American Footprints » Pakistan

Thoughts on the Salman Taseer Assassination

Eric Auner — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:50:14 +0000

I spent yesterday reading about the murder of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province in Pakistan, but I haven’t had time to blog about it until now. Taseer was a high-ranking member of the most powerful Pakistani political party and he was the governor of the political and cultural center of the country. He was apparently murdered because of his objections to Pakistan’s draconian anti-blasphemy laws, and campaigned on behalf of a Christian woman who had been sentenced to death under them. The AfPak Channel has had an interesting series of posts on the subject, and Steve Clemons chimed in with a personal recollection of the man, but I haven’t seen comments from many others.

Disturbingly, segments of Pakistani society appear to be indifferent towards, or even supportive of, Taseer’s killer. Saba Imtiaz writes:

That Taseer’s murder was condoned by religious groups is a shame in itself, but that they are free to make these statements is even worse. Azam Tariq, spokesman for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, called reporters and expressed “happiness” at Taseer’s death and said other “religious parties should also be happy.” Tariq said, “Qadri was no scholar but he committed this act after listening to the fatwas of senior scholars.”

JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman said his party would not allow Taseer to carry on his ‘agenda’ and involvement in the debate on the blasphemy law. The Sunni Ittehad Council campaigned against a possible pardon for Aasia Bibi, saying it would lead to “anarchy” in the country. Right-wing religious political parties were joined in their campaign against Taseer by a barrage of talk show hosts, who dominated their programming with thinly veiled condemnations of Taseer for his support of Aasia Bibi.

Furthermore, the Washington Post reports:

But in a stark display of the polarization in Pakistan, a group of 500 Muslim clerics, meanwhile, praised his assassin, 26-year-old Mumtaz Qadri, and warned people against mourning Taseer. In Islamabad, lawyers tossed rose petals on Qadri as he was produced in a court, where a judge remanded him in custody, news services reported. (emphasis mine)

The central government does not appear to have much legitimacy left, which partially explains the growing power of radicalized groups in the country. Its legitimacy further diminishes when it can’t even protect a mainstream politician like Taseer. It is unclear how to reverse that process, but the government should start by providing basic services (like education) to those most vulnerable to radicalization. Armed raids into the tribal areas are sexier, and capture more international attention and money from foreign governments, but they don’t address (and probably exacerbate) the fundamental problems facing Pakistan. Given that you can’t raise or educate someone retroactively, however, the government will need to find ways of building a better relationship with the poor, disenfranchised people whom it has mostly failed.

In any case, a very sad thing for Pakistan.

The Af-Pak Unpack

Eric Martin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:49:37 +0000

The New York Times, to its credit, attempts to dispel some of the stubborn misinformation concerning the interchangeability (or lack thereof) of the Afghan Taliban faction and Pakistani Taliban faction. Contrary to popular and pervasive fictions, these two groups are quite distinct in terms of strategy and objectives.

As it devises a New Afghanistan policy, the Obama administration confronts a complex geopolitical puzzle: two embattled governments, in Afghanistan and Pakistan; numerous militias aligned with overlapping Islamist factions; and hidden in the factions’ midst, the foe that brought the United States to the region eight years ago, Al Qaeda.

But at the core of the tangle are the two Taliban movements, Afghan and Pakistani. They share an ideology and a dominant Pashtun ethnicity, but they have such different histories, structures and goals that the common name may be more misleading than illuminating, some regional specialists say.

“The fact that they have the same name causes all kinds of confusion,” said Gilles Dorronsoro, a French scholar of South Asia currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

This week, Mr. Dorronsoro said, as the Pakistani Army began a major offensive against the Pakistani Taliban, many Americans thought incorrectly that the assault was against the Afghan Taliban, the force that is causing Washington to consider sending more troops to Afghanistan. [...]

Alex Strick van Linschoten, a Dutch researcher who lives in Kandahar, in the heart of the Afghan Taliban’s power base, said that while leaders of the two Taliban groups might say that they share common interests, the two movements are quite separate.

“To be honest, the Taliban commanders and groups on the ground in Afghanistan couldn’t care less what’s happening to their Pakistani brothers across the border,” said Mr. Strick van Linschoten, who has interviewed many current and former members of the Afghan Taliban. [...]

Mr. Dorronsoro…said the Afghan Taliban were a “genuine national movement” incorporating not only a broad network of fighters, but also a shadow government-in-waiting in many provinces.

By comparison, he said, the Pakistani Taliban were a far looser coalition, united mainly by their enmity toward the Pakistani government. They emerged formally only in 2007 as a separate force led by Baitullah Mehsud under the name Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Students’ Movement of Pakistan.

Illuminating the divergence, fissures have begun to develop between the two as a result of their conflicting agendas:

In fact, the recent attacks of the Pakistani Taliban against Pakistan’s government, military and police, in anticipation of the army’s current campaign into the Pakistani Taliban’s base in South Waziristan, may have strained relations with the Afghan Taliban, said Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence officer who tracks Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the United Nations.

The Afghan Taliban have always had a close relationship with Pakistani intelligence agencies, Mr. Barrett said recently. “They don’t like the way that the Pakistan Taliban has been fighting the Pakistan government and causing a whole load of problems there,” he said.

