML-N and to the Prime Minister’s statement on his visit to the U.S. and after meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama). The upheaval in Pakistan’s parliament – which is otherwise silent or unaware of international political developments – over the issue of an alleged shift in foreign policy towards a country in civil war shows the political clout of Iran in Pakistan’s own internal political arena, as well as the importance given to friendly relations with Iran by Shi’ite politicians as well as the Shi’ite citizens of Pakistan.

Pakistan is depending on the Iran-Pakistan (IP) “peace” gas pipeline to restore some order and balance in the national demand and supply of natural resources. Even if natural resources aren’t as important in Pakistan’s foreign policy (even though they are crucial when it comes to dealing with the persisting energy crisis) as security issues are, it must be remembered that Iran – as a neighbour of Afghanistan – has a very important role in the stability of South Asia, especially as foreign troops depart by the end of 2014. Pakistan cannot afford to anger another neighbour on its Western border, as the incumbent administration in Kabul is overtly anti-Pakistan and the neighbour on the eastern border is least forgiving of all.

Has Pakistan’s neutrality actually been compromised? If not, will perceptions alone be enough to ruin Pak-Iran relations? What would be Iran’s response/backlash to Pakistan aiding the Syrian rebels by training them and giving them advanced weaponry? Will the provision of anti-aircraft weaponry to the Syrian rebels actually be a “game changer” in the Syrian civil war, putting more pressure on the Assad regime than ever before? And what does the U.S. want – does it really want détente with the Rouhani administration in Tehran, or will it continue destabilizing and weakening Iran at the behest (and with the aid) of Saudi Arabia as well as Israel?

Pakistan’s previous Middle East policy – based on Islamic solidarity – was in tatters as it actually supported the political status quo in the region, and therefore indirectly supported autocratic leaders in these countries. Arab exceptionalism was finally challenged by the tide of democratization and the “Arab Spring”, as an enlightened youth took to the Arab streets, demanding more freedoms and sweeping changes in the political systems of their countries. Yunas Samad noted that while the Pakistani military has seen secondment to many countries in the Middle East (including the stationing of a Pakistan Army armoured brigade in Saudi Arabia for over eight years in the 1980’s), Pakistanis were also recruited as mercenaries – particularly in Bahrain – in support of Sunni regimes. Samad said that, “If change comes, Pakistan may find that it has backed the wrong side and, keeping that in mind, it needs to develop a more sensitive understanding of the momentous developments taking place, and not view them from the Saudi perspective of seeing the movement in Sunni-Shia terms”. Pakistan still needs to be cognizant of the very real possibility that if these Sunni autocratic regimes topple, those who come to power afterwards – and those who put them in power, i.e. the Arab people – may view Pakistan in a negative light.

Pakistan must clearly define and outline its Middle East policy, since it was actively pursuing friendly relations with many countries in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 – especially after the “Arab Spring” was abating and some clarity and stability was being realized among many governments in the region. In the previous government, Pakistan appeared to have consolidated its interests in the immediate region, and affirmed its policy of supporting and facilitating rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Any departures from this policy will negatively affect Pakistan’s economy and foreign policy, and it will be very difficult for Pakistan to protect itself or recover from these negative ramifications. After the Saudi overture, Pakistan should take into consideration the diplomatic activities of India near the end of February – hosting both Saudi Arabia and Iran – and must make its own overtures to Iran (preferably by keeping Saudi Arabia in the loop). Pakistan can hardly afford any more complications in its relationship with Iran after 5 Iranian soldiers were kidnapped from the Iran-Pakistan border and are allegedly being held in captivity inside Pakistani territory.

Though friendly ties with all nations – especially superpowers like the U.S., China, Russia, etc. and Muslim states like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, UAE, etc. – should be a clear and actively pursued goal of national foreign policy regardless of which political party is in power or forms the federal government, Pakistan must carefully consider its own interests in the present environment and decide how far it can go without negative fallout.

TACSTRAT ANALYSIS

A spokesman for the Taliban, Shahidullah Shahid, said he wanted a ceasefire ”because of a positive response from the government, an appeal from the religious scholars and for the better future of Pakistan,” reports the BBC. He called on the Pakistani government to end U.S. drone strikes and introduce Sharia law in the country.

The two sides will meet “within a day or two” said Pakistani officials after 17 days of talks. “This is the first big breakthrough that we are seeing,” said Irfan Siddiqui, an advisor to the prime minister.

Violence has flared up in the region and hundreds have been killed by the Taliban in recent months as U.S. forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, and talks between the Taliban and the Pakistani government had dragged on with little to show until the ceasefire was announced.

Negotiations ceased last month when Taliban-linked militants said they killed 23 soldiers they were holding and the government responded with airstrikes on dissidents in the country’s northwest. On Saturday, a bomb attack on a polio vaccination team killed 11 in northwest Pakistan, but the Taliban has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

[BBC]

The countdown to the operation against the TTP has brought the country’s leadership to the sand table, their sole purpose: to establish the writ of the state in areas where the TTP currently run amok. With clear political directives on the matter, the military is in a better position to formulate a war strategy to realize these objectives. There can be no backsies; political parties can no longer score points by running counter to the government’s stance; and the army must realize that a stalemate on the battlefield will spell defeat.

This is Pakistan’s battle for survival. TTP might be enemy numero uno, but once the gunships arrive in FATA, militants outside the TTP umbrella: the globally oriented militants, Afghanistan-oriented militants, India- and Kashmir-oriented militants, Sectarian militants and cessationists will join hands out of sheer need for survival.

The air strikes conducted by the army have so far been largely successful. Indigenous drones have been used to provide precise intel for these surgical strikes. According to a news report, telephone chatter after these strikes has shown that the Taliban were in disarray as they were telling each other if such precise strikes continued, they would be eliminated without even a fight. But a wounded animal is a dangerous animal. While PAF jets and helicopter gunships prepare to strike militant targets in the hinterlands, the heat of the battle will be felt in urban population centres.

The army will be met with retaliatory fire in the war zone. The country’s militant hydra, however, has deep roots and presence in urban centres. A report by the International Crisis Group states that  provincial capitals are an attractive venue for militant and criminal networks to raise money, recruit foot soldiers and attack ethnic rivals, sectarian minorities and state institutions. That is because they have so far been allowed to settle there, be nourished and grow.

Once the operation begins, there will be backlash in the urban centres. However, it will not primarily target state institutions. The enemy will try to cut the state at the source of its legitimacy- the populace.

Earlier this month, the Baloch Republican Army claimed responsibility for blowing up three gas pipelines to the Punjab. Intelligence reports say this is the first of several attacks they have planned. Militant organizations have been unrestrainedly allowed to mushroom in South Punjab. With the Punjab-Balochistan border compromised, security forces other than the ones engaged in the operation will have to step up equally.

