With friends like Musharraf...

Anita Inder Singh

Afghanistan is the frontline state against terrorism. It is where America's legal overthrow of the Taliban in November 2001 marked victory in the first battle against terrorism. But more than six years later Nato seems to be at risk of losing the war, for many reasons. These include an uncoordinated Nato strategy and an alliance with a Pakistan whose export of extremists to Afghanistan has frustrated Nato's campaign.

Western officials, including Lieutenant General David Richards, the former Nato commander in Afghanistan, and America's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, regard the Taliban's safe haven in Pakistan as the key to success.

That means, among other things, that Nato and Pakistan are allies with conflicting goals. Curious, isn't it? It is also curious that the evidence provided by Nato and UN officials of Pakistan's terrorist-training activities has not dissuaded George Bush, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from continually lauding General Musharraf as a steadfast ally.

Since 2001, the US has bestowed more than $10bn (£5bn) on Pakistan to combat terrorism, but there is no sign that this aim is being achieved.

So how has the largesse been spent? Again, it is curious that Islamabad has got as much money as it has wanted from Washington every single month - without having to tell the Bush administration what has been done with the bounty. Most of the money is invested in anything from private houses and golf courses for the military to the hotel industry and cereals factories.

The smallest private enterprise, anywhere in the world, probably has a better-functioning accounting and bookkeeping system than the world's lone superpower and its Pakistani ally.

Dismayed at the foundering military campaign in Afghanistan, a watchful US Congress has raised some questions. Soon after Musharraf's declaration of emergency in November 2007, Congress withheld $50m of the $300m aid requested by the Bush government for Pakistan until Musharraf had restored civil liberties. The remaining $250m, Congress stipulated, could be used only to fight terrorism, al-Qaida and the Taliban.

But Musharraf took his American donors by surprise. He told them the fight was against the Taliban, not al-Qaida. Washington thought it had given him $10bn to fight al-Qaida, and has not responded to his assertion.

Clearly, the US and Pakistan disagree on war aims and military strategy. They may even be fighting for different things. But Washington has yet to grasp the nettle.

Having created the Taliban in the 1990s, Islamabad joined the campaign against it in 2001 only with reluctance. After the war, Pakistan allowed defeated Taliban militia to cross over into Pakistan for shelter and renewed sustenance.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the Taliban has been able to regroup over the last six years. Nato's campaign in Afghanistan has been hobbled by increasing numbers of Pakistani-trained Taliban fighters.

That situation is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, regardless of the political dispensation in Islamabad. Defence and foreign policy will remain in the hands of Pakistan's military and intelligence, which have sustained and exported extremism to Afghanistan.

The motives of the military and intelligence are complex. Musharraf regards the Talibanisation of Pakistan as a threat, but it is unclear whether this translates into a determination to root out the organisation. More significantly, perhaps, neither Musharraf nor General Kiyani, his successor as commander-in-chief, have committed Pakistan to quashing extremism.

The US is probably trapped in a political blind alley of its own making. Although recent elections in Pakistan revealed Musharraf's political unpopularity, Bush and Brown seem to want to him to continue orchestrating counter-terrorist policy.

Is this wise, considering the public mistrust he has earned since Benazir Bhutto's assassination last November? Shouldn't Nato decide whether Pakistan is with us or against us? And if the Nato and US really want to win out in Afghanistan, shouldn't they at least debate, and perhaps reconsider, their dependence on Pakistan as an ally in the anti-terrorist war?

Source: Guardian, CIF
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anita_inder_singh/2008/02/with_friends_like_musharraf_.html