What ails US-Pakistan relations?

By S.P.SETH

Pakistan is very much in the news these days, though for the wrong reasons. In the midst of all the stuff about Osama bin Laden’s killing and who knew what, in Australia the visiting Bhutto family scion, Fatima Bhutto, here for the Sydney Writers’ Festival, made quite a splash. She was in great demand for interviews by the media. She came out as a very personable, articulate and passionate (for her people) young woman, making her points concisely without hyperbole. Even when she was critical of the United States, she said her piece matter-of-factly without wanting to score points.

Her book, Songs of Blood and Sword, is a passionate study of a daughter’s love for her father, who was killed in mysterious circumstances when Benazir Bhutto (Fatima’s aunt) was Pakistan’s prime minister. And she doesn’t hide her conviction, as she told a television interviewer here, that her aunt and her husband (the current President Zardari, Bhutto’s husband) might have had a hand in the ghastly deed---if not in the actual murder, at least, in the cover up that followed as she was the country’s prime minister at the time.

She said she had no plans to enter politics because dynastic politics (as with the Bhuttos) was against the spirit of democracy. She seemed to think that the Pakistani state was doomed. But she made a difference between the state (governed by a highly corrupt establishment) and its people who were resilient. She said that the US aid wasn’t helping the country as it seldom reached the people, being pocketed by the corrupt establishment and its crony.

Which brings us to the present crisis in US-Pakistan relations in the wake of the US military operation---executed without Pakistani knowledge--- that killed Osama bin Laden. The United States believes that some elements of the Pakistani establishment (principally military/ISI) were sheltering Osama, and is in cahoots with the terrorists. Pakistan acknowledges that there was some intelligence failure in the matter. But it strongly rejects any suggestion that it is soft on terrorism, pointing to the large number of civilian and military casualties they have suffered while fighting terrorism.

Islamabad is angry that the United States chose to violate its sovereignty in executing the Osama operation. There are, however, reports that Pakistan and the US had an understanding that allowed the latter to go after the top al Qaeda leadership sheltering in Pakistan, with Islamabad reserving the right to condemn these incursions. In other words, there is a lot of shadowboxing going on in Pak-US exchanges, with neither side wanting to blow up the relationship.

But popular pressures on both sides are quite demanding. On the Pakistan side, the popular opinion is as much critical of their own establishment (the civilian government, military/ISI) as it is of the Americans for, what people see, as brazen violation of Pakistani sovereignty. On the American side, the Congress is seeking some answers from Pakistan and threatening to suspend aid that has amounted to nearly $20 billion over the last 10 years.

There are several factors that underpin relations between countries. In the case of US-Pakistan relations, Pakistan’s geo-strategic location in the midst of a war against terrorism in Afghanistan, which has also spilled into Pakistan, is the most compelling factor. In this context, there is a general view that both the countries are stuck with each other despite all the hue and cry. Pakistan is said to be indispensable to the US for its war against terror in Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistan is heavily dependent on US aid. It is, therefore, a marriage of convenience with no prospect of a divorce, as some will argue.

The question is: is this conventional wisdom so sacrosanct? In the short term, as long as the US is mired in Afghanistan, this certainly is true. But under the Obama administration, the US military engagement is time bound to withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1914, with the drawdown of its troops starting middle of this year. With Osama bin Laden now killed, the domestic pressure in the United States for withdrawal will be even more compelling. It is important to remember that the US invaded Afghanistan because its Taliban government refused to surrender Osama whom the US held responsible for the 9/11 US bombing. It might be argued that if Osama bin Laden had been handed over to the United States, there would have been no Afghan war and Pakistan might have escaped being conscripted into it by the United States.

With Osama bin Laden eliminated, the ostensible cause for US military engagement is no more compelling. Of course, things have got complicated during 10 years of US military operations in Afghanistan. First of all, there is a new Karzai government propped up by the United States to democratize, stabilize and develop Afghanistan. If this were to be accomplished, Afghanistan will cease to be a terrorist hub posing threat to the United States and other countries. Of course, this seems improbable with the Taliban able to mount insurgency operations at will.

To deal with this, the US is seeking to eliminate the leadership of both the Taliban and al Qaeda through drone attacks on their hideouts on the Pakistani side of the Afghan-Pak border. At the same time, they are also conducting military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US is also putting pressure on Pakistan to mount further military operations against terrorists within its own territory. These multiple operations are designed to force the Taliban to seek peace and work within the parameters of Afghanistan’s constitution. In an ideal world, this is how it should be. But Afghanistan is hardly ideal. Therefore, things are not likely to work according to the US or anyone else’s script.

Another complicating factor is the US belief, indeed conviction, that Pakistan is playing a double game of simultaneously keeping their lines of communication open with top leadership of the Afghan Taliban. It is widely believed that the Americans will not stick around in Afghanistan for long, with the war not going their way and because of their internal political and economic constraints. At the same time, Pakistan’s relations with the Karzai government have never been good which, among other things, is perceived being partial toward New Delhi.

