Is this a price worth paying?

Brian Cloughley In the course of research for a paper on US-Pakistan relations I came across a speech given by President Obama in March this year, titled ‘A New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan’. It was interesting and quite informative, if misguided and engagingly ingenuous, but the fascinating sentence that leapt from the page to my astonished eyes was the declaration that “The United States of America did not choose to fight a war in Afghanistan.” It’s a bit like being told “Hitler didn’t cause World War Two”, or reading a newspaper headline such as “Republican Politician Tells Truth” or “Gaza is Earthly Paradise.” But the Obama assertion was even further removed from reality. Nobody grabbed America’s collective nose and ordered it to send special forces to go to Afghanistan’s Tora Bora region on October 7, 2001, along with a few dozen British colleagues and a now-rich bunch of raggy baggy Afghan warlords who took millions of CIA dollars in enormous shrink-wrapped bundles and then sat down on their money and did nothing. The prime mover in that farce (for such it was, alas, in spite of instances of exceptionally courageous conduct by US and British soldiers; I have had a first-hand description of the operation, but alas can’t recount it because of the UK’s Official Secrets Act), was the White House. The pathetic Blair of Britain followed in his usual fashion, desperate to have bonding photographs taken alongside the grinning Bush. It was most certainly the United States of America that chose to invade Afghanistan. And it was the United States that manipulated the United Nations Security Council into a resolution that seemed to give justification for its unwinnable war. Two researchers in the British House of Commons have produced a paper titled ‘The Legal Basis for the Invasion of Afghanistan’. These analysts are not bleeding-heart liberals; they are intelligent, independent assessors of fact. And they wrote: “The military campaign in Afghanistan was not specifically mandated by the UN -there was no specific Security Council Resolution authorising the invasion – but was widely (although not universally) perceived to be a legitimate form of self-defence under the UN Charter.” The whole thing was a con-job. And dozens of nations were summoned to give it a slimy veneer of quasi-legitimacy. They were all duped – or chose to be manoeuvred – into committing blood, young lives and treasure to the preposterously named “Operation Enduring Freedom.” While writing this piece I went to the website icasualties and saw that yet more young foreign soldiers had been killed. Boys of 19 and 20 are dying in Afghanistan for...for what? There are no names of Afghan soldiers, of course, because they don’t matter to the West – any more than the deaths of Pakistani soldiers matter to Western politicians and generals who demand that “Pakistan must do more to combat terrorism.” What they mean is that even more soldiers of the Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps should sacrifice their lives in order to make it easier for the West to claim that things are improving in its Afghan debacle. Had there been no invasion of Afghanistan by foreign troops, Pakistan would not be in the dreadful situation in which it now finds itself. The fanatics came over the border and found sanctuary amid the lawless but culturally hospitable tribes, which at that very time were being encouraged, with signs of modest success, to join mainstream Pakistan. But the displaced militants began energetic campaigns of propaganda and hatred, and then wreaked havoc by brainwashing home-grown barbarians to develop their own brand of evil mayhem. Pakistan had no suicide bombings until 1995 when an Egyptian citizen tried to drive a bomb-truck into his embassy in Islamabad. There were no other attacks until 2005, when there were two, by sectarian religious fanatics. But then the foreigners’ war in Afghanistan really got going, and in 2007 there were over 50 suicide attacks in Pakistan, most of which directly targeted military forces. Since then it’s been a hideous growth industry. Last year 50 bombings killed over 1100 people, and so far this year the score is 500 dead innocents. Thank you, Operation Enduring Freedom. And thank you, too, America, for the deaths of over 3,000 soldiers of the army and Frontier Corps, because none of them would have been killed were it not for your war in Afghanistan. Kabul’s fraudulently elected government and its supporting foreign forces whine about Pakistan being unable to control movement of militants to and from Afghanistan, and certainly it is impossible to do this – as the US well knows but won’t admit. Across its own fenced and heavily patrolled border with Mexico, which costs an annual six billion dollars to maintain and has over 20,000 border agents, pass hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants every year. Ignoring its own backyard cross-border shambles, the US demands that Pakistan commit its soldiers to invade North