A story of a prince and his powers

published first in The Frontier Post

We will only discuss Machiavelli’s prince today and his powers, for he is the only thing that is relevant now, the only character that makes sense, irrespective of all the chaos prevailing around him. As it was said, to understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be the people. So here is a story of the people, and a prince who ruled over them and, not taking into account a few setbacks here and there, enjoyed absolute powers.

So the prince came on the throne, rather he acquired the throne when nobody was expecting he would. But the throne had its own fascinations and inclinations. His job was tough and the work was cut out for him. The last benevolent prince had left plethora of problems for his succeeding mate – benevolent because he was too merciful to be leaving nothing for his predecessors even the things that were duly his - but he had left some powers also, and as long as these powers were there the prince was never to be mistaken as a nominal or a constitutional head. He had to be a partisan in executing all those powers for this is what a prince is supposed to do.

There were many diseases afflicting the state when the prince ascended the throne. Machiavelli had urged the prince to address them instantly. Machiavelli wrote, “And what physicians say about disease is applicable here: that at the beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, not having been treated or recognized at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same thing occurs in affairs of state; for by recognizing from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure.” These gifts to the prudent ruler were never identified well in time.

The prince scrupulously followed Machiavellian views that benefits should be conferred gradually; as they would taste better in this manner, but he at the same time forgot when Machiavelli had said that a wise man does at once what the fool does finally. Resultantly, the prince delayed a restoration of a people’s figure, not knowing that it was something inevitable, and in the end he had to beat a hasty retreat. His prestige seemed to wane but he still had the powers; the powers that he was not willing to shed; the powers that earned him many envious enemies.

The prince knew the quote, “Promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.” Machiavelli had taught him that a prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise, and hence he told his people that his promises are not ‘decrees of heaven’, and every prince is supposed to play shenanigans on the board of chess. He knew that he must keep the illusion of keeping his word and be reliable, but he must only do that when it suits his purpose.

Everything seemed fine on the surface. The prince liked visiting other countries, making friends at important places. He was living his tenure to the fullest amongst all his enemies. What he did not know was that a constant hatred was building up among his people, and that was the very feeling Machiavelli had warned him against. There were other portents as well against which he was warned.

He had been taught that the first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him. But alas, the people around him were no better than sycophants who could only cajole him and could not tell him the truth. He could not guard against flattery; he could not convince people around him to speak the truth. He still would have been the powerful ruler, had he shed some superficial powers to isolate his enemies. But his advisors were not smart enough to comprehend this. They persisted that the prince should be obstinate about it. And at last, this very obstinacy proved to be his last and the final undoing.

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A comprehensive strategy

What happened in Peshawar was not just another terrorist attack. It was a heinous and despicable act of brutality, devoid of even the lowest ebbs of humanity. The bomb exploded in a crowded market filled with innocent people – including a large number of children and women – and the catastrophic images soon followed. Let’s face it; our security agencies have failed us – not because they failed to prevent such a disaster – but because they have allowed the situation to deteriorate this far by pursuing arbitrary policies of expediency for a long time. We are harvesting only what we had sown.

I had written in May 2009 in one of my articles, “To consider use of force an inevitable tactic is one thing and to call it an ultimate solution of the ongoing crisis is totally another.” I am afraid we have not still understood the difference. Somebody recently asked me about the biggest problem with our strategy and I replied we do not have any strategy. Yes there was once a nebulous story of 3 D’s – dialogue, development and deterrence – as the time passed it looked more like ‘drones, damage and daze’.

The policies currently being followed are only reactionary in nature. Problems in Swat? The Fazlullah do not obey anymore? Okay, let’s throw the troops in. TTP is getting too hot to handle? Send the soldiers to Waziristan. Somebody inquired what about Hafiz Gul Bahadur who hails from North Waziristan. Oh, well let us make a deal with him as he hates Hakeemullah as much as we do.

The problem is not confined to Waziristan only. It is very much amongst us – in our towns and cities. It is not that we are not trying to put out the fire, it is just that we are only throwing water on a single tree while the rest of the woods are burning and will soon burn down everything. Let’s see how any other government would have dealt with the situation.

