Musharraf on Roobaroo

Speaking on PTV's Roobaroo programme the other day, President General Pervez Musharraf claimed that the terrorists were on the run after recent successes in capturing their masterminds and important cadres.
The pressure this had generated on them, the president went on, had forced them to relocate to the cities and even other countries.
The president explained the strategy of the government, ie attacking the source and the masterminds behind terrorism, recent and future successes in which would help dry up terrorism.
He appealed to the vast silent majority of Pakistanis to come forward and support the government's efforts against the lunatic fringe.
The president was categorical in refuting any suggestion that all this was being done under some kind of external pressure or on the behest of foreign powers.
He gave due credit to the law enforcement agencies for their successes in reaching close to the heart of organisations such as al Qaeda.
President Musharraf denied that any military operation had been launched or was ongoing in Balochistan, asking his audience to distinguish between actions against a few miscreants and saboteurs and a military operation.
On the setting up of cantonments in Sui, Kohlu and Gwadar, the president was clear that these would be built in the light of the emerging threat on our western borders and to safeguard internal security and law and order.
Peripherally, the president argued, these cantonments would bring development and modernisation to the local people and generate jobs.
The president challenged the MMA to issue a fatwa against the suicide bombers who had been targeting him and prime minister-designate Shaukat Aziz recently. He was critical of the MMA's stance of criticising his government's operations against the terrorists.
He refuted the claim that innocent civilians were being killed deliberately in South Waziristan, saying some collateral damage was regrettable despite the precise targeting of all operations.
He said the integration of the tribal areas into the federal system would become a fact of life within 3-4 years.
There is no gainsaying the recent successes of the law enforcement agencies against terrorists who have yielded a great deal of strategic information, leading to a widening of the net of arrests of such elements. Never before has the government been closer to the nerve centre of al Qaeda and its local allies and supporters.
The arrests of al Qaeda cadres performing crucial tasks for the organisation has dealt a serious blow to its operations, actual or planned for the future.
The president's assertion that al Qaeda and its supporters are relocating under the impact of military operations from areas such as South Waziristan, where they had taken refuge after 9/11 and the US-led war in Afghanistan that overthrew Taleban rule, to the cities and even other countries is partially borne out by the spate of arrests of al Qaeda and its local supporters from some major and smaller cities throughout Pakistan, as also the report about some 400 fighters slipping across the border into Afghanistan from South Waziristan.
There is also weight in the president's argument that far from acting under duress or external pressure, Pakistan itself was responding to the threat posed to it by terrorism.
If further proof of this is needed, the report about al Qaeda training an army of suicide bombers, including women and children, to target prominent Pakistani figures should suffice.
And it is difficult to grudge the president his praise of the law enforcement agencies, which have scored unprecedented successes in the fight against terrorism.
The president's characterisation of actions by the military and law enforcement agencies against a few miscreants and saboteurs does not jibe with the opposition's description of the situation in Balochistan as one where a military operation is in progress.
Second, it seems a strange justification for cantonments in Sui, Kohlu and Gwadar by pointing to the threat emanating from our western borders. If the threats are as real as we are led to believe, surely the case is for cantonments in the western borderlands rather than in the interior of Balochistan.
It seems therefore, that the real underpinning for these cantonments is the internal situation in these troubled areas of Balochistan rather than any external threat.
Whether this will help calm the troubled waters or further exacerbate a sensitive situation remains to be seen.
The government may be better served by negotiations with the nationalists in the poorest province of the country rather than a bristling show of military force.