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| Pak President spills the beans | | Many a tongue in motion after Sept. 11 developments | | B L KAK
NEW DELHI: This past week and this week also Pakistan and most other countries, particularly the United States and India, saw Gen. Parvez Musharraf in action. A lot of talking he did, partly on his own and party under pressure. And his damning disclosure that the US had threatened to bomb Pakistan back into the Stone Age after September 11 developments, has left Pakistanis as well as the rest of the world stunned.
The revelation, made by Gen. Musharraf himself during his US visit last week, could not have come at a more inconvenient point in the US-Pakistan relations. The President of Pakistan spilled the beans during an interview with the CBS — just ahead of his scheduled visit to the White House. No wonder a red-faced President Bush found it hard to explain the threat during his joint press conference with Gen. Musharraf at the White House.
Importance was, of course, atached to the US President’s explanation and reiteration of his trust and confidence in Gen. Musharraf’s Pakistan as the "trusted partner and ally" in the US war on terror. Equally important is the fact that the US threat in the wake of the 9/11 developments now explains the dramatic turnaround in Pakistan’s stance on Afghanistan and the Taliban five years ago. Despite the fact that Pakistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan had been close friends and allies, Islamabad was forced to let down its traditional friends in its larger national interest.
To give credit where it is due, that could not have been an easy decision for the Pak leadership. But in the end, Gen. Musharraf did what he saw in the best interest of his country. He went along with the US. In the bargain, the General ended up turning a major section of his own people against himself. Both Gen. Musharraf and Pakistan have had to pay a heavy price for that decision to join the US war on Afghanistan.
Amazingly, and not surprisingly, it is a known fact that the U.S. does not appreciate Pakistan President when he turns against his own people of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and antogonises them by going against Taliban, which is a political force which represents a majority of the Pashtun people. America appreciates what he has been doing and the fact that he is, acccording to his followers, really "sincere" in his job and he is one man who can change Pakistan for the better. He has taken for the first time no political person to be an obstacle in the way of the tribal leaders.
Gen. Musharraf has to do nothing extra to show that he is serious about the war against terror. He has already shown his truthfulness, insist his followers. Now the time has come when he should not antogonise the Pathan people any more even across the border — in Afganistan, where they are a majority. At the end of the day, the leader is answerable to them, not to the Americans.
There have been two serious assassination attempts on Gen. Musharraf, not to mention the wrath of religious parties and the large Pashtu-speaking community in the north that he has incurred. Perhaps no other country in the so-called coalition of the willing has been so heavily affected by these developments as Pakistan has been. Yet neocon zealots in the US establishment and some officials of the Bush administration continue to point fingers at Pakistan, suggesting that Islamabad has not done ‘enough’ to deal with Al Qaeda elements. Of late, this pressure on Pakistan is said to have reached unacceptable levels.
Which is perhaps why an angry Musharraf went public with the reported threat in Washington -- hours before his encounter with Bush. Whatever Gen. Musharraf's justification for this leak now, it seems to have achieved its objective. President Bush went out of his way to cajole and sweet-talk a sulking President of Pakistan. Bush’s offer to help Pakistan in its attempts to resolve the Kashmir business with India was clearly yet another attempt by Washington to woo back Pakistan.
If Pakistan went along with the US’ campaign against Afghanistan and its larger war on terror in its ‘national interest’, US too vitally needed Pakistan’s support in its post-September 11 drive. In fact, even now the US is more dependent on Pakistan for its campaign against Al Qaeda than Pakistan is on the US. For better or for worse, Pakistan and America are in this together. Washington and Islamabad may be unusual friends but they are natural allies.
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