Meddling in Pakistan
The Pakistani senator gazed at the headline in despair. It read "US weighs new covert push in Pakistan". Washington was authorising "enhanced CIA activity" in the country while Democratic candidates declared they were all ready "to launch unilateral military strikes in [Pakistan] if they detected an imminent threat." Hillary Clinton wanted "joint US/UK oversight" of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. In a country where anti-Americanism is almost a religion, said the senator, this is "an answer to a Taliban prayer."
I am convinced that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first curse with foreign policy. For the third time in twenty years the west is meddling with the world's sixth largest state. It did so to promote the Taliban against the Russians in the 1980s, then to attack al-Qaeda after 9/11 and now to "guard" Pakistan's bombs against a fantastical al-Qaeda seizure. Needless to say the sole beneficiaries are the Taliban and the forces of disorder.
That said, few other conclusions can be drawn from a country which, more than any I know, is Churchill's riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Pakistan has as many paradigms as pundits. You can take your choice. Thesis A is that President Pervez Musharraf is a well-meaning dictator who sought rapprochement with Bhutto to "transit" to democracy, and who still remains the best hope for guiding his country to civilian rule. Thesis B depicts him as a popinjay dictator who kills people, locks up judges, censors the media and runs a brutal fascist party, the MQM. He had no intention of working with Bhutto, whom he detested, and has so much blood on his hands as to be easily capable of consenting to her death.
Thesis C has Bhutto herself as a perfidious and corrupt hereditary monarch in thrall to a monster husband whose base was limited to Sind province and London's media drawing-rooms. She indulged Washington's John Negroponte in his ham-fisted attempt to prop up Musharraf last year, but only so as to escape corruption charges and enjoy a modest taste of power.
Thesis D says this is outrageous. Bhutto was the one Pakistani politician with experience and stature at home and abroad. She knew she could rule only with army permission but could have faced down the military, negotiated with the Taliban districts and steered Pakistan to democracy. Her going is a catastrophe.
Forget that, says thesis E. The American-backed Pakistan army, responsible for almost a quarter of its economy, will never cede power. It is the sole embodiment of central control in this 60-year-old federal state, and its guarantor against another partition like Bangladesh in 1971. It cannot afford to trust unruly politicians such as Bhutto and her ilk and must be trusted by Pakistan's allies abroad.
Rubbish, says thesis F. Pakistan's army makes Saddam's Republican Guard seem a bunch of pansies. Its Punjabi oligarchs and their agencies kill at will and feud even with their Taliban allies, as in last year's slaughter at Islamabad's Red Mosque. It has failed to curb the Taliban and nobody, not even Musharraf, is safe from it.
As for Pakistan in general, thesis G has it teetering on the brink of breaking apart, as the army readies itself to nullify next month's election with rigging and corruption. A bloodbath will follow in which Sind province defects and the north-west become an al-Qaeda enclave, lowering over Kabul.
No it will not, says thesis H. Pakistan is made of rubber, bouncing back from every reverse. It has a mature "civil society" of lawyers, businessmen, politicians and even some generals, sensitive to their image abroad and deeply ashamed of their dictatorship. The elections may be a mess but they will somehow move Pakistan, stumbling and trembling, to eventual civilian rule. Religious parties are supported by barely 10 per cent of the electorate and even the army is overwhelmingly secular. An islamist state is inconceivable.
Since there are grains of plausibility in all these theses, much indeed turns on the fate of next month's elections. Musharraf, weakened by his November 3rd coup, still has 60 top judges imprisoned, including the nation's chief justice locked up with his disabled son. With the charismatic Bhutto dead and the Negroponte intervention shattered, he is in a tight spot. He may yet cancel the vote and invite mayhem onto the streets.
There is certainly an openness to Pakistan's dictatorship compared with other Islamic states and some westerners have appeased Musharraf as "our" dictator, operating a "doctrine of necessity". But there is nothing in this man's track record to suggest that he is not a paid-up member of the dictatoring classes. His agents treat democrats with contempt and he funnels huge sums into his pockets and those of his generals.
Some 80 per ent of US aid to Pakistan since Musharraf came to power has gone on military assistance, less than a quarter of it used even remotely against the Taliban. The virtual collapse of the state school system has followed a fall in education spending from four per cent to 1.8 per cent of gdp, one of the lowest in Asia. In its place have mushroomed the free madrassas, from a few hundred to over 10,000, financed by wahabist Saudi money and formerly in league with American-financed mujahedin training camps. Intended to fight the Russians in Afghanistan they have since become a network of "faith training" for the poor, teaching little but the koran. This is Musharraf's (and America's) most lethal bequest to Pakistan's political economy.
America's clodhopping sponsorship of Musharraf drove him to renege on the treaties with the tribal states, crazily fomenting a Pashtun insurgency. The Afghan frontier has duly proved al-Qaeda's juiciest hunting ground, aided by every American bombing raid and every Pakistan army atrocity. The Pashtun Taliban (whose American backers are well-documented in the film, Charlie Wilson's War) is a Frankenstein monster that has turned its vengeance on Musharraf, Afghanistan and Washington alike.
Whatever the defects of democracy, and in Asia they are legion, it remains the least worst way of curbing authoritarian power. There is no alternative. America's handling of Musharraf since 9/11 - essentially to capture one man, bin Laden - has rendered swathes of his country, from Baluchistan in the South to Swat in the north, wholly insecure. Even the grand trunk road from Islamabad to Peshawar is patrolled by Taliban. The idea that Musharraf's troops, let alone the CIA or the US air force, might suppress a people who have worsted every empire from the moghuls to the British is ludicrous. Modern armies are no agents of pacification. Civilian negotiation in a context of democratic assent is at very least worth a try.
