Suicidal games

Some are calling it a ‘collective squeeze’. Others name it ‘triple stranglehold’. Yet others describe it as a ‘nut-cracker situation’. Whatever the term, the fundamental fact in all the descriptions remains the same: Pakistan’s strategic environment is rapidly deteriorating, and this is putting the country’s international standing, the future of its nuclear weapons and its borders in grave danger.
Because the reality of this deterioration is lost in the noise of domestic fasaad, mostly self-generated, therefore, this is not national news. Because those aware of these dangers that are lurking on the horizon remain tight-lipped, therefore, there is hardly any debate at any public forum to inform the nation about the approaching edge of the precipice.
The primary danger stems from Washington’s drone-and-dirty bomb threat diplomacy. Mid this year, the threat conveyed to Pakistan’s then prime minister by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington from the White House was of a potential attack deep inside Pakistan. The reason? The captured American-Canadian family (released via a controversial operation on our soil in October) was likely to be harmed by its captors, the Haqqanis.
Since then the threat has not been repeated directly but it has not been withdrawn either. In fact, the threat has been tied to a litany of complaints expressed as demands. These demands, informed circles in Pakistan believe, are just another way to enforce the pre-decided agenda of bringing Islamabad to its knees through pressure and coercion.
The new-old demands centre around the LeJ, Jaish, JuD and “other extremist’ groups operating from Pakistan’s soil” across Afghanistan and in India or in Occupied Kashmir. The demands portray Pakistan as the centre of terrorism across both sides of its borders with India and with Afghanistan.
Recently Pakistan registered a breakthrough of sorts when the US detached actions against the LeT from those against the

Haqqani Network as a precondition for approving nearly 700 million dollars of payments. This de-linking of ‘eastern border concerns’ from ‘western border concerns’ dilutes the burden of US demands as it allows Pakistan to purse different set of strategies to engage both groups on different timelines, but this ‘concession’ is not unique. In 2015, a similar bill allowed a similar delinking but the real thrust of the US policy did not change much. Drone attacks continued, and Pakistan’s actions on its soil were always dubbed as ‘inadequate’.
The Trump Administration has gone many steps ahead on the road to coercion. It has been blunt and direct and has spoken words of engagement by placing a pistol on the negotiating table. The dropping of the dirty bomb in Afghanistan this August (the mother of all bombs) was sabre-rattling of a loud kind by the coterie of retired generals in control of Trump’s defence policy. This sabre-rattling’s venue, the Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan, served as a bugle blaring into Islamabad’s ear. ‘You are the real target’, said the bugle’s deafening note.
It took emergency diplomacy of an extremely intense kind with around a dozen important countries to ward off a US adventure inside our territory mid this year. This, however, has been a temporary relief. As US Defence Secretary General (r) James Mattis arrives in Pakistan today, followed by US Joints Chiefs of Staff General (r) Joseph Dunford, the template of US orientation towards Pakistan is pretty much set: more threats and possible attacks inside Pakistan’s territory are the crux of the matter – everything else, niceties and contrived bonhomie etc, is meant for media consumption.
Pakistan’s defence, intelligence and a core of government representatives are in no doubt that the US is simply going through the motions of engagement while its calendar of real strategy – calendering and coercing Pakistan into a pitiable corner – is already defined by its so called South Asia Policy for which it had taken virtually no input from Islamabad. Washington poses a direct and clear danger to Pakistan’s national security over the issue of counterterrorism, and it is not making any bones about it. There is a real possibility of Washington attacking Pakistan with most of the world backing it on one excuse or another with its devastating internal consequences.
The threat-line to national security does not end here. Pakistan is mostly likely to be dragged into the epic war that is shaping up fast between Saudi Arabia and Iran. From the looks of it, the bruising war will be fought via proxies and mostly on foreign lands. It will rip apart countries’ sectarian harmony and divide Muslim lands along racial, sectarian and at times even ethnic and tribal lines. As things stand today, we have zero pull-away power with the Saudi alliance now. It is headed by General (r) Raheel Sharif whose personal actions and ambitions have forced a heavy duty upon this country – a duty fraught with grave dangers to our internal stability. We are witnessing the beginning of a new phase of sectarian strife on our own land and this will only get worse.
There is more. We are also in the eye of the storm of the elephantine jostling between Beijing and Washington without any guarantee that even after marrying ourselves to CPEC unquestioningly we will get the defence umbrella of China against the Delhi-Washington-Kabul nexus. China remains our partner but it is not our ally. CPEC is a commercial arrangement, not a defence treaty. How do we bear the consequences of being on China’s side when it is fighting a long-drawn war of world dominance with Washington which is aided by Delhi, backed by Tokyo and facilitated by Kabul?
Throw into this witches’ brew the unending hit-and-run terrorism inside the country and you will get a very clear picture of the forces of destruction and demolition that are trying to knock our doors and walls down. There have been recent reminders of a creeping and growing internal warfare that is heavily funded and aided by some of the world’s most effective intelligence networks. It is beyond countering terrorism. It is a subterranean global intrigue that finds parallels in its audacity and in its scope, which goes right up to denuclearising Pakistan by spreading frightful chaos.
Anyone with any sense of history would take this deadly mix extremely seriously as countries far stronger and better placed than us have been devastated and laid to ruin by threats less potent than we are faced with. It is monumentally tragic that the point at which sanity is needed the most it seems to have fled corridors of power completely. The past few weeks have been marked by the shenanigans of a group fostered and foisted upon this country. These events have provided the world deadly ammunition against Pakistan to carry out its demolition work.
Just when our best foot forward is needed, bigotry of the worst kind has been put on display. Just when Islamabad has to look stable and functional, paralysis is injected and allowed to run through its veins without any remorse or guilt. The occasion demands sending a message of unity and internal order, but is being misspent in grandstanding divisions and celebrating the humiliation of one another. When our enemies are trying to portray us as homicidal, an internal situation is created to make the whole nation look suicidal.
There is little space available on Pakistan’s decision-making tables to debate real issues that go beyond tenures, egos and zero-sum petty politics. Pakistan’s present managers represent that character with the itch:
‘My itch keeps me busy’.
‘And what’s your itch sir?’
‘I have this itch to solve problems, so I create problems and solve them in a manner that bigger problems are created for me to solve.’
The only problem is that now the problems have grown to a strategic scale. This country can no longer afford meeting the requirement of anyone’s itch. It can either face the dangers right on its borders or be pushed on the road-to-nowhere of political engineering. The two aims are mutually exclusive. It is either Pakistan first or political agendas first. Pick one at the cost of the other. The choice is clear, but unfortunately the wisdom to make the right choice isn’t.
The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.
Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com
Twitter: @TalatHussain12