IN 1946 when the French returned to colonise Indo-China they had contemptuously dismissed Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist Vietminh, who were fighting for independence, as an amateur force whose commander General Nguyen Giap “is a non-commissioned officer learning to handle regiments”.

An American adviser with the French had wondered “how can the Vietminh be mobile when they don’t have vehicles and airplanes”? Eight years later, on May 7, 1954, the cream of the French army that was sent to Vietnam surrendered to General Giap at Dien Bien Phu.

Eleven years later, when the US Marines landed on the beaches of Da Nang on March 8, 1965, history was poised to repeat itself as the Americans were poised to repeat the mistakes made by the French. They had come with the belief that the ‘racially inferior gooks’ would not stand up to the superiority of American arms. They soon discovered that their belief was entirely misplaced. They dropped 7.8 million tons of bombs of all kinds (they had dropped 2.06 million tons in the Second World War), and sprayed 75 million litres of defoliants including dioxin over the fields, forests and villages of South Vietnam. Yet the resistance not only continued, it grew in intensity.

Ten years later, having employed everything in their conventional arsenal, the superpower withdrew, defeated, disgraced and traumatised. Their arrogance had caused seven million Vietnamese casualties including three million dead. This qualifies the Americans for trial for war crimes committed against the people of Vietnam.

In December 1979, the other superpower, in arrogant defiance of history, invaded another Asian country in the belief that their invincible army would change the way of life in Afghanistan, and with it the geopolitical dynamics of the region. It also took them ten years to realise that they were wrong. They too withdrew in a blaze of humiliation. Their arrogance had caused one million Afghan deaths. The Russians too qualify for trial for war crimes committed against the people of Afghanistan.

The French, American and Soviet armies were trained for conventional warfare against an enemy whose dispositions are known. It is characterised by employment of large forces in operations that are designed to create a series of effects on the adversary until he is forced to fight with reversed front, which is a prelude to his destruction.

Guerrilla warfare has a totally different character. It is characterised by small-scale engagements at the time and place of the guerrillas’ choosing. While the army seeks battle, guerrillas avoid it. They do everything to attack the minds of the soldiers, for once the mind is defeated, the war is won. They are kept updated on the enemy’s dispositions by their wide intelligence network which is supported by the people. The army lacks this facility as they lack people’s support and as the guerrillas keep moving from one location to another. That is why the concept of ‘search and destroy’ was evolved by the Americans in Vietnam and followed by the Soviets in Afghanistan.

An infamous incident in 1968 exemplifies this flawed concept. Lieutenant William Calley was ordered to take his platoon to search for Vietcong in the village of Mai Lai. They found none. In anger, they massacred 347 villagers.

The American and Soviet soldiers found it difficult to adapt to the clandestine nature of guerrilla warfare. And as most of them were conscripts, the transition became even more difficult. They lost interest in the war as they could not relate to the cause they were sent to fight for. Protracted deployment made it even worse; there was widespread drug-taking, drunkenness and lack of discipline. Their morale had dropped to such depths that fast rotation of troops had to be carried out. Thus, six million US troops passed through Vietnam and one million Soviet troops through Afghanistan.

As the performance of American and Soviet infantry dropped, their commanders came to rely more and more on air- and land-delivered firepower. This used to result in extensive collateral damage which, instead of cowing the people into submission, strengthened their resolve to defeat the enemy.

History is now repeating itself in Afghanistan and Iraq because the Americans are repeating mistakes. Their visions of swift victories have been shattered. Service in the two theatres is having a corrosive effect on the morale of their soldiers. They are again being made to pay for their folly of underestimating the skill and fortitude of Asian guerrilla fighters. Belatedly they have learned that it is far more difficult to withdraw than it was to go in. The White House and Pentagon find the comparison odious, but the fact is that the ghost of Vietnam has returned to haunt them.

There are three options available to them:

One, stay on till the objectives are achieved. This would entail protracted deployment and putting up with all its ill effects, in an operational environment that would only become worse with time and thus trigger widespread anti-war demonstrations in America.

