:: Editorial

Fears rise: Pak out of control?

Oct.16 : The deteriorating security situation within Pakistan ought to be a matter of serious concern to us in India, although the dramatis personae responsible for the spate of attacks at different places in the country, including the three synchronised assaults on separate leading institutions of the police establishment in Lahore on Thursday, are wards of its own Inter-Services Intelligence who flex their muscle from time to time to signal their autonomy in furtherance of specific aims. Not that the recent spurt in terrorist violence in Pakistan necessarily means that the ISI, which is always known to have its reasons, disapproves. In the absence of reliable information, analysts will, however, need to worry about the possibility of the present Pakistani state being overwhelmed by extremists, whether all elements of the state apparatus approve of this or not. This worry won’t be limited to foreign observers and is certain to extend to the people of Pakistan as well who, by all accounts, are terrified of such a prospect but are unable to exert themselves to avert it. Those that may be ranged against the present establishment have grown way too strong over the decades, thanks to official mollycoddling. India has a serious cause for apprehension here. In the hands of the Army and the ISI, even a supposedly rule-bound Pakistan has been a treacherous and aggressive neighbour. With all restraints off, if the extremists come to rule, the situation is likely to become wholly unpredictable.

But there is another consideration that can plausibly be entertained. It deals with the short term. In the past fortnight, there have been half a dozen major terrorist strikes in Pakistan which have taken more than a hundred lives. The targets have included the Army headquarters in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s chief garrison town, and key police institutions in Lahore, the capital of the country’s most important province in every respect, including political. Peshawar, the principal town of the North-West Frontier Province, of course, has been rocked over and over again. And who knows, it may be Karachi’s turn next to burn. The domestic political backdrop to these goings-on is the bad blood between the military establishment — who are the country’s real rulers — and the so-called civilian establishment which was brought into being in order to provide a veneer of democracy, mainly for the benefit of aid-providers in the West, particularly the United States. If the country is in turmoil, and the civilian rulers give the appearance of being babes in the woods, an official military takeover might appear to be the need of the hour, even in the eyes of the Pakistani people. Typically, the military men have made matters worse over time, but with the Taliban-types knocking at the gates, the people would be made to "understand". As for the Kerry-Lugar US legislation, which doesn’t mind $1.5 billion in American aid flowing to Pakistan every year for the next five years so long as Pakistan doesn’t proliferate nuclear technology and reins in the "jihadists", it is for the birds. India needs to publicly question such aid in the context of the overall US aid of $15 billion since 2001 not having achieved anything at all by way of curbing the dynamics of terrorism.