Taming The Tiger
Pakistan has had the opportunity to learn a hard lesson. Too late, unfortunately. Its implacable hatred for its neighbours, most particularly India, is proving to be its ultimate undoing. Pakistan simply was unable to wean itself away from inflicting atrocities at a remove on India. Through the auspices of aggrieved Islamists acting as surrogates never acknowledge.The tradition of conflict between Pakistan and India, a simple and yet horribly complex story of religious, political and ideological polarities could serve as a template of whatever could go awry, going ballistically wrong. Bad enough the tensions between Hindu and Muslim, worse yet the next-door example of a democratic, secular country with its parliament and lawmakers that attempts, painfully, to make no distinctions under the law between such variations, to treat all equally.
In theory, at least. Enmities heightened by majority entitlements have encouraged ongoing hostilities between the two religions in that vast country that so embraced the British traditions of jurisprudence and politics. Pakistan's dangerous game of sanguine complicit innocence in foisting restless grievance of fundamentalist Muslims verging on terror, against its nuclear-companion country which gave birth to it in a violent cataclysm of separation, is coming home to haunt it.
Turning a blind eye to the border presence of uncivil fundamentalist tribal groups finding common cause with the Taliban and al-Qaeda no longer services Pakistan's interests, as well as that confluence once did. The Islamists have birthed radicalism no longer amenable to promises of complicity from a government that still cannot decide where its best interests lie; with the West or radical Islam. Now Pervez Musharraf reaps what he and his predecessors have heedlessly sown.
He can term internally-generated Islamist violence against his own country and population as "despicable acts", but the initial encouragement and required toe-hold were his to discourage when it was yet possible. It no longer is. His military and his government agencies have been well infiltrated by the very scourge of triumphant jihad that he knows will spell the end to current-day Pakistan's aspirations.
There are no boundaries now that can contain Islamism on its inexorable rise there; it refuses to be contained. The Red Mosque's vanguard removal was a mere stop-gap in the rise, promising far more to come. The repeated attempts on the life of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the suicide bombings of an emboldened Taliban still cradling al-Qaeda in their midst, have had ample covert assistance from the government of Pakistan.
Any friend of Pakistan's enemy remains yet another enemy to be reckoned with, and Pakistan foments one atrocity after another, within India, in Kashmir, and in Afghanistan. Destabilizing the international force whose confrontation of the Taliban and work toward establishing a working state for Afghanistan. An ideal Pervez Musharraf himself reluctantly signed on to, convincing the United States to view it as an ally, integral to the pacification of jihadist Islamism.
Any enemy of my enemy is my friend, and so the government of India is establishing itself as a good neighbour and stalwart supporter of the steadily emerging, occasionally faltering, democratic Islamic government in Afghanistan. In the process further infuriating Pakistan. Good neighbour to Afghanistan that India is, she has allocated hundreds of millions' worth of practical assistance in that country's struggle for legitimacy and support of her people.
It is in India's best interests to intervene, and to help a neighbour aspiring to the democratic ideal, to providing a fair and just and reasonable future for its long-suffering people. As a country with an immense population rife with its own internal problems of political and religious strife to cope with, India could do no better than to offer vital assistance to Afghanistan to forestall its collapse back into the rigid theocratically corrupt regime that plagued the Afghan population under Taliban rule.
To be surrounded by Bangladesh, that impoverished offshoot of Pakistan, along with Pakistan, extended toward Afghanistan and Iran might try the patience and worry the expectations of any country exposed to the volatility of religious extremism. A tiger is a wild beast. Its natural instincts as a predator, a killer, cannot be extinguished, merely contained for a finite period of time.
The world is a zoo, comprised of many animals. Liberal democracies do their utmost to ensure they're on the outside looking in upon caged predators. Occasionally those wild beasts break free. Demanding a reversal. Free democracies are understandably loathe to trade places.
Labels: Political Realities, Religion, Terrorism, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, July 08, 2008
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