Vali Nasr, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, presented a view of how the US could “help” Pakistan wipe out its jihadi problem in the Christian Science Monitor. He is also the author if “The Shia Revival: How Conflicts with Islam Will Shape the Future.” I always find it funny when the United States tells other countries how to solve their problems when they are unable to solve their own problems of a President that has no public support, a military fighting a war that has no public support and a people that have seen the rights granted to them by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights stripped in the name of Patriotism… maybe the American media should spend more time talking about their problems, rather than offering solutions for ours.

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released this week paints a bleak picture of Al Qaeda’s renewed strength and determination to attack America. And a major part of the blame, US officials charge, lies with someone President Bush has described as a critical ally in the war on terror: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf.

Since 9/11, Washington has looked to President Musharraf to uproot Islamic extremism in South Asia. Nearly six years later, however, Pakistan is still a nuclear-armed crucible of jihadi culture, exporting terrorists and destabilizing its neighbors.

For too long, Washington has coddled the Pakistani general, turned a blind eye to his crushing of democracy, and read too much into his pro-West rhetoric. The US must change course. And there are signs it’s about to. “There’s no doubt that more aggressive steps need to be taken,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

After almost a decade under Musharraf’s rule, Pakistan hasn’t changed much. He has initiated reforms and revamped the economy. But where he was expected to do most, fighting Islamic extremism, Pakistan’s record is most disappointing.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban use Pakistani soil as a haven and training ground. Recent deals between the government and Pashtun tribes have in effect ceded the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies. A big reason Al Qaeda’s influence is growing, according to the NIE, is the operational capability it enjoys in Pakistan.

Musharraf speaks of “enlightened moderation,” but he has done more to pulverize secular democratic parties than contain Islamist ones. It was his electoral rules that helped Islamist parties win their largest parliamentary representation ever in 2002, marginalizing the larger secular parties that threatened him.
Islamabad is happy to nab foreign jihadis when pressured by the West or ban extremist groups that get out of hand, but it has been reluctant to uproot the infrastructure of extremism.

Extremist groups proliferate and operate in the open. Musharraf finds them useful in convincing Washington and Pakistan’s middle classes that the military is all that protects the country from a Taliban-like Islamic state.

It is not a coincidence that the government’s recent battle against extremists associated with the Red Mosque came on the heels of nationwide anti-government protests following Musharraf’s summary dismissal of the country’s chief justice. Musharraf hopes that the crisis will persuade secular-minded Pakistanis to abandon the barricades and align behind him.

The government was fully aware of what went on in the Red Mosque, just a mile from the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence headquarters. Yet Musharraf chose to ignore the extremists between January and June, even as they sought to impose Islamic law on the capital city. It was not until he sensed public anger at his dithering, and confronted a diplomatic crisis when the extremists abducted Chinese nationals, that he stormed the mosque.

Frustrated with developments in Pakistan, many in Washington look to elections and a civilian government for solutions. Democracy should be welcomed, but it will change little. The last time there was a transfer of power to a civilian government, in 1988, the military still chose the foreign minister and informed the prime minister that it would control the nuclear program, intelligence, security, and policies toward Afghanistan and India. This time, too, the military will continue to call the shots – especially when it comes to Afghanistan.

Without Pakistani cooperation, NATO and the US will have to substantially increase their commitments to contain the Taliban. That cooperation will not be forthcoming until the US addresses Pakistani interests. Afghanistan has always been a strategic concern for Islamabad. Pashtuns make up 40 percent of Afghanistan, but there are more Pashtuns in Pakistan, where they constitute 15 percent of the population. Afghanistan has never recognized the border (Durand line) between the two countries, and for most of Pakistan’s existence, Pashtuns in control of an independent Afghan state have been allied with India and laid irredentist claims to Pakistan’s Pashtun Northwest Province.

It was only when Pakistani-backed Afghan mujahideen or the Taliban ruled Kabul that Pakistan felt secure in its relations with Afghanistan. Pakistani generals counted on the “strategic depth” that their neighbor to the northwest would provide in a war against India.

These days, they see Afghanistan as an adversary. They are irked by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s strong ties to Delhi and the mushrooming of Indian consulates across Afghanistan. The territory that they “owned” until 9/11, thanks to the Taliban, is now at best neutral and at worst the playground of their arch rival, India. Pakistan does not view Afghanistan through the prism of the war on terror, but in the context of its own vulnerabilities in the competition for power and influence with India. That’s why Islamabad has everything to gain by playing the Taliban card, giving its fighters and their Al Qaeda allies a lair in Pakistan’s border region, to keep Kabul weak and southern Afghanistan free of Indian influence.

In dealing with Pakistan, Washington has preferred to see the logic of the war on terror as self-evident, not recognizing that even close allies will not cooperate if it does not serve their interests. It is only by addressing Pakistan’s interests that Washington can secure greater cooperation from Islamabad.

Washington cannot give Pakistan the sphere of influence in southern Afghanistan that it desires to make sure it will not be encircled by India. However, Washington can give Pakistan greater interest in Afghanistan’s stability than it has now by encouraging Kabul to include Pakistan’s allies and clients in government; and more important, to finally recognize its international border with Pakistan.

A sidebar: in this entire article, you don’t see any admission that the US government and CIA created Osama bin Laden, the Mujahideen, or any of the other forces that today are called terrorists. The United States has always worked from a “throw away” policy, use a country to achieve their objectives and then toss them away to deal with the problems created because of it. Nor, do you see any admission that the US government is more willing to provide military equipment to Pakistan than they are textbooks and teachers, which would actually solve the biggest problem of poor education. Nor do you see any admission that the US foreign policy, in terms of the Middle East and South East Asia, is a failure because it has always tried to leverage one country against another: Pakistan vs. India and Palestine vs. Israel, for example.

Like I said in the opening notes to the article: the US government operates from a “head up the ass” mentality, with George W. Bush begin the poster boy. America can solve everyone else’s problems, but they just aren’t interested in solving their own. I would challenge the American media to pull their head out of their asses and present solutions to the Neo Nazis that patrol areas of the Northern United States; the Klu Klux Klan which has torment the African American population for decades; the poverty that grips the American people living in the “world’s largest democracy”; serial killers, rapists and other criminals that are resolutely Christian that populate the metropolitan cities and prisons; and please stop the Evangelical Christians that seem to believe that they know best and the rest of America is just “lost”; the media’s inability, or lack of access, to report on topics like torture, Gitmo, civil and human rights violations since 9/11 in the name of Patriotism; the growing gap between the haves and the have nots because of government policies giving more value to the wealth, while punishing the poor; it’s continued support of the tyrant governments in the Middle East, Africa and South America to assure that the American way of life is protected, while assuring that the world hates them for punishment that is unfairly doled out to poor countries; and it’s continued support of Israeli terrorist acts while punishing the Palestinian and Lebanese people for trying to live a normal life.

Hmmm… when you look at it in that context, the United States is another Pakistan with less media coverage.