After Musharraf
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Dave Schuler | Tuesday, August 19, 2008 |
In reading the New York Times editorial on what may be ahead for Pakistan after the resignation of its president, Pervez Musharraf, this paragraph leapt out at me:
Pakistan’s newly elected civilian leaders must also move quickly to challenge Taliban and Al Qaeda forces — who threaten their own country’s stability — and the Pakistani intelligence and military officers who are in league with them. They must address a desperate food and fuel crisis and tackle the deeper problems of poverty, development and corruption that are feeding extremism and anti-American fury.
I suspect that reflects a peculiarly America-centric view of things in Pakistan. Do the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which in recent years have been a lot more tribal and a lot less federally administered, which are the areas in which the Taliban and Al Qaeda have taken root, really register that high on the Pakistani radar?
Have these regions ever actually been under the control of Pakistan’s central government? Is the status quo there destabilizing to Pakistan or actually maintaining Pakistan’s stability such as it is and whatever U. S. views on the subject might be?
I suspect that headlines like “Two Gas Pipelines Blown Up in Pakistan’s Baluchistan” or “Fighting flares in Pakistan’s Baluchistan; 43 killed”, to pick just two, are more likely to be on Pakistanis’ minds than what’s going on in the remote and comparatively isolated Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Contrariwise I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t going to be quite the challenge for us to encourage the new Pakistani president to muster even the mercurial level of interest his predecessor had in the region. How likely is he or she to continue turning a blind eye to our occasional cross-border incursions? They’re not much but they’re what our billion dollars a year in aid are buying us.
About the Author: Over the years Dave Schuler has worked as a martial arts instructor, a handyman, a musician, a cook, and a translator. He's owned his own company for the last thirty years and has a post-graduate degree in his field. He comes from a family of politicians, teachers, and vaudeville entertainers. All-in-all a pretty good preparation for blogging.
He has contributed to OTB since November 2006 but mostly writes at his own blog, The Glittering Eye.
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I suspect that reflects a peculiarly America-centric view of things in Pakistan.
Perhaps, but it still ends up being a valid question even from a Pakistani viewpoint, since one given the area in question to thrive and survive in, does anyone seriously doubt that the next victim of Islaimst extrmism, would be the areas of Pakistan they have not yet taken over?
After all, feeding the lion only makes for a stonger lion, who will then have a bigger hunger to feed.
The answer is money - Mr. Ten Percenter will become Mr. Twenty Percenter and all will be well.
The Australian has been reporting pretty heavy fighting in the FATA. Will this new government do more than Musharraf ever did?
Steve
Steve:
No.
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