Two, withdraw from both theatres now. In the event, apart from carrying the stigma of another ignominious defeat by Asian guerrillas, withdrawal would plunge both Afghanistan and Iraq into civil war in which collaborators of the US would be wiped out.

Three, concede defeat in Iraq, withdraw forces from there and deploy them in Afghanistan. In response, the Taliban will revert to classic guerrilla tactics which, in effect, would greatly neutralise the induction of reinforcements. Besides, an upsurge in activity by American infantry would give the Taliban an opportunity to strike at many more targets.

More importantly, the third option has wider implications for Pakistan. Since the reinforced US-led forces would plan to conduct relentless operations against the Taliban, they would expect and demand that the Pakistan Army isolate the tribal areas from the Afghan theatre. This would entail the launching of a massive effort by the Pakistan Army, an undertaking that would evoke equally massive retaliation by the insurgents, not only in the tribal areas but across the country.

The insurgency in Balochistan, which is of low intensity, will begin to intensify as the covert support it is getting from the intelligence services of our eastern and western neighbours will also intensify. The flames of insurgency would thus engulf Pakistan.

Protracted military operations against one’s own people carry with them the germs of disaffection. They would exert inexorable pressure on the Pashtun, more so on Pashtun soldiers. The reaction of Bengali soldiers to the army crackdown in March 1971 in East Pakistan should not be forgotten.

The Americans would like nothing better than to see the battle of Afghanistan being fought in Pakistan by the Pakistan Army. It does not matter to them what happens to Pakistan as long as they get what they want. And what they ultimately want goes well beyond the tribal areas. In the event, Pakistan would have to tread the future with prudence.

Since history is one of America’s blind spots, the Americans are once again counting the cost of their failure to learn from it. They can still make amends by swallowing their arrogance and going home, resolving never to defy history again.

THE last regime will be remembered for governance by myths, all of which deserve demolition. But at the moment there is an urgent need to address the myth of the trichotomy of powers because it is one of the major roadblocks the new order faces.

The ‘whereas’ part of the Nov 3 Proclamation of Emergency consisted of 13 paragraphs: two described the situation created by terrorists, one repeated the myth that “the Constitution provides no solution to this situation” and another one referred to the army chief’s consultations, while nine paragraphs accused the judiciary of undermining the trichotomy of powers. In simpler words, if the judiciary tried to question the executive for acting outside the law it violated the Constitution.

Regrettably, the post-November Supreme Court endorsed the manifestly flawed myth of trichotomy of powers.

According to the establishment’s trichotomy myth, to the extent it can be logically interpreted, the three organs of the state — the legislature, the executive and the judiciary — are autonomous, and none of them can have anything to do with the other two. The emergency was the result of a collision between the judiciary and the executive, and now the legislature has been warned against collision with the presidency.

This myth needs to be buried at the earliest as otherwise the federation cannot function in accordance with the Constitution.

Every layman knows that all three organs of state are subject to the Constitution which derives its sanction from the will of the people. None of them (and not the judiciary alone) is allowed to violate the Constitution.

The executive is required to function in accordance with law but it has no power to make laws. Even where it has some power to regulate matters through rules these must remain within the four walls of law.

The legislature alone is competent to make laws, but always within the limits prescribed by the Constitution. It has no power to directly enforce the law except for such matters as punishment for its contempt or regulation of its own business.

The judiciary is responsible for deciding matters according to law and also according to the basic law. It is not competent to make laws (the power apparently allowed to the Shariat Court is an aberration clearly in violation of constitutional practice). What makes the legislature and executive envious of the judiciary is its power to oblige them to stay within the limits prescribed by the Constitution.

In this scheme if the legislature chooses to revise the powers that the executive should have, it cannot be accused of collision. Likewise the judiciary’s decisions aimed at preventing the legislature from making a law in violation of the Constitution cannot be described as a violation of the principle of division of powers.

Despite the principle of separation of powers, no state organ is prohibited from proposing to another organ to remove a flaw or fill a gap in its scheme of things. The executive has easy access to the legislature and is all the time persuading it to revise the laws (the amendment game). Instances when the judiciary has suggested changes in laws or new legislation are legion.

