Little sympathy in OIC for Pak.

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (Bahrain) OCT. 11. Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) get together to ponder the consequences that could befall the member-states as the U.S. retaliates for the terrorist strikes of September 11. They conclude their meeting without a word of concern for Pakistan, member-state which (next only to Afghanistan) has to cope with the most grievous of these consequences. Failure gives out an unmistakable stench.

The events of September 11 exposed the consequences of Pakistan's failed bid to reach for strategic stakes beyond its capacity. Till then Pakistan had been peddling before the OIC the great potentialities that had been opened up vis-a-vis Central Asia. But the only means that Pakistan could devise to exploit the potential was through the Taliban's control of Afghanistan. It now seems almost inevitable that the Taliban, given space and time, would have helped produce the even more fanatic Al-Qaeda.

Almost every single OIC member-state has now to cope with the consequences of Pakistan's strategic over-reach. As the OIC member-states, especially the Arabs, scurry for cover they have no time to consider the consequences for Pakistan itself. A U.S. administration, operating on the principle ``with us or against'' have placed the Arab states under multiple layers of pressure to undertake painful measures. Small wonder that the communique issued on Wednesday at the end of the Foreign Ministers Conference does not include a word of concern for the internal problems that could rack Pakistan or about the manner in which the U.S. should deal with the country.

Neither is there a word about Kashmir, the Pakistani cause that the OIC had eventually come around to adopting as its own. In previous OIC formulations, the insertions about the need to make a distinction between terrorism and struggles for self- determination had included a mention of Kashmir second only to the mention of Palestine.

The communique issued yesterday merely states that the Conference stressed its ``rejection of any linkage between terrorism and Islamic and Arab peoples, including the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples' right to self- determination, self-defense, sovereignty, resistance against Israeli and foreign occupation..''.

This communique demonstrates that the Arab member- states of the OIC are currently concerned only with marking out the areas in respect of which they hope the U.S. will not put them under pressure. They do not want innocents to be killed in the fighting in Afghanistan; they do not want any other Islamic or Arab state to be targeted (Iraq, Iran and Syria have found mention off and on as other potential targets); they do not want the Palestinian issue to be forgotten in the West's preoccupation with the Taliban and they do want reassurance that Islam will not be equated with terrorism. If the U.S. moves adversely on any of these areas the Arab states will not be able to cope with the consequences.

Till September 11 Pakistan could strut on the platform provided by the OIC. Despite its deference to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan had a clout in the world of the Muslim-majority states. Pakistanis believed they were entitled to this status and the others did not seem to begrudge it this status either. Its size, its nuclear weapons and its capacity to provide the personnel who could administer the OIC and articulate its policies were among the factors that created Pakistan's status. But what really fixed Pakistan's sense of its own importance and the rest of the OIC's perception of Pakistan's power, was the role it had played as a front-line state in the defeat of the Soviet Union.

There was a lot of myth-making involved in the projection of Pakistan's contribution to the defeat and eventual demise of the Soviet Union. But these myths remained unexamined in the euphoria that the conservative and centrist sections of the OIC felt at the ending of the Soviet menace. The reputation that Pakistan has built for itself as a competent strategic player was but slightly tarnished by the evidence of its many other problems. There was, in the OIC world, much admiration for the manner in which Pakistan had extended its influence over Afghanistan and for its success in keeping its much bigger adversary, India, off-balance.

That reputation has been blown away even more swiftly than the dust cloud from the World Trade Center.

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