Pakistan’s Emergency - United States in need of a Plan B
On Saturday 3 November, in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency, suspending the Constitution, blacking out all independent television news reports and filling the streets of the capital with police officers and soldiers.
Stolberg and Cooper wrote in the New york Times,
General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public.
And the situation is even worse than “risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons“. As Stanley Kurtz wrote in the NRO,
Al Qaeda has controlled the mountainous northern tribal region of Waziristan for more than a year, and has expanded its reach across other tribal regions, and even into cities, over that time. Bin Laden and his Taliban allies are waging a campaign of suicide bombings aimed at overthrowing the government and turning Pakistan into a nuclear-armed Al Qeadastan.
The United States is in a very difficult position.
The worst case scenario of this emergency would go something like this:
- Pakistan’s president is NOT Pervez Musharraf
- Pakistan becomes an extrimists Islamic state
- Pakistan can NOT be ‘trusted’ with nuclear weapons
- Pakistan’s public opinion is NOT positive about the United States and Musharraf
- United States and Pakistan have NOT a good relationship
- Pakistan DOES NOT cooperates with the United States and NATO in the war against terrorism
And possible,
- Al-Qaeda obtains a so-called dirty bomb
What to do?
U. S.’ Plan A would be something like this: Get back to a ‘normal’ situation in Pakistan as soon as possible.
The objectives formulated as a kind of reversal of the above worst case scenario.
- Pervez Musharraf stays President
- A more or less democratic election is held
- Benazir Bhutto becomes Prime Minister
- Pakistan continues to cooperate with the United States on the war on terror
But what if Plan A does not work. And chances are probably / likely that this plan will not work. Musharraf is riding a hungry man-eating tiger.
And Islamism has been growing in Pakistan for years increasing the risk that Pakistan becomes an extremists / anti western Islamic state with nuclear weapons.
Plan B
Plan B is not, I repeat, NOT to nuke Pakistan.
The primary objectives of Plan B would be:
(a) Get Al Qaeda
(b) Denuclearize Pakistan
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross wrote in the Weekly Standard,
A year ago, after the signing of one agreement, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States told a network reporter, “The Waziristan accord is not a good thing–it’s a very good thing. It’s a new step.”
And may be he is - afterall - right. It created the situation that Al-Qaeda’s global leadership with possibly Osama bin Laden is (probably) based in Waziristan.
Therefore to get Al Qaeda, the U.S. government has to be invited by Musharraf (as an emergent and extraordinary measure) to have the U.S. military seal off Wazirstan and close in on Al-Qaeda.
And to denuclearize Pakistan – meaning: getting rid of the nuclear weapons of Pakistan — it would be best if all nuclear weapons would be completely gone, second best that these weapons would be under U.S. control.
Pakistan could ‘voluntarily’ sell it nuclear weapons to the United States for a good price and for a nuclear umbrella of the United States in case India or China or … (fill in the dots) would threaten or attack Pakistan with nuclear weapons.
And to complete this removeal of nuclear weapons out of Pakistan, it would also mean the removal of the capability of making nuclear weapons.
It means that Pakistan’s nuclear experts get an offer they can’t refuse. A very rude offer would be: either you move to the United States and work for us or we move you to Guantanamo Bay with our special rendition program. I trust the US planners can come up with some better, more friendly proposal.
The problem, as always, is: How do you get someone else to do what you want him to do?
How do you get Musharraf to cooperate with Plan B? I don’t have answers to that question but I suppose that if the U.S. government really really really wants this done it can convince those in power.