Sunday November 1, 2009

Lower profiles look and work better

BEHIND THE HEADLINES
By BUNN NAGARA

IN the fog of war, chance or wilful misperceptions often happen for ideological or partisan reasons.

By late 2005, the “al-Qaeda in Iraq” group was getting out of hand and on some Sunni tribal militias’ nerves. There was also inter-group rivalry in the smuggling trade, with one tribe allied with al-Qaeda putting another out of business.

The Sunni tribal groups in Anbar province not allied with al-Qaeda then came together against random terrorist attacks while generally complementing the US military role. In time this “Anbar Awakening” had the effect of reducing incidents of spontaneous violence, but the US-led occupying forces took the credit for themselves.

In early 2007 the Bush administration announced a “surge” in US troop numbers, saying this would help keep violence in check. Over the following months the US mainstream media reported faithfully, echoing the administration line even when UN figures based on hospital and morgue reports saw rising numbers of casualties.

By then, the ideology of raising the number of occupation troops to lower casualty figures had stuck. The notion also became transferable to other countries plagued by militant violence: Afghanistan, then Pakistan.

In northern Pakistan’s Swat Valley, a truce ended in late 2007 after four years of on-off fighting between militants and government forces. Since then despite basing 20,000 soldiers in the area, the valley remained under the militants’ control.

In February this year the government offered the militants a controversial deal: ensure peace and order in Swat, and the Taliban’s extreme form of syariah law would be allowed. Within two months, Islamabad deemed this had not worked and opted to attack the militants. This took another two months, after which government forces secured the valley. Troops then turned their attention to flushing out Taliban militants in South Waziristan from mid-2009.

For a while, Islamabad’s tough new line on militants seemed like it was working again. This had the added benefit of pressure from a United States that wanted to see its aid dollars bring results. And then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to visit Pakistan. She had been warned before going that the bad US image since the Bush years could deteriorate further, but she thought she was different enough to mend things.

Unfortunately for her, the vast majority of Pakistanis disagreed. Among the points of contention was the continued US policy of using Predator drones to attack terrorist suspects, indiscriminately killing many civilians.

It took three days in the country to prove Clinton’s optimism about herself wrong. Throughout her high-profile visit, President Asif Ali Zardari, his popularity already down to 30%, took care not to be seen with her in public.

At face-to-face meetings even with select groups of Pakistani citizens, she was told to her face that her presence was not conducive to peace in the country. The one question she could not answer was why the hundreds of civilian deaths had to continue in a US war conducted by remote control, a strategy championed by her vice-president, Joe Biden.

“There’s a war going on,” was the best attempt at an answer to the question, as if the bereaved Pakistani families did not know. She had earlier acknowledged a “pretty sore situation” with the Pakistani people, alluding later to a “trust deficit”.

Towards the end of her trip, Clinton summed up the local feeling that the US role is not helping Pakistan as “incredibly frustrating”. She acknowledged failure in reminding the people that they shared the same war with “we’re not getting through”.

The Pakistan government’s position was already delicate in being associated with Washington in hounding terrorists and militants. It was a position that had hastened the downfall of former president Pervez Musharraf, and which Zardari’s administration is trying to contain.

There was never any indication that Clinton’s visit could do anything to help Zardari against militants, much less extend his tenure. In her three days in Pakistan, there was every indication that widespread antipathy against Washington remains.

On the day Clinton arrived, a massive bomb exploded in Peshawar’s Meena bazaar. More than a hundred people were killed and nearly twice as many injured.

No sooner had suspicions fallen on the Taliban than the Taliban’s own version of the event that the US-commissioned security contractor “Blackwater” was responsible had taken root. For Clinton or anyone else in Washington to win over the maze of loyalties and labyrinth of sentiments that is Pakistan will take some doing, even if it is possible.

On the eve of her departure, Clinton decided to explode something of her own. Some pent-up impatience was obvious when she told a local journalist that she could not believe nobody in the government knew where al-Qaeda’s leaders were hiding in Pakistan or how to get them if they wanted.

The next day’s headlines were all predictably negative about her. That forced Clinton to retract her sentiment and to couch her views in more diplomatic terms.

Pakistan’s thoughts and feelings on such issues of life and death are still raw, from the daily haemorrhage its society suffers. They would not be won over yet by a suit, or even a pantsuit.

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