Waziristan to fight militants who – undoubtedly – cross the border to Afghanistan to fight there. This operation – or, rather, long series of operations, because it would take years – would require some 60,000 soldiers, of whom a thousand would be killed in a two-year campaign. There would be at least 3,000 Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps soldiers wounded, with hundreds of them maimed for life. There would be thousands of widows, orphans and grieving parents and families. The aim of the US and its dwindling number of international supporters in Afghanistan is not further stability in Pakistan – because a North Waziristan military operation would mightily increase the numbers of suicide and other attacks throughout the country. Their objective is to make it easier for them to claim that their war is going well, as part of President Obama’s ‘New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.’ Does Pakistan think this is a price worth paying? Currently the US is threatening to invade Pakistan rather than endorse ongoing negotiations with militants in Fata. The intention was made clear when defence secretary Panetta, referring to Pakistan’s supposed support of militant operations in Afghanistan, declared that “We’re not going to allow these types of attacks to go on.” I’ve got news for Panetta. If he imagines the Pakistan Army will be a pushover like the Iraqis, he should think again. If US forces attempt an invasion of North Waziristan they will meet reaction not only from militants but from an army which will not accept flagrant violation of national sovereignty. I know the Pakistan Army, and I state flatly that man-for-man it will hammer any opponent, no matter if the skies are horizon-filled with US bombers. Does America think this is a price worth paying?

Until they ‘bluff our call’

Mehreen Zahra-Malik “I eat US threats for breakfast.” Would it be so far-fetched to imagine a top Pakistani general thinking this as he sat down to breakfast Thursday morning? News had just rolled in that a US Senate committee had voted to make aid to Pakistan conditional on going after the Haqqani network. All week long, across-the-board ultimatums of unilateral action were heard from the highest sanctums of the US administration. The voice of the tiny minority in the US government still willing to sympathise with Pakistan had lowered to a mousey squeak. What was going through General Kayani’s mind in the midst of this? The prime minister, often dangerously flippant, told journalists recently, “Now, it’s time that they [United States] do more.” The quip was ironic. ‘Doing more’ is precisely what the Americans are threatening to do. Unilateral action is, after all, a form of ‘doing more.’ And there is one other thing just as expensive in international relations as threats when they fail: promises when they succeed. This time round, it seems, there’s a promise wrapped up in the threats that Pakistan has since long learnt to shrug off with a scoff. So, will a Pakistan used to American cage-rattling consider this impasse any different from the last one? The old hands – retired generals, former emissaries, jaded journalists – will all tell you the same thing: There’s a huge chasm between total breakdown and positive engagement and Pak-US ties will continue to hover somewhere over this vast murkiness. The Americans want to enlarge the operational and tactical space to pursue their strategic goals in Af-Pak and bullying Pakistan is one way to do it. They used the same approach two months ago and two years ago and in the larger strategic scheme of things they haven’t gotten very far. No need to panic. Are they right? Maybe not. In at least two respects, this stalemate is conspicuously different. One, the good cops and the bad cops are all speaking with one voice. Hilary Clinton, who has come to the rescue whenever others in the administration have sought to haul Pakistan, was severe in her advice to Hina Rabbani Khar this week: Pakistan was fast losing friends in Washington, including herself. Sources extremely close to the meeting say Clinton was particularly frustrated about the concerted Pakistani campaign to downplay the money the US has been giving it. ‘What’s the point if even the carrot means nothing anymore?’ seems to have been the take-home message. That’s one good cop down. The other good cop, Admiral Mike Mullen, who has always been uncomfortable with the State Department’s short-term stupidities and CIA’s bravado, has also joined bad cop Leon Panetta in the tongue-lashing on links between the ISI and the Haqqanis. Then there’s Gen Petraeus, known for deliberately sending his men into hot pursuit of suspected Taliban fighters as part of a broader plan to test the Pakistani reaction before intensifying the US military campaign into Waziristan. Now, everyone is speaking the language of Gen Petraeus and this is what it sounds like: you can make your sovereign decisions, and so will we. Till now, the Americans have been able to bully and pressure Pakistan into helping them meet their immediate purpose. And that’s the second factor that sets this stalemate apart: this time round, the Americans are no longer just interested in an immediate purpose. How many CIA folks are allowed into Pakistan; how many trainers get visas; how many joint aid projects and counterintelligence raids are conducted – who cares about the minutiae? Pakistan has been fatally locked into a static strategic worldview and that is what needs to change. Enough tweaking and tuning. The US wants a fundamental shift now. The Pakistan army argues that a military operation in North Waziristan is a ‘problem of ‘capability.’ The Americans increasingly see it as a ‘problem of will.’ Behind closed doors, and ever more in front of the cameras, this is the argument: if the Pakistanis have the capability to help us catch senior Al Qaeda types, why can’t they rein in the Haqqanis? It’s a fair question. But all this is not to say the Americans will go for an operation in Wazirsitan. On that one, even those most plugged in say we’ll just have to wait and watch. But what we do know is that the options for Pakistan have tremendously shrunk. If we have influence over the Taliban, we should use it to bring them to the table; if we don’t have influence over them, we need to fight them – there is no third option. We can either use our sway to reconcile them or use our power to weaken them. Take them on, or take them to the table. Not convinced we’re capable of making the right choices when we need to? The Lashkar-e-Taiba was long considered one of the most important instruments of Pakistan’s foreign policy in the region. Could anyone have predicted Pakistan would arrest Zakiur Rehman Lakhwi as the foremost mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks? The idea of going after the Haqqanis occupies the same plane of unthinkability at the moment. But for how long? Right now, one can imagine the security establishment whispering into worried American ears: In the worst-case scenario, the very groups you’re most worried about now may be completely beyond our control later; the jihadists out of work after the coalition’s exit from Afghanistan will need something to keep themselves busy... So perhaps we’ll keep calling the United States’ bluff – but only until they bluff our call back.

For Pakistan to change, army must change

Ayaz Amir The army and its strategic adventures have brought Pakistan to its present pass. The footprints of the terrorism now haunting the country go back to the first Afghan ‘jihad’, the one army-inspired event which pushed Pakistan to the frontiers of insanity. The phoenix won’t rise from its ashes, and there will be no return to sanity, unless the army can bring itself to change its outlook and reinvent some of its mental apparatus. Civilians have been poor administrators, in no position to escape their share of the blame for the mess the Fortress of Islam is in. But in the driving seat of Pakistan’s steady march to the brink have been our holy guardians. There is little room for quibbling on this point. Even so, despite the mounting evidence of disorder, the army refuses to change, still obsessed with the threat from the east, still caught up with the quixotic notion of exercising influence in Afghanistan. God in heaven, why should it matter to us if a president of Afghanistan is a Tajik, an Uzbek or a Pathan? Can’t we keep our eyes focused on our own problems? The threat we face lies squarely within but our strategic grandmasters insist on being foreign policy specialists. If a Stalin were around, although fat chance of that occurring, he would lay his hands first not on militants and assorted terrorists but on the foreign policy experts who infest our television studios. Is Mossad pulling the strings of terrorism in Karachi? Was the CIA behind the attack on Shia pilgrims in Mastung? Was RAW behind the attempt on the life of the Karachi special investigator, Chaudhry Aslam? By any reasonable computation we have enough of a nuclear arsenal. By any yardstick of common sense, a commodity often in short supply in the conference rooms of national security, we have as much of a deterrent as we need to counter the real or imagined threat from India. This being the case, we should be directing what energies we have to the threat from within: that posed by militancy marching under the banner of Islam. As part of this undertaking, we need to advertise for a Hakim Luqman who could cure our general staff and the ISI of their preoccupation with the future of Afghanistan. We have been burnt by Afghanistan. We don’t need any further burning. For the sake of Pakistan’s future we need to distance ourselves from Afghanistan’s problems, dire as they are. Of one thing we should be sure. America’s Afghan pacification drive has failed. Far from being defeated or even on the back-foot the Taliban are stronger than ever. When the Americans leave, the mental decision to leave having already been taken, Afghanistan will erupt once more into civil war. This is the writing on the wall, the message