The Afghan Taliban, whose group is by far the older of the two forces, have been led by Mullah Muhammad Omar since he founded the movement in 1994. They seeks to regain the power they held over most of Afghanistan before being ousted by the American invasion of 2001.

In an interview this week, speaking on the condition of anonymity, an Afghan Taliban commander expressed sympathy for the Pakistani Taliban, but said, “There will not be any support from us.” He said the Afghan Taliban “don’t have any interest in fighting against other countries.”

“Our aim was, and is, to get the occupation forces out and not to get into a fight with a Muslim army,” the commander added.

It would be foolish in the extreme to ignore the fundamental differences between the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban factions, and the significance each holds for Pakistan. In this, we can inform our understanding by observing the policies of the Pakistanis – who are able to grasp, and take advantage of, these distinctions.

For Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban are a useful proxy, and a means of creating regional balance with India. The Pakistani branch is a nuisance in that Pakistani factions have begun to clash with Pakistani state forces in recent years, with such clashes in reaction, at least in part, to armed incursions in their territory by US and Pakistani military. Thus, key elements of the Pakistani state continue to support the Afghan Taliban, while the Pakistani factions are targeted (but even then, only half-heartedly) by that same state.

Because the Afghan Taliban is animated by a desire to regain control of Afghanistan, because it has little interest in conquering Pakistani territory (and, more importantly, it lacks the ability) and because it recognizes that its survival is dependent on support from the Pakistani government, the Afghan Taliban does not and will not turn on its benefactor in order to take up the cause of the Pakistani militants. If anything, tensions have grown between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliba.

Establishing a baseline understanding of the make-up and motivations of the various militant factions is essential to devising a plausible strategy for stabilizing the region. However, while necessary, such knowledge is not exactly sufficient. The ability of any occupier to successfully manipulate such a complex and overlapping matrix of tribes, regional powers and other factions is dubious at best. For the United States, situated half a world away, and at a severe disadvantage in terms of regional understanding and perception amongst the local population, the odds are even longer. From the same Times piece:

For the United States, regional experts say, the long-term challenge is to devise policies that peel away as many militants as possible from both Taliban forces, isolating Al Qaeda and other hard-liners and strengthening the Pakistani and Afghan governments. But for a non-Muslim superpower, widely resented in the region, that is a tall order. [emphasis added]

“At the moment the ground isn’t very well prepared for splitting the militant groups,” said Stephen Biddle, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who spent a month last summer in Afghanistan. “The security trends are running in their favor.”

While Biddle is right about the difficulties that the United States faces even if leaders on the ground and in Washington develop a deeper understanding of the web of militants, it was Biddle himself who recently penned a piece arguing for prolonging the occupation based on, what seems, a fundamental misreading of the motivating principles of those same groups. Said Biddle:

If the Taliban regained control of the Afghan state, their ability to use the state’s resources to destabilize the secular government in Pakistan would increase the risk of state collapse there. Analysts have made much of the threat that Pakistani Taliban base camps pose to the stability of the government in Kabul, but the danger works both ways: Instability in Afghanistan also poses a serious threat to the secular civilian government in Pakistan. This is the single greatest U.S. interest in Afghanistan: to prevent it from aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an al-Qaeda nuclear-armed sanctuary there.

To which I responded:

But Biddle overstates the quality of the threat posed by Afghan Talibs in terms of destabilizing the Pakistani state. The [Afghan] Taliban have long been on the receiving end of Pakistani government largess. They have been cultivated as a proxy and ally useful in terms of creating a strategic redoubt in case of conflict with India, and in further establishing an anti-Indian front in the region. In fact, much of their tenacity and success in Afghanistan today (and previously) is attributable to the ongoing support of their Pakistani patrons.

That is the nature of the Afghan Taliban: a local phenomenon benefiting from the generosity of foreign benefactors. As such, the Afghan Taliban enjoys limited reach and power – especially if it were to actually turn on those same foreign benefactors. Along those lines, what exactly are the Afghan “state’s resources” that are supposed to threaten Pakistan (whose military and security forces are far more numerous, vastly better equipped, well trained, etc)? The Afghan state (and various militant factions) have limited economic and military resources – and much of what they have comes from…Pakistan.

This tail is just not capable of wagging the dog, and the Pakistani government knows it. That is why that government continues to support those same Afghan Taliban factions that we are, according to Biddle, supposed to be protecting Pakistan from. Maybe they know something we don’t?

Maybe indeed.

Well, One Out of Three Ain’t Bad

Eric Martin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:59:01 +0000

At long last, the Obama administration has provided a draft of its objectives with respect to the ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan, as well as a series of metrics for gauging the success in terms of meeting those aims. Unfortunately, the enunciated objectives are themselves typical of the muddled and contradictory goals, tactics and strategies associated with a mission that has lost both its mooring and rudder. From Josh Rogin’s summary:

The draft document focuses on three main objectives: disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan, working to stabilize Pakistan, and working to achieve a host of political and civic goals in Afghanistan. Each objective has a list of metrics beneath it, although many of these are more goals than concrete milestones that could be measured in any factual way. [emph. added]

The metrics span just about every conceivable issue, including progress towards Pakistan’s civilian government and judicial system becoming stable, to support for human rights, to public perceptions of security, to volume and value of narcotics.

