The US & others working with Pakistan

[goesh]

Soft power often entails the transfer of money with good itentions and plans on the part of the donor and recipient but with no quality control over the element of corruption and misappropriation that invariably creeps in. If you want an extension of good will and constructive effort on the part of the US and the Pakistani goverment extended to and into the frontier region, send in an all Muslim Peace Corps with a sole focus on agricultural, educational and health care development. Said components are totally compatible with fundamentalist Islam, which prevails in the frontier region.
I think the cultural barriers are so high in 3rd world countries that the usual soft approaches can't readily be employed. I'm a veteran of both the Marine Corps and the Peace Corps and I recall a time in our training village in Africa when some of the Jola people came to the Peace Corps school where we were doing cross cultural and language training. The Jolas were preparing to go out in the bush for a puberty ceremony. Their shamans were with them carrying traditonal weapons and everyone was fully decked out with their cultural accouterments. We were all outside under a shade of a tree getting a lecture at the time when they approached, singing, drumming, dancing, etc. Everyone except me and one interpretor went running inside the school house like so many frightened school kids. So much for reaching out and cultural interaction and sharing and all that good stuff. The Jolas came to share and show off and were insulted instead. This occured in about the 4th-5th week of some pretty intensive training given to some pretty intelligent, dedicated people. This was predominately a Muslim area and even though the people were good people, very peaceful and quite pro-West, the successful integration into the bush villages was dismal at best. The soft approach is simply going to have to involve American Muslims. I remember a number of the old men who would very politely and respectfully ask some of the male volunteers to accompany them to their masjid, but none would ever go. Commonality cannot always be acquired, sometimes it has to be a given.
I think traditonal soft approaches can be adjusted ,reinvented and reinterpreted and need to be. There was a reforestation project in which all kinds of sapplings were obtained and this one village got fired up and hundreds and hundreds of trees were planted. Kids and women and volunteers were hauling water to beat the band, waiting for the arrival of the chickenwire to fence the sapplings to keep the goats out. It never arrived - it ended up being sold out of a store in Banjul. Had the wire been simply shipped to Peace Corps headquarters instead of the government, it would have gotten to the village and saved the trees. By the end of the 3rd day, goats had eaten all the bark off all the sapplings. This was a traditional soft approach failure that not only killed trees but pretty much killed the faith of the people of that village in their government and the Peace Corps.

[Ray]

It is in the interest of the US to maintain and foster a lasting partnership with Pakistan. However, there are conflicting requirements that makes the task difficult.

Pakistan in the US sphere of influence would allow the US the following benefits:

1. It would keep the Islamic fundamentalist under surveillance and check, even if unable to root it out. The point to note is that Pakistan is the womb of international Islamic terrorism since all actions of the Islamists somehow have its root from Pakistan.

2. It would allow surveillance and intelligence on the AQ activities since ObL and the leading AQ think tank members are holed up in Pakistan or along the borders with Afghanistan.

3. It would reduce the influence that China has on Pakistan.

4. It would allow surveillance to Pakistan's north and into the Uighur insurrection in China's Xinjiang area, as also allow the US to 'influence' the Uighur rebellion to China's discomfort. It will be recalled that the US is already undertaking promotion of better relations with Kyrghyzstan to the West of the Xinjiang area and has a air base there.

5. With Pakistan in the US sphere of influence, the fructifying of the oil and gas pipeline the Central Asian Republics through Afghanistan to Gwadar port in Pakistan's Baluchistan province would become all the more easier, once the situation in Afghanistan stabilises.

There is, however, the issue of India and the historical animosity including four wars! India, apparently is of major interest to the US because of her vast markets as also as a counter balance to China.

It would require delicate balancing so that both India and Pakistan are kept on the US bandwagon.

It is true that the US has not been able to influence Pakistan adequately to prevent the Taliban from using NWFP and Waziristan as its safe havens for action against the US and NATO forces operating in Afghanistan. Nor has the western nations adequate forces to "guard" Afghanistan's frontiers to minimise infiltration nor troops to "sanitise" the areas within a la India in Kashmir.

In fact, it is not possible for any Pakistani leader to toe the US line, owing to the "awakening" Islam and pan Islamic jihad movement has experienced of late thanks to ObL.

So long as Islam fundamentalism continues along with the accompanying mayhem, no strategy change will wean away Pakistan from the madness unleashed by ObL.

At best, a compromise has to be accepted.