With nearing ten terrorism attacks this month, Peshawar is the first provincial capital to have felt the ire of the scourge. The ongoing crackdown against militants and miscreants in Karachi will have to be stepped up several notches to counter the reprisal TTP’s organized crime syndicate will mete. Sensitive state institutions will also have to go on high alert against any possible moles within their cadres.

The state should anticipate a no holds barred reprisal. It is very likely that the backlash in urban centres will be directly proportional to the success of the military operation. It goes without saying that provincial governments must take strong solid steps to secure the populace.

The federal government released its National Internal Security Policy on February 25. It stresses on the need to evolve a focal directorate for intelligence sharing and coordination. The Punjab government too has recently completed recruiting personnel for a new counter terrorism apparatus that also places great emphasis on intelligence gathering and coordination between the 33 intelligence organizations in the country.

These are ambitious plans and should be implemented in due time. However, the government also needs to realize that creating new institutions will take time. The cogs of any institution take several years before they can mesh together and develop jewel movements. The state must be able to differentiate between short, medium and long term strategies and goals. The development of new institutions, revamping old ones, trainings and plans are excellent medium to long term plans. The need for action is now. It is in the state’s best interest to implement a three tiered strategy in this regard. There is no time to lose and the state’s premier intelligence agencies should be put to task right now, while preparations for an umbrella organization continue side by side.

The Punjab Cabinet last week decided to launch a crackdown against holding and hoarding illegal weapons. All entrances and exits to the province will be under strict surveillance and a high security alert maintained. The ban on display of fire arms will be enforced. But the government must also empower the police. The Protection of Pakistan Ordinance allows for greater powers to law enforcement agencies and involves the state bureaucracy and judiciary. This must be implemented in all provinces without delay.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif approved training for 30,000 policemen at that meeting. He said the ‘modern training programme’ would be carried out expeditiously under a phased programme. Once the operation begins, the government cannot afford to spare any of its law enforcers. The is a need to appreciate the gravity of the situation here. Immediate requirements cannot be held subservient to long term plans.

The operation will coincide with the US pullout from Afghanistan this year. If carried out swiftly under the clear, hold, build strategy Pakistan could finally put an end to its own war against terror. The army must realize that this has to be an all-out offensive, without room for a stalemate. An impasse will undoubtedly spell a defeat and leave the state a hollow drum. War drums can be heard in every corner of the country and the time to act is now.

TACSTRAT ANALYSIS

The administration of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who came to power last year promising to find a negotiated peace with the Taliban, has been trying to engage the militants in talks but these efforts have faltered in past weeks.

The Pakistan Army on Wednesday said more than 100 soldiers had been killed by Taliban militants in the last five months: a rare admission of mass casualties since the start of government efforts to engage the insurgents in peace talks. Although the total number of soldiers who have been martyred in terror attacks since 2007 – or since the GWOT began in Pakistan – are considered to be over 10,000, the Pakistan Army has never released a periodic tally of its human losses against Taliban insurgents, a group operating separately from its Afghan namesake, and striving to overthrow the Islamabad government and install an Islamic state. The Army provides information and data to news sources and outlets whenever a terror attack occurs and military personnel are wounded or killed, but this data is revealed to the public by the media, and not announced by the military spokesperson’s office. Tallies of this data on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis are kept by various research institutions as well as state organizations and bureaus, but the release of the tally of the Pakistan Army’s martyrs during the timespan between the APC (when the Army’s unilateral ceasefire was completely set) till date – especially in terms of its troops, whose identity and association with the military is completely documented from time of entry to time of last assignment – is alarming and has come at a crucial time during Pakistan’s wavering (and now perhaps moribund) peace initiative with the belligerent TTP.

Requesting anonymity, security officials have released figures according to which 308 civilians, 114 military personnel and 38 police officers had been killed since September 2013. From January 1 to February 18 – in the first 47 days of this year – 47 terror attacks took place (literally at the rate of one per day) and while the number of deaths range from 100 to 250 to 300, the number of injured is well above 500.

According to the Daily Times:

It was September 2013 when Sharif convened a much-delayed all-party conference on the one-point agenda of peace in Pakistan: that meeting of Pakistan’s political and religious leaders – a forum that is unofficial and not recognized in any formal capacity by the state but apparently has more power than any House of Parliament – was reported to have unanimously opted for peace talks. Since then, talks between representatives of the Taliban and government officials started a few weeks ago, and signals of good news to be shared soon were frequently given using the media, but the talks process broke down earlier this week after a series of attacks on security forces claimed by fringe Taliban groups. These groups are part of the TTP but have greater autonomy than other cadres, and are continuing their attacks on Pakistan despite the fact that their leadership – which sometimes denies and other times defends and claims responsibility for these events – is negotiating on specific terms with the government for ceasefire and peace. The news about the execution of 27 Frontier Corps soldiers, coming a day after a TTP-claimed suicide bombing in Karachi killed 13 police commandoes and wounded dozens of others, increased pressure on the government to back out of peace talks till the TTP agrees to a ceasefire and enforces on all of its subordinate groups to adhere to it.

The Army publicly supports Sharif’s call for talks, but in private, senior officers have spoke strongly against it, giving rise to talk that the military are waiting for an excuse to mount a major operation – in various locations, but with targeted precision and calibrated requirements – against militant strongholds to achieve measurable goals against terrorists. A successful effort of that sort would convince the people as well as the policymakers that the stance of “no negotiations with terrorists” is an option that can be exercised both morally and militarily. And an excuse is already present with continuing attacks: proof the Army does not need to give to the government that while the military is observing a unilateral ceasefire so that the government’s peace talks initiative can plod towards an uncertain peace, the enemies of the public continue to attack Pakistan, make life hell for everyone, and cause casualties that sometimes cost a lot of money and at other times are irreplaceable and invaluable.

The lack of progress on peace talks has also given rise to speculation that the government, backed by the powerful army, is preparing for a ground and air offensive against Taliban strongholds in the tribal belt on the Afghan border. Since parts of the new National Security Policy remain classified, there are chances that the military might undertake “hot pursuit” military actions while chasing retreating terrorists and TTP networks across the Durand Line in Afghanistan – actions that, if made public, will sour relations with Afghanistan, and would need to be co-ordinated with the U.S. if they ever need to be implemented.

“An all-out operation is highly unlikely but a targeted operation is unavoidable,” a senior military official told this correspondent, requesting anonymity. “There is a very strong realisation among all stakeholders that the Taliban will just never give up the use of force and so they will have to be dealt with the use of force. We’ve already wasted a lot of time over this charade of peace talks”. The federal and Sindh governments are already engaged in a targeted operation against criminal elements and terrorist cells in Karachi: this has stabilized the security situation to some extent, even though threats remain and major attacks continue to take place.

Another intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss military operational matters with journalists, said a military operation was in the works. “It will not be carpet bombing,” he said. “But the army is ready for a full onslaught to flush them out”. Given past experiences, the intelligence official also said that plans were in place to clear and hold adjoining areas for civilians fleeing the warzones to encamp in safety and receive medical attention if they required so.