A partial list of the cross purposes is as follows: A continued military operation in Afghanistan that (even if inadvertently) weakens Pakistan vis-a-vis India is not going to stabilize the situation in Pakistan (nor garner the full support of the Pakistani government). Along those lines, operations against Pakistani Taliban elements in pursuit of eliminating supply lines and redoubts for Afghan Talibs is not going to stabilize Pakistan either. Quite the contrary, such activities are creating a sizable anti-US, anti-Pakistani government backlash – pushing moderates and religious extremists together in common cause – and provoking Pakistani Taliban to attack the Pakistani government.

In general terms, this radicalization and escalation are only logical: large foreign military occupations pursuing narrow, self-serving interests and in the process bending local powers to its purposes rarely bring about stability, peace and regional harmony. Absent an unrestrained brutality that we will not and should not unleash.

As for the metric of achieving “progress towards Pakistan’s civilian government and judicial system becoming stable,” again, this aim is undercut by the underlying policy of military occupation of Afghanistan. Consider the actual metrics:

Progress towards Pakistan’s civilian government and judicial system becoming stable and free of military involvement
Pakistan’s actions to take necessary steps to ensure economic and financial stability, job creation, and growth
Support for human rights
Development of an enduring, strategic partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan
Pakistani public opinion of government performance
Demonstrable action by government against corruption, resulting in increased trust and confidence of the Pakistani public

Our policy is wildly unpopular in Pakistan. We are viewed by large swathes of the population as, alternatively, an imperial power and a Western crusader intent on weakening a powerful Muslim nation (and seizing its nukes). The government in power is viewed as a quisling regime installed and/or controlled by us.

How is a continuation of the policy that gives rise to such sentiment going to aid the “[d]evelopment of an enduring, strategic partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan”? Further, in an environment like the one stoked by such policies, how can the US simultaneously support democracy and seek to ensure a compliant Pakistani government? After all, it is at least likely that any government that emerges from a fair democratic process, if representative of public sentiment, would reject these particular US policies in the region.

Even Hamid Karzai had to engage in massive fraud to achieve his “free and fair” electoral victory – a testament to the complications elections and democracy can bring about. A similar outcome (or perceived outcome) in Pakistan in order to preserve the opportunity to pursue an unpopular policy would directly undermine each and every one of the enumerated metrics above.

Legitimacy is not won that way. And if legitimacy is a prerequisite for success in counterinsurgency operations, well then, we’re doing it wrong.

Premature Evacuation?

Eric Martin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:55:09 +0000

James Joyner passes along some rather unremarkable news about India’s views on the ongoing US occupation of Afghanistan - unremarkable news given the regional dynamic that pits India (in support of the Karzai government) against Pakistan (who had strongly backed the Taliban as its proxy/ally in Afghanistan):

India’s new ambassador to the United States, Meera Shankar, told the Atlantic Council that her government believes it is “imperative that the United States stay the course” in Afghanistan even while conceding that “stability will require a sustained engagement.”

This is not, I am assured by Shuja Nawaz, the director of our South Asia Center, breaking news. It’s a reiteration of India’s longstanding position.

Right, not surprising at all, again, given the Pakistan/India relationship. Oddly, though, Joyner fails to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

It’s a view in fact shared by all the key governments of the region, notably including Afghanistan’s.

Actually, not all the key governments of the region share the view that the US should remain in the region with a massive military presence in support of an India-friendly regime in Afghanistan. I can think of one that is kind of important, shares a common border with Afghanistan, common ethnic and tribal groups, some spillover of the conflict, etc. Joyner, however, continues to ignore Pakistan:

Alas, as is by now clear to regular readers of this site, it is not regional opposition that threatens to prematurely end the ISAF mission in Afghanistan but rather faltering commitment in the United States, Europe, and other Coalition countries.

Well, Pakistani opposition is a pretty significant factor in making the mission, whatever that may be at any given moment, exceedingly difficult. Further, what does it mean to say that the mission could “prematurely” end? We’ve been at it for about 8 years now, with no immediate end in sight. Even if Obama were to set a two year timetable some time after or during the recent escalation, we’d be looking at a campaign lasting 10-12 years, costing in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars and leading to thousands of US (and many more Afghani) lives lost.

One man’s premature is another man’s long overdue I suppose. To his credit (and I really am fond of his work), Joyneris honest enough about the timeline of what a fully mature commitment would look like: “decades, not years.” But why something short of a quarter century military occupation of Afghanistan should be seen as a “premature” end to this occupation, at least from an American perspective, is baffling. India, on the other hand, has a different outlook.

Engaging the Muslim World: Pakistan and Afghanistan

Brian Ulrich — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:39:31 +0000

My project to review Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World chapter by chapter is dragging on longer than I thought it would, but I hate leaving things unfinished, and so I soldier on. The fifth chapter, “Pakistan and Afghanistan: Beyond the Taliban,” is the one most outside of my expertise, for while I did some graduate work on Afghanistan and wound up reading about tribal populations for my dissertation, I’ve never taken much interest in modern Pakistan, the politics and society of which is critical to a comprehensive view of the area.

