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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
Trouble
with Friends
To
win its war against terrorism America must stop sleeping with the enemy
By Tavleen Singh
 Shortly
after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon I met a high
official from our Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to find out if we
were worried about American foreign policy in South Asia tilting once
more towards Pakistan. General Pervez Musharraf had already started portraying
his country as a "frontline state" and like another general
before him had demanded a heavy price (billions of dollars, it now turns
out) for Pakistan's support to America. So, were we not-I asked the MEA
official-once more in danger of disappearing off America's radar screen
while Pakistan occupied centrestage? The high official assured me that
India had no cause for worry. "It is our assessment," he said,
"that Pakistan no longer has control over the Taliban and will, therefore,
not be able to help the Americans much when the attack on Afghanistan
begins."
 This
unusually prescient assessment would undoubtedly have been conveyed to
the US Government but President George W. Bush clearly chose to ignore
it. Pakistan's military ruler-reviled for being exactly that not long
ago-became America's new hero. Effusive praise was showered on him for
his "cooperation" in America's war against terrorism and Musharraf
became such a darling of BBC and CNN that it was hardly possible to switch
on your TV set without coming face to face with him lying through his
teeth. Pakistan, he said repeatedly, had always opposed terrorism and
did not support terrorist groups anywhere in the world. On the few occasions
that his attention was drawn to his Islamic warriors in Kashmir, he said
simply that the situation in Kashmir was a "freedom struggle"
against Indian repression.
Colin Powell, judging from the naivety of his
statements in Islamabad, appears to have believed Musharraf. But last
week, when it started to become clear that America's war on Afghanistan
was going very wrong, The New York Times reported on its front page that
US officials were now admitting Pakistani intelligence had links with
Al Qaida. Not just diplomatic links either. The NYT report based on US
Government sources says, "The intelligence service (ISI) even used
Al Qaida camps in Afghanistan to train covert operatives for use in a
war of terror against India, the Americans say."
We in India have known this for years and it
is comforting that the world's only superpower is finally seeing the light,
but its war against terrorism is unlikely to be won unless it stops sleeping
with the enemy. It is not just Pakistan's ugly past that America chose
to turn a blind eye to but also the nefarious activities of its old friend
and ally, Saudi Arabia. The Pakistanis (luckily for us) were never rich
enough to finance their jehad foreign policy-for this the money came from
the Saudis. Many of the bank accounts that the Americans have now frozen
for suspected terrorist links belong to rich Saudis. We have long known
that financing the jehad in Kashmir was substantially a Saudi enterprise
and many of the new mosques and militant Islamic groups we see in other
parts of India also came up with Saudi largesse.
There was little we could do about Saudi Arabia
but we had hoped that Pakistan's crumbling economy would soon make it
impossible for that country to continue exporting terrorists across our
borders. Now, in pursuit of its own war against terrorism, the Americans
are attempting to ensure that the Pakistani economy survives and grows.
This year alone it is likely to get a cash injection of $600 million in
addition to millions of dollars of debts being written off and the World
Bank and IMF being persuaded to be more generous with loans to Pakistan.
That the Americans are in a mood to be very
generous to its old ally and new partner is also evident from the manner
in which Pakistan has succeeded in influencing strategic decisions since
the war began. It is now generally accepted that it is mainly to avoid
hurting Pakistan's feelings that a Northern Alliance government is not
already sitting in Kabul. The delay is attributed to Pakistan wanting
a "moderate Taliban" element in the new government, whenever
it is formed. Moderate Taliban? Is the Bush Administration familiar with
the word oxymoron?
It is also being said that it is because Pakistani
intelligence was not as good as the Americans initially thought that Osama
bin Laden is still a free man. So what exactly is Pakistan being rewarded
for? And if it does get the generous prize money it has been promised,
what makes the US so sure that it will not indirectly be fuelling more
terrorism? Meanwhile, the longer the war drags on, the more dangerous
it becomes for us who live in the neighbourhood. Christians were massacred
in a Pakistani church last week by Taliban-friendly Muslims, and in Malegaon,
Maharashtra, we saw the first communal riot directly related to America's
war in Afghanistan. A war that is unlikely to end as long as the US continues
to sleep with the enemy.
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