by MELVIN A. GOODMAN
Under the stewardship of neoconservative Fred Hiatt, the editorial and op-ed pages of The Washington Post have steadily moved to the right; the paper’s key writers — Charles Krauthammer, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Kathleen Parker, and others — have marched along in lockstep. They have supported the use of military force in Iraq and Afghanistan; offered apologies for the CIA crimes of torture and abuse, extraordinary renditions, and secret prisons; and criticized efforts by the Obama Administration to reverse these policies and to rely on multilateral diplomacy and arms control and disarmament to resolve outstanding problems. The key writer in Hiatt’s stable has been David Ignatius, who is this year’s winner of the WashPost/Compost Award for the most incomprehensible and fanciful op-ed of 2009.
Ignatius’ winning op-ed was written last month. He sought to justify U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan that, he says, will lead to a “sovereign Pakistan that controls all its territory”; a “future common market between Pakistan and Afghanistan that can power economic development in both countries”; and a “stable structure for Central and South Asia in the 21st century.” Ignatius believes that, just as the Mexican-American War “helped make the United States a continental nation” and the European wars of the 19th century “helped unify Germany and Italy,” the Af-Pak wars will stabilize a lawless tribal region that has been in turmoil for 150 years. There is no Afghan or Pakistani leader who genuinely believes that the current strife can lead to stabilization. Indeed, there are few Afghan and Pakistani leaders who understand all the roles being played by Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda, various tribal leaders, and the Pakistani intelligence services, which have played key clandestine roles in multiple crises that have affected Kabul, Delhi, and Islamabad. If the local actors can’t comprehend all the major factions, U.S. leaders (and commentators) are not likely to do better.
Ignatius brings an unusual ignorance to the subject of Pakistan, which he treats as a normal nation-state. In reality, Pakistan is an artificial political entity that has long been both dysfunctional and unstable. In their partition of South Asia in 1947, the British hoped to create one region (Pakistan) that would provide military facilities to Britain. To accomplish this, the British merged five key ethnic groups that had never co-existed in the same body politic historically, according to Selig Harrison, a senior fellow with the Center for International Policy. The Bengalis were the largest ethnic group, outnumbering the other four: the Punjabis, the Pashtuns, the Baluch, and the Sindhis. The Bengalis seceded in 1971, forming the independent state of Bangladesh. The Punjabis now outnumber the Pashtuns, Baluch, and Sindhis, but the three smaller groups have ancestral claims to more than 70% of Pakistani territory, ensuring continued ethnic and tribal strife.
The essential instability of the Pakistani state and the continued military conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan will make it impossible to create the network of institutions that Ignatius believes can “create a stable structure for Central and South Asia in the 21st century.” He wants unidentified American and Pakistani “statesmen” to “show the same vision and maturity” that post-World War II American and European statesmen used to create the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. These international institutions were born during WWII, however, in an effort to restore international order and prosperity at a time when the U.S. economy was booming and could finance postwar recovery and ensure currency stability. American leaders had a good understanding of the political and economic problems of Western and Central Europe; in contrast, U.S. leaders are basically ignorant about the frontier along the Afghan-Pakistani border and the tribal wastelands of Southwest Asia. The World Bank and the IMF have had their successes, but they have never been able to create positive economic development among the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world; both Afghanistan and Pakistan are key members of this unfortunate group.
Finally, Ignatius believes the U.S. buildup of troops in Afghanistan is the key to securing Pakistan’s control over its lawless tribal region. In fact, Pakistan understands that additional U.S. forces in Afghanistan will lead to increased warfare on the Afghan-Pakistan border and will ultimately drive more militants into Pakistani territory in Waziristan and the Northwest Frontier Provinces. The suicide bombing of a CIA base along the border and the wave of bombings that have swept Pakistan over the past several months, including the eastern city of Lahore, are a reaction to the increased U.S. use of unmanned drone aircraft in Pakistani territory against al Qaeda and the Taliban. U.S. efforts to bolster border security in Afghanistan may well complicate the overall security situation in Pakistan. Moreover, the Obama Administration’s announcement of a troop buildup in Afghanistan, along with a timeline for withdrawal, presumably have emboldened both al Qaeda and the Taliban.
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