The Waziristan Affair

North and South Waziristan are now the new battle grounds in the war on terror, not havens or safe spots anymore, but true battle grounds in the first sense of the word. Prior to this, the areas had been charged as havens for the Taliban, as ungovernable borderland wildernesses and as no go areas for any armed forces. From the west, NATO and US forces have been trying to push the Taliban hard, but as they say, trying is only a metaphor for meaning to fail. The Taliban control much of the Afghan countryside and show no signs of abating in their relentless attack of coalition forces, hampered by caveats and an unwillingness to fight by most except the Americans and British. The recent case of the Italian military personnel paying the Taliban to not attack them is a case in point. More important is the accusation made over the years by the Karzai government and the US that Waziristan and the Tribal Areas are safe havens for the Taliban, who cross over the border to attack NATO forces and then slip back across to rearm and rest on the Pakistani side of the border. Pakistan has consistently denied this, not least because implicit in the statement is the idea that there are members of the armed forces and paramilitary, especially the FC, that are complicit in this arrangement and that there s sympathy for the Taliban on this side of the border. This idea has found credence in most Western media outlets and has produced an image of a Pakistani state unable to govern its own territory and on the verge of collapse or takeover by extremist militias who will then have access to nuclear weapons, the great fear of the US and its allies. This scenario overlooks some of the basic history and structure of the Pakistani state, reducing its integrity to that of a failed state, which could not be further from the truth. The Pakistani state structure remains the most powerful institution in the country and taking it over would require manning all the millions of positions that are currently occupied by civil servants, bureaucrats and the like. It is not on the point of collapse that many US bureaucrats would like to believe and its takeover by Islamist extremists is a scenario with so little credibility that it is a wonder it has found any voice at all in respectable journalism. But the image continues to be peddled by the news media and feeds vague public fears about Pakistan’s future, leading to public approval of drone attacks and other violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty as well as rebounding back on the Pakistani public, who feel vilified by this constant misrepresentation of their state, culture and society. The attack in Waziristan is a show of resurgence by the state to highlight that far from being at the point of collapse, it is merely in a transitional phase, from a strong military dictatorship to a strong, and more oppressive, civilian dictatorship. The myriad problems the civilian government has inherited make that process more painful and difficult but not insurmountable, seeing how the army, under Chief Ashfaq Kiyani, seems to be giving it support on the difficult decisions. This transition is painful for the country and is accompanied by a loss of life and with terrorism and a near civil war that is retarding the economy and taking its toll on the collective psyche of the nation. Accompanied by a global recession and the lack of faith in the country’s leadership, this is perhaps the defining moment for this nation, and the recently begun army operation in Waziristan could just shape the future of the country for decades to come, with implications for the world as well.