ZONEASIA-PK

A balanced and logical American expert on Pakistani affairs has again gone out on a limb to try and explain the complexity of Pakistan’s military strategy and security thought-process to an audience that apparently loves to bash Pakistan instead of aiding it in the War against Terrorism that America launched in the first place

Waving the “Bakvas Flag”, Dr. Carol Christine Fair – an otherwise respected assistant professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS) within Georgetown University, and also a senior fellow with the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. military’s West Point academy – recently came up with ten so-called “ossified fictions” that Pakistani defense officials apparently love to peddle. “In the spirit of perpetual rent-seeking”, she says, “Pakistani defense officials have recently alighted upon Washington to offer the same tired and hackneyed narratives that are tailored to guilt the Americans into keeping the gravy train chugging along”. Dr. Fair, also the author of the yet-to-be-published Oxford University Press book “Fighting to the End: the Pakistan Army’s Way of War” (a book on her impression of the Pakistan Army’s “strategic culture” which – according to her georgetown.edu website – was supposed to be published in 2013), is adamant in her point of view that there is nothing strategic about the U.S.-Pakistan bilateral relationship, and that the relationship between the two countries is not a “dialogue” (with the implication that America dictates to Pakistan what it wants Pakistan to do – certainly, Americans in politics and government want to think that way; and yet, they blame Pakistan for whatever ills and evils that befall the U.S., the South Asian region, and even Pakistan herself!).

Here is a blow-by-blow (or shot-by-shot, as the esteemed professor would herself prefer it) rebuttal of her ten fictions: what may be considered a Pakistani perspective as well as a candid, lucid, unbiased, holistic (due to the verbosity required in making sense of – and then repudiating – Dr. Fair’s unfair ascriptions of realities and fictions), and most importantly, sober – one might add, if for the flavour alone – analysis of the transformations that the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has undergone over the last three to four decades:

1. Pakistani defense officials say “our relationship should be strategic rather than transactional”. Are they wrong in saying so?

Dr. Fair says that Pakistan is completely vested in undermining U.S. interests in the South Asian regions. Of course, she fails to mention that U.S. interests in the region include:

Of course, like any economist – or American taxpayer wanting their money’s worth – Dr. Fair says that the U.S. has given Pakistan somewhere around $27 billion in military and financial aid, and “other lucrative reimbursements”. What she fails to realize is that according to independent estimates, Pakistan’s participation in the U.S.-led War on Terror has cost the American ally more than $60 billion in terms of lost economic growth, damage to critical economic infrastructure and security apparatus, and even more in the instability that America’s “policies for the region” have wreaked upon Pakistan: the government of Pakistan puts the figure closer to $100 billion in the past 13-to-14 years. Of course, why would an American care about the loss to Pakistan? An American only cares about the loss – or profit – to America, whether it be in terms of money or lives (yes, American soldiers have died in Afghanistan, because soldiers die in any war: but why have more than 40,000 Pakistanis died? Just because they sided with an angry America which was blinded by vengeance when a terrorist group led by a Saudi Arabian sent some Egyptians and Saudis to hijack American planes and kill over 3,000 American citizens and demolish America’s symbol of economic power? America’s real economic power took another 11 years to dissipate itself, and precipitated the Global Financial crisis or GFC of 2008).

As Pakistan is often blamed for supporting the Afghan Taliban and/or the Haqqani network – groups that the U.S. and her allies themselves funded during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan under the auspices of Operation Cyclone (seems like the professor of peace and security needs a lesson in history) to harass and hopefully defeat the opposing superpower – there is ample evidence that the U.S., India, and even Israel are actively involved in financing, supporting and propping up other terrorist elements in Afghanistan which do their bidding: from destabilizing Pakistan to carrying out attacks in China and Iran. This is apart from America’s financial, moral and political support to the very warlords who are still accused of war crimes and human rights abuses (particularly abuses of women’s rights, which the U.S. is afraid the Taliban will do if they come to power in Afghanistan again) by international organizations as well as by American rights groups. This leads directly to Dr. Fair’s third fiction, where she claims that Pakistani defense officials are delusional when they say “America used Pakistan for the Afghan jihad against the Soviets”. That is true: America pounced on the opportunity to covertly pummel its own arch-nemesis, even though it was in Pakistan’s regional interest to support the Islamist groups fighting the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan (which would have spilled over into Pakistan, and towards the warm water ports of the Arabian sea, as was the original design and desire of the Soviet Union). But more on that later.

2. The United States has been (and still is) an unreliable ally. That is an undeniable truth: because it HAS!

Stop the press! Did the United States NOT sabotage Pakistan’s peace process with the TTP – no matter how ill-conceived or ill-timed it may be from a military or strategic perspective – by bombing TTP leader Hakeemullah Mehsud in the first few days of November 2013? If the United States can’t have a negotiated peace with the Afghan Taliban, then the Pakistani state cannot have a peace process with the TTP either. That was the message for which Hakeemullah Mehsud (and the top leadership of the TTP, save Latif Mehsud, who was in CIA/American military custody at the time, and had been apprehended after he was conspiring with, or being recruited by, Afghan intelligence to destabilize Pakistan) had to die.

Consider the past – and continuing – alliances that the U.S. has had: it led its little brother, the United Kingdom, to war in Iraq over false allegations of WMDs (Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction which are yet to be found in the oil-rich country), and pursuant investigations (like the Hutton inquiry, which was destined to be classified for 70 years until October 2010) into “distorted intelligence” (or falsified, as the case may suit) led to horrible outcomes such as the suicide of David Kelley, a British scientist and expert on biological warfare who had also served as a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. Nevertheless, the “special relationship” between the U.S. and the U.K. continues. America’s other allies – like South Vietnam – did not fare as well, and were wiped off the world map.

In response to the unreliability of the U.S. vis-à-vis Pakistan, Dr. Fair says “rubbish”. How scholarly of her! She openly acknowledges that while Pakistan was an ally of the U.S. under the SEATO and CENTO pacts, the U.S. did not aid Pakistan in its wars with India (which Dr. Fair says was “non-aligned” because Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, was among the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement or NAM, but had put India firmly into the Soviet orbit, as is obvious with the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation of 1971, when India formally gave up its non-aligned status). This is true: the U.S. did NOT aid Pakistan in its wars against India, especially in the crucial 1971 war which dismembered Pakistan and resulted in the “bloody” birth of Bangladesh. If SEATO and CENTO were “specifically designed to combat Communist aggression” and not provide existential support to maintaining the territory of allied nations, then Pakistan’s leaders were fool to believe in the reliability of the U.S. as an ally. And if the U.S. was under no obligation to support Pakistan in its war against India (or the war that India launched against East Pakistan, to be historically accurate), then Pakistan was also under no obligation – like the stance the Taliban adopted when they ruled Afghanistan before 2001 – to support the U.S. and its inflated military ego in their Global War on Terror: Pakistan obliged the U.S. only because the U.S. had threatened Pakistan (and in fact, the every nation in every region of entire world, verbatim as per the U.S. President) that they had to choose if they were with the U.S. or against them (this being a more plausible and verifiable reference thanRichard Armitage’s threat of bombing Pakistan back to the Stone Age, which has already been converted into satire by Martin Lewis for the Huffington Post) – moreover, there were plans in place (which gave Armitage every reason to present his threat) which were designed to remove Pakistan from the world map (with the help of India and Israel – a map to the effect of depriving Pakistan of its western provinces and reshaping the broader Middle East and South Asia was made by retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters for the U.S. Armed Forces Journal in 2006, and has now been made public) if it did not comply with American demands for allowing military flights over Pakistani airspace and provision of transit bases.

