DUSHANBE, November 28, 2011, Asia-Plus — Pakistani military are political pawns of Pakistani clerics, Tajik political scientist Rustam Haidrov said, commenting on tension in relations between Washington and Islamabad.
According to him, the United States has now lost Pakistan irretrievably and the United States realizes this. “The question is that Pakistan’s generals cannot run counter to the radically ‘Islamized’ society of Pakistan, which is against any war of the West in Afghanistan,” said Haidarov. “That is why any support provided by Pakistan for international coalition’s operations in Afghanistan is apprehended by the religious circles of Pakistan hostilely.”
“Pakistan’s clericals play a key role in formation of public opinion in Pakistan, and therefore, both the government and military have to pay heed to opinion of local clerics who before launch of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan were supporting the Taliban movement and the Al-Qaeda network in the person of Osama bin Laden,” noted the expert. “Pakistan has become the second Afghanistan long ago and only due to the United States’ support, a fragile stability has been kept in this country. But even this [fragile stability] will not exist any longer.”
According to him, these circumstances have forced the United States to seek alternative ways of transporting cargo for its troops in Afghanistan as well as seek areas for its military bases. “Recent visit of the United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Central Asia was dedicated to solution of this task,” Rustamov says.
He stressed that the United States “now has a weighty argument to begin negotiations on deployment of its military bases in Central Asia.” “These bases are expected to appear in the region before Russia’s presidential election scheduled for March 2012,” the political scientist.
He added that not only Uzbekistan would profit from that; “other Central Asia’s countries in which the United States shows interest will also be the gainers.” “I am sure that against the backcloth of the latest developments that took place in relations between Russia and one of Central Asia’s countries, the issue of deployment of the U.S. military base in this country will be solved immediately and quite positively for the United States.”
Rustamov stressed that one may say that Russians have come to grief. The Kremlin has not yet realized that after its Pyrrhic victory over Tajikistan, its strategic partner in the region, in the so called pilots’ case it will lose Central Asia irretrievably soon, after the deployment of the U.S. military bases in the region.