emblazoned across the skies. All the more reason for Pakistan’s strategic geniuses to avoid the temptation, irresistible as it may be, to take sides in that civil war. Who comes out on top, the Taliban or warriors from Mars, should be none of our business. The theory of strategic assets for the future thus becomes irrelevant. We paid a heavy penalty for this theory in the past. We can’t be repeating the same mistakes. Our old assets were the likes of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. What good did they do us? Our new assets, even though our denials are vociferous, are the likes of Sirajuddin Haqqani and his so-called network. What are we expecting of them? That they will deliver Afghanistan to the ISI’s safekeeping? Is this grand strategy or the repetition of grand folly? The discovery of Sheikh Osama bin Laden in the sylvan surroundings of Abbottabad should have been a wake-up call for the guardians of national security. Having been caught with their pants down some humility was in order. But they seem to have slunk deeper into their bunkers. The Americans may be asking for too much, and they are certainly in the mood to hunt for scapegoats as their Afghan intervention begins to unravel, but none of this should mean that we remain faithful to the discredited theory of strategic assets. The Haqqanis may be good for Afghanistan but nothing that they have qualifies them to imperil or worsen Pakistan’s ties with the United States. Gen Kayani is perfectly right in saying that any decision to launch an operation in North Waziristan or anywhere else will be Pakistan’s decision, taken in the light of what we think is best for us, and that in this respect there will be no taking orders from America. This is also the voice of the nation. At the same time, however, why must the suspicion be allowed to linger that the Haqqanis enjoy ISI backing? This has been the cocktail circuit gossip in Islamabad for a long time now. If this is a groundless suspicion the ISI’s media machine should have been working overtime to dispel it. But we have allowed matters to reach the point where Pakistan’s real or alleged support for the Haqqanis has become, at least for the time being, the major sticking point between the Pentagon and General Headquarters. Allowing this suspicion to grow has not been very smart on the part of our national security experts. The US secretary of defence Leon Panetta and CIA chief Gen David Petraeus are not oracles whose words should be taken on trust. If they say something it doesn’t become a divine revelation. But we have to be honest with ourselves. Is North Waziristan a Taliban haven or not? Do the Haqqanis use it as a safe base or not? If it is a safe haven we should be doing something about it, not because this is what America wishes but because it is in our own interest to do so. But if it be not in our power to do something then our protestations about national sovereignty wear pretty thin. At America’s door can be laid the responsibility of much mischief stretching from the Middle East to Iraq and onwards to Afghanistan. But the demons we are contending with – whether in Mastung or Karachi – are not American inventions. For their creation and nurturing we have to look at ourselves, in this regard our own shoulders bearing the heaviest responsibility. Let us dread the day the Taliban are victorious in Afghanistan. What a fillip will that be for militancy in the name of the faith in Pakistan? Then America will not come to our rescue. We will be on our own and it will avail us little if the Haqqanis were or were not a strategic asset of ours. By the way, who was the genius who coined this phrase, strategic asset? In a just world he would have some explaining to do. The militants Pakistan faces baulk at nothing. They are utterly ruthless. But, collectively, we haven’t really woken up to this threat, our national response, therefore, a mixture of toughness and softness. How many militants have been sentenced by the courts? Very few if at all. The excuse trotted out is that prosecutions are weak and the evidence often skimpy. But when an Aasia Bibi comes to trial, for an alleged offence with a religious connotation, the punishment is swift and severe, regardless of how persuasive or skimpy the evidence may be. My Lord the Chief Justice is trying to take the authorities in Karachi, especially the police, to task, although what good mere admonitions will do remains to be seen. But it would also help if their lordships took a closer look at the weaknesses in the judiciary’s cupboard. Decades of misadventure have distorted and even corrupted the Pakistani mind. We do not live in the real world. Our foreign policy notions, our list of assets and threats, have but a remote relation to reality. We must look to first causes. How did we create these bonfires for ourselves? How did we become prisoners of our misconceptions? Liberating the Pakistani mind from the shackles of these self-imposed errors must be the first of our tasks if, with luck, we are to become a normal nation.