Juan Cole, however, is a Pakistan expert, and the first part of his chapter provides an educated overview of Pakistani politics and it social basis, as well as the causes of Pakistani grievances with the United States. A key point is that Islamic Revivalism does not have a large constituency in the country, nor are most grievances rooted in pan-Islamic sentiments. Most of the country is radically different from the tribal areas from which the Taliban Movement of Pakistan emanates, and where one finds the madrasas who took in poor and orphaned refugees from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and provided them with a rudimentary education, which did happen to be based in theologically conservative Deobandi teachings.

While Islamist parties won 2002 elections in the North West Frontier Province, Cole interprets this as a reaction to the American invasion of Afghanistan and the support it received from President Pervez Musharraf. The population was swiftly disenchanted when these parties focused on implementing Islamic law in the area rather than advancing their agenda on other issues.

After surveying Pakistan’s recent political history up to the rise of current President Asif Ali Zardari, Cole turns his attention to Pakistan, which is a very different place. A basic sense of nationalism, which underlies the modern state system, isn’t strong among any of the country’s inhabitants, with the possible exception of the Uzbeks, and where it does exist it is often directed toward linguistic groups rather than “Afghan-ness.” Cole also questions how much of the violence in Afghanistan’s south is really caused by the Taliban, and indeed much is not.

The one point in this chapter where I question Cole has to do with the old issue of the extent to which ethnicity influences Afghanistan’s conflict. Here’s the crucial paragraph:

“The conflict also has a strong, if not determinative, ethnic coloration, with some Pushtun tribesmen resentful of what they see as the Tajik-dominated government in Kabul even though Afghan bureaucrats representing that government in the southern provinces are themselves Pushtun. The ethnic lines are not drawn in an absolute way, since Karzai and many of his officials are Pushtun and they have many Pushtun tribal supporters. In some ways, the fighting in the south is the civil war between pro- and anti-Karzai tribes. Still, ethnicity is one element in the struggle – there are no Hazara Shi’ite Taliban, and the spread of neo-Taliban violence to northern provinces such as Kunduz, where German troops have come under repeated attack, has tended to occur through Pushtun clan networks.”

My question here is that can’t the given examples better support the idea that ethnicity is a minor factor? Is the lack of Hazara Taliban because they are Hazara, or because they are Shi’ites? Is the Pushtun-ness of the clan networks of neo-Taliban violence in the north really important?

That aside, this is an excellent chapter, and I strongly support Cole’s recommendations, which boil down to forming an alliance with the Pakistani people rather than particular governments.

You Probably Think this War is About You

Eric Martin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:37:27 +0000

Despite President Bush’s post-9/11, manichean-tinged attempt to categorize other nations as either “with us or against us” with respect to those terrorist groups that the US government considers problematic, and despite an understandable impulse on the part of the US government to put US interests ahead of those of other states (a tendency that spans administrations from both parties), governments in foreign capitals haven’t necessarily been all that cooperative or obedient. This should come as no surprise, and yet our policies are often crafted with the expectation that our dictates will meet little resistance because we, the indispensable nation, have issued them.

Along these lines, much of our strategic class suffers from a persistent form of solipsism with respect to international affairs, a myopia that obscures the obvious truth that, just as we must pursue our interests first and foremost, other governments are, likewise, compelled to put their own respective interests first. Often times, this overriding motivation means that they will refuse to line-up along demarcations established, somewhat arbitrarily in their eyes, by the United States. It’s nothing personal.

The most pertinent recent example of this incongruity between US expectations and demands, and a foreign nation’s uncooperative and hesitant response, centers around our dealings with Pakistan and our policy agenda in Afghanistan.

After the attacks of 9/11, from the US perspective, the Taliban was an extremist religious faction that had seized power in Afghanistan, hosted a terrorist organization that had repeatedly attacked the US and US interests, and thus, a group that had to be deposed and shut out from power. That policy agenda is certainly reasonable enough, especially for an American, but there is another side to the story.

Whereas the United States is, quite understandably, concerned with the threat posed by al-Qaeda, and thus views the Taliban as a hostile element given its past support (and current cooperation) with al-Qaeda, Pakistan is not similarly disposed. For Pakistan, the foreign policy universe revolves around its regional adversary, frequent military opponent, and former co-inhabitant of a vast territory that each, in common, once called home: India. Everything from relations with China and Russia, to relations with the United States, are ordered on the principle of how to best counter India. In fact, this pervasive paranoia and monomaniacal focus has even warped Pakistan’s domestic political life, exacerbating a militarized culture, complete with a powerful and semi-autonomous intelligence apparatus (the ISI), with frequent military coups and a general disregard for civilian rule.

While Pakistan views its alliance with the US as valuable, it is not because it necessarily sees eye to eye with the US on most matters. Quite the contrary: Pakistani elites, as well as the general population, have long had a suspicious view of the United States and its motives, opposing key aspects of its international policies (these attitudes have worsened dramatically in recent years). This alliance, like most others for Pakistan, passes through the India-lens; Pakistan values the military and economic aid it can obtain via cordial relations with the US in order to counter India, and it has an interest in preventing too close an alliance forming between the US and India (which could tilt the balance of power too heavily in India’s direction). But the US alliance is – at best – of a second order importance, and subsumed by the India imperatives.

