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US planning to co-opt MMA?
This seems like the worst thing the US could do, but I have never understood American policy towards Pakistan anyway. They don’t seem to realise that the MMA is already coopted into the establishment of Pakistan, and that they wouldn’t be able to run private armies, support the Taliban, and churn out thousands of brain washed Jihadis if the Pak Army didn’t want them too.
The United States attempt to reach out to the religious political forces in Pakistan and get them to participate in the process of governance is a positive step but may not work out as intended, say sceptical liberal and political observers. The issue is being debated since the US ambassador to Pakistan Nancy Powell’s September 24 visit to Peshawar where she met with politicians from different parties including leaders of the ruling Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal government. The US move seems to try to replicate its experiment in Tajikistan where Islamists have joined the government following hectic efforts to get them to do so by the US and European governments.

Keen political observers in Pakistan, however, say it may not be possible to replicate the experiment here. “The fundamentalists in Central Asia are different. There it is more about non-participation in governance,” says Juma Khan, a Peshawar-based political analyst. Unlike Central Asia, religio-political parties in Pakistan have always participated in the political process. They have a vote-bank and they mobilised it pretty well in the last elections. Today, they rule the NWFP and are in the coalition government in Balochistan. “They have no reason to change their spots. They are in government on the basis of the very ideology which is anathema to the liberal forces in Pakistan and abroad. Why should they leave that anchor and begin to dance to a different tune,” asks another political observer.

This is an important argument. For the Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal to take a different political line would mean looking like any other party. “If they have to become liberals they might as well merge themselves in the PPP,” says an observer. Khan also points to the fact that in Pakistan the “situation is worse than Central Asia”. “The state supports fundamentalism and petro-dollars from the Arab states have made fundamentalists even stronger in Pakistan.”

During her meeting in Peshawar with senior leaders of a liberal political party, the US ambassador talked of her country’s successful experiment in Central Asia where Islamists were threatening the former communist-led Tajikistan government. She hoped a similar experiment in Pakistan might yield some good results. “That is what I understood when I sought her opinion on the MMA’s role,” says a leader of the party. This politician, who is also a member of the conservatives-dominated Frontier Assembly, said he did not agree with the American diplomat. “I told her that she should not treat Pakistani fundamentalists with those in Central Asia. The fundamentalists in Central Asia are completely different from those in Pakistan.”
The Islamists in Tajikistan where much more modernist, and mostly drawn from several clans who had been kept out of the power structure after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They may have wanted Sharia, but the Pakistani Islamists are in a completely different century from them.
The US government is working on the same pattern in Afghanistan also. They are trying to co-opt conservative leaders like former president Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani and Rasool Sayyaf. But Khan has strong objection to the US approach in Afghanistan. “The Americans have made a mistake by allowing former jihadi leaders to be a part of the government in Kabul”. That may be so but the policy cannot be entirely faulted. It is at least an attempt to try and reach out to the religious right and see if the rightwing would be amenable to becoming a part of the process of governance. “What can anyone lose,” says an analyst in favour of the approach. “They are politically powerful and can’t be wished away. It won’t do any good to ignore them. Reaching out to them may not do much good but neither can it do any more harm than their presence in the system is already capable of doing,” he says.
Taken with the alleged recent moves to negotiate with moderate Taliban, through Mutawakkil, it looks as if the Americans are cutting some deals that might lead to even more blowback.
The US and the European countries continue to stay in touch with the MMA government in Peshawar. Even the World Bank continued negotiations for a loan to Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani government. Donor countries, unexpectedly, did not cut off any aid to the Frontier government despite the fact pro-Taliban MMA is ruling the province. TFT approached the US embassy spokesman Bruce Kleiner in Islamabad to seek his government’s opinion on the issue but his office said that he was busy. Despite many calls, Mr Kleiner did not respond to TFT.
I beginning to think that America will hand over Afghanistan to the Islamists, to allow themselves an exit strategy. An Islamist run Afghanistan would be a natural ally to Pakistan, which is the reason they have been supporting the Taliban resurgence, through the MMA for deniability, all along.
Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-10-24
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=20284