| Ander Nieuws week 14 / nieuwe oorlog 2008 |
US fears as new coalition government plans to negotiate with its 'own people' - the extremists
The Observer
March 23, 2008
Jason Burke
Pakistan's newly elected government will seek to negotiate with Islamic militants and demilitarise the campaign against them to end the violence racking the country, leaders of the major coalition parties who will take power next week have said.
The explicit declaration of a desire to talk to extremists and to reduce the role of the army marks a major change for the strategically crucial country and will confirm fears among American policymakers that the heavy defeat of President Pervez Musharraf at recent elections will lead to Pakistan scaling back its support for the US-led 'war on terror' in the region. Pakistan's rugged western frontier is seen as a haven not just for Pakistani militants but also for al-Qaeda and the Taliban and has been the site of fierce combat for several years.
This week a new Prime Minister and cabinet is expected to be sworn in in Islamabad, following an accord between opposition parties. The party of assassinated former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto yesterday nominated the former National Assembly speaker Yousaf Raza Gilani as its candidate for premier. The unprecedented 'grand coalition' he is likely to lead is expected to seek ways to permanently remove Musharraf, a loyal US ally who was re-elected president for a five-year term last year, from power.
'The Musharraf era and everything that was wrong with that era is now behind us,' said one Pakistani parliamentarian yesterday. 'We are not going to throw the baby out with the [bath] water, but a lot is going to be different.'
American policymakers fear that any negotiations will both legitimise the militants in the eyes of the local population and give them time to rearm, re-train and reform. There has been a series of truces with extremist leaders in recent years, many arranged by Pakistani military commanders on the ground despite Washington's opposition.
'We do not believe that truces or talks with militants are productive,' one US official in Islamabad told The Observer earlier this year. British diplomats do not dismiss negotiations entirely, but say that the success of talks 'depends on who is talking and about what.
In interviews before the election last month, senior figures in both major coalition parties - Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League and Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's party - said they favoured a less 'military' strategy to counter violence by Islamic extremists. Sharif said he wanted a 'wide-ranging debate' on how to fight violence, though he refused to commit himself to a policy. However, the New York Times yesterday reported the Muslim League leader saying that the militants were part of 'our own people' and explaining that 'when you have a problem in your own family, you don't kill ... you sit and talk'.
Asif Ali Zardari, who assumed joint leadership of the PPP after his wife Benazir Bhutto was killed in an bomb and gun attack attributed to the militants in December, told the New York Times that he favoured using talks and a 'beefed-up police force,' saying that 'even a fool knows that ... what they have been doing for the past eight years has not been working'.
Decriminalising the fight against the militants is also favoured by the newly elected provincial government in the North West Frontier Province, but may need constitutional amendments to be put into practice.
'We are not talking about appeasement but taking a different approach by looking at law enforcement,' said respected analyst Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group in Islamabad. 'If you don't enforce the law, you won't get rid of what is an internal problem.'
Ahmed pointed out that one problem will be the semi-autonomous status of the 'tribal agencies' where the militants are based. To end their special legal status, the legacy of British colonial government, will not be easy. 'You need courts, police, judges,' he said.
Yet any new government in Pakistan has to tread a careful path. Pakistan relies on America for massive aid, particularly to the country's powerful military. Yet most ordinary Pakistanis believe their army is fighting 'someone else's war' and that casualties of the militants' bombs are paying the price.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Original link
| Ander Nieuws week 14 / nieuwe oorlog 2008 |