Pakistans flawed policy paradigm by Raoof Hassan

For all the years that Pakistan has been in existence, its relations with the US have been like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to the other, but rarely attaining a semblance of normalcy. This is in spite of ceaseless statements emanating from the leaderships proclaiming the abiding nature of the relations between the two countries which, over decades, have been tied together through various regional and international treaties and scores of bilateral contracts and understandings.

While serious questions have been incessantly debated regarding Pakistan’s lackadaisical bent towards the US after independence, these relations could never settle down to becoming a solid platform for launching any sustainable initiative for the progress of the new-born state. Instead, they have been a heavy cross to bear and a drain on the possible options that should have been more openly and productively considered in the realm of putting the nascent country on the road to attaining internal cohesion and a viable relevance as a regional player.

The dastardly attack on Salala was perceived as a pre-meditated assault to diminish Pakistan’s resolve in meeting the myriad challenges it confronts internally and along its eastern and western fronts. In the east, it is principally a challenge to rationalise the peace initiative that has taken over six decades in coming and, in the west, it is a challenge to address the lacerating issue of human trafficking of the non-lethal and the not-so-non-lethal types. Together, they present a platter demanding a subtle combination of the best in diplomatic and military skills and an unbending political resolve in the face of multiple diminishing factors.

There are some critical ingredients that Pakistan ideally needs to formulate and promote a sustainable policy paradigm to meet the mammoth challenge: the credibility and quality of its leadership, the functionality of its institutions, the viability and sophistication of the tools it could craft and use and the courage and character of its people.

Pakistan’s leadership has traditionally suffered from the twin-debacle of lack of credibility and competence and surfeit of greed. In the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, it was hoped that the PPP government would move quickly to atone for its past mistakes and lay the foundation of a truly democratic, egalitarian, tolerant and equitable society led by able and deserving people. After over four years of laborious existence, Pakistan has a leadership consisting of a convicted president, a convicted prime minister and a coterie of ministers and advisors with dubious credentials including reprieve through controversial presidential pardons and sworn allegiance to powers other than Pakistan by virtue of their dual nationalities.

Having come into power wearing the yoke of the NRO that legitimised crime and corruption alike, its politics have been a crude mixture of crass coercion, exhibition of an undying penchant to attain political martyrdom and clinical and debilitating compromises to win over sworn enemies of yesteryears.

Its rule has seen the collapse of the national institutions, rampant corruption, an unending confrontation with other pillars of the state, unprecedented inflation, an abominable increase in the number of those living below the poverty line, wilful abdication of authority over huge chunks of Pakistan’s territory, an aggravated law and order situation and a comprehensive collapse of governance at the centre and in all the provinces. This leadership has effectively plunged the country into a critical state of incessant haemorrhaging banishing any conceivable prospect of recovery.

The art of developing and using tools best suited to fight national battles has never been a favourite of the corrupt ruling mafias. Instead, a self-destructive macho approach has been systematically promoted. The impoverished millions of the country have been the victims of the strategy by becoming hapless pawns in the hands of their crafty manipulators. They have also been exaggeratingly exposed to the damaging effects of the obscurantist propaganda profusely spilled out by the madrassas. Against living proof to the contrary, Pakistan has been assiduously promoted as the invincible bastion of untenable ideologies. Logic, statecraft and the art of diplomatic manoeuvring were consigned to the backseat as jingoism and all its attendant instruments held perpetual ascendancy. The legitimate voice of the majority was mercilessly silenced through craftily-coined mechanisms, ensuring dominance by the status-quo proponents.

East Pakistan became Bangladesh, but we did not learn. The bitter setback suffered at the Kargil only precipitated another military takeover. Internally, the faulty mindset contributed to the emergence of a violence syndrome and, externally, it promoted the perception of a country embracing militant ideology and instruments to attain national objectives.

Having suffered endlessly at the hands of succeeding rulers, the unsuspecting people of Pakistan appear quite resigned to their fate. Their every-day struggle is survival which takes all of their time and most of their enthusiasm and energy. They are left with nothing to invest in any meaningful effort to improve their condition. Their existence depends on placating the thanedar and patwari – the power-wielders at the local level – who, patronised by the criminal ruling mafias, control their destinies.

They have been traumatised by the contrived emergence of ravaging gangs of militancy-spouting thugs who roam the streets garbed as saviours. For all their existence, they have hoped to be able to stand up for their rights, to be at peace with themselves, their fellow countrymen, their neighbours and their surroundings and to be able to invest in their progress and that of their coming generations in consonance with the parameters of civilised co-existence among people and among nations of the world.

