Mustafa Qadri

Sanctions would only fortify the army’s support for militancy

Mustafa Qadri 28-Apr-2009
Thanks for the insightful comments, Madhav – it’s interesting the army is already dominating our conversation.

Over the weekend, the journalist Ahmed Rashid wrote about the army’s continued refusal to accept how much the Taliban has transformed into a full-blown insurgency. Much of what he said echoed Madhav’s call for the army to return to the barracks.

But there’s virtually no chance of that. As the Taliban continues its infiltration of the Pakhtun heartland, a nervous international community feels compelled to bolster the army, which will further marginalise the civilian leadership.

Part of the problem is that Pakistan’s politicians have failed to provide leadership that can sideline the army and allow foreign patrons to more fully support the fledgling civilian political system. Pakistan’s politics are mostly personality driven, with domestic political faultlines resting not between parties but personalities. The irony is that the least personality-driven and most internally democratic parties – Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islami – are religious, and they have consistently underplayed the dangers the Taliban poses.

And the army’s bona fides are still in question. Does it still consider the Taliban and other militants to be key strategic assets? To answer this, we need to know whether the army is still seeking to establish a pro-Pakistan regime in Afghanistan and to wage an asymmetric conflict against India in Kashmir.

There are good reasons to believe it is.

We’re now seeing a subtle, yet seismic, shift in the War on Terror narrative in Western capitals. The host of a recent CNN discussion on ‘Islamism’ tried to distinguish al-Qaeda from the Taliban, basically arguing that as rigidly conservative and chauvinist as the Taliban are, they are not, like al-Qaeda, interested in open conflict with non-Muslim societies and instead want to establish a ‘true Islamic state’.

This kind of discussion, unprecedented in the West since 9/11, is a product of Washington’s policy shift away from broadly-drawn wars against ‘terror’.

Several European countries have already suggested deadlines for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. This, along with talk of the US negotiating with so-called ‘moderate’ Taliban, suggests elements within the movement could well be transformed back into the freedom fighters they were described as during the war against the Soviets.

If that’s so – and the recent informal discussions between a US diplomat and an aide to pro-Taliban militant leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar suggest it could be – there’s a good chance the army will avoid delivering a fatal blow to the militants.

Despite these sobering conclusions, I respectfully disagree with Madhav’s suggestion of sanctions on the army. This would only fortify its support for militancy. Indeed, given the army’s penetration of the state and economy, sanctions would be difficult to administer effectively and would likely hurt the public more than persuade the generals – much as has happened with Burma. In fact, international sanctions and isolation following Pakistan’s 1998 nuclear tests and the Musharraf coup of October 1999 did not discourage army support for the Taliban nor jihadi militancy in Kashmir.

Of course there’s more, but perhaps here’s a good place to hand over to you, Madhav.

http://www.the-diplomat.com/article.aspx?aeid=13333