Sea change

The classic Pakistan dilemma has resurfaced again. For a while,after the Pakistan army responded with vigour to the Pakistani Talibans takeover of Swat and Buner,it seemed that the narrative had changed; that rationality had won over irrationality in the Pakistan armys conception of what poses the gravest threat to Pakistan,that its energies would henceforth be focussed westward. But a report in The New York Times shows how difficult that will be. The report details concerns in the United States military-diplomatic establishment that Pakistan modified US-supplied ship-borne defensive missiles an act that would be a violation of US law under various end-user monitoring clauses. The missiles themselves called Harpoon were sold by the Reagan administration in the 80s. A sale to the Pakistan navy justified at the time,absurdly,by what the late Robert Novak called the Afghan threat. Afghanistan was,then as now,landlocked. But the mechanism that augments the missile system,aiding it to hit targets on land,was apparently not completed or tested till this April.

Decision-makers in the US,as pressure grows on them again to examine the scale and timeline of US presence in Afghanistan,must be brought to view the Harpoon modification in context: as merely the latest in a series of successful heists of US assistance. Assistance that was meant to strengthen the Pakistani states bulwarks in the west repeatedly and consistently is diverted to a quixotic pursuit of military parity with India. It is now generally accepted that of the over-10 billion given to Pakistan to fight terrorism since 9/11,most has gone down the sinkhole that is the Pakistan armys obsession with India.

The Pakistani foreign office has denied the story,saying that the missiles were indigenously developed by which they apparently meant,according to other statements,made with crucial inputs from North Korean expertise. Policy-makers both in Pakistan and the US must remember that the Obama administrations weak 7.5 billion dollar payout to Pakistan has not yet been passed by Capitol Hill. For the sake of the war effort in Afghanistan,for the sake of stability in South Asia,and for the sake of Pakistans own people,those 7.5 billion dollars should be spent fighting the twin threats of militant Islamism and economic backwardness. The Harpoon imbroglio shows that both New Delhi and Washington DC will have to put in sustained energy to make that happen.