The 'do more' mantra

Hours after having a telephonic conversation with President Zardari British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a strong and highly unfriendly statement containing allegations and demands. Calling on Pakistan to "do more" in the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda, he repeated what President Obama had earlier said regarding al Qaeda being still based in Pakistan.
He took recourse to an unusually strong language saying "Pakistan authorities must convince us they are taking all action that is necessary." The statement was uncalled for in view of the Pakistan army being fully engaged in rooting out the terrorists in South Waziristan after destroying the militant strongholds in Swat.
The military is also conducting an air action while troops have also been deployed in Khyber, Orakzai and the Kurram agencies. Reports appearing in the media, on a daily basis, tell of large-scale casualties taking place during the operations. If this is not enough to convince Gordon Brown about Pakistan's commitment to eradicate terrorism, one wonders what else needs to be done to satisfy him.
Brown also asked why there was no evidence leading to the capture of leaders like Osama bin Laden and al Zawaheri, despite people in Pakistan knowing where they are. The loosely defined 2,640-km long border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has areas with thick forests and inaccessible mountains.
What is more there are tribes in the region living astride the border allowing people to move from one side to the other without much difficulty. Pakistan maintains that Osama is in Afghanistan though he would find little problem to criss-cross the ill-defined border. If a rich and powerful country like the US cannot seal its border with Mexico, how can anybody expect Pakistan, with its meagre resources, to do this?
Pakistan Foreign Office has expressed surprise over the accusation and asked for any clues that any country might possess about the location of the al Qaeda leadership before action can be taken. If the US, with its sophisticated monitoring system, has failed to locate Osama, how can Pakistan do that?
Had any people in Pakistan known about Osama's whereabouts, as claimed by Brown, Washington too would have acquired the information, after which it would not have hesitated to launch drone attacks on the Qaeda leadership as it continues to use the drones for attacks inside the tribal areas in total disregard of Pakistan's repeated protests.
According to Gordon Brown, the campaign to free British streets from terrorists must start from Pakistan, where three quarters of the plots against Britain were masterminded. Many believe that militancy in Britain is a home-grown phenomenon. These accused of involvement in militancy belong to the second-generation British citizens. The youth is disillusioned on account of the ghetto-style living conditions for migrant families and the racist tendencies in the country.
What is more, like millions of white Britishers who took out some of the largest anti-war protests in British history, they also resented the thoroughly unjustified attack on Iraq that led to the killing of about 1,033,000 innocent citizens, according to Opinion Research Business Survey, a figure confirmed later by Britain's Attorney General, Baroness Patricia Janet Scotland.
As Britain's former envoy to UN Jeremy Greenstock testified before the inquiry into the Iraq war on Friday, US was 'hell-bent' on the Iraq war, "which did not have the democratically observable backing of the great majority of member states, or even perhaps of the majority of people inside the UK."
However, the momentum for earlier action in the United States "was much too strong for us to counter." The militancy in Britain is thus directly related to Tony Blair's decision to join the war in 2003. A US Senate report commissioned by Senator John F. Kerry, which was released on Monday, holds Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks responsible for al Qaeda leadership's slipping into Pakistan.
The report sums up the consequences, maintaining that the neglect left the American people "more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today's protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan." Thus Pakistan is a victim of American negligence. Instead of hectoring Islamabad, Britain and US need to help it as it bears the brunt of terrorism.