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Do we know the enemy?
By Moazzam Husain

Waiting in line to drive through an army checkpoint on the leafy Shami Road of Lahore garrison, my driver hesitatingly utters: ‘Sir, can I ask you a question?’ ‘Yes sure,’ I tell him. ‘This is all a game isn’t it…. Ultimately they want to take away our nuclear weapons ... don’t they sir?’

With military operations under way in Dir, Buner and Swat and the question coming from a retired infantry soldier who is now employed as my driver I assume the ‘they’ means the Taliban, the troublemakers, the Islamists, the militants, the rebels or some such. Still, to be sure I ask: who wants to take them away? ‘Why, the Americans, the Jews, the Indians of course. After all they are the ones funding the Taliban!’ he exclaims. I stare out of the windscreen and let my mind wander … to Islamabad, Constitution

Avenue, to the information ministry. Do the folks there know how ordinary Pakistanis are thinking? Does this ministry even have a mission statement? NGOs and citizen’s groups — with meagre resources — have launched campaigns and held protest marches. We have even heard isolated utterances from members of the clergy, on how the Quran forbids suicide bombings. Even Al Qaeda and the Tehrik-i-Taliban have media cells to give a populist spin to their ideology so that it finds maximum resonance.

On the other hand, there is no visible attempt from Pakistan’s Ministry of Information to develop a systematic campaign as a counter narrative to this ideology. If not the information ministry where in the haystack of our ministries and government departments will I find this needle? A narrative that will also get the respective constituencies of Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan and the religious parties to ask: if you want to negotiate with the Taliban then first decide, is the constitution of Pakistan negotiable? Is our democracy negotiable? Is the Supreme Court of Pakistan negotiable? Is the state’s writ negotiable? Are the custodial controls of our nuclear weapons negotiable? The first rule of negotiation is that you do not come to the table empty-handed. The second rule is that you have to be prepared to give away something.

As the car comes to a stop at the barrier I realise I am looking directly at a beard, and then up at the face from which it originates — running halfway down the chest. There is no turban, instead a red beret and the military police armband. In place of an AK-47 and rocket launcher slung over the shoulder, the weapon is an MP 5, held — as a professional soldier would hold it — slung down to the hip, one hand on the weapon.

Witnessing a Pakistan Army exercise some years ago, Colonel Brian Cloughley, who was then Australian defence attaché in Islamabad, had crawled into a dug-in artillery observation post. Inside a young officer had shown him a laser range finder — a device used to measure distance. As Cloughley was examining the high-tech device, the officer treated him to an exposition of how there is in fact no need for advanced technology, if one believes in Allah.
On another occasion he was informed by a junior officer on how the beard of one of his soldiers had turned red on its own … in fact because of the piety displayed during his recent Haj. The commanding officer had buried his head in his hands but had made no comment.

For the most part, personnel deployed at nuclear sites are screened. As a matter of principle, why not extend this precaution to cover all members of the military? In this way, the primary role of military counter-intelligence would be to watch for any sympathisers.

As a means to guarding the rear, a systematic programme to curtail the undesirable activities of the clergy would be immensely effective. In the first instance they should be persuaded to change sides. Preaching in mosques needs to be put under the control of the security apparatus of the state. Mosques and clergy under strong state control can be made to function as a powerful via media through which to disseminate the counter jihadi narrative.

With the space closing in on Al Qaeda as a result of the above initiatives its response will be to turn down the volume of the conflict in Swat (and Fata) to a low-intensity war of attrition. After it has drawn the army into the valleys and the Taliban have fled, Al Qaeda’s 055 Brigade and diehard Taliban will dig in. They will seek to bog down the army through suicide bombings at checkpoints, hit its convoys with roadside improvised explosive devices, and carry out guerrilla hit-and-run operations on its supply lines. During this drawn-out conflict, Al Qaeda will seek to precipitate another crisis with India. It is therefore important that this time the army should eliminate and net as many militants as operationally possible. This is best done by blocking their exit routes out of Swat and follow up by combing the area in a dragnet operation.

Back at the checkpoint, the Suzuki Bolan van ahead of us is waved through. Driving it is a burly bearded fellow wearing a skullcap. A kid occupies the front seat, also wearing a skullcap and two veiled black bodies are on the back seat. Seen from the corner of the eye an unremarkable Toyota Corolla except for a US college sticker on its rear windshield has been pulled over. The occupants, two young boys, one wearing studded jeans another in knee-length shorts, stand facing a security man. He is casually checking their documents but appears more amused by one’s tattooed arm and the other’s pierced eyebrow. Another one snickers as he casually checks the car.

As we pass through, my mind is once again wandering — would the driver of that van, the man in the skullcap; condone the negotiating away of our constitution? What about that officer that, Col Brian Cloughley had met at the war exercise — the one who thought you didn’t need sophisticated technology if you believed in Allah. What if he’s guarding our nuclear weapons right now? It wanders still further … to President Zardari using the metaphor of cancer to describe the Talibanisation of Pakistan. Isn’t that when healthy cells turn malignant and rapidly multiply? And I thought we said we knew what the enemy looks like.
Posted by: john frum 2009-05-10
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=269472