With respect to Afghanistan, Pakistan has long sought to cultivate a proxy and ally in that territory in order to achieve several objectives: expand its regional reach, influence and alliances in order to better balance India’s larger territorial space and population, and create a strategic redoubt in case of conflict. In fact, the US facilitated this process somewhat with the funneling of massive amounts of financial and military aid destined for anti-Soviet Afghan mujaheddin through Peshawar and other Pakistani hubs, leaving it to the Pakistanis (mostly the ISI) to determine the recipients of this largess (a valuable perch from which to cultivate influence, as well as enrich itself). Peshawar, it turns out, was also where Osama bin Laden set up his operations, and the point from which he coordinated aid from Gulf donors to his favored groups of foreign fighters.

After the withdrawal of the Soviets, and the eventual fall of the regime that it had backed, the US withdrew its presence from Afghanistan. But Pakistan, obviously, continued its involvement with its neighbor. As the dust settled after years of post-Soviet conflict, Pakistan made sure that the eventual victor – the Taliban – was the horse that it had backed with money, arms and other forms of support. Pakistan, at last, had what it deemed vital in terms of countering India, its most serious threat.

Fast forward to the events of 9/11 and George Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan. The leader of Pakistan at the time, by dint of a prior military coup in 1999, was Pervez Musharraf and he was faced with a significant strategic setback for Pakistan: it’s proxy and ally had been replaced by a government that was establishing friendly ties (and accepting millions in aid from)…India. While the US was focused on neutralizing al-Qaeda and the Taliban (notwithstanding the massive diversion of resources away from this effort and to the unrelated theater in Iraq), Pakistan was trying to contain the fallout from the loss of its valuable regional ally.

Musharraf did his best, as any Pakistani leader would, to juggle the various imperatives: placate the United States by saying what they wanted to hear and making a show of cooperation, extract massive amounts of aid under the pretense of fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban (aid that was converted into conventional arms better suited for conflict with India, and rushed to that front), surreptitiously support (or, at least, keep alive) its Taliban allies, and destabilize the India-friendly Karzai regime. All in preparation for the day when the United States, again, withdraws and Pakistan can, again, fill the void.

But the tightrope walking has had its perils. In the process of, at least partially, complying with the war on terror as envisioned by the United States, the Pakistani government has had to support the anti-Taliban mission in Afghanistan which has, at times, involved cross border incursions and air strikes on Pakistani territory along the border regions. This support and acquiescence to infringements on its sovereign territory has, in turn, greatly stoked anti-Americanism as well as anti-government sentiment within Pakistan.

Pakistani Taliban elements have been radicalized, choosing in recent months to launch attacks against government forces. During the years that the Afghan Taliban were in power, the Pakistani government had little problem with its indigenous Taliban elements. The heightened tensions are a recent phenomenon, and are directly related to the Pakistan government’s complicity in the US war on terror, and they are a symptom of a pernicious underlying unrest.

By pushing Pakistan even further, by forcing US prerogatives on the Pakistani government (interests that run counter to Pakistan’s in many respects), the US is actually destabilizing Pakistan and forcing disparate groups of religious zealots and secular elites, extremists and moderates, together in common cause in opposition to the current government and its pro-US tilt - ironic, considering that one of the arguments for ongoing US military operations in the region is the supposed stabilizing effect those military operations will have on Pakistan, crucial to safeguarding that country from potential hostile coup. From a McClatchy article (via Kevin Drum):

For weeks now, the Pakistani media have portrayed America, its military and defense contractors in the darkest of lights, all part of an apparent campaign of anti-American vilification that is sweeping the country and, according to some, is putting American lives at risk.

Pakistanis are reacting to what many here see as an “imperial” American presence, echoing Iraq and Afghanistan, with Washington dictating to the Pakistani military and the government. Polls show that Pakistanis regard the U.S., formally a close ally and the country’s biggest donor, as a hostile power. [...]

The lively Pakistani media has been filled with stories of under-cover American agents operating in the country, tales of a huge contingent of U.S. Marines planned to be stationed at the embassy, and reports of Blackwater private security personnel running amuck. Armed Americans have supposedly harassed and terrified residents and police officers in Islamabad and Peshawar, according to local press reports.

Much of the hysteria was based on a near $1 billion plan, revealed by McClatchy in May and confirmed by U.S. officials, to massively increase the size of the American embassy in Islamabad, which brought home to Pakistanis that the United States plans an extensive and long-term presence in the country. [...]

A survey last month for international broadcaster al Jazeera by Gallup Pakistan found that 59 percent of Pakistanis felt the greatest threat to the country was the United States. A separate survey in August by the Pew Research Center, an independent pollster based in Washington, recorded that 64 percent of the Pakistani public regards the U.S. “as an enemy” and only 9 percent believe it to be a partner.

“The Ugly American of the sixties is back in Pakistan and this time with a vengeance,” said Mazari, the defense analyst whose newspaper column was the subject of the American complaint. “It’s an alliance (U.S.-Pakistan) that’s been forced on the country by its corrupt leadership. It’s delivering chaos. We should distance ourselves. You can’t just hand over the country.”

While the anti-US sentiment appears genuine, it is uncertain whether the current storm, and the particular stories that it thrived on, was orchestrated by a pressure group or even an arm of the state. In the past, Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, part of the military, has very effectively used the press to push its agenda. [...]

