Pak no failed State, Holbrooke tells House panel

Apparently the first thing Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari did when he arrived in Washington, DC, on Monday night and met with the United States Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, was to complain bitterly about sections of the Obama Administration.

The gist of his grouse was that through well-placed leaks to members of the US Congress and particularly the American media, that it was on the verge of collapse and that he (Zardari) was on the way out with Washington distancing itself from him and negotiating with his bete noire Nawaz Sharif as his replacement, they were undermining his democratically elected government.

He had also whined to Holbrooke that the US was "lending an air of panic to the situation" with regard to the situation in Pakistan in the wake of the Taliban's capture of the Swat Valley and the continuing advances of the Taliban militants.

Thus, when Holbrooke, came up on Capitol Hill on Tuesday -- on the eve of President Obama's meetings with Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the subject of 'From strategy to implementation: the future of the US-Pakistan relationship', he began to unabashedly defend Zardari. Denying that the US was seeking his ouster, Holbrooke asserted that while the situation in that country was critical, it was certainly not on the verge of collapse.

It was a dramatic about-face by the Administration which only a week ago, and by no less a person than President Obama himself during a press conference marking his 100 days as President, had described Zardari's government as  "fragile" and could not "gain the support and loyalty of their people."

This had in fact led to the impression among some analysts that the Obama Administration was clearly disappointed with the Zardari government and feared that Pakistan was unravelling and could fall to the Taliban and with it jeopardise the safety and security of its nuclear arsenal, maybe hoping for an army takeover to stabilise Pakistan.

All of this evidently seemed to have been forgotten by Holbrooke following Zardari's crying on his shoulders, and the Administration's top diplomat to the region was on a defend-Zardari mode throughout the hearing, despite some tough questioning by lawmakers including the likes of Congressman Gary Ackerman who said, "Let me be blunt. Pakistan's pants are on fire."

Responding to the committee chair Congressman Howard Berman's request that he describe "how critical the threat is and what efforts we are undertaking to communicate US intentions to address the threat directly to the Pakistan people," Holbrooke said, "The fall of Swat created an air of panic, not in the United States initially, but among certain people in Pakistan; even in India I found people who recalled their vacations in Swat and were stunned by its fall."

Holbrooke said, "This began to create a ricochet effect so that anyone's honest, well-intentioned statements of concern became interpreted as predictions, and the press magnified this."

"I'm not actually blaming anyone," he said. "I'm not blaming the people who made the statements. They were pro-Pakistan. I'm not blaming the press, they were reporting them. But it really took off as a story."

Holbrooke argued that it was imperative that "it needs to be put in the perspective of what we're trying to achieve," and asserted, "Pakistan as such is of immense importance to the United States strategically and politically, that our goal must be unambiguously to support and help stabilise a democratic Pakistan headed by its elected president, Asif Ali Zardari."

He complained that he had "read in the newspapers that the Administration is distancing itself from President Zardari in favour of his leading political opponent Nawaz Sharif. That's simply not true. We have not distanced ourselves from President Zardari. If we were, why would President Obama have invited him to Washington today? Why would we be here talking about additional money for his government?"

Holbrooke then declared, "We do not think that Pakistan is a failed State. We think it's a State under extreme test from the enemies who are also our enemies and who have the same common enemy -- the United States and Pakistan."

He reiterated, "It's very important people get away from easy and attractive journalistic clichés. It just isn't (a failed State). But it is a State under enormous social, political and economic pressure. And India is always a factor."

Holbrooke's reference to India was because some lawmakers had questioned him on Pakistan's obsession with India as its biggest threat instead of acknowledging the internal existential threat from the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and other extremist groups.

At the end of the nearly two-hour hearing, when one lawmaker asked Holbrooke that while it is hoped the current government is successful in stabilising Pakistan, if the US had a "back-up plan if by the end of this year we are dealing with another government in Pakistan," Holbrooke all but exploded.

"If we have a back-up plan -- of the sort you mean -- we're just going to publicly undermine the government," he scolded the lawmaker, and asserted, "Asif Ali Zardari is the democratically elected president of the second-largest Muslim country in the world -- the fifth largest country in the world."