Pakistan can tell America to go to hell but….

Published Business Recorder, Oct. 1, 2011

The government and the Army think they can make up for decades of blunders of an adventurous foreign policy by convening an All-Parties Conference. Imran Khan thinks we can tell America to mind its own business. Liberals think all the faults lie with Pakistani establishment. We thrive on half-truths and wishful thinking but we cannot formulate a serious strategy like that. 

Yes, Pakistan can tell America to go to hell but Pakistani establishment should know the consequences and the risks inherent in this brinkmanship mistaken for strategy. America is likely to mount even greater diplomatic, military, economic and media pressure on Pakistan in the coming weeks and months. If we continue to make childish statements about our sovereignty and national interests and then capitulate, we will lose even the last shreds of our dignity, if any remains.

Pakistan can regain its lost respect in the world and even stand up to America provided it does the following:

• Normalise relations with India to the maximum extent possible and disengage from any form of support to the militants in Kashmir or Afghanistan.  This is the best way to secure the eastern borders.
• Seek a regional diplomatic solution to Afghanistan by getting China, India, Russia, and Iran involved through focused and rigorous diplomacy and acknowledge that all, not just Pakistan, have a stake in a peaceful and stable Afghanistan governed by the Afghans.
• Expose America’s real intentions and failures. Its establishment has always wanted to prolong the war and stay in Afghanistan. The US has also used covert operations to expand the conflict to Pakistan.

The trouble is that we are not prepared to face the truth and analyse objectively. Many of the arguments put forth by the defenders of the so-called “strategic depth” policy as well as by its critics, in favour of their respective positions as to how Pakistan can get out of this quagmire are colored by “ideology” or their entrenched perceived interests and how best to pursue them. They are not based on a clear understanding of how Pakistan got into the present situation in the first place.  Pakistan’s another predicament is that its generals cannot expose American failures and duplicity because their positions are compromised. There are too many skeletons. Can posturing make up for serious mistakes?

This does not mean Americans are telling the truth either. The American narrative, supported by its Pakistani proponents, is something like this.

Pakistan’s tribal areas have sanctuaries for the militants groups like the Haqqanis. Pakistani ISI supports them. These militants are linked to Al Qaeda which is a threat to the US. The Haqqanis and other groups have caused all problems the US forces have had in Afghanistan.  This narrative misses the point that the US Afghan policy has been based on ridiculous premises to begin with and carried on with great inaptitude.

Pakistani liberals argue it does not matter whether American position is wrong or right and Pakistan, by continuing to refuse to attack the militant groups in North Waziristan, is risking serious confrontation with the United States. Much as they or the United States would like to believe, Pakistani ISI, despite its very old relationship with the Afghan militant groups, does not control the Haqqanis. Nor is there any real chance that America can increase its military involvement at a time when the world is threatened with a possible economic meltdown in Europe and a struggling and hugely indebted American economy {see DAWN of Oct. 11, 2008 ” Financial meltdown dissected”}. American public opinion is no mood for following such a course. So this is actually a great time to tell Americans to go to hell provided we know what we need to do.

The fact is that the American war in Afghanistan was launched without much thought and suffered from huge mistakes.  {Refer my article in DAWN of Nov. 12, 2008, “Obama must remove our fears”}. It was a needless war driven by a completely mad neo-con cabal and supported by the selfish interests of the American security establishment.  Al Qaeda’s leadership was not in Afghanistan after December 2001 but had escaped to the border areas. Al Qaeda’s threat was deliberately and massively exaggerated to justify the exponential increase in the US defense spending and pursuit of the military domination in far-flung areas like Central Asia. Why? Because people like Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld suffered from delusions of grandeur and of another “American century.”

Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror. The amount of money spent on intelligence has risen by 250 percent, to $75 billion (and that’s the public number, which is a gross underestimate). That’s more than the rest of the world spends put together. Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet—the equivalent of 22 U.S. Capitols or three Pentagons. Five miles southeast of the White House, the largest government site in 50 years is being built—at a cost of $3.4 billion—to house the largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs: the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people. All this in the name of fighting some few thousand terrorists and absolute nonsense like “one-percent doctrine”. Who says the war on terror has nothing to do with big money and utterly preposterous arguments? 

