The Daily Star, Lebanon

The problems and dilemmas confronting Pakistan’s leadership – including a deepening vortex of mutual suspicions, sectarian killings and brazen terrorism – are almost too numerous to count. And that leadership – whether it is civilian, military or judiciary (which has now become increasingly active politically) – has proven congenitally ineffective, leaving the country with a broken economy and a political system that is paralyzed.

Central to the world’s concerns about the region is the complex reality of two Taliban movements – one in Afghanistan, over which Pakistan’s powerful Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence has a great deal of control, and one in Pakistan itself, which is waging an increasingly vicious guerrilla war against the Pakistani government. With the United States military and NATO forces due to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, there is a very real possibility that the Taliban will not only regain power there, but will also transform Pakistan into what is a truly failed state.

Encouragingly, after a gap of seven months when no military supplies could reach Afghanistan via the Khyber Pass – a cutoff that followed the death of Pakistani soldiers at the hands of NATO troops in Afghanistan who were firing across the border – NATO trucks in early July were finally allowed to cross again. Somewhat guardedly, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced: “[Pakistani] Foreign Minister [Hina Rabbani] Khar and I acknowledged the mistakes that resulted in the loss of Pakistani military lives. We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military.” Her affirmation of commitment to preventing the recurrence of such an event in the future appeared to have sufficed to re-open the border to NATO’s resupply through Pakistani territory.

This self-defeating crisis is now over, but can both sides really prevent a further deterioration in what is a complex and mutually dependent relationship? This question matters principally because Pakistan’s quest for national identity and territorial security is rooted in existential fear of its neighbors. Unfortunately, as Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center, an American foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, observes, official Pakistani tactics sustain both the country’s “isolation and decline.” Moreover, America’s tactics, Krepon argues, heighten “its estrangement with Pakistan. As long as current policies remain fixed, new points of contention seem inevitable between Pakistan, its neighbors and the United States.”

The big question across South Asia is whether or not the withdrawal of American and other NATO troops will attenuate Pakistan’s dilemmas or only deepen them. Much will depend on how Pakistan addresses its internal turbulence, as well as how the situation in Afghanistan evolves. Many Pakistanis, including Sartaz Aziz, a former foreign minister who sees a policy vacuum, are not sanguine when it comes to predicting what will happen in the future.

But the problem is deeper than an absence of effective leadership. As Pakistani journalist Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur has put it, “[W]hen states are formed on an artificial basis of contrived nationhood or on the basis of religion, as was the case with Pakistan, Israel and Yugoslavia, they of necessity turn into … states dominated by militarist ideology.”

Furthermore, Ali Talpur wrote, “Pakistan, by claiming to be the legatee of the glory of Islam burdened itself with heavy historical baggage.”

But could the country have done otherwise? The elite of Pakistan, Ali Talpur continues, “subscribing to a statist and militarist ideology,” became “the self-appointed defenders of Islam,” and “even the brigands of Islamic history” were accorded the status of heroes, creating an illusion of invincibility and grandeur that is “not in any way in keeping with reality.”

Here, successive United States governments have compounded South Asia’s problems by pursuing only their own national interests, at an incalculable cost to the natural, organic growth of the countries of the region. Without Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran acting in concert, no lasting solutions can be found; they certainly cannot be imposed unilaterally by the United States and NATO.

Thus, a dilemma arises: The presence of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan is not in harmony with the natural urges and balance of the region. After all, Afghanistan can remain only where it is, with or without the deployment of United States troops, which is why its future will remain an issue of great concern to Pakistan (and to India). How are these countries to harmonize their own national interests and priorities with those of the Western powers?

According to Kamran Shafi, a retired Pakistani army officer, Pakistan “has lost the trust of most, if not all of our friends.” Indeed, even Pakistan’s “brotherly” Saudi Arabia has extradited to India the man blamed by the Indians as one of the masterminds of the horrific terror attacks on Mumbai in November 2008. In promoting and pursuing terrorism as an instrument of state policy, Pakistan seems intent on never regaining that trust, without which peace, unseen in South Asia since the partition of British India in 1947, is impossible.

South Asia now seems condemned to something akin to a 100-year war. But unlike Europe’s Hundred Years’ War, this struggle is shadowed by the potential for mutually assured destruction. Given the potent Pakistani and Indian nuclear arsenals, the war could be very short indeed.

Jaswant Singh, a former Indian finance minister, foreign minister and defense minister, is the author of “Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence.” THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org).

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