Bali bombings in 2002, which killed more than 200 people, were a rude awakening for the Indonesian government. Indonesia, being the largest Muslim nation on the earth, faced a serious internal terror threat. The Indonesian society was riddled with conservatives, who the authorities fear will swell the ranks of extremists. Jemaah Islamiah, an organization said to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda, was recruiting actively young people not only from Indonesia but also from Thailand and Philippines to carry out terror acts. That was the year 2002. Since then there has been a remarkable decline in the terrorist activites. The top leaders of Jemaah Islamiah were caught, its terrorist centres were dismantled, and all this was achieved with major public support within few years.

Indonesian leaders knew that they could only win this battle through public support, by making sure that each day they catch few militants there are not dozens of other recruits to replace them. Ultimately to win the hearts and minds, even of the militants, they started deradicalization programs. What they did was that they reached out to militants who were willing to renounce violence in order to receive some incentives like reduced sentences. They hired those militants to fight terrorism itself by sending them to places like breeding grounds of Jemaah Islamiah, or by sending them to jails, in order to preach other terrorists about the un-Islamic nature of their mission, to tell them about the sanctity of human life in Islam. It did not just stop there. The former militants often came on televisions to remorse their role in terrorist activities. The media campaign was very much effective in this regard.

Similar radicalization programs are being adopted by other Arab countries. Los Angeles Times reported on that recently in these words: “Under the Saudi version, militants in jail who agree to undergo intense classroom sessions receive shorter sentences. The sessions, designed to convince extremists that Islam does not condone terror, come combined with psychological deprogramming. The deprogramming resembles techniques used on cult members, and it also allows psychologists to assess whether militants are joining the deradicalization program just to be released and return to extremism”.

Are our Ulemas ready to play such role? Will they for once stop blaming others for our own follies and start proposing solutions in which they are an active part of it? We have in jails a large number of alleged militants waiting to be put on trial. The anti-terrorism law is in place but is not proving effective. Whilst the government is busy extending ordinances (read NRO plus) to exempt felons from justice, no one is paying attention to strengthen the procedure through which terrorism or extremism can be checked. Well, who would need an anti-terrorist act when you can just walk free by filing a petition mentioning the word of ‘political victimization’? Tough times for courts may lay ahead as they will soon be bombarded with petitions from every criminal in the country seeking exoneration under the newly proposed NRO plus.

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Testing times

First Published The Frontier Post

So it has come to this. The desperadoes will now not discriminate between the combatants and non-combatants. Well, the line between ‘infidels’ and ‘believers’ was always hazy and fluctuating, and innocent civilians always took the blows but this time there were no lines whatsoever. Every young student had to pay the price. The bombings at International Islamic University brutally demonstrated the fact that the make or break point has come for Pakistan.

Sun Tzu had written centuries ago in ‘Art of War’, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat”. And here we stand not knowing what we are up against; what has been eating us from within. We are still confusing too conveniently the growing American influence in our lands with the ever increasing radicalization of our society. Ask anyone from a religious right wing party to condemn an act of terrorism or extremism and he will start his harangue about how the Americans have penetrated inside Pakistan and you will hear every conspiracy theory in the market.

We are yet to define victory in this war for Pakistan’s survival. How can you defeat a certain ideology? The victory here is certainly not ascertained by body count. The important thing to defeat terrorism is to get public support and to alienate the miscreants from the local population. All roads of terrorist attacks may lead to South Waziristan but all solutions will not emanate by only sending the army there. The operation Rah-e-Nijat is the mother of all battles but it has got to be followed by some concrete changes in the mindset of establishment. Few heads will have to roll. The distinction between a good Taleban and a bad Taleban will have to be done away with. The policies of pursuing strategic objectives with the help of proxy elements might have worked in the past but there is no space for it in today’s world.

It is true about the Americans, the more they try to help the more they hurt us. And they are too dumb to understand this. Condoleezza Rice once asked French President Sarkozy on his victory in elections what she could do for him. “Improve your image in the world”, said Sarkozy. Alas, she never understood the importance of it. Kerry Lugar bill may contain all good things for Pakistan over a long period of time. But then again Quetta and Muridke are mentioned as terrorist bases in the document. Intelligence agencies have been asked to ‘cease’ support to terrorists codifying that they have already been doing that. Pakistan has sacrificed too much to be humiliated like this and that too only for $1.5 billion. We should say to the Yankees, “Thank you very much. If you really want to help us, keep your drones away from our lands.”