By and large, they remain uneducated, unenlightened, economically-enslaved and socially and culturally traumatised. Their dreams perished a long time ago as they gradually wilted under the dictates of the criminal gangs who contrive a majority election-after-election. They remain grossly underprivileged and gruesomely deprived of even a miserly slice in the fruits of development. Left to the convicted prime minister, they should leave the country: “Why don’t they? Who is stopping them?”

Standing on these weak and crumbling pillars, the state of Pakistan is showing increasing signs of internal strife and external alienation. More is being demanded by powers, led by the US, with overriding stakes in the region as Pakistan has become increasingly afflicted with a diminishing capability and capacity syndrome. It is the natural consequence of a faulty policy paradigm. A major surgery is the likely remedy where most of its artificial attenuations may have to be amputated to control the spread of contagious infection.

For facilitating change, the basic ingredients will have to be improved with bravado giving way to sustainable logic and jingoism replaced with pragmatic policies that reflect the inherent strengths of the country and cater to addressing its weaknesses. Sprinkled with a heavy dose of legitimacy through all echelons of power, this should then go through the mill of time to cultivate trust and confidence of its people and partners alike. Suffering from a terrible dearth of good intentions and heavily plagued with confrontational politics and policies to the exclusion of accountability and acceptance of the rule of law, the dice seems heavily loaded against any imminent redemptive outcome as Pakistan continues to bleed at the hands of a corrupt leadership that, lacking in both vision and resolve, has been rendered effectively insolvent.

Panetta’s hubris by Rustam Shah Mohmand

Pakistan must be grateful to US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta for articulating a clear, unambiguous US line of action in regard to Pakistan’s perceived inability to proceed against groups that the US sees as dangerous to its forces operating inside Afghanistan and which are supposedly based in the tribal areas.

Now is the time for Pakistan to place its cards on the table and challenge the wholly unsubstantiated assertions of a frustrated man. If the Pakistani establishment rushes to do damage control or launches another “determined” campaign of appeasement, the US bullying is only expected to grow in intensity and ferocity. That is the lesson of history.

The fact that the defence secretary chose to deliver his warning to Pakistan from Delhi and Kabul is significant. That was intended to reinforce his tough message to the rulers of Pakistan. Panetta said the US is running out of patience with Pakistan. In the ongoing war on terror, has the US ever displayed patience, shown any deference to Pakistan’s interests or respect for its sovereignty?

Whether it is the incessant drone campaign that has killed hundreds of innocent people, including women and children, limited ground incursions inside Pakistani territory, a raid deep inside Pakistani territory to eliminate Osama bin Laden and making a mockery of the notion of Pakistan’s sovereignty, the US has never vacillated in its resolve to do whatever it considers best for its own interests. So where has it exercised patience? Let us examine the claim that some militants who are inflicting pain and misery on the coalition forces in Kabul are operating from “sanctuaries” located in the tribal area on Pakistani-Afghan border.

One may ask: on how many occasions in the past ten years have the US forces or their Afghan counterparts been able to intercept, confront, capture or kill those who intrude into Afghanistan, travel more than a hundred miles inside Afghan territory, carry out operations and then safely return to their hideouts in the tribal areas, again traversing a distance of more than a hundred miles?

This failure seems more enigmatic, considering that the coalition forces number 130,000 and are assisted by the more than 160,000-strong Afghan army in addition to more than 50,000 of “contractors” serving as security forces. The Afghan police force is also operating in the area and its strength has gone up to more than 140,000.

Also consider that these forces are equipped with the most sophisticated weapons and they function with the help of a vast surveillance network, radars and a comprehensive human intelligence apparatus.

And there is another dimension to this bizarre theory of sanctuaries. If the sanctuaries do exist, as the defence secretary claims, how and why have the hundreds of US drone strikes missed such targets for a whole decade? When mosques, houses, markets, vehicles, schools, weddings and funeral processions could be targeted and hit with such accuracy, how could the terrorists’ hideouts and sanctuaries be spared? Hitting sanctuaries should have been a top priority for the CIA drone campaign managers. This exposes the absurd rationale of the whole fragile theory that is woven around wholly baseless assumptions.

But this is repeated ad nauseam because Islamabad has never been able to confront its American interlocutors with facts and ground realities. If one were to assume, even for the sake of an argument, that some resistance in the few Afghan provinces that border Pakistan would have some connectivity with militants operating from the tribal area of Pakistan, then how would one explain the growing resistance in areas that have no border with the tribal area or with Pakistan?

