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| India-Pakistan |
| Canadian blood stains doorstep of Pakistan president |
| 2006-07-26 |
| Editorial - The Vancouver Sun As the bodies of two more Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan arrive home, one has to ask why the West, and especially Washington, continues to treat with kid gloves the man who could throttle the Taliban insurgency. Pervez Musharraf, the dictator president of neighbouring Pakistan, was quick to side with the administration of George W. Bush when it was clear the United States intended to clear al-Qaida and its Taliban regime protectors out of Afghanistan following the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. But while Musharraf has talked a good line, his performance has always fallen well short of his rhetoric. Border areas of Pakistan remain a haven and training area for the Taliban where teams of young Afghans are prepared for missions, including the kind of suicide bombing that killed Cpl. Francisco Gomez and Cpl. Jason Warren near their Kandahar base last week. In all likelihood al-Qaida head Osama bin-Laden and Afghanistan's former Taliban leader Mullah Omar, both wildly popular cult figures in Pakistan, are hiding somewhere in the wild border country out of reach of Musharraf's government forces. Perhaps most perplexing of all is Washington's continued stroking of Musharraf in the shadow of the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, former head of Pakistan's atomic agency. Early in 2004 Khan confessed that, in addition to being the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, he sold bomb-making technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran. So the true source of dangerous nuclear proliferation is not a rogue state, but a Washington ally. More extraordinary still, Musharraf put Khan under house arrest for a while and then pardoned the man considered a national hero in Pakistan. Meanwhile, for about two years Musharraf blocked American intelligence agency officials from interviewing Khan. It is only in the past few weeks that access to Khan has been approved. And on Monday the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security released a report saying Pakistan is massively expanding its Khushab atomic site so that it will be able to produce enough plutonium to make 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year. The ISIS report is probably intended to spur the U.S. Congress to modify or derail plans by the Bush administration to develop peaceful nuclear technology trade with Pakistan's arch-rival, India. Critics of the deal foresee it sparking a nuclear arms race in South Asia involving not only India and Pakistan, but also India's other regional rival, China. Perhaps the most generous interpretation that can be put on Washington's apparent insouciance in the face of Musharraf's sins of commission and omission is that the administration figures he's a better bet than the alternatives. If that is the case, there is some justice in it. Pakistan's experiments with democracy since the country's partition from India in 1947 have been largely shambolic. The military and the Inter-Service Intelligence agency are among the few efficiently functioning institutions in the country. The problem is that both these institutions, like much of Pakistan's population, are infused with Islamic radicalism. The Taliban and al-Qaida are both to a substantial degree creations of Pakistan's ISI. The agency is culturally disinclined to slaughter its own offspring no matter what Musharraf or Washington say. The result is that even though the Pakistan military has made some noisy and much-photographed forays into the so-called tribal areas of the Northwest Frontier Province and North and South Waziristan, the Pakistani forces do not control these border regions and have shown little will to do so. Earlier this year the Taliban went so far as to declare it has created an "Islamic state" in North and South Waziristan. Although some of the Taliban claims are undoubtedly exaggerations, the basic premise appears to be true -- these Pakistani provinces have been turned into a Taliban haven containing about 2.5 million Afghan refugees, many of them young men eager for jihad. For members of the Canadian and other coalition forces and their families, the bitter truth is that until Musharraf can be prodded into rooting out the terrorists in his own country, the Taliban insurgency will continue to flourish. |
| Posted by:john |
| #2 The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan at least inhibits interference with the culture of the "Tribal territories." Musharaf once supported Taliban as part of Pakistan's "Pakistan in depth" policy, but dropped the support after 9-11. |
| Posted by: Griper Whegum8464 2006-07-26 20:52 |
| #1 No rooting out will be done. Pervez Musharraf is the head of the Pakistan Army and the official motto of that army is "Jihad in the name of Allah" They are jihadists... end of story |
| Posted by: john 2006-07-26 15:08 |