One point needs clarification at the very outset. Military alone cannot deliver a solution and — as should be clear from excerpts we are carrying from Clausewitz’ On War — its use has to be part of a viable policy. In areas hit by insurgency and strife, the military’s primary function is to create space for negotiations from a position of strength.
What kind of political solution can we expect when the state has capitulated militarily before the militants? Logically, such a solution cannot be in favour of the state. There is no concept of negotiations between a victor and a vanquished. The latter simply has to accept the demands imposed on it by the former.
If this is what we mean by a political process then the best thing to do would be to pull back the army and allow the militants to take over and create their own laws and political system in the areas liberated from state control. If everyone is happy with this victory, so be it.
But let’s take this to its logical conclusion. If the rest of Pakistan is not comfortable with the system the militants want, then the logic of ending the military operation in the NWFP would take us to accepting that the state has lost the major part of its cis-Indus territories, at least west of Attock.
Once that happens and it will, going by this logic, then external actors will move into the power vacuum to neutralise an adversary they consider as a clear-and-present danger. Are we prepared to accept that?
Here’s the paradox then: the military has so far been ineffective and its presence is being criticised; but if it is pulled back, we might as well say goodbye to state control in the NWFP.
Is there a solution?
If the logic of pulling back the military is not accepted and the assumption is that it is not, unless we want the scenario presented above, then the issue that needs to be addressed is whether and how the military can be used more effectively. That issue needs to be tackled separately; it is also a tale of ironies. We shall return to it.
The End
What kind of political solution can we expect when the state has capitulated militarily before the militants? Logically, such a solution cannot be in favour of the state. There is no concept of negotiations between a victor and a vanquished. The latter simply has to accept the demands imposed on it by the former.
If this is what we mean by a political process then the best thing to do would be to pull back the army and allow the militants to take over and create their own laws and political system in the areas liberated from state control. If everyone is happy with this victory, so be it.
But let’s take this to its logical conclusion. If the rest of Pakistan is not comfortable with the system the militants want, then the logic of ending the military operation in the NWFP would take us to accepting that the state has lost the major part of its cis-Indus territories, at least west of Attock.
Here’s the paradox then: the military has so far been ineffective and its presence is being criticised; but if it is pulled back, we might as well say goodbye to state control in the NWFP.
Is there a solution?
If the logic of pulling back the military is not accepted and the assumption is that it is not, unless we want the scenario presented above, then the issue that needs to be addressed is whether and how the military can be used more effectively. That issue needs to be tackled separately; it is also a tale of ironies. We shall return to it.
The End
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