On June 9, there was a deadly attack on French soldiers in Kapisa province, which neither has a border with Pakistan nor has any substantial Pakhtun population. And who are targeting the coalition forces on a daily basis in such regions as Qundus (bordering with Tajikistan), Herat (bordering with Iran), Jozjan (bordering with Turkmenistan) and such areas as Sare Pul, Ghazni, Lugar and Wardak which have no border with Pakistan.

Panetta, who is now calling the shots as far as the war theatres of Afghanistan and Iraq are concerned, must be under considerable pressure to deliver an emphatic victory at least in some sector of Afghanistan. He has some results to show, however. The night raids initiated by Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus have caused tremendous losses to the resistance, although many of the casualties were innocent Afghans. The local militias formed in some regions have also inflicted heavy losses on the resistance.

But the fighting, despite such losses, has not diminished. The most worrying thing for the Pentagon bosses is the rate of desertion in the Afghan National Army which is going up. Secondly, the many supporters and sympathisers of the resistance within the government establishment are causing a headache to the coalition forces which see their scheme for Afghanistan unravelling in the face of more defections and more “conversions.” These are formidable challenges which cannot be managed by throwing money at people.

Pakistan must be able to see the emerging mayhem in Afghanistan which a residual force of 25,000 US troops after 2014 will not be able to contain or handle. The Doha peace process is as good as dead. In any case, Mullah Umar has now decided to discontinue any future parleys with the US, having realised according to some reports that these are gimmicks aimed at creating a rift in the ranks of the resistance. To an extent the team that is based in Doha has lost its relevance for the leadership of the resistance.

These are grim and painful developments. As well as confronting the US position with the help of solid evidence and facts Pakistan must also take a more robust part in initiating a serious dialogue between the US and the resistance, exploring the solid basis that exists for working togather: no Al-Qaeda in future Afghanistan and no use of Afghan soil against any other country. As Pakistan undertakes this stupendous task it would learn very soon that common ground has existed between the position of the US and the resistance that has not been tapped into for many years.

But the success of such an effort would depend on whether the US is willing and prepared to withdraw all its soldiers, trainers, advisers within a stipulated period of time. Insurgency with all its attendant consequences will not end unless the US agrees to a complete pull-out of its forces of all types. Would the US listen?

US Losing Patience with Pakistan

Special guest in town (Hillary Clinton in Pakistan)

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton paid her most important visit to Pakistan so far. It had three purposes: it not only proved to be another one of the measures to bring Pakistan within the ambit of American diplomacy, it also proved to be a preparatory visit for President Barack Obama’s expected visit towards the end of the year, as well as an opportunity to prove its imperial hegemony in the region.

Indeed, its hegemony was shown by the signing of the minutes of negotiation with Afghanistan on the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement in the presence of Secretary Clinton. The agreement has not been reached, but negotiations have taken place.

Normally, the signing of the agreement itself would be the occasion for a ceremony, but even that would not have a foreign dignitary witnessing it.

However, the US was represented by its Secretary of State because Afghanistan is under its occupation, and it does not make any agreements without American approval.

This was made possible by Pakistan’s acceptance of this hegemony, and by its allowing, or rather welcoming of the American presence. This made the signing, which took place at roughly the time that an agreement should have been reached, a cosy all-American affair, between one country which is under actual American occupation, and another which is under its financial and political tutelage, which together add up to a region which the US controls.

Pakistan is trying to resist on two counts. First, it is trying to obtain a civilian nuclear agreement with China. And in the Afghan transit trade, it is trying to refuse to give to India a route over it to Afghanistan.

The US is trying to stop the deal for reactors with China, even though it had entered into a similar deal with India. Pakistan turned to China only after it was rebuffed by the US, but America has hauled China before the Nuclear Suppliers Group on this count. Pakistan’s energy shortages have lent an edge to its attempts to get a nuclear deal, and this is an area in which the US has pledged to help, but without any firm commitment.

The reason it is refusing a land route to India for Afghanistan is paradoxically the same as why the US wants that route conceded. It is refusing to accept Indian hegemony over the region, which the US wants to see established in preparation for the time when India, equipped with the great-power status it has desperately sought ever since independence, can act as its policeman in the region.

Also reflective of American imperial concerns is how the Secretary stepped into the issue of General Kayani’s extension as Pakistani COAS. Normally, such manoeuvring is done behind closed doors, but the Secretary’s recommendation was very public, and deliberately so.

If the extension is given, it will be seen as an American decision, and will correspondingly reflect on the civilian government. However, if the civilian government chooses a replacement, the US will also be OK with that. Either way, the US will have established its veto power over top appointments in the military. As the military already does not think much of civilians, it will accept this message.

