This is still our war
We were never at war with Eurasia. An Orwellian haze surrounds the affairs of empire. When the US FBI quietly removes Mullah Omar’s name from its list of most wanted terrorists, presumably reflecting the Obama administration’s plan to reach out to the Taliban, a respected US magazine goes a step further and says he never was on the list. But that isn’t all; since there is a chance that the negotiations just might fall through, he still remains on the State Department’s list of most wanted terrorists.
Do those words of caution before entering into Afghanistan seem wishy-washy now? An evil and medievalist a regime the Taliban might have been but they were not as intransigent on the issue of Osama bin Laden as was pandered to the world. And even if the decision to militarily engage the Taliban was unavoidable – there are always guns to be sold, after all – there could have been other ways to deal with the situation. There was advice from some Afghanistan watchers to the effect that the regime could, in fact, be broken up by disconnecting the upper-middle and lower tiers from the apex council. But no, there was war, an all-out war, to be waged.
Here in Pakistan, there are bound to be smug faces in the usual quarters. They would see the American decision as a vindication of their overall argument against the war on terror. It is a flawed framework of analysis, one that is premised on the belief that our endeavours in the war against terror are exclusively at American behest. It is the elected government, both the federal and that of the violence-hit KP province that feels this is our war to fight.
The Americans can afford to cut and run; we cannot. The US could not care less if the zealots create a fascist fiefdom in Afghanistan as long as they can thrash out a working relationship with them. Pakistan, on the other hand, needs to take care of her own. What transpires in Afghanistan is the lot of the unfortunate Afghans; it would be immoral to try to change that. But we have to ensure that the people of Fata, KP and indeed the rest of Pakistan are accorded the same freedoms that are envisioned in the constitution for everyone. That we cannot do if the violent forces of obscurantism are not dealt with.