A widely believed conspiracy contends that America is deliberately destabilizing Pakistan, to bring down a “strong Muslim country”, and ultimately seize its nuclear weapons. Pakistanis, especially its military establishment, also are distrustful of U.S. motives in Afghanistan, seeing it as part of a strategy for regional domination. Further Pakistanis are appalled that the regime of Hamid Karzai in Kabul is close to archenemy India. [...]

Many also blame the U.S. for “imposing” a president on the country, Zardari, who is deeply disliked and who last year succeeded an unpopular U.S.-backed military dictator. So democrats resent American interference in Pakistani politics, while conservatives distrust American aims in Afghanistan.

“You used to find this anti-Americanism among supporters of religious groups and Right-wing groups,” said Ahmed Quraishi, a newspaper columnist and the leading anti-American blogger. “But over the past two to three years, young, educated Pakistanis, people you’d normally expect to be pro-American modernists, and middle class people, are increasingly inclined to anti-Americanism. That’s the new phenomenon.”

There are two main takeaways from this McClatchy piece, and the background laid out above: First, Pakistan will, ultimately, look out for Pakistan’s interests and address threats to Pakistan which involve, above all else, India. Our efforts in Afghanistan run directly counter to Pakistan’s regional/India-related concerns. Thus, Pakistan will only provide half-hearted cooperation, while key elements of its security establishment work at cross-purposes. The recent anti-American media blitz is either the result of grass roots sentiment, or an ISI funded campaign, but neither alternative should prove comforting.

With a population so suspicious of our motives, and with a military/elite/intelligence apparatus in vehement opposition to an agenda that is weakening Pakistan vis-a-vis India, forcing our mandate on Pakistan will serve to destabilize a country that is far more important to the US than Afghanistan. In that sense, it should be possible to line-up US interests and Pakistani interests: ultimately, destabilizing a nuclear armed nation such as Pakistan is riskier than withdrawing from Afghanistan and disrupting al-Qaeda from afar. And by doing the latter, we reduce the risk of the former. Perhaps if the Obama administration took full measure of Pakistan’s position and interests, it could further seek to craft a compromise acceptable for all.

Our Midas Guns

Eric Martin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:24:32 +0000

Stephen Biddle’s recent piece on Afghanistan seeks to probe the question asked in the title, Is It Worth It? Biddle’s answer is a tepid, tentative "yes." In his words, our ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan represents "a war effort that is costly, risky and worth waging—but only barely so."

As suggested, Biddle is certainly no optimist about our prospects for "victory" in Afghanistan – although, to his credit, he narrows down the criteria to two modest goals when compared to some of the other more grandiose designs associated with the mission since its inception.

The United States has two primary national interests in this conflict: that Afghanistan never again become a haven for terrorism against the United States, and that chaos in Afghanistan not destabilize its neighbors, especially Pakistan. Neither interest can be dismissed, but both have limits as casus belli.

Biddle quickly abandons the first rationale, however, describing it as the "weakest" reason to wage a war considering the fact that: (a) there is no guarantee that the Taliban would welcome al-Qaeda back if the US departs and the Taliban dominates; (b) we can disrupt so-called safe-havens by taking measures far short of all out war; and (c) there are more attractive safe havens available in several other settings, and waging war to shut them down as they crop up is unrealistic in the extreme (also: a key part of Osama Bin Laden’s strategy of bleeding our resources by goading us into costly campaigns across the globe) – arguments that this site has been making with some frequency.

Which leaves us with the second rationale alone, about which Biddle has this to say:

Pakistani state collapse, moreover, is a danger over which the United States has only limited influence. We have uneven and historically fraught relations with the Pakistani military and intelligence services, and our ties with the civilian government of the moment can be no more efficacious than that government’s own sway over the country. The United States is too unpopular with the Pakistani public to have any meaningful prospect of deploying major ground forces there to assist the government in counterinsurgency. U.S. air strikes can harass insurgents and terrorists within Pakistan, but the inevitable collateral damage arouses harsh public opposition that could itself threaten the weak government’s stability. U.S. aid is easily (and routinely) diverted to purposes other than countering Islamist insurgents, such as the maintenance of military counterweights to India, graft and patronage, or even support for Islamist groups seen by Pakistani authorities as potential allies against India. U.S. assistance to Pakistan can—and should—be made conditional on progress in countering insurgents, but if these conditions are too harsh, Pakistan might reject the terms, thus removing our leverage in the process. Demanding conditions that the Pakistani government ultimately accepts but cannot reasonably fulfill only sets the stage for recrimination and misunderstanding.

If we cannot reliably influence Pakistan for the better, we should at least heed the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm. With so little actual leverage, we cannot afford to make the problem any worse than it already is.

