generalspeaking

Targeting The Enemy Within

External enemies can be fought. They are identified and a face-off occurs and the result is either success or failure. Internal enemies are more elusive; they can be identified, but sometimes they can blend in with others in the population, and knowing the geographical terrain as no enemy would, they can advantageously linger long after being routed to spring to life again, like the fabled hydra of Greek legend.

For Muslim Pakistan, the encouragement of a proxy army of religious fanatics meant to target neighbouring Hindu India, the understanding of their having bred an unmanageable beast has come late.

Lesson: be careful of the Frankenstein created. A malevolent, hateful entity will not distinguish between victims. Its force of malign purpose will extinguish loyalties once it becomes self-supporting, no longer amenable to distinguishing between its objects of annihilation and its controllers, so like as enemies of their greater purpose - ultimate control of its own ascendant destiny.

Pakistan was incapable of sustaining itself as a religious state within a democratic political infrastructure. Its democracy was too unstable, too frail to defray the costs of acute and political religious fundamentalism.

If, in its current battle against the religious insurgents, those who have instilled terror in the formerly ungovernable provincial hinterlands, it vanquishes forever its neighbourly enmity toward India, much will have been accomplished.

In the meantime, it is instructive and hopeful to witness President Asif Ali Zardari seemingly transformed from playboy to responsible political maturity. Finally, Pakistan recognizes the enemy, and it has been themselves. Henceforth, Asif Ali Zardai has declared, his government's operations would target "strategic assets", identifying the leaders of the Taliban, eradicating their terrifying ultra-religious unorthodoxy in Islam.

The intent is to recapture the Swat Valley for the country, along with its neighbouring districts where the major cities have been threatened by capture and occupation by the Taliban. "Military operations are all across the board against any insurgent, whether in Karachi, Lahore or whether he is in any part of Pakistan.

"The Pakistan People's Party has focused itself against the extremist mindset. Terror is a regional problem; it cuts across borders. I would love to be remembered for creating a Pakistan where militancy - I know it can't totally be diminished - is defeated", declared Preesident Zardari.

When he meant to say he knows it cannot be totally defeated; he means to diminish its impact and its reality, and its future. In the meantime, he has rendered the region a great service by befriending Afghan President Hamid Karzai. He has extended goodwill gestures to India, and influenced a mutual campaign to battle the influence of militant Islam in the entire geography.

He has his detractors in Pakistan, the old guard who liked things the way they were, ready to wage war with India as their first order of business. "It rankles the small mind. It does not rankle the army", said President Zardari, "because after India and Pakistan became nuclear powers, that position of being able to take over another state is nullified". Mutual Assured Destruction focuses the mind.

But why did it take so long to focus the Pakistani mind on that reality? And the reality is that Pakistan encouraged religious fanaticism in Afghanistan through supporting and directing the Taliban, hoping to enlist Afghanistan in Pakistan's hostility to India. What a tangled web of deceit, murderous intent and carnage.

Labels: Political Realities, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 06, 2009