Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [258]
In July and August 2009, by contrast, despite the insecurity and violence, there was a general feeling that the military and the authorities had finally got a grip on the situation and demonstrated that they were determined to fight, and that, whatever happened, the Taleban would not be allowed to seize control of Peshawar and its valley. Business confidence had returned, and there was less talk of people leaving. For this, a range of new state policies and actions was responsible – but above all, it was due to the military counter-offensive in Swat in the late spring and summer of 2009.
The counter-offensive against the Taleban indeed provides something of a classic example of the Pakistani response to really serious threats: the eventual selection, from the hordes of more or less useless Pakistani public servants, of a small number of brave and able men; the concentration, from Pakistan’s heaps of squandered public finances, of enough money to support a major operation; the belated unity of the political, economic, administrative and military elites in the face of a common existential danger; the brutal but in the end brutally effective manner in which the struggle has been conducted; the way in which most of the operation has been conducted outside the constitution, the law and the regular administrative and political structures; and the central role of the army not just in the military operation but every other area.
Unity among the elites was essential, because the near-paralysis of the summer of 2008 in the Pathan areas affected every area of the state, and was largely due to the bitter divisions between the political parties, the military and the civil service. For this various factors were responsible: the slow death of the Musharraf presidency (he resigned on 18 August 2008) and the struggle over the succession, which dominated the attention of the political party leaderships and governments; the tradition of bitter distrust between the military and the ruling parties in both Islamabad and Peshawar; and the awareness of everyone concerned that tough military operations against the Taleban were opposed by the majority of the population, especially in the Pathan areas.
PUBLIC OPINION AND THE TALEBAN
The following fact has been widely ignored in the West, probably because it raises a very uncomfortable issue: namely, that Western governments and the Western media believe that they want to promote democracy in Pakistan, but that they have pressed upon Pakistani governments a co-operation with the West in the ‘war on terror’ which most Pakistani voters detest. Pakistani politicians, however – who need those voters’ votes – obviously could not be indifferent to this dilemma, or, at least, not until the threat from the Taleban to themselves became so grave and so obvious that they felt that they had no choice but to fight back. For a long time, therefore, all the main actors on the Pakistani political stage, including Musharraf, the military, the intelligence agencies and the political parties, tried to avoid tough action against the Pakistani Taleban, while at the same time not breaking with the United States. Each at the same time tried to put the blame on the others for the failure to confront the Taleban.
For reasons that have already been explained, these feelings were especially strong among the Pathans, and are closely related to their opinions of the Afghan Taleban struggle. I thought that I might find some more hopeful signs at Peshawar University, which is both a centre of ANP and PPP support, and the site of whatever progressive feeling exists among Pathan youth in the province. In any case, it is always nice to visit Peshawar University. Its green and beautiful grounds are like a drop of perfume squeezed out as if by God’s hand from the hard and gritty fabric of Peshawar. They remind one why, for all the great monotheistic religions that emerged from the arid Middle East, paradise is a garden.
Next door is the Islamia College, from which the university originally grew, a magnificent