From Kabul to Gaza: how failed strategies define Muslim leadership
Editor’s note: Lieutenant General Asad Ahmed Durrani is a retired three-star general of the Pakistan Army. He previously served as Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Director General of Military Intelligence. He is currently active as a commentator, speaker, and author. The article reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily represent the position of News.Az.
“Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other options have been exhausted.”
This Churchillian gem has been quoted so often that it now sounds like a cliché.
Nevertheless, it was starkly on display in Afghanistan for the two decades of its occupation.
The US bombed; installed and changed regimes; raised a new army; hosted dialogues in Doha; arm-twisted Pakistan; and bankrolled its enemy. One day, it finally took the only sensible course that had been obvious from day one: packed the bags and hit the road home.
The Taliban, on the other hand, gave only one other choice — reconciliation — and after it was spurned, fell back to their tried and tested recipe: armed resistance.
It seems that on Kashmir, after sending infiltrators in 1965, stumbling into wars, and climbing the Kargil Heights, we still have some more tricks up our sleeves and have therefore postponed the inevitable: making a policy with long-term objectives, working out a strategy, and creating a steering mechanism — as we did for the nuclear acquisition.
Source: The Hill
On Palestine, we do have a policy — talk, talk, and no walk.
As the war in Gaza started, we plausibly assumed that, like many earlier rounds, it would peter out in days or weeks. When it didn’t, we had to rationalize our continued inaction. Now that the human rights organizations were involved, Israel must be getting a bad name. Since the matter had reached the International Court of Justice, South Africa was the right country to get the rogue state sentenced as an apartheid entity. Who better than a Pakistan-born Karim Khan to get Netanyahu prosecuted as a war criminal in the ICC? The UN was, of course, the right forum to declare Israel a pariah state. And indeed, with world opinion in our favor, nothing needed to be done that could bail out the rascal in the dock. When none of that brought the genocide to an end, our policy left us no recourse but to moan and groan that no one was doing anything about it.
As we were running out of options to keep us out of the firing line, to our great delight Trump landed on the throne in Washington. Known for his love of deals and sycophants, he was the right man to do business with. India, being our twin, did us a favor and attacked us — providing the US and Pakistan the opportunity we were waiting for. Trump could not blow enough of his trumpets to have “saved humanity from a holocaust,” and we wisely downplayed the effectiveness of our conventional and unconventional deterrence — but unwisely nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize a man guilty of preventing us from exploiting the advantage that we claimed we had on the battlefield and saving Israel as it was being pummeled by Iran.
Source: CNN
It disappointed Mearsheimer, a professor of strategy, who rightly believes that anyone who has an edge must milk it dry. The peace flotilla offered a flicker of hope but did only slightly better than the 7th Fleet, which never made it to the shores of East Pakistan that was soon to become Bangladesh.
Suffering from hubris, we ignored the price of free lunches and the hazards of American friendship. Pay time came only a few days back.
The OIC is a scam; the Ummah an illusion; and the leadership of Muslim countries a farce. Gathering around Trump to put our seal on the fate of the Palestinians was still a show of servility hard to beat by any mafia alleging loyalty to its boss. No argument to plead that the document they were shown was not the same as the one announced as the peace deal could whitewash our culpability. Those who remained irrelevant in the two-year struggle of the Gazans were not going to count for more than a fig leaf for whatever the Godfather had in mind.
Hamas, on the other hand, knew what it was all about and brilliantly passed the buck to Trump, who, in a state of shock, asked Netanyahu to cease all military action. He did not — but whenever he does, the latest after the hostages are returned, it will be resumed with much more ferocity. Trump, I believe, has already approved six billion dollars in military aid to Israel for the next phase.
One has often been asked if there was any “practical” way to change this paradigm. The problem is that those who intend to act — like Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran — don’t wait to be told; they know what to do. The others may be offered a range of choices — from sub-conventional all the way to the Samson Option — but will invariably find a reason nothing can be done.
“This she could not and that he would not, and so she died.” — Emily Dickinson
Yes, the Gazans are dying — but only once.
Cowards like us die a thousand deaths — every time one of them does.
(If you possess specialized knowledge and wish to contribute, please reach out to us at opinions@news.az).
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