19 February 2010 BOOK OF THE WEEK A people trapped By Richard Steyn

The title of this timely book is derived from the perpetual stand off between the politico-military elite in Pakistan, which has ruled the country for more than 60 years, and the common people who are promised social and democratic reforms that never materialise. Author Tariq Ali, prominent student activist at Oxford, anti-Vietnam war campaigner and now writer and film-maker, has been analysing developments in his home country since the 1960s. His left-of-centre views routinely annoy the Americans, British, Israelis, Nato and the Pakistani establishment, but are nonetheless worthy of consideration, given the rapidly deteriorating situation in that country and Afghanistan. Ali's thesis is that since its birth in 1947, Pakistan has been a pawn in the power struggle between West and East - the victim of an interventionist US foreign policy that has shored up the military and hamstrung the evolution of genuine democracy. Unlike in India, where politicians in the Congress Party flourished during the last three decades of the Raj, the Muslim League in the Pakistan of Mohammed Ali Jinnah was never able to stamp its authority on the military or civil service, both of which had little respect for democratic politics. THE DUEL: Pakistan on the flight path of American power By Tariq Ali315 pagesPocket BooksR148 When trouble erupted between West and East Pakistan (the latter now Bangladesh), the generals and bureaucrats simply pushed the politicians aside and assumed control. It was the country's first military dictator, General Ayub Khan, who took Pakistan into the Baghdad Pact and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation, two bodies designed to protect US interests in the Cold War. Since then, Ali argues, US priorities have determined Pakistan's domestic and foreign policies and the country's dependence on US aid and military assistance has steadily increased. Since the 1950s, a corrupt claque of fixer-politicians and businessmen, the Bhutto and Sharif families prominent among them, have been primarily intent on feathering their nests - forcing their opponents to turn to Islamic fundamentalism, and even armed jihad. Ali knew Benazir Bhutto well and though scathingly critical of her and her venal husband, Asif Ali Zardari (the current prime minister), he writes with sorrow as much as anger of her US-sponsored stitch-up with Pervez Musharraf that took her back to Pakistan in 2008 and to her untimely death. If Pakistan's past and present have been mortgaged to the Americans, its future is linked inextricably to neighbouring Afghanistan's. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979 transformed Pakistan's Gen Ziaul-Haq from brutal dictator into brave defender of the Free World against communism. It also provided a cover for the country's secretive nuclear programme and gave birth to the anti communist but fundamentalist Taliban. Fast forward to 2001, with Afghanistan now under Taliban control, and the same forces that had been trying to bring the Russian-ruled country to its knees found themselves urged to get rid of the Taliban and shore up a corrupt, inept government, beholden this time to the US. Thirty years of continuous warfare in Afghanistan ought to have persuaded the West, Ali insists, that what most Afghans are instinctively opposed to is occupation by a foreign power - whether the US or anyone else. Ali's solution for Afghanistan is the withdrawal of US and Nato forces and the engagement of neighbouring Iran, Russia, India, and China as well as Pakistan in the search for a political solution that will create and sustain a genuine national government for at least the next decade. Instead, the opposite course is being pursued as US President Barack Obama puts his faith in a renewed "surge", on the advice of his own generals. Ali gives short shrift to Western concerns that Pakistan's nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of pro-Taliban forces engaged in a violent insurrection. The Pakistani army, he points out, is 500 000-strong and firmly in control of its nuclear facility (a conclusion that many Western observers might doubt). The only way jihadi groups could acquire a Pakistani nuclear weapon, he says, would be if the military were to split - which is more likely if the US army continues to occupy swathes of the country in order to rout Al-Qaeda and sends unmanned "drones" to wipe out Pashtuns suspected of harbouring terrorists. Of the three power blocs with interests in Pakistan - the US, Saudi Arabia and China - the US, in his opinion, is the "most influential, the most public and the most hated". So unless US policy in the region changes, Ali argues, Pakistan will stumble on, its people trapped between a succession of military dictators and venal politicians. And Afghanistan will continue to suck in American resources and defy Western efforts to create a functioning democracy.