Backing Musharraf has always seemed "a good idea at the time". The next person to be cursed with Washington's favour appears to be Musharraf's successor as army chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani. But by opting for the realpolitik of dictatorship the west has not just repressed democracy but aided insurgency and terror. It has yielded no security benefit to anyone. If indeed this country becomes a "failed state", the failure will in large part be one of democratic imagination in Washington and London. We simply refuse to practice what we preach.
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Today's news.
http://www.newser.com/story/16137.html?widgetsquare=yes
While the news continue to report that the US wants to become active on Pakistan soil --that never has been, and will not be, an option. This situation is so loaded with complications and nuance. In thwarting the growth of terrorism--this one is the one that will tip the scales. The potential of a sovereign nuclear nation with an openly hostile extremist government is The Nightmare.
Pakistan is not ever going to be a sweet, manageable, democracy which is stable. Teh divergent groups are never, ever going to compromise. Compromise is not in their vocabulary and each group has very serious difficulties with one another.
The UN needs to get some spine and take over the monitoring of the nukes, and the international community has to be involved. Since the UN doesn't have any spine, this is a problem.
This administration may well be incompetent. But is hardly alone. As Simon Jenkins explains in his excellent blog, Pakistan is far too bewildering to be dealt with in simplistic terms. The problems we are dealing with are not all our fault. But has recent US foreign policy towards Pakistan made anything better? With the large exception of economic progress, the answer is probably no. What is needed is real intelligence expertise, wise diplomacy, and a commitment to advance the cause of democracy. Alas, easier said than done.
The situation in Pakistan is just one of many reasons why we need to push the reset button on American foreign policy. There's simply too much opining and not enough listening.
Like a political campaign that's on the ropes, we have to find a way to turn the page, to admit that what we've been doing hasn't been working, to bring fresh ideas into the discussion, to send the message that we're ready to listen, and to gain a more accurate understanding of the realities we face.
Our foreign policy may not need to be completely changed, but it definitely needs to be completely reassessed. And to those absolutists who insist that if we don't place full blame on the Islamic militants then we implicitly place full blame on ourselves, I reject that premise, and I further submit that this ideology is a significant part of the problem.
America can't solve every problem in the world. To hear the very same people who insist that government cannot solve our problems in a domestic context adamantly argue that it can and should in the context of foreign policy is both ridiculous and somewhat backwards.
But what we can do is listen. What we can do is send the message that we want to be a part of the solution and that we want to have an ongoing dialog on how we can best play this productive role. We want to be the best superpower that we can be, and that means issuing the diplomatic equivalent of an open RFP (Request For Proposals).
Thank you, Simon.
Your blogging here is much appreciated. I enjoy your columns in British newspapers and appreciate your insight.
The lack of comments on an article of this importance to our foreign policy is one of the symptoms of the problem. People still don’t know shit about the region. One thing our government needs to stop doing now is supporting the wrong people, even if it is against another set of wrong people. The US supported Bin Ladin against the USSR and then supported Musharraf against Bin Ladin…
How about Thesis T for Treason?
-Let Sibel Edmonds speak to the American Media!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece
No matter who governs or dictates Pakistan, it's never going to be a democracy and if it ever is one well, be careful what you wish for. Most of the peole there are not lawyers and are not schooled in law or even respectful of it. Women, gays and others live under a jackboot and that won't change.
I'd like to point out that Musharraf does not "run a brutal fascist party, the MQM", but is actually an ALLY of the MQM, an independant party run by a fascist of it's own, Altaf Hussain. Musharraf is even more closely allied to the PML-Q which made up most of the central government till it was dissolved in favour of an interim government... but even there, he is not formally part of that party.
And there is another thesis: the country has been badly mismanaged by all it's politicians and leaders (army or otherwise) over decades, and the weakness of it's institutions has created the vacuum for such a crisis to take hold.
To say that "it has not yielded any security benefits" is to claim to be able to view alternate universes. It is unknowable whether the policy has turned out better than alternatives would have.
But But drug profits are almost as up as Cheney's stock portfolio !and that makes world leaders like him feel most secure indeed!
Just read the Headline and you do not have to read the post. In a nutshell it is all America's fault--of course it is--radical Islam is blameless--it is all America's fault. We are an evil country with evil people and evil leaders all. We are the bane of the world. Let's see, is there anything else we can self-flagilate about????? Nope?? Well guess I have fulfilled my daily hard left duties.
Pakistan is by no means the first....the hypocracy of the USA has been dished out for at least 80 years....
Read history, from other than USA sources.
Thank you for attracting attention to this vital unfolding scenario.
News of the killing of the 8 tribal leaders on Monday, the day they were to meet went largely unreported.
Pakistan is the pivot country--we all need to watch this country's dynamics as they are the center. If militants continue to gain strength, it is only a matter of time until they access the nukes.
O My God,
Dear Simon, you have written an article filled with reasonable ideas, but there are some grave errors in it.
First the first is that the name of province is Sindh, and not "Sind", as you have used it.
Secondly, the G.T road is not at all patrolled by Talibans from Islamabad to Peshawar. Who in the hell has told you that? I live there, and I know it. I invite you to come and see the things here. Please see the ground realisties for yourself.
We are fighting the US war here at the expense of our own people and property, and US candidates are running their campaigns at our expense.
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