| September 03, 2008 | Wednesday | Ramazan 2, 1429 |
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Of lobsters, whales and the Taliban
One of the joys of being on the eastern coast of Canada is the availability of lobsters. Some time back we were invited to a lobster boil on the beach to celebrate our friend Giles Walker’s daughter Kaisa’s engagement, and each guest had one of the delicious crustaceans with lemon-butter sauce, apart from an array of salads and pies. The meal was followed by fireworks, and a long tramp along a forest trail to return to our cars parked half a mile away.
Earlier in the day, we had gone on a whale-watching expedition on a fast Zodiac speedboat called the Fundy Tide Runner. Although there was some fog, we did spot a few finback and humpback whales. With the engines switched off, we listened for the gentle giants in the mist, and the eerie “whoosh!” of their distinctive exhalation pointed the way to the spot they had surfaced. Although some of these creatures attain lengths of over 50 feet, they accept the proximity of humans without any sign of aggression.
In order to ensure that they are not harassed or disturbed while they feed, the government has enacted a law to prevent whale-watchers from approaching closer than 100 metres. Recently, a fisherman was fined $100,000 for piloting his speedboat through a pod of whales. Several species of these magnificent creatures migrate over great distances to spend the summer in nearby Fundy Bay which teems with food. The tides here rise faster than anywhere else in the world, and this vast, rapid movement of water sucks up nutrients from the bottom, attracting smaller fish and krill. These in turn serve to pull in large number of predators, including the giants of the deep. Apart from whales, we regularly see porpoises, seals and seabirds of various kinds.
In this calm solitude of Passamaquoddy Bay, I was as far as it was possible to get from the messy politics of Pakistan. Or so I thought. When Dave, our captain, discovered I was a Pakistani, he asked: “So what do you think about Musharraf’s resignation?”
When I first went abroad to Paris where my father was working at UNESCO in 1956, I was 12, and was constantly being asked where Pakistan was. This was a source of great annoyance, and it irked me to have to reply that it was a new country carved out of India. Now, the whole world knows exactly where it is, and not necessarily for the right reasons. Hardly a day goes by without some news of fresh disaster in or around Pakistan making the provincial dailies where I have been these last six weeks.
Several well-informed friends who are spending the summer here – one of them a Canadian senator; another a Harvard professor – have been asking me how the meltdown in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be stopped. Frankly, I have been hard-pressed to give them any assurance that the looming disaster can be averted. The tools that are needed seem to be beyond our grasp. A national consensus, strong leadership, international cooperation and political will are even more essential than weapons and helicopters in our existential fight against extremism.
To foreigners, there is no difference between Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban, and in fact, there is none. Both are fighting to overturn the governments in Islamabad and Kabul, and impose their bleak, medieval systems over the two countries. So why, ask my friends, can’t the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan coordinate efforts and resources to fight the common foe? While the question is both legitimate and logical, the reply is convoluted, touching as it does on geopolitics, history and regional rivalries.
As I have argued in this newspaper before, a problem with Pakistani military planning is that it has traditionally been oriented towards India. This is reflected in our army’s deployment, its training and its indoctrination. Generations of officers and jawans have been brainwashed into considering India as the arch-enemy out to destroy Pakistan. To transform this mindset takes time, and thus far, there is little evidence to indicate that the military high command has undertaken a thorough review of its threat assessment. Bartle Bull is an American writer who has spent a lot of time in Iraq since the war began, and has written extensively on the subject. Recently, he wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, arguing that as the war in Afghanistan could not be won, all the US should be doing is to make sure that it isn’t lost either. For this purpose, he suggested a military programme to train the Afghan army, combined with economic assistance, but not a major fighting force. In his strategy, the Americans would support the Afghans with their air force, but not with boots on the ground.
I have disagreed earlier with Bartle over his pro-Bush views. When I met him the other evening, I suggested that while his proposals for Afghanistan might fit in with narrow, short-term American goals, they went against regional and global interests. While victory might be difficult, the world cannot afford a return of the Taliban to Kabul as Afghanistan would become a centre for global jihad once more. A combination of a dysfunctional Pakistan and a radicalised Afghanistan would be a disaster for the whole world, and not just for the region. US interests would be particularly at risk.
With a new government about to emerge in Washington, and another to hopefully become established in Islamabad, there is an opportunity to review the situation. Clearly, the strategy and tactics being followed by both have failed. And as we in Pakistan have seen time and again, we cannot have a separate peace. The Taliban and their ilk do not feel obliged to keep their word when dealing with what they view as anti-Islamic forces. They want nothing less than total power. Unfortunately, even thinking Pakistanis do not realise that we are in a battle for survival.
The notion that we are fighting ‘America’s war’ is being driven by the reactionary media and religious parties in Pakistan, and threatens to erode the will to fight. Perhaps we will realise what we have let themselves in for when the priceless artefacts in our museums are destroyed, just as the magnificent statues of Buddha were in Bamiyan by the Taliban. Above all, this is our war, and it is a conflict we must win if we are to avoid sliding backwards into the stone age.