The fickle alliance of the U.S. in 1971 led Pakistan to withdraw from SEATO, and CENTO (which by design did little to prevent the expansion of Soviet influence to non-member states in the Baghdad Pact area) was disbanded in 1979: this despite the fact that then-President Richard Nixon sent the U.S. Seventh Fleet to East Pakistan and particularly assigned Task Force 74 to engage in maneuvers that would deter India from overrunning the Pakistani Eastern Command. Led by the Aircraft Carrier USS Enterprise, the deployment of the task force was a show of force by USA in support of the beleaguered Pakistani armed forces, and was claimed by India as an indication of US “tilt” towards Pakistan at a time that Indian forces were close to capturing Dhaka. The Task Force meekly withdrew from the Bay of Bengal after receiving reports of Soviet submarines that were dispatched to shadow the fleet. Ghazala Akbar notes that the U.S. Seventh Fleet and Task Force 74 were never sent to prop up the then-West Pakistani armed forces or the Pakistan Army’s Eastern Command: they were sent to the region to be ready to aid the People’s Republic of China against a Soviet onslaught (China and the U.S.S.R., both communist countries, had a border clash in 1969, and President Nixon used this opportunity –as well as the good offices of then-Pakistani President Yahya Khan – to “open up” China to the U.S. and to the world). America’s alliance through SEATO and CENTO forced Pakistan to join the Non-Aligned Movement by 1979, while it firmly pushed India into the Soviet orbit of “friendship and cooperation” as early as 1971.

Dr. Fair acknowledges that Pakistan’s founding fathers and initial leaders viewed their relationship with the U.S. as a strategic one: “Pakistani officials beginning with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, and General Ayub Khan repeatedly sought to join American military alliances in exchange for money and war materiel”. The fact that the U.S. was not serious about this till the 1950’s is irrelevant: Pakistan itself became an independent nation in 1947, and rebuffed Soviet advances for an alliance – which preceded any American offer – because it was geopolitically, morally, and nationally similar to the values and principles that the American nation-state stood for, regardless of its post-WWII enmity with the U.S.S.R. or of the fact that it was eyeing a cordial relationship with India instead of Pakistan (even though it was more concerned with rebuilding a war-ravaged Europe at that time: the fact that the U.S.S.R. was already building an Iron Curtain in the eastern portion of Europe did not occur to many American strategists – apart from General George Patton and BND founder Major General Reinhard Gehlen – until it hit them in the face after the Hungarian Uprising). Of course, many freedom fights and members of freedom movements in post-WWII Eastern Europe believed the U.S. to be a fickle ally when it failed to aid them against a full-fledged Soviet military onslaught that installed puppet communist regimes in these European satellite states. Maybe the professor needs to see episode 2 of the gripping TNT miniseries “The Company” and understand why Pakistan is not the only American ally which believes in the notion that an alliance with America is worse than an open enmity with the world’s unipolar superpower; because the alliance hurts more, especially when the ally least expects it. This is true for states like Pakistan as well as for leaders like Musharraf, who was left in the lurch at the last moment by the Bush administration, which finally (and surprisingly, at a unique moment in history) understood that it should not meddle in Pakistan’s internal affairs when the then-President (and former Army Chief) resigned under the threat of impeachment.

Forget about Pakistan: what about the American-installed Afghan President, Hamid Karzai? He has repeatedly criticized America in public, on news channels around the world, and has rebuffed visits by senior American functionaries in the last few months so as to avoid pressure on the signing of the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) which is designed to give legal cover to a residual force of 10,000 U.S. troops staying in Afghanistan beyond 2014 (and perhaps operating outside the ambit and jurisdiction of Afghan law). Even Karzai – who many believe will be on the last American C-130 (or YC-14) transport aircraft carrying the bulk of U.S. troops and war materiel from Afghanistan – is known for his often contradictory views about how America is such a nice country for bringing a state, human rights, and high-speed internet to Afghanistan, but also a bad country for killing innocent Afghan civilians and villagers in cold-blooded reprisal attacks such as the March 2012 massacre in the villages of Alkozai and Najeeban – an event that was blamed squarely on one staff sergeant who went haywire, and (according to President Obama) did not represent “the exceptional character of our military”. This is the same military that carried out the now-famous Mahmudiyah killings (the gang-rape and killing of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi by United States Army soldiers in March 2006) and displayed many other traits of their “exceptional character” by gang-raping Muslim women in Iraq and Afghanistan – videos of such hideous attacks on the sanctity of Muslim women and of an entire Muslim nation are available on LiveLeak. This makes the United States an unreliable ally of women and a two-faced proponent of women’s rights: even women in American and British military service have been raped by their fellow officers because – according to Steve Friess writing for TakePart.com as recently as February 12, 2014 – these militaries have a “rape problem”. Sounds like (despite all the liberal liberties available to them in their home countries) they are as frustrated as Muslim males living in conservative societies!

3. The United States used Pakistan for its anti-Soviet jihad. Of course it did!

It embroiled itself in the decades-old Pak-Afghan Cold War, which Dr. Fair has herself referred to, for the erstwhile North-West Frontier Provinces (NWFP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) when the U.S.S.R. swooped down – literally walked in without U.S. intelligence even knowing about Soviet intentions till they were made evident to international media and to the Afghan people – into the landlocked state, and was poised to occupy Pakistan next in order to achieve its dream of acquiring a warm water port – in addition to strategically supporting India (which was a total Soviet subsidiary by the time, and refused to condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan despite the uproar in the international community) by completely destroying her arch-nemesis.

Dr. Fair remembers her South Asian history well when it comes to the rivalry between Pakistan and Afghanistan before 1994 (and maybe she knows a bit about what it has become after 2001 too), but by taking it out of context and placing the U.S. as a hapless, innocent supporter of Pakistan’s own policy, she is acting the pot and pointing at the black kettle. Of course, Pakistan and Afghanistan were rivals since Pakistan came into existence in 1947 – Afghanistan was the only country that did not support Pakistan’s entry into the U.N., as Dr. Fair mentions herself, without realizing that thus lay the foundation for icy relations (and a befitting response, as Pakistani defense officials say) between the two countries.

