US-Pakistan ties in a knot

By S P SETH

Many people in Pakistan hate the Western coverage of their country as a litany of disasters from terrorism to becoming a nuclear threat for the rest of the world. Here is one such description from a senior Australian journalist who recently visited Pakistan for an investigative report. Paul McGeough’s report in the Sydney Morning Herald headlined, “A monster roaming the world”, began: “Search for a firm footing in Pakistan and there is none—all is quicksand… strategically, politically morally.” The rest of the article is an elaboration of what is wrong with Pakistan.

A recent report in the Economist magazine concludes that Pakistan is a country with “venal civilian leaders; army men hankering for the next coup and having pesky journalists killed off; Islamists who shoot opponents for being liberal.” And it says, “With a friend like Pakistan, who needs enemies?”

A recent BBC documentary has further amplified this image, quoting Taliban sources confirming the US allegations that Pakistan’s ISI is actively involved in helping Taliban. Mullah Azizullah, a Taliban official, reportedly said that the trainers at the Taliban training camps “are all the ISI men.”

Understandably, such negative imaging of Pakistan creates annoyance and resentment in the country. Of course, within Pakistan, some of its finest journalists are even harder on their country’s political and military establishment for their acts of omission and commission, though they don’t much like outsiders telling them what they already know. One notices, though, that the criticism within Pakistani media is now more circumspect, which might have something to do with the country’s worsening relationship with the United States and the need to stand together fearing some sort of US military against Pakistan. The US accuses Pakistan of being in cahoots with the Taliban in its recent attacks in Kabul.

The situation seems to have eased a bit following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit. She, however, kept up the pressure on Pakistan to do more against the Taliban sheltering in its territory as well as against the Haqqani network, believed to be an extension of the ISI. As a result, the Haqqanis might have temporarily moved across into Afghan side of the border. The Pakistani army seems to have stepped up operations against Taliban elements in tribal areas of Waziristan. How long this temporary truce will last is anybody’s guess, because the relationship is based on distrust. But as long as both sides find the other useful, they will try to make it work, though the pressures lately are too sustained and likely to cause more ruptures and political confrontation.

As is, by now, well-known that a sharp slide in Pak-US relations started with the US military operation in Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden, without the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities. Since then it has been one thing after the other, with stepped up Taliban attacks on the US and NATO troops in Kabul, US accusation of ISI’ involvement with the Taliban, and Pakistan’s fear of US military attacks into its tribal areas on top of the current drone operations. This has seriously worked up all sections of the Pakistani people, where support for the United States was already in short supply.

The problem for the United States is that a progressive radicalization of Pakistani people in anti-US terms is making its task of fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan increasingly difficult. As Noam Chomsky, a well-known US academic who is known to hold views different from his governments, (quoting Anatol Lieven, a British specialist) said here in his Sydney Peace Prize lecture: “…destabilizing and radicalizing Pakistan, risking a geopolitical catastrophe for the United States—and the world---which would dwarf anything that could possibly occur in Afghanistan…” is not a wise move.

In Pakistan, the problem, though, is (and has been) that the country’s establishment, dominated by the military, thinks mostly in terms of beefing up their military power to prepare against a foreign attack, most of the time from India. This has skewed Pakistan’s priorities since the fifties, leading it into unwholesome alliances with the US and its Western allies, hoping to have an edge against India that hasn’t worked.

In the eighties, Pakistan got involved into the Afghan imbroglio, first against the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and more recently (since after the 9/11 terrorist attacks) with the US to fight Taliban in Afghanistan, which is not going too well. Indeed, instead of creating a solid alliance with a common purpose, it has plunged their relationship into, probably, their worst crisis. With the US committed to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014, Pakistan apparently is keen to position itself for a determining role in that country.

Which has led both the US and Pakistan to fast track their respective political agendas in Afghanistan. It would appear that Pakistan has lately bolstered up its linkages with the Taliban to establish a privileged position in the post-2014 period, hoping that the Taliban will eventually come on top in any struggle for political power. On the other hand, the US is even more desperate to require Pakistan’s help to deal forcefully with the Taliban. This is part of the US strategy to bring the Taliban into Afghanistan’s political process from a position of strength. At the same time, it requires Pakistan to be a conduit and guarantor of such a peace deal. Which, in effect, means that the Taliban will agree to operate under the present Afghan constitution with Hamid Karzai as the country’s president until the next round of elections. It seems like a forlorn exercise, principally because the Taliban don’t see themselves as a vanquished political and military force.

Whatever the future political and power contours of Afghanistan, the lesson for Pakistan is that the country’s political and military establishments urgently require a reorientation of priorities to provide its much suffering people economic and physical security that has eluded them so long. Because: without internal cohesion and strength, no amount of military power and strategic shuffling will keep Pakistani state afloat for long. Paul McGeough quotes Arif from Human Rights Commission of Pakistan to say: “The government does not have the capacity to tackle any of the issues [confronting the country]. Things will just keep getting bad… and I don’t discount the fact that we can fall into chaos.” It is, therefore, high time for a total national re-think of the country’s future.