If you don’t take the war to the militants, we’re being told, the war will come to you. A statement that is true, regardless of how one slices it. Liberals within Pakistan keep claiming it in a different context. And now, the Americans in another. The outgoing commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, General David Petreaus, has said that the focus of his theatre of war will shift from south Afghanistan to the east, particularly the border with Pakistan.
The general would know a thing or two about the grand American plan. For the soldier-statesman is set to become his country’s intelligence czar. He was previously the chief of the US military’s central command, in charge of the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Consider also the British prime minister’s visit to Afghanistan, where he compared the Taliban to the Irish Republican Army. These were people who were involved in terrorism, he said, but they were engaged and are now a part of the government. Though the Irish Sinn Fein categorically denounced the comparison, it was indicative nevertheless of the British plan to seek out a political future for the Afghan Taliban. And to move, one would conjecture, further south.
Since quite some time now, voices within the western military establishments have been pleading the case for zeroing in on Pakistan instead, given the rather large number of Al-Qaeda operatives being apprehended from the country. This school of thought was more than vindicated after the presence of Osama Bin Laden in the country.
A state of denial is going to get us nowhere. Things are going to heat up around the neighbourhood. Does the establishment have a plan? The customer, as they say, is always right and the Americans are going to want some clear progress – the sort they themselves can attest to – in the war against militancy. A decision has to be taken one way or the other. The anti-militancy stance of the hapless political class can be easily scuttled, not that of the Americans.