The US hawks, led by Admiral Mullen and General Petraeus, opposed President Obama’s plans to reduce US involvement in Afghanistan in 2009. They still do not want US forces to withdraw from Afghanistan. They got the ‘surge’ they wanted from Obama in 2009 but failed to deliver and are now faced with a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan. Pakistan is an easy scapegoat because its supposedly clever ISI, while at times operationally successful, is almost always strategically stupid.  It does things or allows such things to happen that make it an easy target.  The ISI has also lost the media war because it has failed to expose the US covert operations in Pakistan as well as the Pentagon’s failures.

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was provoked by Brzezinski’s “arc of the crisis” doctrine { See TIME magazine, January 15, 1979} and US covert operations before the Soviet invasion in 1979. In exchange for butter and guns, Pakistani generals fought the American war against the “evil empire” and deluded themselves they could repeat in Kashmir what they did in Afghanistan without American money, international support, and “stringers”.  An international pariah like Zia thought fighting America’s “jihad” was the best way to ensure his regime’s survival.  Another internationally isolated military ruler Musharraf once again sold Pakistan’s long terms interests mainly to ensure his survival { see DAWN of Nov. 25, 2006, “Setting the record straight”}, and in part, because he and his fellow generals had become vulnerable to the blackmail of declaring Pakistan as a terrorist state. They became vulnerable because they were stupid enough to support militants like Masood Azhar and Ilyas Kashmiri.

What Pakistan’s Army generals do not understand that the time for brinkmanship is over and also the time for them to milk Americans and at the same time carry on grandiose regional geo-strategic agenda.  They can say NO to America only if they stop using militancy as a policy tool, expose American covert operations, and sincerely pursue peace with India. But their corporate interests led them to the follow policies that caused the debacles in 1965, 1971, 1989. Yet there are little signs that they understand they are their own worst enemies. In this respect, they are little different from Zardari. { see my article in DAWN of Sept. 4, 2008, “ Zardari, his own nemisis? “}.

Pakistan’s military establishment’s thinking goes like this.

American have to leave Afghanistan soon or later. Their intervention has been disastrous. Pakistan cannot afford to attack the very forces it would have to engage in securing peace in Afghanistan and the tribal areas. Pakistan needs the support of these forces to secure its Western borders and counter Indian influence in Afghanistan leaving aside unpleasant facts (for Americans) such as Jalaluddin Haqqani* alongwith other Mujahideen leaders like his leader Younis Khalis was once a dear friend of America (see Younis Khalis’s picture speaking at the White House with Ronald Reagan on his side while a young Zalmay Khalizad takes notes).

While not attacking the Haqqanis makes eminent sense, Pakistan’s security establishment has no credibility or ability to make an international case.  Its credibility has been in tatters for a long time but more so after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Pakistani leadership’s ability to conduct a truly independent foreign policy does not exist because it has never  really understood or demonstrated that only a well governed and economically strong Pakistan can charter an independent course.  Maybe, Pakistan’s entire top political and military leadership can go on a sabbatical and undertake an 8-week crash course in country transformation by visiting Brazil and Turkey and requesting Lula and Erdogan to conduct the course.

Pakistan’s security establishment has an out-of-date “India-centric” cold war mindset wherein nuclear arms and financial assistance from the US figure prominently but not better governance and economic reform as a way forward toward a responsible and stable country .

Historically and ironically, the Army establishment – the most powerful force in the country that really matters and can make a difference – has not shown enough realization that the cessation of all external and domestic conflicts is the most critical and essential pre-condition to secure Pakistan’s security interests.

The army leadership can and must take the lead and put India, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and nuclear issues on the back burner, stop its domestic political games, and focus on nation rebuilding for a change if it wants to save Pakistan. Only a stable, well-governed, and economically strong Pakistan can help end its international isolation, secure its borders and regain its “lost” sovereignty.

* New York Times of Sep. 9, 2008 quote:

“In the 1980s, Jalaluddin Haqqani was cultivated as a “unilateral” asset of the CIA and received tens of thousands of dollars in cash for his work in fighting the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, according to an account in “The Bin Ladens,” a recent book by Steve Coll. At that time, Haqqani helped and protected Osama bin Laden, who was building his own militia to fight the Soviet forces, Coll wrote.”