As for the agreement, the question of the Indian overland route has not been left alone, but may be raised again. As the agreement is to be a long-term one, question may arise again over its life, and if Pakistan stays committed to the relationship, will surely be raised again, and probably be decided in favour of India.

It would lead to the smuggling of Indian goods into Pakistan, and thus the claim that a large Pakistani business lobby is in favour of formalising the import by making the trade legal. India wants to have all the advantages of good relations with Pakistan without going to the trouble of solving any of its problems with it, the most obvious being the core dispute of Kashmir.

This all took place as the immediate prelude to the Kabul Conference, and thus was part of the USA’s AfPak policy, which views this as a single region deserving a single policy. However, though it may be acceptable to the rulers in Islamabad to be lumped with Afghanistan, this approach ignores the reality that Pakistan has concerns of its own which must be addressed.

While it may be acceptable to Kabul, and to the rulers in Islamabad, for regional hegemony to be given to India, it would not find acceptance among the people of Pakistan, no matter how neat or convenient the US might find it.

The strategic dialogue mechanism has overshadowed traditional diplomacy because the US espouses it, but it should be kept in mind that China has adopted the method, and one of its earliest partners has been Pakistan, and civilian nuclear cooperation has been one of the subjects.

The aid which Secretary Clinton trumpeted so much was ‘old aid’, already approved by Congress, and thus Secretary Clinton not only did not bring anything new, but she also failed to fulfil any of the promises made by the US, like the Reconstruction Opportunity Zones for the tribal areas or Pakistan’s energy needs.

With the dialogue failing to deliver on those issues, and also on changing US positions on issues involving India, not just its main partner in the region, but also its main hope, it does not seem to have served a particularly useful purpose for Pakistan.

Perhaps, the most important subject for both sides was the visit to Pakistan by President Barack Obama. The Secretary’s visit is often the substitute for a presidential visit, but the visit itself will depend on India, for President Obama will not visit Pakistan alone, but will make a swing through the region which will include India and Afghanistan, and may even include Central Asia, provided the USSR does not object.

However, it should be encouraging that Obama is willing to visit the region in an election year, for both his predecessors, including Ms Clinton’s husband, deferred their subcontinental visits until their second terms, something which it is not at all clear that Obama will get.

While that will reduce the effectiveness of his visits, it does not reduce the risk that he will repeat the charge flung by Ms Clinton while here, that the terrorist leadership, notably Osama Bin Laden, was in Pakistan.

This charge, linking Pakistan to terror, is primarily a piece of Indian propaganda, which some circles in the US choose to repeat not because it is true, but because it helps distract attention from the USA’s failure in Afghanistan. Since Ms Clinton will be briefing him, her beliefs will be crucial.

However, Pakistan can probably take comfort from the fact thus revealed, that Pakistan still matters in the American scheme of things.

The mere visit by a US President is, under the circumstances, well worth sacrificing, by refusing to toe the imperial American line. However, the ability of the present ruling class to give up the contact, even if brief, with the mystique attached to the US President’s office, even if bruised, is probably not something to depend on.

More of the same by Arif Nizami

Pakistan has been at the epicentre of hectic diplomatic activity in the past few weeks. However, as they say, no matter how much things change they remain the same. Parleys between Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and his Indian counterpart, S M Krishna, failed to break any fresh ground.

Talks with Ms Hillary Clinton resulted in the US secretary of state arm-twisting Islamabad into signing an unequal transit trade agreement with Kabul and the sop of $500 million’s project assistance. The fine print that this money was part of the assistance already pledged under the Kerry Lugar Bill was conveniently swept under the carpet.

Shorn of diplomatic verbosity, the wide gap between Islamabad’s wish list and the demands of the West, with India Pakistan’s perennially estranged neighbour, has not narrowed a bit. The only silver lining is Islamabad’s markedly improved relations with Kabul.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi, visibly disappointed and sombre at the joint press conference with his Indian counterpart, looked more like a jilted lover than the foreign minister of Pakistan. Had he taken too seriously the bombastic claims of his predecessor, Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri, that a Kashmir solution had virtually been clinched under Musharraf?

It is naive on our part to expect New Delhi to start meaningful talks on Kashmir on Washington’s prodding. Striking a sympathetic chord with the West, India’s priority remains engagement of Pakistan on terrorism and trade. S M Krishna or any member of his team need not have been on the cell phone with New Delhi during the talks, as claimed by Mr Qureshi, for instructions on this count.