The Punjab Judicial Commissioner (this was before the province had its highest court) asked the executive and the legislature to make a law to prevent moneylenders from depriving landlords, Muslims in particular, of their lands, and the result was the Punjab Land Alienation Act. Some time ago the superior courts told the executive and the legislature both that the provision of death penalty as the only punishment for some offences sometimes obliged them to acquit persons who were not completely innocent but their guilt was not proved to the extent that warranted capital punishment. They called for alternative punishment. When in the 1990s the executive tried to establish military courts to hear cases of heinous crimes and the judiciary put its foot down, nobody shouted foul or war.

A remarkable example of the judiciary’s friendly advice to the executive was noted days before the November 2007 putsch when the Supreme Court requested the government to regularise the disappearances (or regularise detention of suspects) so that it did not have to pass orders that might embarrass the latter.

Nonetheless, the possibility that the human beings representing the state organs can interpret each other’s initiatives as spoiling for confrontation or collision can never be ruled out. In 1954 parliament reviewed the powers of the governor-general and the latter took this as a challenge to a duel and replied by sacking parliament. When Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif flew to Choti (D.G. Khan) in 1997 to tell President Leghari that parliament was going to deprive him of his powers under Article 58-2(b) he was not in a position to warn the legislature against confrontation with the presidency, against undermining the trichotomy of powers.

Incidentally, more often that not it is the chief executive of the federation who warns the other state organs against collision; the legislature and the judiciary have hardly ever been able to warn the executive of undermining their rights or violating the principle of trichotomy. The judiciary did not pick a fight with the executive (or extra-constitutional agents functioning as the executive) when a PCO came in 1981 or in 2000 or in 2007. Without issuing a call to war the legislature did challenge the executive’s fatal assaults on it in 1954, 1977, 1988, 1990, 1993 and 1999 and lost every time except in 1993.

There have been occasions when the outcome of an intra-executive confrontation has decided the course of events. In 1958 President Iskander Mirza was the supreme commander of the armed forces but he could not overrule the army chief. Likewise Field Marshal Ayub Khan, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and President Rafiq Tarar, all supreme commanders, failed to overrule the army chiefs in 1969, 1977 and 1999. When President Farooq Leghari thought he was being challenged by the government and realised that the supreme commander did not have the armed forces on his side he quietly resigned. He didn’t even say that talk of his impeachment by parliament amounted to threatening the presidency with confrontation.

This discussion leads to two conclusions. First, when an organ of the state is perceived to be rocking the trichotomy boat it may be merely fulfilling its constitutional duty. Thus, howsoever the extra-constitutional removal of judges may be undone it will amount to ending the executive’s bid to supplant the judicial organ.

The second conclusion is that all threats to the constitutional scheme of the three organs of the state — from 1954 to 2007 — were resolved in favour of the party enjoying the support of the army chief. The outcome of a new confrontation, if it does materialise, will not be determined otherwise.

Does Pakistan wish to be recognised for ever as the state where all of its organs exist and function during the pleasure of the army chief? The time has come for the legislature, the judiciary and the executive (that includes the armed forces) to say ‘No!

This is the only issue in Pakistan now; all else is detail.

SOON after Condoleezza Rice foreclosed the possibility of negotiations between the Pakistan government and insurgents, Tony Blair’s longstanding aide Jonathan Powell featured prominently in the British media urging eventual talks with Al Qaeda. Citing the importance of ‘back channel’ communication, Powell recalled his contribution to Northern Ireland’s peace process which, he noted, had been preceded by decades of links between the British government and the belligerents.

While the empathy that many people of Northern Irish descent voice for British Muslims today is another story, Powell’s emphasis on dialogue resonates keenly with Pakistanis desperately seeking an end to the bloodletting gripping the land.

The sharp intensification in the bombing campaign as it fans out from the tribal areas into major cities has stunned and angered the people, heightening the disconnect between their perception of their predicament on the one hand and that of the diminished Musharraf clique and its neocon patrons on the other. The disconnect had been a key factor in the rout of PML-Q in the February polls as the voters sought a reprieve from eight years of military rule and a departure from the president’s Afghan policy.

