GEO-POLITICAL AFFAIRS

[Guest guest]

GEO-POLITICAL AFFAIRS

Pakistan, Afghanistan and US Policy

 

Remarks at a seminar on "What Next for Afghanistan:

The War, the Peace and the Impact on South Asia" sponsored by

the Centre for International Policy, Washington, December 13, 2001

Mr. SELIG S. HARRISON talks about the present regional situation.

(Courtesy of Ahmad Faruqui).

 

I'm going to focus on Pakistan today for three reasons. First,

because Pakistani support has made the rise of the Taliban possible,

and there is a danger that Pakistan will continue to play a

destabilizing role in Afghanistan now. Second, because the United

States has pressured General Pervez Musharraf into a marriage of

convenience that has emboldened Pakistan to step up its pressure in

Kashmir, which could lead to a new war with India. Third, because

the American embrace of Musharraf has polarized Pakistani politics,

strengthening anti-American, anti-Indian hardliners who are deeply

entrenched in the armed forces and who actively support Islamic

fundamentalist groups. I will begin with some essential history,

then turn to the situation in Pakistan today and conclude with a

discussion of US policy. My bottom line is that American interests

in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India require serious and sustained US

support for a transition to a civilian democratic government in

Pakistan, a broad-based government based on redrawn National

Assembly constituencies that end the grip of the landed oligarchy on

the existing gerrymandered Assembly at the expense of the urban

middle class. The best hope for a secular Pakistan lies in

representative institutions that will dilute the disproportionate

power now enjoyed by Islamic extremists through their alliance with

sympathetic generals.

 

How did it happen that the Pakistani armed forces, known for their

professionalism, became the sponsors of the Taliban?

 

The place to start is the Bangladesh freedom movement and India's

military support for the liberation of Bangladesh. Pakistan's

humiliating defeat in 1971 marked a basic turning point in the

history of the Pakistan army. A whole new generation of officers

has grown up since 1971 nursing a bitter determination to get even

with India. This has coincided with the transition from a Sandhurst-

educated generation of cosmopolitan, elitist officers to a new

generation of more insular officers with rural and middle-class

roots. Many of this new generation of officers have been receptive

to the religious appeals made by Islamic groups — groups that

suddenly expanded with the official encouragement of the Zia Ul Haq

regime during the Afghan war. Zia consciously built up a powerful

group of like-minded officers, centered in the intelligence

agencies, who were driven by an ideology that mixed anti-Indian

nationalism with a pan-Islamic vision.

 

I had a conversation with Zia on June 29,1988, six weeks before his

death in that mysterious plane crash. He spelled it all out very

clearly in that conversation. His goal, he said, was a "strategic

realignment" in South Asia. Pakistan needed a satellite state in

Kabul so that its western front would be secure and it could face

India without worrying about the possibility of a pro-India

Afghanistan. Also-because he had a pan-Islamic agenda.

 

Here's what he said: "All right, you Americans wanted us to be a

front-line state. By helping you we have earned the right to have a

regime in Afghanistan to our liking. We took risks as a front-line

state, and we won't permit it to be like it was before, with Indian

and Russian influence there and claims on our territory. It will be

a real Islamic state, a real Islamic confederation. We won't have

passports between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It will be part of a pan-

Islamic revival that will one day win over the Muslims in the Soviet

Union, you will see."

 

It's a painful reality that the terrorist problem in Afghanistan and

Kashmir today is a legacy of the shortsighted policy pursued by the

United States during the Afghan war in giving a blank check to Zia

and his Inter Services Intelligence Directorate — the I.S.I. The

Reagan administration had one single myopic objective after the

Russians blundered into Afghanistan: make it hot for them and tie

them down there so they don't bother us anywhere else. There was

little expectation that the Red Army would be driven out and little

thought about the consequences of this policy after the fighting

stopped. As Ahmed and I used to write in those days, it was a

policy of "fighting to the last Afghan." Anything that made it hot

for the Russians was okay. So the United States made the historic

mistake of letting Pakistan decide which groups in the Afghan

resistance got the $3 billion that the United States and its friends

poured in. Most of that $3 billion went to Islamic fundamentalist

groups that represented a tiny minority of Afghans but were favoured

by the I.S.I.