On the contrary, in the talks it was Islamabad that was ill prepared and was caught on the wrong foot. New Delhi has exploited to the hilt the testimony of David Haedley, a maverick of half-Pakistani, half-American descent who has been working as a mole for the Americans and later ostensibly for the Taliban. In sharp contrast, Islamabad failed to walk the talk by providing any concrete evidence on RAW’s alleged involvement in Balochistan.

The much-hyped second round of strategic dialogue with the US also proved to be a damp squib. It ended with a litany of oft-repeated demands and statements from the US secretary of state. As on her previous visit, she repeated her claim that Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan and elements in the Pakistani government are aware of his whereabouts, a charge predictably denied by the prime minister. Ms Clinton also wanted tougher action from Pakistan to combat militants and expressed her apprehension that another terrorist attack on US soil will be devastating for Pakistan-US relations. Who doesn’t know this?

Predictably, the US secretary of state reiterated Washington’s stance that Islamabad is not entitled to civilian nuclear technology a la New Delhi, on the pretext that it was not a responsible nuclear state, thanks to the so-called A Q Khan network. Similarly, market access that is available to some other South Asian countries and is a long-standing demand of our textile industry remains unavailable to Islamabad.

It is obvious that the “trust deficit” between the US and Pakistan acknowledged by both sides remains high. On one side, Washington wants Islamabad to “do more” while on the other it implicitly blames elements within the Pakistan military of being complicit with the terrorists.

It wants Pakistan to forgo its present strategic paradigm and launch an attack against Taliban sanctuaries in North Waziristan. However, it is unable to play any mediatory role between India and Pakistan, apart from facilitating a fruitless dialogue between the two adversaries. The collateral damage inflicted in the tribal areas, owing to the constant drone attacks has made the onerous task of winning hearts and minds even more difficult with US approval ratings in Pakistan stubbornly remaining at an all-time low.

The country’s economy is in dire straits, and our policymakers have little option but to follow US diktats. The only stumbling block, or, rather, a balancing element, is the military that adheres to its own version of India-centric policies.

Pakistan Afghanistan transit trade deal signed under the matronly gaze of the US secretary of state is an unequal treaty. While advantageous for Kabul, it has few benefits for Islamabad. Getting access to Central Asia is easier said than done, thanks to the large swaths of Afghan territory controlled by the Taliban.

Access to Central Asia through war-torn routes in Afghanistan is also expensive, if one has to pay all the warlords on the way. Afghan trucks plying to Wagah and Karachi would not only be financially detrimental to the local trucking industry but could also serve as a fresh source for drugs and arms smuggling.

Ominously, on the eve of the strategic dialogue, speculative stories appeared in the media about COAS Gen Kayani, whose term was to end in November this year, being granted an extension by the prime minister. One newspaper came up with the fantastic claim that the US secretary of state has pleaded for the army chief’s tenure be extended for the sake of continuity in the war on terror.

Such a demand coming from Washington would be construed as a blatant interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan. Despite the closeness of relations between Islamabad and Washington the decision to grant an extension hopefully has been taken because of the pivotal role Pakistan is playing in the war on terror, rather than on the basis of US demands.

Now that Gen Kayani’s term as COAS has been extended for another three years for the sake of “wider national interest,” more speculation in the media will be counterproductive. Although military strongmen giving themselves extensions has been he norm, it is the first time that such a step has been taken by a civilian government.

President Mohammad Ayub Khan promoted himself from general to field marshal, whereas Gen Zia and Gen Musharraf as presidents gave themselves extensions as army chiefs.

Islamabad’s regional security environment has markedly improved as a result of better relations with Kabul. The process started after Musharraf’s exit from power, has now culminated in Gen Kayani and his ISI chief facilitating a dialogue with the Taliban. Pakistan’s neutrality in the controversial presidential elections held last year in Afghanistan and Karzai losing faith in the Nato forces’ ability to defeat the Taliban has helped tip the balance in Islamabad’s favour.

Relations with Afghanistan have improved to the extent that Kabul has agreed to send Afghan military officers for training to Pakistan–a proposal which Karzai had been vehemently resisting till recently. India, which has invested heavily in Afghanistan and has a vast intelligence network along the border with Pakistan, is visibly upset over these developments. The virulent anti-Pakistan propaganda in the Indian media on this count is clear indication of New Delhi’s withdrawal symptoms.

A key conference on Afghanistan led by Hillary Clinton and chaired by UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon and attended by 80 countries and organisations, including India and Pakistan, has endorsed Karzai’s plan for talking with those Taliban who are willing to renounce violence. Obviously, this is a window of opportunity for Pakistan. But it has to tread cautiously, lest it is accused of treating Afghanistan as its backyard.