Conn Hallinan - Oct. 29, 2011
“Terrorism is not a statistic for us.”—Asif Ali
Zardari, president of Pakistan
This is a Pakistani truism that few Americans understand.
Since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, Pakistan has lost more than
35,000 people, the vast bulk of them civilians. While the U.S. has had slightly
over 1800 soldiers killed in the past 10 years, Pakistan has lost over 5,000
soldiers and police. The number of suicide bombings in Pakistan has gone from
one before 2001, to more than 335 since.
For most Americans, Pakistan is a two-faced “ally” playing a
double game in Central Asia, all while siphoning off tens of billions of
dollars in aid. For Pakistanis, the spillover from the Afghan war has cost
Islamabad approximately of $100 billion. And this is in a country with a yearly
GDP of around $175 billion, and whose resources have been deeply strained by
two years of catastrophic flooding.
Washington complains that its $20.7 billion in aid over the
past nine years has bought it very little in the way of loyalty from Islamabad,
while Pakistan points out that U.S. aid makes up less than 0.3 percent of
Pakistan’s yearly GDP, what Zahid Hussain, author of a book on Islamic
militants, says comes out to “the price of a six-inch personal-size pizza with
no extra toppings from Pizza Hut” for each Pakistani. In any case, much of the
civilian aid—the bulk, $14.2 billion, goes to the military—has yet
to be disbursed.
Both countries’ opinions of one another are almost mirror
images: According to a U.S. poll, 74 percent of Americans do not consider
Pakistan to be an ally, while the Pew Research Center found that six in 10
Pakistanis consider the Americans an “enemy,” and only 12 Percent have a favorable
view of the U.S.
How did this happen? In part the answer is mistakes and
misjudgments by both countries that date back to the 1979-89 Russian
occupation. But at its heart is an American strategy that not only runs counter
to Pakistan’s interests, but will make ending the war in Afghanistan a far more
painful procedure than it need be.
If Pakistan is a victim in the long running war, it is not
entirely an innocent one. Pakistan, along with the U.S., was an ally of the
anti-Communist, right wing Mujahideen during the 1980s Afghan war.
Pakistan’s interest in Afghanistan has always been
multi-faceted. Islamabad is deeply worried that its traditional enemy, India,
will gain a foothold in Afghanistan, thus essentially surrounding Pakistan.
This is not exactly paranoid, as Pakistan has fought—and lost—three
wars with India, and tensions between the two still remain high.
Over the past six years, India has conducted 10 major
military exercises along the Pakistani border, the latest—Viajyee Bhava
(Be Victorious)—involved 20,000 troops and what New Delhi military
spokesman S.D. Goswaim called “sustained massed mechanized maneuvers.” Pakistan
is the only potential enemy in the region that “massed” armored formations
could be aimed at. India has the world’s fourth largest army, Pakistan’s the 15th.
By aligning itself with Washington during its Cold War
competition with the Soviets in Afghanistan, Islamabad had the inside track to
buy high performance American military hardware to help it offset India’s numerical
superiority. Indeed, it did manage to purchase some F-16s fighter-bombers.
But in Central Asia, what is sauce for the goose is sauce
for the gander. When Pakistan allied itself with the Taliban, India aligned
itself with the Northern Alliance composed of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras, who
opposed the Pashtun-dominated Taliban. Pashtuns are a plurality in
Afghanistan’s complex mix of ethnicities, and traditionally they dominated the
Kabul government.
Islamabad has always been deeply concerned about the
Pashtuns, because the ethnic group makes up some 15 percent of Pakistan’s
population, and Pashtuns do not recognize the colonial period border—the
so-called Durand Line—that forms the current boundary between the two
countries. A long-time fear of Islamabad
is that Pakistani Pashtuns could ally themselves to Afghani Pashtuns and form a
breakaway country that would fragment Pakistan.
From Islamabad’s point of view, the American demand that it
corral the Taliban and the Haqqani Group that operate from mountainous
Northwest Frontier and Federally Administrated Tribal Areas of Pakistan might
stir up Pashtun nationalism, one of those things that goes bump in the night
for most Pakistanis. In any case, the task would be beyond the capabilities of
the Pakistan military. In 2009, the Pakistani Army used two full divisions just
to reclaim the Swat Valley from local militants, a battle that cost billions of
dollars, generated two million refugees, and inflicted heavy casualties.
Current U.S. strategy has exacerbated Pakistan’s problem by
putting the Northern Alliance in power, excluding the Pashtuns from any
meaningful participation, and targeting the ethnic group’s heartland in
Southern and Eastern Afghanistan. According to Hussain, this has turned the war
into a “Pashtun war,” and meant, “The Pashtuns in Pakistan would
become…strongly allied with both al Qaeda and the Taliban.”
The U.S has also remained silent while India moved
aggressively into Afghanistan. On Oct. 4, Kabul and New Delhi inked a
“strategic partnership” which, according to the New York Times, “paves the way for India to train and equip Afghan
security forces.” The idea of India training Afghan troops is the equivalent of
waving a red flag to see if the Pakistani bull will charge.
One pretext for the agreement was the recent assassination
of Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the Afghan High Peace Council, whom the Karzai
government claims was killed by the Taliban under the direction of the
Pakistani secret service, the ISI. But evidence linking the Taliban or Pakistan
to the hit is not persuasive, and the Taliban and Haqqani Group—never shy
about taking the credit for killing people—say they had nothing to do
with it.
Pakistan’s ISI certainly maintains a relationship with the
Afghan-based Taliban and the Haqqani Group, but former Joint Chiefs of Staff
head, Admiral Mike Mullen’s charge that the latter are a “veritable arm” of
Pakistan’s ISI is simply false. The Haqqanis come from the powerful Zadran Gaum
Pushtun tribe based in Paktia and Khost provinces in Afghanistan, and North
Wazirstan in Pakistan’s Tribal Area. It was one of the most effective military
groupings in the war with the Russians, and is certainly the most dangerous
group of fighters in the current war.
When their interests coincide the Haqqanis find common
ground with Islamabad, but the idea that Pakistan can get anyone in that region
to jump to attention reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the deeply
engrained cultural and ethnic currents that have successfully rebuffed outsiders
for thousands of years. And in the border region, the Pakistan Army is as much
an outsider as is NATO.
There a way out of this morass, but it will require a very
different strategy than the one the U.S. is currently following, and one far
more attuned to the lens through which most Pakistanis view the war in
Afghanistan.
First, the U.S. and its allies must stand down their
military offensive—including the drone attacks—against the Taliban
and Haqqani Group, and negotiate a ceasefire.
Second, the U.S. must open immediate talks with the various
insurgency groups and declare a plan for the withdrawal of all foreign troops.
The Taliban—the Haqqanis say they will follow the organization’s
lead—has indicated they will no longer insist on a withdrawal of troops
before opening talks, but they do want a timetable.
Third, recognition that any government in Kabul must reflect
the ethnic make-up of the country.
Fourth, Pakistan’s concerns over Indian influence need to be
addressed, including the dangerous issue of Kashmir. President Obama ran on a
platform that called for dealing with Kashmir, but subsequently dropped it at
the insistence of New Delhi. The issue needs to be put back on the table. The
next dust-up between Pakistan and India could go nuclear, which would be a
catastrophe of immeasurable proportions.
Pakistan and the U.S. may have profoundly different views of
one another, but at least one issue they agree: slightly over 90 percent of
Pakistanis would like U.S. troops to go home, and 62 percent of Americans want
an immediate cut in U.S. forces. Common ground in this case seems to be based
on a strong dose of common sense.
Read Conn Hallinan at
dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com