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PAKISTAN/US: Elected Gov’t Wants War On Terror Reviewed

Analysis by Amir Mir

ISLAMABAD, Mar 30 2008 (IPS) - With a democratically-elected government firmly in place, the United States is anxious to see that its ‘war-on-terror’, which depended heavily on cooperation from the erstwhile military regime run by President Pervez Musharraf, does not get derailed.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani, who won a vote-of-confidence in Parliament on Saturday with overwhelming support, has already made it clear to visiting U.S. deputy secretary of state John Negroponte and assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher that henceforth ‘’all important policy matters and decisions on important national issues would be taken through the Parliament’’.

It is significant that both Negroponte and Boucher, who have been closely associated with Pakistan in the context of the war on terror in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, were present in Islamabad on Mar. 25 when Gillani was administered the oath of office by Musharraf.

Cooperation with the U.S. by Musharraf, who was also army chief until November, is said to have contributed to Pakistan’s two main opposition parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by Asif Zardari and the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, emerging victorious in the Feb. 18 general elections.

But Gillani – who has already indicated that he is ready to negotiate with those militants who are ready to give up arms – said in his address to parliament that the tribal areas were prone to militancy because of illiteracy and poverty which he planned to address.

In meetings with the U.S. envoys, earlier in the week, Sharif said Pakistan’s own interests will take precedence over Washington’s concerns.

Briefing the media after the meetings Sharif said the new government wanted to see peace in the region, but not at the cost of the lives of innocent Pakistanis. “I told them that we cannot kill our own people for the sake of others. I further told them that since 9/11, all decisions were made by a person (Musharraf) who had no connection with the people and their aspirations.’’

Sharif said Parliament will review Musharraf’s policies which, in most cases, have turned a complete failure and even aggravated problems. “The basic issue is that just as the U.S. wants to be safe from terrorism, we don’t want to see bombs and missiles falling on our villages, we want our people to be safe and we don’t want blood to flow in our streets. Our Parliament is sovereign and it would take decisions in future,” Sharif added.

Zardari, whose PPP leads the ruling coalition, did not speak to the media after his meeting with the U.S. officials. But Hussain Haqqani, a former minister in Benazir Bhutto’s cabinet and an adviser to Zardari who attended the meeting with him, said the U.S. officials were given notice that the old ways were over. “If I can use an American expression, there is a new sheriff in town,’’ he said, adding that the U.S. officials have realised that they have perhaps talked with one man for too long.

These statements seemed to indicate that a change in Pakistan’s domestic politics would impose new limits on how the U.S. fights militants inside Pakistan. Over the last couple of years, terrorism had spread from the tribal areas of Pakistan to the settled places and reached as far as the federal capital itself, despite the peace deals struck between tribal leaders and Musharraf’s government.

Such deals were viewed with suspicion by the U.S. military which continued to fire missiles from across the Afghan border into Pakistani villages which are said to have been turned into bases by the Taliban and the al-Qaeda.

Washington’s clout with Pakistan has depended on the massive aid – exceeding ten billion US dollars since 2001 – that ithas been infusing into Pakistan.

Former foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri told IPS in an interview that ‘’while the U.S. believes the peace deals were a sign of weakness on the part of the government of Pakistan, there is a view that the U.S. did not allow the peace deals to work even if that meant instability in the tribal areas of Pakistan; hence the repeated missile attacks by drones allegedly fired by the U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan’’.

Kasuri asserted that the missiles have caused deaths of civilians. ‘’With anti-U.S. sentiment increasing across Pakistan in the wake of every such attack, terrorists have been taking advantage of the situation”, he told IPS. Making matters difficult for Musharraf as well as the Bush administration was a recent report published by Newsweek which said that some recent attacks by the U.S. drones inside the Pakistani territory on the Pak-Afghan border that killed dozens had a tacit approval of the Musharraf regime, an assertion that has been denied by the President’s spokesman.

Approached for comments by IPS, Sardar Assef Ahmed, a former minister in the cabinet of assassinated former prime minister Bhutto said: ‘’Pakistan has the right to not allow a foreign force to conduct a military operation or carry out a missile attack inside the Pakistani territory. The new government is going to make it clear to the U.S. that Pakistan understands fully the importance of waging the war on terror, but through different means. Pakistan has suffered a lot due to the war on terror and it is time a somewhat different approach is adopted to get better results instead of a botched policy that rather takes a narrow view of a multi-dimensional problem”.

Writer and analyst Naseem Zehra told IPS: “The only policy which will receive the support of the people of Pakistan will be the one that is seen to be a made-in-Pakistan policy. People are suffering the fallout of two problems – terrorism itself and a flawed anti-terrorism policy. The masses want to fight terrorism, but not in a manner that backfires on the people of Pakistan. Given these compulsions, the new government must formulate a homegrown anti-terror policy which upholds the rule of law at home, protect the lives, property and dignity of its citizens and oppose through strict enforcement of law any attempt to forcibly impose any system on the people of Pakistan. Such a policy alone can help the government defeat terrorism at home and exclude the possibility of letting any Pakistan-based group spread terrorism outside.”