In her concluding sentence, Dr. Fair says that “it is important to note that Pakistan funded its own Afghan policy out of its own resources well before the first American dollar entered the fray”. Of course it did! Because the U.S. didn’t care before the Soviets got involved! And needless to say, it wasn’t just the U.S. paying: the Saudi’s matched the U.S. dollar for dollar in what became – according to Dr. Fair, after 1982, but according to experts who were involved in the “bear trap”, an operation that transpired as early as 1980 – known as “Charlie Wilson’s War”. A lesson in the history of Pak-Afghan relations from Dr. Fair betrays the fact that she did not watch the film of the same name starring Tom Hanks, and more importantly, did not note the quotation from Congressman Wilson that appears at the end of the movie. What Pakistan could not achieve from its own resources, it achieved with the help of U.S. and Saudi financial assistance, as well as U.S., Egyptian (and even Israeli) military assistance! And the U.S. became involved in the conflict at a time when Pakistan’s policy of opposing the Afghan state suited American interests in the region – if Dr. Fair thinks that the U.S.-Pakistan alliance against Soviet-ruled Afghanistan was merely transaction rather than strategic, then she is right, because the U.S. left soon after the U.S.S.R. did, but Pakistan could not leave, and continued with its own Afghan policy as it had succeeded thanks to the U.S. But at no point could it be said that Pakistan acted contrary to U.S. interests in a Central Asia dominated by the U.S.S.R. from 1979 onwards, thus laying waste to the fundamental component of the first fiction (mentioned above) that she has ascribed to Pakistani officials.

4. The United States is responsible for the development of al Qaeda and Islamist militancy. Of course it would hide the fact – and even deny – that it funded Osama bin Laden against the Soviets, but the fact remains that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, including its military and financial support for the state of Israel which is not recognized by any Muslim nation out of its own will (Turkey is a secular state, while Jordan and Egypt were militarily defeated by Israel, backed by American weapons and even troops, since U.S. Jewish troops can serve in the IDF), and its stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia (the Holy Land for all Muslims, regardless of which sect they belong to) is the main catalyst for the post-modern radicalization of the Islamic religion, supported by the rising power of petrodollars that props up Sunni monarchies justified by strict Wahhabi interpretations of Sunni Islam.

At long last, Dr. Fair begins this so-called fiction by conceding that it is “not entirely a pack of lies”. Precisely because what is mentioned above is historical fact coupled with an interpretation shared by Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia – the same kind of recruitment pool that terrorist groups and extremist organizations like Al Qaeda look for when they preach their ideology of hatred and revolt, i.e. “takfir” and “khuruj”.

But Dr. Fair goes back to the Afghan jihad to talk about Pakistan’s fear of Pashtun nationalism depriving it of its North-Western province and tribal areas, and states that the ISI was adamant that it run the Afghan jihad; Dr. Fair says that the “firewalls” between the CIA and the mujahideen groups remained intact “despite the CIA’s efforts to subvert them”. But in the next paragraph, Dr. Fair continues with her own pack of lies, arguing that the main Islamic militant groups were already established in Afghanistan before the U.S. got involved. Only one of the groups – that of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which exists even today, and is the northern front of the Afghan Taliban – had been successfully established by the ISI on its own, and other mujahideen groups could only be mobilized by massive amounts of funding which became available thanks to American interest and Saudi encouragement of the global “jihad” which attracted fundamentalist Muslims from around the world. Osama bin Laden was among such fundamentalist Muslims who helped established, and then operated, a support group for Pushtun mujahideen in the tribal areas, which had been successfully turned into a war industry after American and Saudi money began pumping through the area to Afghan warlords who are – as always – for sale to the highest bidder. In a classless Afghan society created and enforced by the Soviet Army, such warlords and tribal elders (maliks) would have no place – for them, accepting American money, Saudi ideology and Pakistani operational strategy was a matter of survival. It is the same American money – without “firewalls” this time – that is flowing to the Afghan warlords which were opposed to the Taliban and who created the Northern Alliance: to the CIA, even today, it does not matter whether these warlords commit human rights abuses, or whether they participate in the democratic process through the power of their political position and not by the force of their weapons and militias. Afghan warlords – and even the Taliban, in the form of extortion money and payment for safe passage of military convoys and supplies, otherwise known as “protection money” – have been given much more funds by the U.S. and NATO since 2001, just so the modern Afghan nation state can keep on breathing: even though it is on life support till the BSA is signed.

Dr. Fair still lays the blame at the United States – as well as at Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other supporters of the Afghan mujahideen – by concluding that the “anti-Soviet jihad surely was the crucible that gave birth to the global Islamist militancy that mobilized under the banner of al-Qaeda. It is difficult to imagine the existence of al-Qaeda had the United States supported the insurgency in Afghanistan on ethnic rather than jihadist terms”. Of course, now, the U.S. is correcting that mistake by supporting the non-Pashtun minority ethnic groups in Afghanistan against the Taliban, whose majority cadres are formed of Afghan Pashtuns and Pashtun tribesmen from the Pak-Afghan border (and from Pakistani Baluchistan, which Afghanistan laid claim to before 1979 because Afghans were settled there when Pakistan was born). Satire aside, the point is that the United States made its mistakes, and Pakistan made its own: the U.S. paid at the hands of Al Qaeda and the death of 3,000 innocent civilians on September 11, 2001, while Pakistan continues to suffer from 2007 till date not because of its support of the Afghan Taliban, but because of its support of the U.S. in the invasion of Afghanistan and the removal of the Afghan Taliban militia government in favour of a regime that is propped up by – and in all instances, may not survive without – wholesome U.S. and Western aid, as well as military support from the U.S. and NATO (and anyone else who is willing to let their soldiers become “white meat” for the Taliban).

5. The United States created the Taliban.

For once, Dr. Fair is half-right: the United States did NOT create the original Afghan Taliban. Mullah Omar created them in 1994 as a revolutionary movement. And Pakistan may have well supported them through the ISI. The Taliban insurgent movement that the U.S. and NATO created, as a result of their 2001 invasion, is the insurgency that has been gaining momentum since 2006. One wonders which Pakistani defense official Dr. Fair is speaking to when she hears that the U.S. created the Taliban, because – as is obvious from “Charlie Wilson’s War” and from other historical testimonies – the Taliban came about as a local, homegrown Afghan revolutionary movement against the rule of the warlords, and as more evidence comes to light, it may have been the fact that the Pakistani intelligence services – primarily the ISI – would have supported their rise to power (even though the ISI is blamed for supporting the Taliban in their failed attempt to capture Jalalabad, so to be fair to Dr. Fair, Pakistani intelligence is credited with the Taliban’s failures and not their successes; at least not until they started successfully killing U.S. and NATO troops!).