The post-election period has enhanced their hopes as the winning parties, the PPP and the Muslim League-N, have pledged to form a coalition with the ANP, and prioritise the search for new policy directions. The disconnect has its roots in conflictual understandings of the Afghan invasion. The print offensive from Musharraf’s liberal apologists notwithstanding, the public never endorsed the war. Their opposition did not emerge subsequently as a reaction to Pakistan’s collapsing security situation nor to the government’s collapsing narrative as cross-border precision strikes proliferated, and lurid details emerged in Centcom reports of thousands of sorties launched from Pakistani soil.

The facilitation of neocon ambitions had served a dictator unencumbered by popular support but encumbered by the need for international legitimation. Irrespective of their disagreement with the Taliban, Pakistanis found no joy in watching daisy cutters rain upon a Muslim neighbour, especially one ravaged by decades of conflict.

Relatedly, besides its ritual strengthening of dictatorships in Pakistan, the bittersweet legacy of Pakistan-US alliances was itself seen as complicit in Afghanistan’s post-Soviet woes, thus stripping the gloss from glib promises of ‘Enduring Freedom’. Echoing critical voices around the world, Pakistanis ascribed America’s Afghan crusade to ‘enduring’ security and energy interests, including the containment of Iran and China and the lure of Central Asia’s natural resources.

Tragically, Pakistanis find themselves at the sharp end of a war they always opposed, which has spilled over the border to rage in their homeland in the form of a lethal insurgency. Neocon pundits may technicise the insurgency as a series of unfortunate events perpetrated by ‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists, and console Pakistan’s traumatised people that these are containable through intensified military action and expanded foreign surveillance. However, knowing that asymmetric warfare can last for the longue duree the people also note that the combination of military means and ‘actionable intelligence’ has functioned as a euphemism for a war on one’s own people.

It has meant the slaughter of innocents by helicopter gunships and drones, mass internal displacement, unexplained disappearances and the militarisation of a semi-autonomous tribal region where other Pakistani generals, bravado notwithstanding, never ventured in their jackboots.

They connect the military-security paradigm directly to the radicalisation of the border areas. Communities sharing linguistic and ethnic cross-border ties, and until recently serving as the establishment’s foot soldiers, were doubly aggrieved at Musharraf’s U-turn. Once at the mercy of his firepower, they hit back without mercy at the emblems of his power.

Making common cause with their kinsmen across the border, they came to see Musharraf as the local face of global power. Hence the rise of the ‘local Taliban’ who some speculate may form part of a nexus that includes Al Qaeda.

Although other accounts see the insurgency as hatched by external powers to destabilise and denuclearise Pakistan, the emphasis remains on seeing Afghanistan/Waziristan as the nub of the problem.

While neocons view Pakistan almost exclusively through the lens of expediency coloured by their Afghan venture, Pakistanis seek new terms of engagement in which they no longer subsidise Musharraf’s fetish for Bush’s imperial quest. Its excessive costs may be seen statistically. In 2007, approximately 1,700 Pakistanis died through various incidents of violence. From Jan to mid-March 2008, 614 Pakistanis died in 71 incidents. From 2001-2008, coalition fatalities in Afghanistan total 775. Of these the greatest losses are American at 486 whereas estimates of Pakistani soldiers’ deaths range from 1,500-2,000.

The public’s call to review current policy is echoed by many retired generals and ambassadors, academics, journalists, lawyers, and newly elected parliamentarians. Although no single blueprint for salvation has emerged, there is agreement that a bold multi-pronged political initiative by a government with national legitimacy provides a beginning, especially as a precursor to a wider regional settlement on Afghanistan. Proponents of these views also recall Britain’s success in Northern Ireland.

However, such is the imperial oversight of Pakistani affairs that Rice’s prohibition was succeeded by two ‘precision’ strikes in Waziristan killing over 20 people. It comes amid the heyday of the White House’s determination, corroborated recently by Kissinger’s press article, that something as inconvenient as an electoral verdict must not be allowed to unsettle the affairs of the satrapy.Breaking with Musharraf’s bloody legacy presents a formidable challenge for the new government.