It is important that we distance our efforts to curb militancy from the Americans’ War on (t)error. We are fighting because all the Baitullahs, Fazlullahs, Hakeemullahs have no place in Jinnah’s Pakistan. We have got nothing to do with the follies of Americans stranded in Afghanistan. They have always started wars which they could not finish. History is happening to them but we have a crisis of our own to deal with.

The government is at loggerheads over the deteriorating security situation in the country. Status of Rehman Malik has been reduced to that of a story teller and of a prophecy maker who comes on the television after the blast only to say, “See I had told you, it would happen”. Whoever said that TTP was history after the death of Baitullah should say no more. This Frankenstein is boiling and spilling all over. The battle of Waziristan will be tough. There are said to be more than 10,000 militants operating there who are well-fortified and well-equipped.

Then there is another element. It is the militancy in South Punjab. Men who planned GHQ attack are said to be from Punjab. With our heads turned towards Waziristan, one may dare to ask, is there any strategy whatsoever to check extremism in other parts of the country? The government has not even made a serious effort to register all the religious seminaries, what to speak of regularizing their syllabi or keeping tab on their revenues.

Leadership, the most important commodity in times of crisis, is something that we are short of. All we have got are accidental captains of our ship and they have been suddenly asked to steer us away from the storm. We will have to manage the best from the available resources.

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The Peace Process

Published first in The Frontier Post

Let's not get carried away by the joint statement issued after the meeting between the two Prime Ministers Yousaf Raza Gilani and Manmohan Singh at Sharm El-Sheikh. India has not conceded anything. This is what Manmohan Singh reminded us all when he was talking to Indian journalists later on. It was apparently another somersault performed by the Indian Prime Minister, when he reiterated that peace talks were on hold until Pakistan took a credible action against the perpetrators of Mumbai attack. However, it is not what the joint statement contained on which he signed. The statement issued had explicitly stated that "action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed".

Such is the chemistry of relationship that is present between the two arch rivals. When it comes to Pakistan and India, it is not only the prime ministers of the countries which define foreign policy towards each other. There are so many other intricately linked factors involved - be it the media or various lobbies which have vested interests. There are warmongers who would lose their jobs if war is not in the equation. There are various hawks whose public approval ratings only increase if they speak out venom and vilify the other country. The leaders on both sides of the border will not want to be seen conceding their stances. Amidst all this it is not surprising if Manmohan Singh did not try to sell the joint statement to a group of Indian journalists. But in not doing so, he has again given the handle of peace process to a third party, which in this case happens to be terrorists.

Just as India should refrain from allowing the issue of terrorism to sabotage the peace process, similarly Pakistan should equally not use the stalemate in Kashmir issue to hinder any chances of progress in other sectors of Composite Dialogue. Yes, Kashmir is the core outstanding issue which needs to be resolved according to the wishes of Kashmiri people. But then again, you have to pass through the crust to reach the core. Making headway in other issues can create a propitious environment to solve the core issue.

It was not long ago, in 2005, when Musharraf and Manmohan had together touted that peace process had become 'irreversible'. Then the world saw how the events unfolding in Taj and Oberoi hotels flouted that myth of 'irreversible' peace process. Indeed, it was 2005 when people to people contacts had reached the maximum; when the bilateral trade figure was soaring up to $2 billion mark; when there were talks about joint anti-terrorism mechanism. So what went wrong? Or will our future relationship continue to be defined by the isolated activities of some rogue elements?

Shireen Mazari writes that the Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) had become an end itself. While Pakistan was seeking a conflict resolution, India came to the tables with the policy of conflict management. With absence of any major progress in conflict resolution in the last decade, the peace process was largely celebrated as the absence of tensions and not the presence of harmony. Harmony comes only, when the civil society, businessmen and the media are the stakeholders of peace process, and not the politicians, who sit behind doors to show flexibility, but would fail to sell that in the public.

According to Khurshid Kasuri, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce had appealed to the Indian government during the tension era of 1999-2003 to improve relations with Pakistan, as the economy, which had registered growth of 8% in early nineties, experienced a decline in 1999-2003. This is what can happen on a large scale when the peace process is hailed publicly by the groups who have genuine interest in the progress.