Despite religious and sectarian affiliations that Dr. Fair ascribes to Afghan mujahideen groups and to the Taliban cadres – who can most commonly be classified as Salafi Sunni’s rather than Deobandi’s or Wahhabi’s – it may be true that the Taliban movement from 1994 to 2001 was constituted mostly over Muslims who ascribed to the Deobandi sect. But, as a result of America’s aggressive military actions in the Muslim world since 2001, and the corresponding rise in Islamic extremism (read: hatred of the West and of American policies throughout the world) and intolerance, the Taliban insurgent movement – as well as Al Qaeda – have received recruits from not only Sunni Muslims belonging to various sects, but also from converts to Islam (such as Adam Yahya Gadahn, who is considered to be a senior operative of Al Qaeda). On that very note, America’s actions against the Muslim world have inspired many terrorist organizations and militant extremist outfits not only in the world that exists outside the United States of America, but also among what the U.S. would call “homegrown terrorists”, such as the “Buffalo Six”, “Portland Seven”, “D.C. Five”, the “Detroit Sleeper Cell”, the “Virginia terrorist network”, and many more. The extent of anger, hatred and outright revulsion against American foreign and military policy is such that a few weeks prior to his deployment to Afghanistan, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, now a former United States Army psychiatrist and Medical Corps officer, was forced by his conscience to pick up an FN Five-Seven pistol and target fellow officers of the United States armed forces as well as civilians, eventually killing 13 and injuring 32 in what is now known as the “Fort Hood shooting”. Major Nidal Hasan was, according to a local store owner, stressed about his deployment to Afghanistan because he might have to fight or kill fellow Muslims as part of his duty to his country.

Whether or not the U.S. has created the Taliban or Al Qaeda, one thing cannot be denied by Dr. Fair or any American scholar with a unbiased and balanced approach: the foreign policies of the U.S., no matter how self-serving, create an environment in the Muslim world which is antagonistic towards the West in general and the U.S. in particular, and this sentiment is shared from the Muslim household to the Arab street, from the homes of those innocents who have lost their lives at the hands of U.S. drones being operated from thousands of miles away by American military operators who are playing video games with the lives of real people, to the villages and rural countrysides of many Muslim countries where conservative values and strict adherence to religion is being challenged by American cultural bombardment and the contest of religious freedom versus outright blasphemy and disregard for one’s personal beliefs and associations.

6. Pakistan has lost more due to its participation in the Global War on Terrorism than it has gained in U.S. assistance.

While this has been dealt with earlier – with evidence from a variety of sources, Pakistani and foreign – Dr. Fair answers this “fiction” with an uncertain, somewhat tipsy answer. “Depends upon who is counting and what is counted”, she says, arguing rightly that this claim has “two components: economic and human”. Dr. Fair concedes that “Pakistan is right to question the degree of American generosity and it is right to question whether payments f or ‘services rendered’ is even generosity”. However, to say that “Pakistan is one of the biggest reasons why we are fighting the GWOT in the first place” is a blatant lie and misconstruction of facts – which is obvious because of the professor’s own perspective and viewpoint as an American (because she herself said “depends on who is counting”) – because if Pakistan is “one of the biggest reasons” for the GWOT, then the United States is “THE SINGLE BIGGEST REASON” as well as the instigator of the GWOT. Dr. Fair blames Pakistan for making Taliban “the effective force that they were on September 20, 2001”, ignoring the fact that they are a far more effective force now, which is despite the fact that Pakistan has been fighting (and is now trying to negotiate) with its own homegrown Taliban terrorist/insurgent movement. To bring up the issue of Islamist terrorism in India and lay the blame squarely on Pakistan is similar to saying that the U.S. created the Taliban or Al Qaeda: if Pakistan is responsible for religious extremism in the region, then India herself is responsible for the Muslim angst and sense of deprivation in the “world’s largest democracy”, and ignoring the Kashmiri struggle for freedom from 1948 till date, as well as the Gujarat pogroms, is a huge oversight of reality that cannot be forgiven, especially not when it is done by someone who professes to teach peace and security studies. How can there be peace if – when counted only from 1989 onwards – the total killings of human beings in (Indian-occupied to be precise, but Indian “administered” to be diplomatic) Kashmir are above 93,935, the number of Kashmiri children orphaned over 107,461, the number of Kashmiri women widowed more than 22,772, and the number of Kashmiri women raped, molested or sexually abused beyond 10,065? It is circumstances like these that have created conditions for uprising against the state not only in Indian Kashmir, but also in Afghanistan, and forced the removal of all U.S. troops from Iraq unless they operated under the jurisdiction of Iraqi law (and thus could be tried within Iraq, by the Iraqi justice system, for any crimes they would commit against Iraqi citizens – Muslim men, women and children whom they claim to have “liberated”). Moreover, to say that “Osama Bin Laden was safely ensconced in Abbottabad for ten years” is also a mis-statement of fact, since the compound where the former Al Qaeda leader was allegedly found, killed, and whisked away was only created (i.e. detected by American satellites) in 2006, and it is not likely for a terrorist commander of OBL’s stature to be fixed to a single location for more than a few weeks, let alone years. Dr. Fair needs to understand terrorist operations and methodologies in a much more holistic sense to understand how terrorist cadres, operatives and leaders continue to evade America’s military might and technological supremacy by using “Stone Age tactics” to deceive and defeat and much more powerful and overwhelming adversary.

To say that Pakistan “owes” the West and India “generally”, in light of the above facts and particularly with the above perspective in mind – which is obviously poles apart from that of Dr. Fair – is again, a sad statement made by someone who clearly has vested interests and a specific target audience in mind; by making such statements Dr. Fair is being extremely unfair, and is proving that she does not want to argue about facts on merit or evidence, but would like to do so merely on perception and perspective. In that sense, Dr. Fair is herself a victim of a fictional world, and seems subject to delusions of false grandeur or alcohol-induced stupor (which, again, would be quite unlike her, or anyone of her stature).

7. We care about Usama Bin Laden as much as you.

One wonders which Pakistani defense official would have said such a thing in an official or even in an unofficial capacity. How could a military official of a country who has lost more men-in-arms to the takfiri ideology and allied groups of Al Qaeda make a statement about “caring for OBL”? Has Dr. Fair been mistakenly considering someone like Munawwar Hasan or Hafiz Saeed to be a Pakistani defense official? Perhaps Dr. Fair thinks that Zaid Hamid is a spokesman for the Pakistan Army – too bad for Major General Asif Bajwa, for he thinks he is running the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) and is supposed to be the OFFICIAL spokesperson of the Pakistan armed forces!

To say that “caring about OBL” means investigating the matter to its logical conclusion is absurd: the matter remains shrouded in mystery, and the Abbottabad Commission report – leaked or otherwise – cannot be taken at face value unless it is confirmed and not denied by official sources. The reason why none of Pakistan’s senior officials, whether from the Army or from the political arena, were sacked or resigned themselves is because the U.S. presented – imposed, rather – its own perspective of the news story and on the perception of global affairs, while – as always happens in cloak and dagger affairs – the truth of the matter (of when OBL died, and how) will be revealed in the decades to come. Regardless of that, even if it was OBL in Abbottabad, there is no guarantee that he had a “lengthy redoubt” to the tune of ten years confined to that single compound – even intelligence experts in the United States would disagree with such an assessment, citing obvious trends of terrorist operations.