 

Another historic mistake made by the C.I.A. was encouraging Islamic

militants from all over the world to come to Afghanistan to join in

the jehad. Afghanistan became a base for Osama and for a wide

variety of kindred groups beginning in the last half of the 1980s

while the war was still on. This was actively encouraged by the

I.S.I. and the C.I.A., notwithstanding C.I.A. denials. I often

talked with American diplomats and the C.I.A. people involved and

warned them that we were creating a monster. They said that the

more militant the jehadis were the more fanatically they would fight

against the Russians. Many of the former I.S.I. generals who are key

players in the recycled military regime today were responsible for

bringing in the foreign jehadis. For example, General Mohammed

Aziz, who was corps commander in Lahore until recently and is now

chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

 

Why did Pakistan want to control the allocation of US aid to the

Afghan resistance? They were thinking ahead, looking for trusted

collaborators who would help them to establish a Pakistan-oriented

client state in Kabul after the war in order to realize Zia's dream

of "strategic realignment. They wanted to make sure that no US guns

or money went to Pushtuns who might try to get back the lost Pushtun

tribal areas that now make up the Northwest Frontier Province of

Pakistan. It's important to remember that Afghanistan extended deep

into what is now Pakistan until the middle of the nineteenth

century. There are twenty million Pushtuns, and half of them were

part of Afghanistan until the British Raj annexed forty thousand

square miles of ancestral Pushtun territory between the Indus River

and the Khyber Pass. When the British left in 1947, they handed over

this large Pushtun population to the newly-created state of

Pakistan. Afghanistan has never accepted that, and a series of

Afghan leaders starting with former king Zahir Shah have

periodically sponsored an irredentist movement for an

autonomous "Pushtunistan" linked to Afghanistan.

 

Throughout the Soviet occupation, the I.S.I. gave only token aid to

the Pushtun tribes identified with Zahir Shah even though they were

the most important tribes. Zahir Shah himself was not allowed to

come to Pakistan to organize Pushtun resistance forces under his

banner, which he attempted to do on several occasions. Of course,

the Pushtuns fought the Russians with whatever weapons they could

get, and the I.S.I. did find some Pushtun collaborators like

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. After the Russians left, Pakistan picked

Hekmatyar to be its man in Kabul, but he had little popular support

so he was dropped when the Taliban appeared on the scene.

 

The I.S.I. liked the Taliban because it was dedicated to Islam, not

Pushtun nationalism. At first the Taliban did have the support of

many Pushtuns who were disgusted with the corruption and endless

factionalism of the existing resistance groups. The mullahs who

created it did have some indigenous standing, unlike Gulbuddin. But

the Taliban acquired the military muscle and the money to defeat its

rivals only through Pakistani and Saudi support. The I.S.I. and the

Pakistani armed forces not only provided weaponry and logistical

help but also Pakistani manpower, and then the Al Qaeda moved in

with more money and weapons. The Taliban were tolerated, not

supported, by the Pushtun tribal hierarchy, and of course in the

north the Taliban were foreigners, since they were Pushtuns. That's

why defeating them militarily has been relatively easy.

 

There is a danger now that elements in the I.S.I. and in Pakistani

Islamic groups will continue to help diehard Taliban fighters with

two objectives in mind. First, to use them in Kashmir. Second, to

keep the Pushtuns divided. Now, as in the past, Pakistan is likely

to view a client state in Kabul as necessary for its security

against India. This is not what Hamid Karzai has in mind. Let us

hope that when the Loi Jirga meets in six months there is not a

Trojan Horse present in the form of delegates bought and paid for by

the I.S.I. who are lined up against Pushtun leaders identified with

the King and against ethnic minority leaders committed to an

independent Afghanistan.

 

At the moment, the prospects for the interim government and for the

Loi Jirga look good, but six months from now, two years from now,

five years from now, if Pakistan does play a destabilizing role, the

United States does not stay the course, and the new government

proves to be ineffective, the result could be a de facto division of

the country into northern and southern zones. Some people talk

loosely about the desirability of such a breakup. Local autonomy,

yes, but within the framework of a viable central authority. A

breakup along north-south lines would invite Pakistani manipulation

of the Pushtuns and guarantee built-in instability.

 

What could make the present situation different from the past and

more hopeful would be a sustained international commitment to Afghan

reconstruction and the constructive use of the leverage that the

United States now has in Pakistan. The United States is giving

Pakistan grant economic aid totaling $1.1 billion in cash budgetary

support, not earmarked project aid, which means it is fungible and

can be used for military purchases. In addition the United States

and its allies are giving Pakistan debt relief, a relaxation of the

conditions governing $1 billion in IMF aid, and more liberal access

for Pakistani exports.

