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Pygmies can't fight this war

The diplomatic deadlock that had followed Delhi's totally justifiable Indian outrage against the deadly attack on its Kabul embassy may have slightly eased after the Colombo Saarc summit.

Yet the meetings in Colombo between the Pakistani Prime Minister and his Indian and Afghan counterparts could not have addressed the growing distrust between Pakistan and its western and eastern neighbours.

Together they have pointedly accused Pakistan's intelligence agency the ISI of masterminding the Kabul embassy attack. Pakistan's repeated call for evidence has prompted Washington to share the text of a telephonic conversation between two Afghans planning the attack referring to ISI's support the attack.

The Americans also claim that they have in their custody an ISI agent captured operating in Khost. In its subsequent meetings with its Islamabad-based CIA counterparts have asked for more "substantive evidence." Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani also requested the Afghan President Hamid Karzai for more evidence on the alleged involvement of the ISI in the Kabul bombing. In Colombo Gilani also met US Under secretary Richard Boucher the third of the key player on the Afghanistan scene. Boucher again advised Gilani on how best to internally battle terrorism.

More bilateral meetings between Pakistan and its neighbours are on the cards but more such diplomatic exchanges are unlikely to address the more difficult dilemmas related to the growing militancy problem.

These dilemmas that cover the regional dimension of militancy have surfaced more clearly in trilateral response — of Delhi, Kabul and Washington — to the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul. At least three are noteworthy.

One, there is a trilateral consensus between Kabul, Delhi and Washington on Islamabad alone being the primary and near exclusive trouble maker in Afghanistan. While the nature of the functioning of national intelligence workings, some of ISI's past track record and the nature of antagonism that prevails between the regional countries means ISI's involvement cannot be ruled out but the quick pre-investigation conclusion lead by Kabul followed by Delhi and Washington that ISI alone is behind the bombing illustrates this anti-Pakistan consensus.

Two the historical Islamabad-Delhi adversarial relations are now being played out in Kabul. Delhi for obvious reasons is on the ascendance while Islamabad is on the defensive.

How Kabul and Delhi conduct their bilateral political, economic and diplomatic relations is the prerogative of the two countries but how the relationship effects the security of Pakistan's own border and internal security will be of legitimate concern to Pakistan. There is enough evidence available on Delhi's use of the Pakistan's Balochistan difficulties, through material support to angry Baloch elements residing in Afghanistan, to destabilise Balochistan, the home of Pakistan's Baloch and the strategically important province. This India and Afghanistan dimension having to some extent contributed to the emergence of a siege mindset within Pakistan's security establishment.

The Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies, in a pincer move, are engaged in undermining Pakistan's security from two fronts. They are busy using the Baloch card and the militant card, created initially through the blunders of the Pakistani State. Now our neighbouring intelligence agencies are effectively exploiting these weaknesses. Many alienated Baloch including Sardar Akbar Bugti's grandson Bramdagh reside in Afghanistan while Indian funding is made available to various groups.

On the LoC, the July 27th Indian military move to establish a forward post inside the LOC on the Pakistani side of the LOC was projected as Pakistan going into Indian Held Kashmir. This pincer movement, involving India and Afghanistan, will only aggravate matters.

Three, while within Pakistan there has been a genuine rethink of a decades old short-sighted security strategy, evolved in partnership with the US a similar rethink within other states to deal with the growing problem of militancy is not in evidence. The Washington-led international approach of putting Pakistan alone in the dock flows from deep-seated suspicion, prejudice and willful attempt to weaken the security apparatus of a State, which the US and others in the region do not entirely trust.

This is a convenient position for countries, which like ostrich are unwilling to view their own weaknesses. The fact that while US and UK generals and men with boots on the ground met in UK, as they have done in July, they acknowledge categorically the huge problems with the Karzai regime, but find it difficult to state the same publicly.

Reports of London meetings trickle in. They suggest the generals recognize that maybe achieving success is a long haul affair, it will take their staying in Afghanistan for 30 years but know staying that long is not possible. Their national politics will not allow them. Conscious of the remoteness of achieving success they want to leave now.

For the Americans their national politics will not allow them too. But for the UK their 'special relationship' with the US will not allow them hurried exit. The same is true of the Europeans and the Canadians too. Their is talk among UK generals that they must stay on in Afghanistan as a "US auxiliary.' The Germans, especially their defence professionals maintain in private that have been demanding a Pakistani way forward on the tribal area issue. They are hesitant to go the starkly blundering US way. From Washington reliable reports indicate that " the generals, they are distressed, and angrier with Karzai than with Pakistan."

It is time for Pakistan to categorically state: enough of Pakistan-bashing, enough of vacuous Kantian moralising in a Hobbesian world, enough of the do-more mantra, enough of double standards in talk and in practice. A world struck by the growing militancy problem in Afghanistan and in Pakistan's tribal areas has been on the offensive against Pakistan.

On the home front and the army plus ANP are struggling to deal with it. It's a long drawn out struggle. Gradually there is increase in the application of force because the Swat deal, pushed by the ANP with input from intelligence agencies, has fallen through. In the tribal areas the use of force is now ascendant.

In a purely Hobbesian world of inter-state relations it is naïve of the world to expect Kantian behaviour from a State and a society, which is being 'pushed to the wall.' Pakistan will play 'as clean as the world around it.' This is the reality. Take it or leave it. There is no 'going it alone' on the victory dais for any of Pakistan's neighbours. We are in this mess together. The way out lies only in

working together; divided we all drown. That is the message of fast spreading militancy which, with every new subversion move that anyone from the neighbourhood induct against the other, gets more and more deadly and uncontrollable.

The region will unravel if the governments in the area and those involved outsiders like Washington do not make it a common cause to jointly work to address the causes of growing militancy. The answer lies in a regional solution. We need to give up historical suspicions, current score-settling and status hang-ups to work create a more trusting environment within which a more cooperative security approach is evolved. It is a tall order. So is the challenge we face. It's not one that pygmies can deal with.

Nasim Zehra is an Islamabad -based national security strategist