Apocalyse now. Run for cover. The turbans are coming. This is the state of Pakistan today, according to the current hysteria disseminated by the US administration and media — from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to The New York Times. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said on record that Pakistani Talebanistan is a threat to the security of Britain.
But unlike St. Petersburg in 1917 or Tehran in late 1978, Islamabad won’t fall tomorrow to a turban revolution.
Pakistan is not an ungovernable Somalia. The numbers tell the story. At least 55 percent of Pakistan’s 170 million-strong population are Punjabis. There’s no evidence they are about to embrace Talebanistan. Around 50 million are Sindhis — faithful followers of the overwhelmingly secular Pakistan People’s Party. Talebanistan fanatics in these two provinces — amounting to 85 percent of Pakistan’s population, with a heavy concentration of the urban middle class — are an infinitesimal minority.
The Pakistan-based Taleban are concentrated in the Pashtun tribal areas, in some districts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and some very localized, small parts of Punjab.
To believe this ragtag band could rout the well-equipped, very professional 550,000-strong Pakistani Army, the sixth-largest military in the world is a ludicrous proposition.
Moreover, there’s no evidence the Taleban, in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, have any capability to hit a target outside of “Af-Pak” (Afghanistan and Pakistan). That’s mythical Al-Qaeda’s privileged territory. As for the nuclear hysteria of the Taleban being able to crack the Pakistani army codes for the country’s nuclear arsenal, even Obama, at his 100-day news conference, stressed the nuclear arsenal was safe.
Of course, there’s a smatter of junior Pashtun army officers who sympathize with the Taleban — as well as significant sections of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. But the military institution itself is backed by none other than the American Army — with which it has been closely intertwined since the 1970s.
President Zardari’s government this week had to send in troops and the air force to deal with the Buner problem, in the Malakand district of NWFP, which shares a border with Kunar province in Afghanistan and thus is relatively close to US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops. They are fighting less than 500 members of the Tehrik-e Taleban-e Pakistan (TTP). But for the Pakistani Army, the possibility of the area joining Talebanistan is a great asset — because this skyrockets Pakistani control of Pashtun southern Afghanistan, ever in accordance with the eternal “strategic depth” doctrine prevailing in Islamabad. So if Islamabad is not burning tomorrow, why the hysteria? There are several reasons. To start with, what Washington cannot stomach is real democracy and a true civilian government in Islamabad; these would be much more than a threat to “US interests” than the Taleban.
What Washington may certainly relish is yet another military coup. So the man of the hour — and the next few hours, days and months — is discreet Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. He is very cozy with US military chief Adm. Mike Mullen.
Moreover, there are canyons of the Pakistani military/security bureaucracy who would love nothing better than to extract even more US dollars from Washington to fight the Pashtun neo-Taleban that they are simultaneously arming to fight the Americans and NATO.
What is never mentioned by US corporate media is the tremendous social problems Pakistan has to deal with because of the mess in the tribal areas. Islamabad believes that between the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and NWFP, at least one million people are now displaced. The myth of Talebanistan anyway is just a diversion, a cog in the slow-moving regional big wheel — which in itself is part of the new great game in Eurasia.
During a first stage Washington think tanks and corporate media hammered nonstop on the “threat of Al-Qaeda” to Pakistan and the US. In the second stage, the new Obama administration accelerated the Predator “hell from above” drone war over Pashtun peasants. Now comes the stage where the soon over 100,000-strong US/NATO troops are depicted as the true liberators of the poor in Af-Pak (and not the “evil” Taleban) — an essential ploy in the new narrative to legitimize Obama’s Af-Pak surge.
For all pieces to fall into place, a new uber-bogeyman is needed. And he is TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud, who, curiously, had never been hit by even a fake US drone until, in early March, he made official his allegiance to historic Taleban leader Mullah Omar, who is said to live undisturbed somewhere around Quetta, in Pakistani Balochistan.
Now there’s a $5 million price on Baitullah’s head. The Predators have duly hit the Mehsud family’s South Waziristan bases. But not once but twice, the ISI forwarded a detailed dossier of Baitullah’s location directly to its cousin, the Central Intelligence Agency. But there was no drone hit.
Drones can incinerate any single Pashtun wedding in sight. But international bogeymen of mystery — Osama Bin Laden, Baitullah, Mullah Omar of course deserve star treatment.
— This article first appeared in Asia Times. Pepe Escobar may be reached at [email protected].