That is a very accurate, objective analysis of the situation: our influence in Pakistan is limited; we are extremely unpopular; the use of our military assets engenders resistance and radicalization; Pakistan is more pre-occupied with India; and the Pakistani government is not fully committed to combating those Taliban elements and radicals that it has used, and continues to use, as anti-Indian proxies in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Given those factors, one could easily see that, since our primary mission should be to "do no harm" in terms of destabilizing Pakistan, we should cease our US-centric (which runs counter to Pakistan’s focus), heavy-handed, military interference in the region. After all, our influence is limited, and due to our lack of popularity, and the radicalizing effects of our presence and military campaign, we aren’t furthering our goals but undermining them. Biddle, however, comes to the opposite conclusion:

If the Taliban regained control of the Afghan state, their ability to use the state’s resources to destabilize the secular government in Pakistan would increase the risk of state collapse there. Analysts have made much of the threat that Pakistani Taliban base camps pose to the stability of the government in Kabul, but the danger works both ways: Instability in Afghanistan also poses a serious threat to the secular civilian government in Pakistan. This is the single greatest U.S. interest in Afghanistan: to prevent it from aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an al-Qaeda nuclear-armed sanctuary there.

But Biddle overstates the quality of the threat posed by Afghan Talibs in terms of destabilizing the Pakistani state. The Taliban have long been on the receiving end of Pakistani government largess. They have been cultivated as a proxy and ally useful in terms of creating a strategic redoubt in case of conflict with India, and in further establishing an anti-Indian front in the region. In fact, much of their tenacity and success in Afghanistan today (and previously) is attributable to the ongoing support of their Pakistani patrons.

That is the nature of the Afghan Taliban: a local phenomenon benefiting from the generosity of foreign benefactors. As such, the Afghan Taliban enjoys limited reach and power – especially if it were to actually turn on those same foreign benefactors. Along those lines, what exactly are the Afghan "state’s resources" that are supposed to threaten Pakistan (whose military and security forces are far more numerous, vastly better equipped, well trained, etc)? The Afghan state (and various militant factions) have limited economic and military resources – and much of what they have comes from…Pakistan.

This tail is just not capable of wagging the dog, and the Pakistani government knows it. That is why that government continues to support those same Afghan Taliban factions that we are, according to Biddle, supposed to be protecting Pakistan from. Maybe they know something we don’t?

Further, Biddle takes it as a given that our ongoing military operations in Afghanistan serve to stabilize the situation in Pakistan without even acknowledging – let alone discussing – the obvious counterpoint: what if our seven+ year military campaign in neighboring Afghanistan (targeting Pakistan’s longtime ally), with US forces frequently striking Pakistani territory itself, was actually "aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems."

What if, in asking the Pakistanis to cooperate in the neutralizing of their proxies and in the empowerment of a new regime friendly to India, we were "[d]emanding conditions that the Pakistani government ultimately accepts but cannot reasonably fulfill only set[ting] the stage for recrimination and misunderstanding." Is there any chance that bending the Pakistani government to our agenda – which cuts against its own interests – could cause political problems for that same government?

Shouldn’t we at least acknowledge the possibility that wars and occupations often have a radicalizing, destabilizing effect with myriad unintended consequences throughout the war zones? The Pakistani government is certainly sounding the alarm: [more after the jump]

Pakistan is objecting to expanded American combat operations in neighboring Afghanistan, creating new fissures in the alliance with Washington at a critical juncture when thousands of new American forces are arriving in the region.

Pakistani officials have told the Obama administration that the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan, according to Pakistani intelligence officials. [...]

The country’s perspective was given in a nearly two-hour briefing on Friday for The New York Times by senior analysts and officials of Pakistan’s main spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence…The main themes of the briefing were echoed in conversations with several military officers over the past few days.

One of the first briefing slides read, in part: “The surge in Afghanistan will further reinforce the perception of a foreign occupation of Afghanistan. It will result in more civilian casualties; further alienate local population. Thus more local resistance to foreign troops.”

One obvious rebuttal is that the Pakistani government is exaggerating these threats because it is trying to cut short US operations against the Pakistan-friendly Afghan Taliban, and it is wary of an India-friendly Karzai government consolidating power in Kabul. But the implications of that possibility should offer no comfort: it would mean that the Pakistani government is more intent on protecting the Taliban, and preserving its influence via the Taliban in Afghanistan, than it is in advancing US interests (which are diametrically opposed). If that’s the case (and it seems likely), and our success in terms of stabilizing Afghanistan is dependent on the Pakistani government’s cooperation with our agenda instead, then we are pursuing a lost cause.

The Pakistani account made clear that even as the United States recommits troops and other resources to take on a growing Taliban threat, Pakistani officials still consider India their top priority and the Taliban militants a problem that can be negotiated. In the long term, the Taliban in Afghanistan may even remain potential allies for Pakistan, as they were in the past, once the United States leaves.

The Pakistani officials gave views starkly different from those of American officials regarding the threat presented by top Taliban commanders, some of whom the Americans say have long taken refuge on the Pakistani side of the border.

Recent Pakistani military operations against Taliban in the Swat Valley and parts of the tribal areas have done little to close the gap in perceptions.

Even as Obama administration officials praise the operations, they express frustration that Pakistan is failing to act against the full array of Islamic militants using the country as a base.

Instead, they say, Pakistani authorities have chosen to fight Pakistani Taliban who threaten their government, while ignoring Taliban and other militants fighting Americans in Afghanistan or terrorizing India.

Right. And that’s not going to change any time in the near future, or thereafter.

