Mosharraf Zaidi

http://thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=253154

A Quickie-Leak on Obama’s War

Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Mosharraf Zaidi

Let’s establish the facts about the Wikileaks expose of 75,000 US military documents detailing Obama’s war in Afghanistan.

First, the total number of documents released is 75,000. Another roughly 15,000 have been held back by the Wikileaks people “as part of a harm minimisation process demanded” by the sources that provided these files to Wikileaks in the first place. This means that there may be really damaging and shocking stories embedded in the remaining documents, because thus far, the documents contain nothing more than what we already know.

Second, the time period covered by the Wikileaks expose is January 2004-December 2009. This means it does not cover President Barack Obama’s post-Afghan surge work, but it does cover both President Pervez Musharraf and President Asif Ali Zardari’s time in officer. It also covers COAS Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s time as both head of the ISI and COAS. This means that when we derive broad themes from the documents about Pakistan, we are saying something about the present Pakistani government, the past Pakistani government, and everything in between. But when we take broad messages about the US from these documents, we are saying something only about whatever preceded the current COIN strategy.

Third, Wikileaks’ purpose in releasing these files has nothing to do with Pakistan, or India, or Afghanistan. Its purpose is to expose the incompetence, myopia and failure of the US-led war in Afghanistan. Wikileaks is an anti-war organisation. This means that the expose is not a part of any kind of campaign against Pakistan. If Pakistan looks bad in the crossfire of domestic American politics surrounding the Afghan war, that’s Pakistan’s bad. Contrary to the insatiable appetite for negativity about this country among some media outlets, Pakistan is in fact a bit player in the Wikileaks drama. The release of these documents is designed to influence US public opinion about the war in Afghanistan.

These facts are important. On Day One of its release, the Afghan War Diary 2004-2010 (as the documents have been branded by Wikileaks) discussing the conduct of the US government and military in their prosecution of the Afghan war seemed to be secondary. Instead, questions and conversations about Pakistan’s ISI dominated the initial analysis of the Wikileaks documents.

The ISI is not a new villain in the global conversation about “Af-Pak”. For more than three decades, as the collective intelligence organisation of the Pakistani military, it has planned and prosecuted Pakistan’s secret wars. Pakistanis don’t need any help in understanding the ways in which the ISI has influenced both internal and external political events for the last three decades. The most penetrating, articulate and meaningful criticism of the ISI also happens to come from the work of Pakistanis, from Kamran Shafi’s bold and fearless columns, to human rights activists demanding accountability for missing persons, to Pakistani Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani’s devastating critique in his book “Pakistan: From Mosque to Military”.

Virtually no serious commentator or analyst anywhere, even those embedded deep in the armpit of the Pakistani establishment, claims that the Pakistani state was not instrumental in the creation, training and sustenance of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. Given the nature of the relationship between the Pakistani state and the Afghan Taliban, one that goes right to the genetic core of the Taliban, it is hard to imagine that all ties can ever be severed. Again, for serious people, this is an issue that is done and dusted. Pakistan’s state, and indeed, its society, had, has and will continue to have linkages with the Afghan Taliban. Moral judgments about these linkages are external to this fact.

These linkages do, however, deserve the scrutiny of the Pakistani parliament. If somehow, Pakistanis are involved in supporting any kind of violence against anyone, that kind of support had better be couched in a clear national security framework that articulates why it is okay for Pakistanis to underwrite such violence. Absent such a framework, the violence is illegal, and the space for speculation and innuendo about Pakistan is virtually infinite. It is that space that Pakistan’s fiercest critics exploit when they generate massive headlines out of small nuggets of insignificant and stale information that implicates Pakistan in anti-US violence in Afghanistan (among other things).

Over time, the space provided by an ineffective Pakistani state has helped the ISI occupy in western minds, what the Mossad and CIA represent in the Muslim world: a convenient red-herring to explain the complexities, difficulties and unpleasantness of war and diplomacy in a post-9/11 world.

Western conspiracy theories about Pakistan’s evil double-cross in Afghanistan don’t need to be rooted in absolute truth, just a scant kernel of the truth will often do. In that way, it is once again eminently clear that talk of a “clash of civilisations” is garbage. It turns out that human beings are the same everywhere.

Pakistan’s obsession with conspiracy theories is well-documented by the western media. This small sampling, for example, took less than five minutes to compile: August 24, 2005, “Pakistan: In the Land of Conspiracy Theories” PBS Frontline. May 12, 2009, “A Grand Conspiracy Theory From Pakistan” NY Times The Lede. November 17, 2009, “Pakistan’s conspiracy theories” Reuters Blog. November 27, 2009, “Pakistan conspiracy theories stifle debate” BBC News. December 24, 2009, “Conspiracy Theories ‘Stamped In DNA’ Of Pakistanis” NPR. February 12, 2010, “Blackwater Conspiracy Theory Thrives in Pakistan” AOL News. February 16, 2010, “Pakistanis See a Vast U.S. Conspiracy Against Them” Time Magazine. April 28, 2010, “Pakistanis just love conspiracy theories” PRI’s The World. May 25, 2010, “U.S. Is a Top Villain in Pakistan’s Conspiracy Talk” NY Times. May 26, 2010, “Times Square bombing conspiracy theory takes hold in Pakistani media” Yahoo News.

This kind of coverage of Pakistan irks some within the Islamic Republic. But it really shouldn’t. It is absolutely true that the current conflict between terrorists and ordinary Pakistanis has been made worse by our national and collective dependence on invisible and indefensible theories about the harm wished on us by other countries. Most of all, conspiracy theories, which tend to be based on small kernels of truth, help us avoid uncomfortable realities. Pakistan has a massive national security problem that is rooted in the violent extremism it once invested in as a strategy in Afghanistan. That is an uncomfortable reality.

The recent ISI and Pakistan obsession of war analysts and correspondents is not some other-worldly phenomenon. It is rooted in the very human need for comfort. There is much comfort in finding Pakistan and the ISI under every rock and IED in Afghanistan. The small kernels of truth that enable ISI conspiracy theories are a matter for Pakistanis to take seriously and address. But they also help the US and its allies in Afghanistan avoid the uncomfortable reality of Obama’s Afghan war. This is a war that does not have a happy ending for anyone. This is a war that has made America, Pakistan, India, Iran and Afghanistan less safe. This is a war that needs to end. That is an uncomfortable reality.

Focusing on the adverse role of the ISI — real and imagined — in Afghanistan is a distraction. Ending Obama’s Afghan war is the true purpose behind the Wikileaks expose. For that it should be celebrated. Not mourned.