Friday, February 20, 2009

Is Pakistan a sovereign country?

Sovereignty is the absolute power to govern a country. In Islamic jurisprudence, sovereignty belongs to Almighty Allah and during the early years of Islam, the caliphs used to denote Allah’s representative on earth. Democracy has its roots in the belief that all men are born equal and the people collectively, as a nation, form a democratic system through procedural systems and institutions in place. As per the classical theory of democracy on the other hand, the people are sovereign and delegate the elected representatives the right to exercise powers on their behalf. The concept is justified in part on the analogy that since the people who form a nation should not be bothered with the day to day running of the state and instead their representatives do this on their behalf and the citizens pay taxes for example as their obligation to the state and may for example enjoy the benefits (often called rights) of protection of their property.

Pakistan’s sovereignty means in essence therefore, the complete hold of the state over its affairs. The conduct of state business should reflect the will of the people and the affairs of the state should not be such so as to negate sovereignty or give the impression that our government is unable or unwilling to exercise complete control over its affairs. Unfortunately, the revelation by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee of the United States revealed how close Pakistan was from becoming a proxy state or a satellite of the United States of America and how alienated the present government is from the will of the sovereign people of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Senator Feinstein disclosed during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair that the drone attacks that were being carried out inside Pakistan’s sovereign soil were not conducted by drones originating from the neighboring Afghanistan (as was being speculated before), but from Pakistan itself. She made these disclosures whilst commenting on the protests lodged by the Pakistani government against these attacks to the visiting newly appointed U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke. She expressed her surprise at the fact that the Pakistani government had protested at the drone attacks, when in fact Pakistan had actively permitted the U.S. to operate a base for such drones. These drones regularly carry out sorties killing many innocent civilians along with a handful top Al-Qaeda leadership.

While the Pakistan government rejected the allegation and amongst others, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi denied the presence of the bases inside Pakistan used for the operation of these drones. On the other hand, top U.S. officials have confirmed that what Senator Feinstein had stated was true. While satellite images taken in 2006 on Google, have been released in the media showing the presence of three drones at the Shamsi airbase which is less than 200 miles southwest of Quetta, the Pakistani government remain in a state of denial. However, the matter does not rest here as I would have honestly wanted to believe that the government was right since the images were dated prior to the present government’s accession to power. On top of this however, unnamed top officials of the U.S. as well as its counterterrorism officials have spoken to the western media (Fox News for example) and confirmed Pakistan’s explicit approval for the ‘project to kill’ as well as provision of infrastructure, including airstrips, to execute citizens on the basis of U.S. intelligence. A former CIA official familiar with the Predator (a drone having the capability to create massive destruction) operations said Pakistan’s government secretly approves of the flights because of the growing militant threat. An investigation by The Times, a U.K. daily, revealed that the CIA was secretly using Shamsi to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants around Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

According to a senior NATO military official, Pakistan, the US, and other NATO member countries have had an ‘unwritten agreement’ for the past three to five years to allow the CIA to fly unmanned drones out of airstrips in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. Moreover, the NATO official while speaking to CBS news increased the level of anxiety of Pakistanis when he stated that the Shamsi base is not the only one used for the purpose.

The present government had broken from the practice of the Musharraf policy of staying quiet whenever drone strikes took place and occasionally claiming that the strikes were being conducted by the Pakistani forces. However the present government started condemning the strikes in a bid to win popular support. What has emerged however has now clarified that the government has refused to repudiate the agreement with the U.S. and NATO to allow such bases to be present in Pakistan. By protesting at the official level, it tried to win over domestic support as well as tried to create a false impression that the strikes were being conducted against Pakistan’s will. To this extent the government followed a policy of deceit and hypocrisy.

Whilst the Kyrgyz parliament voted this week to close a U.S. airbase over growing public hostility towards the base, the Pakistani government seems bent upon befooling its own people rather admit the presence of such bases and its acquiescence in the drone attacks and take remedial steps. It is also pertinent that U.S. had refused to pay more for the base which Kyrgyzstan had demanded. Additionally, another cogent reason for the closure of the base is that a U.S. soldier had fatally shot dead a Kyrgyz truck driver during a security check and the U.S. had refused to revoke the soldier’s immunity to prosecute him. In sharp contrast to the high price the U.S. had to pay for the killing of a single innocent citizen, Pakistan is willing to acquiesce in the killing of hundreds of innocents. We have been unable to even get reimbursed for the coalition support for the so called “war on terror” which have increased to more than 1.5 billion dollars as per Finance Adviser Shaukat Tareen, what to speak about negotiating for a better deal (keeping aside the arguments against being a U.S. partner for a moment). Up to 75 percent of U.S. supplies to Afghanistan travel through Pakistan yet the government had to beg to the IMF for loans (what to speak of write-off of previous ones) to keep the economy from crashing.

The good news is that it is still not too late. The government must restore its credibility as well as sovereignty of Pakistan by repudiating all secret agreements made with the U.S. and NATO for conducting the drone attacks. Sovereignty may be undermined for a time period. It can however be restored provided the will and the courage like a small country such as Kyrgyzstan having a population of just over 5 million and area of 200 thousand square kilometers exists. Having a far greater population of over 170 million and area of more than 800 thousand square kilometers, we need to have a greater fervor and apt leadership which values our sovereignty on top of anything else. To achieve that, the leadership must be more sensitive to the public sentiment since at the end of the day, in a democracy, the people are sovereign and in a sovereign country, there is no “collateral damage”. It is the loss of innocent lives that matter.

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