Prove that the U.S. Navy Seals Team Six ACTUALLY took Osama bin Laden from the Abbottabad compound after killing him. Why does the U.S. military fail to show OBL’s remains – or pictures thereof – citing reasons like “heightened threats to U.S. forces stationed in high-risk areas like Afghanistan” when the antics of American military personnel – like the rape of Muslim women, as detailed above – is more likely to cause greater existential threat to the lives of American troops than the release of some pictures of some person who has most likely been dead since 2004 (the U.S. has possession of KSM, who has allegedly murdered OBL during their retreat from Tora Bora: evidence to that effect – now relegated to “conspiracy theories” – has been made available from intelligence sources in both Pakistan and the U.S., but the real story has never been made public) and not 2012 (which was an extremely opportune time for the incumbent U.S. President to shoot first and aim for the stars as far as his stature as a commander-in-chief goes; this is the same person who won the Nobel Prize for Peace while fighting two wars at the same time!). Prove that the death of OBL was not merely a ploy to allow Barack Obama to win the U.S. Presidential election for another term despite the fact that his ratings at home had plummeted to an all-time low by the time the TARP Bill, the ObamaCare Bill, and other Presidential initiatives had brought America’s first black President (as well as the Democratic party) to the knees: it is no secret that in the coming elections, the opposing party – the Republicans – are poised to take over the Senate, after being in control of the House of Representatives since 2011.

8. Pakistan has an enduring interest with peace with India.

Pakistan does, but many in Pakistan do not realize it – maybe that is how Dr. Fair should have addressed this notion. Pakistan did not start every war with India (especially not the 1971 war), and to say that Pakistan failed to win is a matter of who is counting and what is being counted, as Dr. Fair herself said in an earlier fiction. While Pakistan may have achieved tactical gains both in 1965 and 1999, it is true that Pakistan failed strategically in 1965, whereas Pakistan successfully tested its nuclear deterrent in 1999 by debilitating an Indian military response across the international border. Furthermore, India also tried to incite war with Pakistan in 2002 after the attack on the Indian parliament, as well as in 2008, after the dastardly 26/11 attacks (the likes of which Pakistan faces every day, the kind of which the Pakistani people fear and suffer every day) – in both cases India also failed to achieve its desired strategic objectives, and only damaged the peace process with Pakistan, whether it is a composite dialogue or something else.

Does India have an enduring interest in peace with Pakistan? Not really. India is still dreaming of superpower status, with a rich and vibrant economy and a growing middle class with great purchasing power, but in no way can it challenge the regional status quo established by China, nor can it project itself further or in a greater quantum than China already has. And after that, China tells India, the U.S. and the world that Pakistan is our Israel, in a clear statement of how U.S.-Israel relations are similar to Sino-Pak relations in many ways.

The abovementioned atrocities that India continues to commit on a daily basis in Kashmir, coupled with the reality of Muslims in India according to the Sachar Committee report – which revealed in November 2006 that the status of Indian Muslims are below the conditions of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and that he overall percentage of Muslims in bureaucracy in India is just 2.5% whereas Muslims constitute above 14% of Indian population – are the main catalyst due to which Indian Muslims (especially those of an extremist dispensation) are forced to join, or attracted towards, militant groups that exist in India. Whether or not Pakistan supports these groups morally, financially or operationally is a matter that must be qualified with evidence and not on the basis of unsubstantiated media stories and dossiers of paper and ink: because Pakistan can respond in the same manner by providing dossiers of evidence or proof that India has been training Baluch insurgents as well as Mohajir mercenaries for decades.

It takes a Pakistani to realize that such finger pointing – at the scale of terrorist groups, to the scale of nuclear exchange – serves nobody’s purpose, and that both Indians and Pakistanis (at the state level as well as the non-state level) must look beyond these petty “non-issues” (as the Indian phrase goes) to actually see the merits in Indo-Pak peace: if India and Pakistan can become economically interdependent, for instance, it will be incumbent on them to find a mutually agreeable and peaceful resolution on the Kashmir dispute, particularly one that is acceptable to the Kashmiri people (who are divided between India and Pakistan by the Line of Control, or LoC).

Dr. Fair ends this particular fiction by developing a fantasy of her own: “While it is true that Pakistan must implement a defense policy based on India’s defense capabilities rather than assumptions about India’s most magnanimous intentions, it is also true that India would have no interest in Pakistan if it were not for the numerous terrorist groups that Pakistan supports”. This is tantamount to giving kudos to Pakistan’s alleged state policy of supporting terrorist groups in India, if there ever were such a state policy adopted and implemented by Pakistan or any of its organs. If Pakistan – which is facing an existential terrorist threat more deadly than any faced by India (despite the Naxal-controlled Red Corridor) or the U.S. – ceased to support terrorist organizations, will India cease to pursue peace with Pakistan? This line of argumentation is completely devoid of logic.

9. Pakistan wants a stable Afghanistan.

Evidently, Dr. Fair thinks that Pakistan is an irrational nation-state if not an unstable nation-state: that Pakistan, as a state, as a country, and as a nation, cannot learn from its mistakes, and cannot evolve with the requirements of modernity and the necessities and/or limitations of geopolitical strategy. Keeping Afghanistan unstable and subject to civil war through active or passive support of a militia government has come back to haunt Pakistan, as a similar militia movement (and not the offshoot of the Afghan movement, as Dr. Fair claims) is posing a grave threat to Pakistan’s western borders as well as to its cities and rural areas. Pakistan’s new government has repeatedly said that it has no favourites in Afghanistan, and that it continues to support an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peace process (despite the fact that the U.S. and their client state run by President Karzai are at odds over who is to talk with the Taliban and about what), but Dr. Fair says that “if Pakistan cannot create an Islamist, pro-Pakistan regime in Kabul that is inhospitable to India, it would prefer chaos that it can manage”. The past few decades have made it clear that if Afghanistan spirals into chaos, it will spill over into the region, and it will not be in the power of a single country, or a group of countries, or even a superpower, to manage the chaos that will come with an unstable Afghanistan now.