Against this backdrop, its prior contacts with the top Taliban leadership, said to be sheltering in Pakistan, will enable it to play an important role in determining the political future of Afghanistan, in which the Taliban are likely to feature prominently. With a friendly regime in Afghanistan, Pakistan will be able to have strategic depth against India. The problem, though, is that the last time Pakistan had a friendly regime in Afghanistan, they got sucked into the war on terror that is still unfolding; its recent chapter being the US killing of Osama bin Laden and the open airing of the blame game on both sides.

Obviously, neither US nor Pakistan want to rupture the relationship. But in Pakistan, both the civilian government and military are under intense popular scrutiny after the US killing of Osama bin Laden. Pakistan’s civilian governments have been savaged in the past too for their various acts of omission and commission, thus providing the trigger for a military coup now and then. But this time the military leadership is as much under microscope, if not more, than the civilian government. The Zardari government is a bit of a joke, though not a funny one with so much at stake for Pakistan. But with the military now joining the ranks of derision in popular imagination, Pakistan is really a troubled nation.

At the same time, US-Pakistan row, if it escalates further, has the prospect of endangering US aid to Pakistan. The United States’ aid to Pakistan is critical in some sectors. The popular anger in Pakistan against the United States is so widespread and so vociferous that its people want the country to recover its full sovereignty by spurning US aid. For instance, the cricketer-turned-politician, Imran Khan, is leading the charge for this and blasting the ruling establishment for their subservience. Which is all fine but, without any alternative vision and a concrete blueprint for Pakistan’s future, these kind of angry and populist demands do not take the country anywhere.

There is a sense in Pakistan that US needs it more than Pakistan needs the United States. This is because of Pakistan’s crucial geo-strategic location regionally, and for the war on terrorism. But, at the same time, it is increasingly believed that the United States might withdraw from Afghanistan because (I) it is not winning the war in Afghanistan and (2) the Bush administration’s rhetoric of war on terror was overblown. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were unnecessary and they have simply prolonged America’s agony.

At some point, and sooner rather than later, the United States is going to disengage from Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan high and dry. In other words, however prized Pakistan’s strategic location might be, the United States’ domestic political and economic constraints dictate withdrawal.

However, the United States is also worried about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, fearing that the terrorists might get their hands on them through lax security or whatever. Bruce Riedel, an influential US strategist, graphically describes this fear: “Imagine a jihadist state with the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world. If that doesn’t scare you at night, then you have been watching too many horror movies.” He reportedly told this to an audience at the Brookings Institution. Pakistan, on the other hand, seems to fear that encouraged by the Osama operation, the United States or some other country might be tempted to go after Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. And it has threatened catastrophic consequences.

There is thus an underlying distrust between Pakistan and the United States, now magnified with the Osama episode. Indeed, the United States doubts Pakistan’s commitment and sincerity regarding anti-terrorism. An example of this is a piece in a recent issue of the New Yorker where Lawrence Wright, a prize winning American writer, suggests that the Pakistani military might not be all that keen to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders because that would put the army out of business by drying up the flow of dollars from the United States. To quote Wright, “…What would happen if the Pakistani military actually captured or killed Al Qaeda’s top leaders?” His answer: “The great flow of dollars would stop, just as it had in Afghanistan after the Soviets limped away…”

Such deep distrust might dissipate or moderate over time, but the bitterness and a sense of betrayal on both sides is likely to persist, more so because the Pakistani people are much more exercised over the US unilateralism, whether it is the drones’ operations in the frontier badlands or something big like Osama’s killing. This crisis of confidence is eating away at US-Pakistan relations. And Pakistan is worried because of its considerable dependence on US aid. Whether or not this aid reaches people of Pakistan is not considered terribly relevant by the generals, as long as it enables them to keep expanding their share of the pie.

Not surprisingly, at this critical juncture in US-Pakistan relations, Pakistan is turning to China for moral and material support. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s recent China visit, among other things, was designed to let the United States know that Pakistan has other options and a trusted friend in China. And Beijing suitably reassured the visiting Prime Minister Gilani of their friendship for and support of Pakistan. But there was nothing concrete, apart from the usual expressions of goodwill, friendship and further expansion of cultural and economic ties. China certainly would give Pakistan aid for economic projects, and equipment and weaponry for the military, as it is already doing. The military and economic aid might be expanded. But China is likely to stay out of Pakistan’s multiple fault lines of Islamic militancy, sectarian strife, ethnic separatism; civil-military hiatus and fragmented polity.

In the ultimate analysis, Pakistan would need to launch a nation-building popular movement to raise literacy, empower women, foster economic activity and development, strengthen its institutions, promote democracy based on the primacy of civilian authority and so on. The threat to Pakistan is not so much external but internal. And if that is not tackled, things might get worse before they ever get better. (Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times)