If we ever needed a damning indictment of ugly geo-politically motivated military interventions, Sir John Chilcot delivered it on July 6 — The Iraq inquiry. It also triggered a string of apologies that reveal hypocrisy and self-preserving expedience of some of Tony Blair’s former colleagues. “We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort. … the notorious dossier presented in September 2002 by Tony Blair to the House of Commons did not support his claim that Iraq had a growing programme of chemical and biological weapons. … the people of Iraq have suffered greatly,” Chilcot said in his UK Inquiry Report on Iraq. Most of Western media and diplomats based in Islamabad used to scoff even at the hint of flawed and concocted justifications for the war in Iraq but it was interesting to see how most of the CNN/BBC reporters — who pounced upon every bit of UK/USA intelligence to explain and justify the Iraq war then — took a U-turn once the report was released; claims by Bush and Blair seem to be pale in contrast to what Iraq has gone through since 2003, said one of the CNN star correspondents. John Chilcot has literally exposed the fallacies that masked the illegal war on that country; with up to half a million lives lost and a raging sectarian war, Iraq continues to bleed even today. It saw over 250 vanish in a horrific suicide bombing only two days before Sir Chilcot released his report. “I will never apologise for the decisions I took in 2003,” Blair adamantly told the media the same evening about a war that former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had already declared illegal. Blair’s Deputy Prime Minister, Sir John Prescott (May 2006 — June 2007), consented with Annan and offered “my fullest apology, especially to the families of the 179 men and women who gave their lives in the Iraq War … any actions needed the endorsement of our...

The Pakistani state’s strategic outlook is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. Security policy drives overall foreign policy rather than the other way round. The establishment has spearheaded this agenda. One reason the prevailing strategic paradigm seems under no real pressure is the increasing irrelevance of ‘strategic liberals’ (I am referring to strategists with a liberal view on geopolitics, not liberals writ large). Given their knowledge of strategy and liberal orientation within this domain, one would expect them to spearhead the challenge to the status quo. The state has been myopic in keeping them at bay. But they haven’t done themselves any favours either. The Pakistani liberal discourse on strategy tends to present the realist framework as something of an anathema. Realism personifies the ‘if you want peace, prepare for war’ mindset. States tend to be realist beings — those in conflict zones more than others. They see logic in defining national interest in hard security terms and manoeuvring to secure themselves as they see fit — irrespective of normative concerns like morality of their choices. The liberal paradigm challenges this mindset on multiple counts — generally the least effective in influencing policy is what I see Pakistani strategic liberals employ the most: declaring this mindset paranoid, self-contradictory, immoral, etc. (Western policy discourse on Pakistan often takes this line as well). Pakistan’s current policy has led to its growing isolation. They are not wrong. Taken too far, realism leads to these perversions. And the establishment has developed somewhat of a habit of living dangerously close to this zone. Yet, while a challenge merely pointing to these fallacies and highlighting liberalism’s normative superiority may be powerful for public intellectuals of liberal leaning, it does little to effect realist policy minds. Not in Pakistan, not anywhere else. Achieving this requires engaging the state’s brand of realism in its...

This month nine years ago, the world watched in awe as the Lal Masjid brigade terrorised Islamabad citizens and shopkeepers, including Chinese business owners, before being smoked to death on July 10. This day is a grim reminder of how things can spin out of control if state institutions ignore, promote or condone violations of law by non-state actors. The government had dithered for months before going for the kill. The residents of the Lal Masjid had refused to submit to the writ of the state, taking up arms, assuming the role of moral vigilantes and thereby not only harassing local and foreign individuals but also challenging the state’s authority and refusing to surrender. This is what necessitated Operation Silence after nearly six months of soft-peddling a group of clerics led by Maulana Aziz and his brother Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, both of whom had challenged the state’s writ. Both the ruling elite as well as the populist former chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, pandered to these non-state actors. By doing so, a dangerous precedent was set for years to come. Operation Silence was an unavoidable, though delayed, need of the hour in view of the rebellion by Ghazi and Maulana Aziz. Timely action — enforcement of the rule of law — coupled with political foresight probably could have prevented the bloodshed, and most probably the backlash that the country suffered in the aftermath of the operation. Ideally, nothing beyond police action and the arrest of the clerics and their followers would have been needed if the authorities had acted in a timely manner — a purely law and order issue against a couple of hundred baton-wielding youth who had become symbols of defiance to the state. The post-operation circumstances were even more detrimental to the state. While Abdul Aziz was detained initially along with more than 600 students, they were all released on bail in the following months. These were people who had been considered rebellious enough to deserve a...

In a rare interview with Times Now, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it was hard to decide who to speak to about peace in Islamabad. “We want to live in harmony and peace,” he said, but asserted that it was hard to figure out who in Pakistan he should negotiate with – the elected government, or some other actors. Without naming it, he took a swipe at the Pakistani military: those entrusted with negotiating must go about their business, and those tasked with defending the borders must fulfil the responsibility entrusted to them, he said, assuming the tone and tenor that most US officials had adopted after the March 2008 elections in Pakistan. Modi implied that India had done its part in convincing the world and internationally isolating Pakistan for its alleged support of terrorism, and the ball was now in Pakistan’s court. Russia’s interest in Pakistan is growing This probably is the dilemma that most Indian leaders and US officials have faced. Despite knowing Pakistan’s peculiar civil-military context, they keep wondering whether they should or shouldn’t talk to the military, even when they had the most pliant General Pervez Musharraf in charge in Islamabad. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh simply went into a “wait and see” mode when the General, infatuated with a sense of absolute power, threw the gauntlet of selected zonal “demilitarization” in Kashmir in 2006. During a conference at Stockholm in early 2008, Stephen Cohen, the renowned American expert on South Asia, had expressed his confusion over the “Indian dithering” in initiating a dialogue on Musharraf’s plan. Ironically, most Indian analysts at the time would describe General Musharraf as a “single window clearance” on all bilateral issues, but soon after his resignation, both the Indian officials and intelligentsia began questioning the “authority” of the civilian government. Eight years down the lane, another Indian premier is asking the same question, as if he is totally oblivious to...