 

What is the United States getting in return? Pakistan has provided

the use of several airfields that have been indispensable for

helicopter operations. At the moment the border is being patrolled

to prevent Al Qaeda units from escaping to Pakistan. But the big US

planes used in Afghanistan have not been based in Pakistan. They've

come from aircraft carriers, Diego Garcia, from Central Asia, and

from captured airfields in Afghanistan itself. The I.S.I. is so

divided that Pakistani intelligence has been much less helpful than

expected. Musharraf replaced the head of the I.S.I., but it's

increasingly clear that he has not really purged the I.S.I. or the

armed forces in general of hard-line, anti-Indian elements allied

with the Islamic extremists. Nor can he do so without undermining

his own position. For example, General Mohammed Aziz, the leading

hardliner, has been kicked upstairs from corps commander in Lahore

to chairman of the joint chiefs. But he has not been kicked out. The

hardliners appear to recognize that it's in the interests of

Pakistan to get as much from the United States as possible while the

getting is good and to go along with Musharraf and bide their time.

 

The question now is whether the United States will use its new

leverage to promote the long-term stabilization of South Asia as a

whole and to make sure that its relations with Pakistan do not

undermine friendly US relations with India, a rising power of much

greater long-term importance to American interests than Pakistan. I

would suggest three policy priorities:

 

First, any new US aid should be earmarked for specific civilian uses

so that it does not subsidize military spending, and the United

States should not succumb to blandishments for the sale or grant of

new military equipment.

 

Second, the United States should condition the fulfilment of

existing economic aid commitments on an end to Pakistani terrorism

in Kashmir. General Musharraf has commendably begun to restrain the

use of the madrassas in Pakistan for military purposes. However,

Pakistan continues to sponsor Pakistani terrorist groups operating

in Kashmir, notably Lashkar-e-Taiba, which assassinates moderate

Kashmiri leaders as well as government officials and police. This is

a different issue from Pakistani weapons support for Kashmiri

insurgents. The Lashkar-e-Taiba consists of Pakistanis, not

Kashmiris. It is time for the United States to put Lashkar-e-Taiba

on the list of foreign terrorist organizations as Britain did last

February and to insist that the paramilitary capabilities of Lashkar-

e-Taiba and other Islamic extremist groups be dismantled.

 

Finally, and most important, the United States should condition the

fulfilment of economic aid commitments on steps toward a meaningful

transfer of power to a broad-based civilian government. General

Musharraf has appointed himself as president in perpetuity and is

planning to set up a facade of phony civilian rule with the armed

forces continuing to maintain control through a veto power in the

National Security Council. Permanent de facto military rule would

lock in the power of the generals who were responsible for the rise

of the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba and who are waiting for their

chance to unseat Musharraf. The Islamic parties are a minority in

Pakistan. Their strength rests primarily on their support from

powerful generals, and their power would be greatly diluted by

democratic elections.

 

Past so-called democratic elections in Pakistan have been based on

gerrymandered National Assembly constituencies that have kept

politics confined to a small circle of landed oligarchs and their

conservative allies in monopolistic sections of big business and in

the armed forces. This inbred, closed system has encouraged

corruption, made the rich richer and blocked egalitarian economic

reform measures targeted on the impoverished majority of Pakistanis.

The United States should press for a new electoral system based on

Assembly constituencies that would give the educated urban middle

class fair representation — the Ahmed Rashids, if you will.

 

In conclusion, democracy has never had a chance in Pakistan. But

even the flawed, narrowly-based civilian governments of the past-

from Suhrawardy to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Benazir to Nawaz Sharif

have been better for the regional stability of South Asia than the

periods of military rule. It was not the generals who went to the

Lahore summit. It was not the generals who negotiated the Simla

agreement or the conventional force redeployments that Benazir was

discussing with Rajiv Gandhi until her wings were clipped by the

military. Nawaz, for all of his sins, did go to Lahore and did pull

back the Pakistani forces that had crossed the cease-fire line in

Kashmir, and this was the underlying reason for his downfall. Now

the way to get a Pakistani government that will respect the

sovereignty of Afghanistan, stop stoking the flames of war in

Kashmir and talk peace with India does not lie in supporting

continued military rule. It lies with representative institutions.

In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, democracy and secular values are

inseparable.

 

 

 

http://www.defencejournal.com/2002/february/policy.htm