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Pakistan's Military Dictator Besieged
by Dr. Subhash Kapila

The latest suicide bomber attack on a Pakistan Army training establishment near Peshawar killing 40 soldiers and wounding scores of others is the most prominent attack on a series of attacks on the Pakistan Army camps and personnel by tribesmen angered by the Pakistani military dictator’s repressive policies. Earlier major attacks have taken place in Baluchistan and Waziristan. Besides these attacks sectarian violence plagues Pakistan’s major urban cities killing scores of innocent civilians.

Pakistan’s military dictator is also under heavy pressure from the United States and Britain for the terrorist footprints in these countries leading all the way back to Pakistan. And these are not old cases. These are new cases in which Pakistani expatriates from these countries have gone for training in terrorist training camps in Pakistan. All this has happened under the so called eagle eyed surveillance of General Musharraf’s regime which stands pledged by him personally to the United States to eradicate this global menace.

What is one to make out of this situation? Either General Musharraf as the military dictator of Pakistan has lost control of the State apparatus in Pakistan or that terrorism emanating from Pakistani terrorism infrastructure continues with his tacit assent. Whatever be the judgement of the jury, the harsh reality is that terrorism emanating from Pakistan and terrorist organizations said to be under control of the Pakistan Army has not slowed down.

As far as violent attacks on Pakistan Army facilities and personnel are concerned the pattern suggests that the frontier tribesmen are deliberately targeting them to give vent to their anger against General Musharraf’s sellout to the United States.
The frontier regions of Pakistan contribute nearly 30% of the Pakistan Army rank and file and nearly 20% of the officer cadre. The disaffection in Pakistan’s frontier regions could create serious problems for the Pakistan Army as tribal disaffection can affect the Pakistan Army personnel hailing from these areas. It could lead to serious command and control problems if not the prospects of an outright mutiny.

Pakistan’s military dictator, General Musharraf can therefore be said to be in a besieged state militarily as with each such attacks against Pakistan Army, that much of the image of this Army gets eroded. It is a strange irony of General Musharraf’s fate that he is now facing what he used as an instrument of state policy against India.

General Musharraf during his regime has constantly maintained that the terrorists operating from Pakistan in Kashmir were “Freedom Fighters”. Would he now call these frontier tribesmen attacking the Pakistani Army as “Freedom Fighters”?

It has been wisely observed that those who sow the wind are likely to reap the whirlwind. This is precisely what the Pakistani military dictator is now reaping. Any reactive suppression launched on the frontier tribesmen on General Musharraf’s orders would only kindle the fires more. And surely the United States would not term suppression of the tribal people as a fight against terrorists.

Was there some method in General Musharraf’s assertions in front of the Foreign Relations Committee of the European Parliament on his way to the Havana NAM Summit that today it is not the Al Qaeda which was a danger but that the Taliban and Talibanisation were a more dangerous threat?

Could General Musharraf be foreseeing a coalescing of the Pakistan Taliban and the Afghan Taliban into a movement for an independent Greater Pashtunistan? It has again been wisely said that it is easy to create a tiger but difficult to ride it and more difficult to get off it.

Pakistan today can be said to be suffering from Musharraf Fatigue and this is likely to intensify as the November 2007 elections creep closer and political stridency increases. The pressures for shedding his uniform on General Musharraf, if he wishes to contest for President, would grow and unlike the 2002 elections the 2007 elections in Pakistan would be minutely scrutinized by the international community including the United States. Unless of course Pakistan’s military dictator engineers a crisis to once again make himself indispensable to United States strategic interests.

As a parting thought, one would like to question whether the proposed visit to Pakistan by the Indian Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh is politically advisable to a Pakistani President besieged by his own people!

November 12, 2006

Image courtesy: dailytimes.com

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