Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteThis is the Wikipedia description of Pakistan's former ISI spy agency boss and present Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani:
"He is described as a soft-spoken intellectual who is apolitical, and disciplined. A chain smoker as well as a keen golfer,[2] he is currently president of the Pakistan Golf Association. Kayani is married and has two children, a son and a daughter".
Clearly, Kayani would be more the Al Qaeda and Taliban target than avatar.
However, trigonometry applies all along Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan: eject the Arabs, who truly have invaded Pakistan and produced courts and militian under their auspices; subdue the Talibanized tribes, but with care to leave the way clear to a lasting peace with them; and keep Afghani, American, and Coalition forces out of Pakistan.
On top of that, but not quite quadratic, more of an overlay, the army, reflecting its own makeup and in lieu of disarray in the legislative element of the country as well as weakness in the administrative, must produce from its comparatively secular stance a nonetheless comprehensive possibility for conservative Islamic life when the shooting ends.
That's a tall order, a challenge greater than that of shooting at American commandos who, as well as the Taliban, may evade engagement as they bait and pick up parties running raids into Afghanistan.
The order to engage American forces found operating in Pakistan comes on the heels of the Bush Administration's decision to "carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government" (schmitt and Mazzetti, September 11, 2008). Essentially, Pakistan's doodling for seven years around the problem of policing militants in outlying regions has inspired doubt in Washington about its military's ability to alter internal security relationships developed during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and sustained following the ejection of the Taliban government from Afghanistan.
The U.S. threat to operate freely in Pakistan's backyard serves to goad Pakistan's military into rising to the defense of the country's borders. While it knows it may best do that by subverting the countryside's war-making drive and machinery, the military has now also to deal with a larger internal political issue: with 50 percent illiteracy underming its efforts to make sense to its public and predominantly conservative clerics adding fuel to the popular fires, which consume many effigies, Dutch most recently, as well as American flags, it has the terrible burden of keeping itself popular.
"The main ruling Pakistan People's Party is generally considered in line with U.S. goals in the war on terror, but it has to tread carefully because of deep anti-American sentiment in the country. Many Pakistani's blame their country's partnership with the U.S. in the war on terror for fueling rising militancy in their country" (Associated Press, via Fox News Online, September 4, 2008).
The AP story noted goes on to quote recently ascended President Zardari: ""We stand with the United States, Britain, Spain and others who have been attacked," wrote Zardari, whose wife was killed in a gun and suicide blast in December. "Fundamentally, however, the war we our fighting is our war. This battle is for Pakistan's soul."
A little more than a year ago, conflict and adverse political development in the remote border regions produced much sorrow but not an exodus of refugees. Today, its The Theater in Washington's and Pakistan's own much wanted "War on Terror", and troops on both sides of the border are moving fast to whittle their missions into just the operations they need: the Pakistan military has made its own "foreigners", Al Qaeda unwelcomed--this we know--while possibly sparing or putting off engagement with indigenous with whom it must live if Pakistan is to maintain its borders and survive as a unified and politically coherent country.
Pakistan's military may well fight to make possible a deeply conservative but not militant Islamic state, presuming that separation of intent possible where clerics, so far, control the language and instructions installed willfully and with malice toward others throughout much of the population, but not the part that enjoys the benefits accruing to the development also of a cosmopolitan and modern state well integrated in the world's international trading system.
Associated Press. "Zardari Says Global Terror Pakistan's Priority." Fox News, September 4, 2008.
Loudon,Bruce "Pakistan order to kill US invaders." The Australian, September 13, 2008.
Schmitt, Eric and Mark Mazzetti. "Covert Bush order for raids in Pakistan." The Telegraph, September 12, 2008.
Wikipedia. "Ashfaq Parvez Kayani."
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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