When US bombed Afghanistan with daisy cutters and depleted uranium bunker busters, I called it ‘hate’ built on illogical strategic and military premise. As events prove, my hypothesis got stronger. “If you have it, show it” was the impulsive reaction of the Bush administration to demonstrate its unchallenged broad-spectrum dominancespurred by notions of supremacy and religious orthodoxy.
To everyone’s surprise, the mess in Afghanistan was left to simmer and destabilise Pakistan whilst USA shifted its focus to destroy perceived havens of terrorism and sexed up weapons of mass destructionin Iraq. Actually, the sudden shift was to consolidate the oil rich Southern Front. Rather than ushering in democracy,the Bush-Chenney-Rumsfield-Blair nexus created anarchy with the obvious outcome of ultra-sectarianism. Within the complexities of West Asia and North African politics, hares hunting with hounds complicated the situations created inpost-world wars redrawn geographies.
This is Political Absolutism. “US Strategic mind is obsessed with dominance. A constant drift from a measured military response to countervailing strategic dominance …Past fifty years have witnessed the gradual rise of neo strategists who advocate covert violent activities in tandem whilst bypassing the defence establishment. They reflect aspirations of zealots, cartels, energy giants and economic czars riding the technological edge.” (I wrote in The Nation, Political Absolutism: a disaster in making, on November 19, 2009).Countries do not go to war with clear motives of geographical adjustments, ethnic, and sectarian reengineering as in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Protected up by the mighty Atlantic, USA could not care less.
USA learnt no lessons from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, El Salvador, Sandinista and Nicaraguan Contras. It also failed to learn any lesson from its arch rival USSR’s blunder in Afghanistan. In 2001, I was surprised to study a US War game that advocated military dominance for Broad Spectrum Dominance. The most shocking part was that the policy involved invoking sectarianism in the Muslim world to its advantage. To my disgust, Pakistan was listed in the periphery.
As highlighted in objectives of this military document, Iraq and Libya are no more, while Syria and Yemen are facing civil wars. Sectarianism has morphed to ultra-extremism. Back in 2002, I had commented that USA would suck up a part of the world and ultimately lose it. The world would become a very dangerous place for humanity. Millions of lambs will turn to werewolves with killing fields spreading world over. The tentacles created by this uni-focal insensitivity are spreading to Europe while Syrian migrants fleeing atrocities are being targeted for something they never did. The message in Parisis unambiguous.
The genie of rising ultra-extremism was born in the mindset that exploited sectarianism and set up torture camps in Iraq. Retired Colonel Jim Steele, a veteran of US atrocities in El Salvador and Panama was appointed as Vice President Cheney’s and Donald Rumsfeld’s personal advisor to Iraq’s Special Police Commandos. He set up units, trained and in violation of international laws of war and human indignity, oversaw the worst forms of torture. At that point, a Shia majority in Iraq was used against a Sunni minority that comprised Iraqi servicemen and Baathists. In due course, there was a Sunni uprising in Fallujah and Mosul that became the epicenter of ISIS/ISIL/Da’esh.
Arab Monarchies pumped it with Salafists, Turkey used it against Kurds. The west looked the other way while Syria was decimated. Like an old western movie on how the West was won, the good, the bad, the very bad and the ugly got together to make a broth that has emerged as the major floating threat to the world.
But the logic of irrational strategic thinking does not end here. Foreign sponsored militancy in Pakistan has been transplanted to Afghanistan (read Daesh), an area they use to attack Pakistan with local Afghan and Indian support. As this tentacle gains a bridgehead in Afghanistan, it will act as a counterweight to Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan. The scenario is all too familiar. OBL was transplanted from Sudan in C-130s at a time Sudan was willing to hand him over to USA. While Pakistan’s Zarb-e-Azb operation in the tribal areas reached its conclusive stage, the next enemy will be Daesh bases in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s armed forces will be kept busy with no respite. At the same time, Pakistan’s economic attrition will be maintained at a gasping point to tie it to international assistance.
How nations react to terrorism is a contrast. Around the same time that France declared emergency after the Paris carnage, Pakistan’s defence establishment was complaining of governments neglect in implementing the National Action Plan. The vitriolic media in quest of riding airwaves diverted the arguments to a fruitless end. It seems the political establishment does not have any stakes in Pakistan.
As for the US, I have previously written: “George Bush committed the cardinal sin of transiting to conflict at the wrong time against the wrong people, with wrong reasons. It was up to another Democrat Barak Obama to go down in history like Kennedy or choose the elastic conscience of Johnson. The lesson of history must not repeat itself. It is a Shakespearian irony that Senator John Kerry heads the Foreign Policy camp that put its conscience to sleep in 1964 when Kerry, US servicemen and people suffered on the false premise of TONKIN”(The Nation, A Question of Conscience, July 18, 2010). But this was not to be. Barack Obama like President Johnson has acquiesced and surrendered to the hardliners.
The conflict in Syria and Iraq is already spreading to Europe. Both the hares and the hounds will have to pause and make new plans geared towards reconstruction and rehabilitation through an international coalition. Else, the genie will consolidate in Afghanistan and become the next phase of this bloody conflict.
Pakistanis are 200 million resilient people refusing to die. With battle hardy armed forces, they have the potential to parry every crisis if the corridors of power can recognize and neutralise the economic hitmen within. Much depends on General Raheel’s visit to USA. He must have found it impossible to crack a nut that has hardened over four decades. If he thinks he will get space on his terms would be wishful. Soviet analysis cited Pakistan falling into the US camp despite sanctions in 1979 as the single reason for their failure. Time will tell if history repeats itself.
