Pakistan paying high price for appeasement

Ralph Peters:

THE fighting in Pakistan this week has been more intense than any current operations across the border in Afghanistan. President Musharraf is paying, with interest, for trying to cut a deal with Islamist fanatics.

The combat operations in North Waziristan involve thousands of ground troops, artillery barrages and attack aircraft. This isn't internal policing. It's war.

And it's all the uglier and deadlier because the Pakistani government convinced itself that appeasement could work. Last year, the generals believed they had an agreement with the truculent tribals on the Northwest Frontier: The tribesmen would behave, and the army would leave them alone.

Well, the army left them alone. And Taliban and al Qaeda fanatics, allied with the most extreme local leaders, took over vast tracts of land in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), creating a safe haven for terrorists.

For its part, the Islamabad government never got any positive returns. Instead of containing the threat in the wild FATA mountains, Pakistan's security forces found that the Islamist terrorists used their sanctuary to inject extremists into the country's cities.

This subversion climaxed with the bloody siege of the Red Mosque in Pakistan's capital city a few months back. Instead of bringing peace, Musharraf's attempt at benign neglect enabled the spread of extremism.

That's the way it always comes out in the end. Religious fanatics can never be appeased. And the degenerate conditions in the Muslim heartlands only make fanaticism more virulent.

But we never learn. There are many in our own country who insist that, if only we didn't annoy Allah's assassins, we wouldn't have any problems with them. We just need to "respect their culture."

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Well, the historical fact is that the world has never lived in harmony. Never. Peace has never prevailed across the planet. And the most intract- able butchers have been those who believed they were on a mission from their god.

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Our Western cult of negotiations produces no lasting successes for the simple reason that those ablaze with lethal faith never hesitate to break deals with unbelievers the moment they find it useful to do so.

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I can find no single instance in 3,000 years of history when violent religious fanatics were pacified by concessions. Religious fanaticism, with its apocalyptic currents, can never be contented. The appetite for blood only increases.

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That is what makes Democrats so dangerous for national security. They believe diplomats can solve the problem of dealing with religious bigots. The fact is that thee people must be destroyed. It is a way of demonstrating that God is not on their side. For it is only by their coming to that realization that their movement will die.

The Belmont Club notes the differences between the situation in Iraq and Pakistan. Iraq looks like it is in better shape at this point. "... People aren't struggling against an Iraqi government so much as trying to create one. On the other hand, certain sectors in Pakistan are actually trying to oppose their government. Therefore the 'peace offerings' in Waziristan may be politically defective. The second difference may be the inefficiency of the Pakistani Army, which, while it may not lack for will or brutality, may nevertheless be deficient in operational skill."

He actually swerves into an important point about the so called "sectarian civil war" in Iraq. None of the actors was really making war against the government. It was personal. In Pakistan it is the government.