But Dr. Fair does raise some unique and inherently novel points in this “fiction”. She says that Pakistan “wants the United States to retain some presence such that it can continue marketing its relevance to Washington”. Perhaps she does not pay heed to PTI chief Imran Khan who says that the very reason for instability and absence of peace in Pakistan is the presence of foreign (read: U.S.) troops in Afghanistan. Secondly, she asserts that Pakistan wants some Taliban representation in the Afghan government, but does not want the Taliban to conquer Afghanistan: this is some highly innovative thinking on Dr. Fair’s part, and if this were actually possible at an operational, tactical and strategic level, then Dr. Fair would serve Pakistan well to show Pakistani defense officials how it can be done: how the pursuant chaos can be contained and what-not. On the note that “an anti-Pakistan Taliban government could even offer reverse sanctuary to the Pakistani Taliban who fight the Pakistani state”: this is either the deeply embedded strategic thinking of the U.S. that wishes to see a destabilized Pakistan, unstable enough to disable it and take away its nukes, or the U.S. that has some vested interest in controlling the TTP. While the Afghan Taliban and TTP do have mutual interests, it has been made clear time and again by the Afghan Taliban that the TTP are not their offshoot, and that the latter are not under the operational command of the former (even though the TTP acknowledge Mullah Omar as their Amir-ul-Momineen). Pakistanis do not prefer that the U.S. prop up a weak state in Kabul: it is a matter of fact and the ground reality that the U.S. HAVE propped up a weak state in Kabul which has failed to become self-sufficient and self-sustainable like the post-Saddam Iraqi state. The “concomitant stream of revenue” that Pakistan receives from the U.S. has become subject to much more conditions according to the latest Defense Appropriations legislation in the U.S. legislature – Dr. Fair would do well to keep up with legislative developments in her own country for this matter. If the U.S. exits Afghanistan with its tails between its legs, then it will be impossible for anyone to contain the Afghan Taliban, who will thereafter have regional if not global ambitions: and they will certainly have a plan for Pakistan, whether Pakistan likes it or not. Dr. Fair gives too much credit to Pakistan by assuming that the Afghan Taliban are an extension of the Pakistani state, the Pakistan Army or the ISI – if they were before 2001, they certainly are not anymore, and would never forget the betrayal of the Pakistani state and the Pakistan Army led by General Pervez Musharraf who allowed the U.S. to drive the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in their invasion of the country in 2001. In making an assessment, Dr. Fair betrays knowledge of an intelligence fact that is most often argued by Pakistan to be reason for the country’s western border areas and provinces to have become unstable since 2001: “As the U.S. security umbrella retracts, Pakistan can be sure that India will make a hasty retreat from the areas most important to Pakistan in the south and east of Afghanistan”. Pakistan has often argued that India operates consulates in these areas with the specific purpose of recruiting Pakistani tribesmen and anti-Pakistan elements, and with the intent of sending them back into Pakistan to carry out terror activities – in the same manner that, Dr. Fair alleges, Pakistan has been propping up militant groups in India and in Afghanistan to do so.

10. The biggest hindrance to U.S.-Pakistan relations is a ‘trust deficit’.

Berating the perspective of all Pakistanis, Dr. Fair says that, “Pakistan has long marshalled a highly stylized history of American perfidy such that it can guilt the Americans into continued support”. Of course, there is a history of American perfidy that has not been stylized by Pakistan, but has been sponsored by facts of history and by the evidence of actions undertaken under the auspices of American foreign policy throughout the Muslim world that betray this American perfidy, whether it is “Operation Iraqi Liberation”, or “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, or what you will. Dr. Fair says that, “the problem is not a deficit of trust, but rather, a surplus of certitude”, and further says that, “Both sides fully understand that America’s allies such as India are Pakistan’s enemies and Pakistan’s allies, such as the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, are the enemies of the United States”. In an understanding of reality that has, for the past decade, eluded both the Pakistani and American militaries – and has served to the benefit of the Taliban and the TTP – Dr. Fair rightfully says that, “the biggest hindrance is the obfuscated reality that, in many ways, the United States and Pakistan are more enemies than they are allies”. Even if the U.S. and Pakistan are allies, and wish to be allies, then they have not acted like good allies – neither side has, and this has benefitted the common enemy as well as the enemy of each individual nation-state. It has been argued time and again that the Taliban and the TTP have been more allied than the U.S., Afghanistan (post-2001) and Pakistan: for this very reason, the “hammer and anvil” approach to defeating Taliban militants in Afghanistan’s border areas – or Pakistan’s border areas, for that matter – has yielded little success. Terrorist sanctuaries exist in rural as well as tribal Afghanistan, along with certain contained areas of Pakistan – like India, Pakistan has a trust deficit with the U.S. which needs to be overcome in 2014 more than ever, because this is a far more crucial year for Pakistan (and in fact, for all South Asian nations) than for the U.S., which can – like it did in the past, after it fought “Charlie Wilson’s War” – pack its bags and leave. Whatever fallout or aftermath comes as a result of the security vacuum and the possible implosion of the Afghan state, it is Afghanistan’s neighbours – Pakistan, China, Central Asian states and Iran – who will have to deal with any and every outcome, and will have no choice but to deal with it. America’s position is different: like it did in Doha, it can choose whether to talk to the Taliban or to leave Karzai and the Afghan state at the Taliban’s mercy; it can choose to create a better and more conducive environment for peace and stability in South and Central Asia, as well as opportunities for Indo-Pak peace, or it can leave the region in a greater mess than it was before 2001. Whatever the outcome of 2014 and beyond, Pakistan will have to face the consequences, while U.S. troops go back to the land of shopping malls, bars, beaches, land of the free, and the home of the brave. They might still want to call themselves that, after failing in Iraq and failing extremely miserably in Afghanistan – who knows, like the U.S.S.R., they might implode after exiting Afghanistan?

If one needs to know the future, one must definitely contact Dr. Fair. But beware: scotch must not be rare.

As an honest, humble and serious conclusion to all the abovementioned, and with due deference to the proficiency of Dr. Fair in her subject of expertise, it seems necessary that the assistant professor visit Wikipedia every once in a while just to refresh her memory and knowledge of history and reality – particularly after her sessions with people who have vested interests and fine whiskeys to buy her off with. For her achievements and capabilities, Dr. Fair deserves much respect and maintains the admiration that is awarded to her by many Pakistanis both inside the country as well as those abroad, regardless of their affiliation or mindset. But it is clear that by publishing these “ten fictions” that she claims are frequently peddled by unknown Pakistani “defense officials”, she had a specific target audience in mind, and a specific vested interest to feed.

Grow up, Dr. Fair! It is far beneath you to quote facts that suit your theory while ignoring others that would allow you to develop a more balanced approach towards the kind of holistic analyses you are renowned all around the world for. And no amount of Punjabi cursewords will change the fact that you have deliberately created some fictions, and misconstrued others, for the simple purpose of “Pakistan-bashing” and nothing else. As you are aware of Pakistan’s reality and limitations, as well as the mindset of the Pakistani public, the Pakistani street, and especially the Pakistani military – on which you are still writing a much-awaited book – it would serve you well to consult your Pakistani associates (and some real defense officials) before you create fictions and ignore facts, and thus only perpetuate the cycle of mistrust and anger between Pakistan and the United States (rather than tone it down, rationalize it, and eventually bring it to an end, as the intelligentsia are supposed to and expected to do).

NEWSVINE – Simon Seaton