Forestalling another Salala

Will Pakistan allow the resumption of Nato supplies through its territory and thus get invited to the Chicago Summit, is for the Federal Cabinet to decide later this week. However, the indications are that would be the case. Given that the ground realities are catching up with Islamabad moderating the excessive emotionalism - which had considerably influenced the Parliamentary Committee on the National Security's recommendations, hardening Pakistan's stance on the question of reopening the Nato supplies routes - constructive engagement with the US-led coalition appears to be the most viable option. Also, the imperative of mending fences with the West to help secure budgetary support, directly and through its international outlets, is believed to be now weighing in with the policymakers in Pakistan.
But how will the renewed relationship with the West play out once Pakistan allows the resumption of supply routes is not clear yet, excepting for some progress made at the series of meetings the Pakistani military high command had with its Nato and Afghan counterparts over the last week. Going by a brief ISPR handout following General Kayani's meeting with the International Security Assistance Force commander General John Allen and the Afghan army Chief General Sher Mohammad, the host military leadership has to some extent succeeded in successfully persuading its counterparts that the Salala incident, which derailed the co-operative anti-terrorism alliance was essentially the work of elements on the Afghan side of the border. For quite some time Pakistan has been the victim of cross-border aggression, and the Salala incident was no exception. Rightly then, the commanders' meeting in Rawalpindi on Sunday "focused on border control measures and mechanisms put in place to avoid untoward incidents on both sides of the border".
The military leadership of the three countries could go only that far; the other, and much larger, part of the Pakistan-Nato relationship is the responsibility of their governments. The fact is that so far political leaders on both sides have not been able to handle bilateral relations with the required diligence and prudence. Take the case of the 'apology'; it has been essentially mishandled by the Americans - as their various power centres, including the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA, took varying positions, sometimes contradicting each other. Consider the issue of 'threats', like the one hurled by Nato Secretary General Andres Fogh Rasmussen in that should Pakistan fail to reopen the supplies route, it would not be invited to the Chicago Summit. Pakistan was already seriously engaged with the question of the supplies routes, and resumption remains a strong possibility. And also being fully cognisant of the fact that the Chicago summit would be followed up with wider interactive moots, Pakistan would not have liked to be missing from the scene - being the prime victim of the Afghanistan imbroglio and having paid dearly in terms of human and material losses over the 10 years since foreign forces moved into Afghanistan. That said, we tend to believe it's now time that the United Nations should be invited to take the lead role in restoring normalcy in Afghanistan. To quote former Foreign Secretary, Shamshad Ahmad, "For a global response to this challenge (of finding a strategy or roadmap for peace in Afghanistan) the UN alone has the credentials and wherewithal to broker a US withdrawal as it did for the Soviet Union in the 1980s". We expect the Chicago summit would involve the world body in generating an across-the-board Afghan consensus, as it tends to emerge from the 30 years of war and destruction.
At the same time we expect and hope that the Chicago moot would take due notice of the sacrifices the people of Pakistan have made as a coalition partner. Thanks to the war in Afghanistan, its 'twin brother', Pakistan is today the prime victim of terrorism. Not a day passes without terrorists striking somewhere and killing innocent people - which it braves the CIA-operated drone attacks and hundreds of thousands remain internally displaced. How tragic, when the people of Pakistan undergo so much of pain and suffering at the hands of the Taliban, they earn the blame of sheltering the very same tormentors. There is, therefore, the need that the perspectives and perceptions of the Western political leaders, particularly the Americans; the likes of the US Senator Dianne Feinstein, have on Pakistan, are rectified. The Taliban are as much the creation of the Americans as of anyone else, as were the Afghan Mujahideen whom President Reagan described as 'moral equivalents of America's founding fathers'. Now that the Taliban have established themselves as an inescapable reality and indispensable to Afghan peace, the forthcoming Nato summit must focus more on restoring broader peace than leaving behind a 'strategic base', which is being described nothing more than an instrument to influence regional situations and scenarios. Military victory is indeed difficult in Afghanistan, but retreat from there would be much more exacting and costly.