Opinion - Editorials

Bold admission

Pakistan’s creation of, and support to, jihadist groups in order to further its foreign policy objectives is settled history. From the 1990s, the state and especially its security establishment saw purchase in unleashing its “holy warriors” to secure so-called strategic depth in Afghanistan in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal — and to bleed India in Kashmir. After 9/11 Islamabad, forced by the “with us or against us” line of the Bush administration, found itself acting against militant groups on its territory; and not surprisingly, there was a fierce backlash. Only then was there a tacit acknowledgment at many levels internally that the policy of using jihad to destabilise the neighbourhood may not have been a bright idea after all. The most important instance of this de facto acceptance is contained in the India-Pakistan joint statement of January 6, 2006, in which Pervez Musharraf committed Pakistan to not allowing its territory to be used for terrorist activities against India. But President Asif Ali Zardari’s stark articulation the other day that “militants and extremists emerged on the national scene and challenged the state…because they were deliberately created and nurtured… to achieve some short term tactical objectives” is the first official admission of the benighted policy at the highest level of government.

The remark reinforces the belief that the democratic regime in Pakistan means well by its neighbours and is sincere in its desire to break with the past. Even before this, Mr. Zardari made it plain that he carried none of the old ideological baggage, especially with regard to India. He is confident that he and the military are on the same page with regard to extremism and militancy. Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani recently seemed to agree indirectly with President Zardari’s declaration that India was not a threat to Pakistan when he stated that the internal threats to the country were more immediate than the external ones. But while the anti-Taliban operations in the North-West Frontier Province show the army will take on militant groups that threaten the country’s internal sovereignty, there is no firm indication that it is ready to give up groups that have acted as its ‘strategic assets.’ That the Pakistan Foreign Ministry has opted to read down Mr. Zardari’s statement by seeking to locate it in the specific context of the aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored jihad in Afghanistan suggests that the President is ahead of his times. Still for India, which is preparing for another round of talks with Pakistan at Sharm-al-Shaikh this week, Mr. Zardari’s words are a timely reminder that it must engage positively with the elected government of Pakistan.

A sentence in the first paragraph of "Bold admission" (Editorial, July 13, 2009) was "The most important instance of this de facto acceptance is contained in the India-Pakistan joint statement of January 6, 2006, in which Pervez Musharraf committed Pakistan to not allowing its territory to be used for terrorist activities against India." It is January 6, 2004.

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