Improved relations between Pakistan and India are not only important for bilateral reasons but also for regional and global cooperation. Healthy bilateral environment can pay dividends in the solution of Afghanistan as India is also in the Obama's contact group for Afghanistan. Then there is a dilemma of a 'dead horse' named SAARC, which can be revitalized if there are no bilateral tensions among the member countries.

Lastly, it is as important for Pakistan as it is for India to see the perpetrators of Mumbai attack getting punished. Terrorism is a regional issue, which deems a threat to the stability of this region. Pakistan is already paying a heavy price to this menace. The last thing Islamabad would want is to jeopardize the rapprochement with India due to its lackadaisical response to the terrorist networks responsible for Mumbai carnage.

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Obama's Afghanistan

Published first in 'The Frontier Post'

Abraham Lincoln said: "What has once happened, will invariably happen again, when the same circumstances which combined to produce it, shall again combine in the same way." Obama may like to recall this, especially when he has launched a new offensive in Afghanistan. The situation is precariously similar to what was when Lyndon Johnson was at the helm of affairs. He inherited the Vietnam War from his predecessor. He went for the increase in the number of US troops. The number rose from 16,000 in 1964 to 553,000 by 1969. But it failed to do the job and Richard Nixon had to pull out after buying some time for face saving. New Zealand and Australia decided to pull out earlier in 1971 and were followed by US in 1973.

This time the battlefield is Afghanistan. Obama has inherited a war in a landscape that is notorious for brutal civil wars throughout history. Genghis Khan failed to prevail here even with his naked barbarity. The Great Britain retreated in 19th century. So did the Russians when they were 'Vietnamized' in a war of attrition. However, Obama thinks he can win it.

The Operation Khanjar, which is the first big offensive of President Obama, must be seen in this background. This time the plan is to enter into Helmand, the stronghold of Taliban, and to hold and build the area for the upcoming Afghan elections. Obama has already increased his troops by 21,000 which have brought the total number of US boots in the ground to 68,000. Simply put, this number is not enough to win Afghanistan militarily. Perhaps, Obama would like to pay heed to the advice of Fikryat Tabeyev, the former Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan from 1979 to 1986, who is of the view that no escalation in troops can bring a lasting peace in Afghanistan.

The coalition countries already know this and hence we saw the reluctance of committing more troops in the last NATO summit. Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, has already termed the war 'unwinnable' and has refused to pledge more troops. So what other choices does Obama have to pull his country out of this quagmire?

To answer this, let's go back to the beginning for a while. The US only came in Afghanistan to capture Osama Bin Laden and to disrupt al-Qaeda network. There were no other grandiose goals like nation-building or promoting democracy of moderate elements. Milton Bearden, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan during 1986-89, wrote in 2001 prior to the US invasion: "Washington may be tempted to try to oust Taliban regime, but doing so could rekindle Afghan's brutal civil war. The United States must proceed with caution - or end up on the ash heap of Afghan history." But the Yankees lost the sight of this, turned their faces towards Baghdad, and had put too much in their plates which they could not eat.

The US must understand that no amount of elections can bring a representative and a consensus based government in Kabul unless all the ethnicities including the alienated Pashtuns take part in it. Then, Washington must have an exit strategy, for the lasting peace will be given a serious chance only once the foreign troops are off the soil of Afghanistan. Henry Kissinger proposed one such strategy while writing in the International Herald Tribune. He propagated a formal neutrality of Afghanistan that would be guaranteed by all of its neighbours and the big powers, while, the government in Kabul will give assurances of not exporting terrorism. Treaty of London of 1839 is one accord that comes in one's mind which contained a similar agreement of neutrality of Belgium.

Afghanistan has always been the battleground of war of proxies between different nations. The inclusion of India in Obama's contact group for Afghanistan should not be seen with suspicion. For if India is on the table along with the neighbours of Afghanistan, the prospects of reaching a comprehensive agreement of neutrality of Afghanistan are much brighter, provided if the concerns of Pakistan are also addressed. But for this to take place, Obama must connect all the dots in the region - be they in Tehran or in Srinagar.

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