Start Another Fire and Watch It Slowly Die

Eric Martin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:57:35 +0000

Peter Bergen penned a piece in the Washington Monthly in which he argues that, with a substantial dedication of time and resources by the United States and the international community, Afghanistan could, eventually, become a "relatively stable and prosperous Central Asian state." In short, Afghanistan is a "winnable" war.

The entire first half of Bergen’s piece is dedicated to shooting down "facile" historical comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam and between the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and ours (Bergen contrasts the tactics and professionalism of the respective armies), as well as correcting the history of other imperial efforts in the region. But Bergen’s is an unnecessary and, ultimately, irrelevant exercise.

Clearly, Afghanistan is not the same as Vietnam, and the argument that they are parallel episodes is as misguided as any prior argument that the Iraq war was a replication of our Vietnam campaign. But so what? The Iraq war wasn’t the Vietnam war, and it didn’t have to be Vietnam in order for it to be a grievous foreign policy debacle whose costs (in terms of human suffering and US interests) are almost immeasurable. Proving Iraq and Vietnam were different did little to inform us of the wisdom of invading or perpetuating the occupation of Iraq.

In fact, the same metrics that Bergen uses to show why our Afghan effort has a better chance of succeeding than our prolonged Vietnam mission (less costly as a percentage of GDP, fewer casualties, no support for insurgents from a powerful foreign benefactor, insurgent force relatively small and lightly armed) could have just as easily been used by those arguing that Iraq wasn’t Vietnam, going on to suggest our prospects in Iraq were thus brighter. They wouldn’t have been correct, of course.

Further, there is little comfort to be had from acknowledging that the US military is more professional than, and tactically superior to, the Soviet version that suffered a crushing blow in Afghanistan decades ago. While this is true, it was the US military, not the Soviet military, that was dropped in the middle of Iraq and asked to do the near impossible to little avail. So a superior military is not exactly a sufficient condition to success as there are just certain obstacles that even the most professional army, employing optimal tactics and rules of engagement, cannot overcome. Pacifying foreign populations is like eating soup with a knife, even if the knives come in different shapes and sizes, and no two soup recipes are the same.

So, points conceded to Bergen: facile historical comparisons distract from the more germane analysis of the scenario at hand, and in general lead to sloppy reasoning by analogy. Oddly enough, after scoring these points rather deftly, Bergen goes on to make a couple of…equally facile historical comparisons!

Skeptics of Obama’s Afghanistan policy say that the right approach is to either reduce American commitments there or just get out entirely. The short explanation of why this won’t work is that the United States has tried this already—twice. In 1989, after the most successful covert program in the history of the CIA helped to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, the George H. W. Bush administration closed the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The Clinton administration subsequently effectively zeroed out aid to the country, one of the poorest in the world. Out of the chaos of the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s emerged the Taliban, who then gave sanctuary to al Qaeda. In 2001, the next Bush administration returned to topple the Taliban, but because of its ideological aversion to nation building it ensured that Afghanistan was the least-resourced per capita reconstruction effort the United States has engaged in since World War II.

But the US has not, in fact, tried this twice. In Bergen’s first example of the US having previously withdrawn tens of thousands of troops from Afghanistan after a 7 year military campaign, the US didn’t actually have any troops in Afghanistan at all to withdraw – just funding for insurgent groups squaring off against the Soviets. So it’s hard to see how this is analogous in even the most strained sense. And withdrawal (or reduction) of military forces does not necessitate shutting off all forms of aid (far from it). In fact, Bergen is using this as a rebuttal to those that merely want to "reduce American commitments" (to quote him), not eliminate them.

In Bergen’s second prior example of the US ending a prolonged military campaign in Afghanistan, the US actually invaded Afghanistan and kept tens of thousands of troops in that country for over 7 years (and counting). Somehow that counts as a military withdrawal? Only in a world in which US military intervention is the norm, and the only question is to what extent and how deep the military commitment should manifest.

In another segment, Bergen seemingly continues under the rhetorical framework of "military intervention as the norm":

Another possible objection to the introduction of more U.S. soldiers into Afghanistan is that, inevitably, they will kill more civilians, the main issue that angers Afghans about the foreign military presence. In fact, the presence of more boots on the ground is likely to reducecivilian casualties, because historically it has been the overreliance on American air strikes—as a result of too few ground forces—which has been the key cause of civilian deaths. According to the U.S. Air Force, between January and August 2008 there were almost 2,400 air strikes in Afghanistan, fully three times as many as in Iraq. And the United Nations concluded that it was air strikes, rather than action on the ground, which were responsible for the largest percentage—64 percent—of civilian deaths attributed to pro-government forces in 2008.

While Bergen might be right that more boots on the ground will lead to fewer civilian casualties from coalition forces because of the reduction in the reliance on air strikes (at least in as much as the increase in overall military operations don’t negate those reductions), there is a third way that is guaranteed to reduce civilian casualties from coalition forces: withdraw coalition forces from Afghanistan. That option, and its impact on deaths by coalition forces, is ignored, however.

Regardless, it is unclear to what extent those same airstrikes will, in fact, be scaled back on an appreciable scale. There has long been talk about the negative impact of these tactics, especially from senior commanders such as General Petraeus who has been overseeing CENTCOM for several months now. And yet the airstrikes have persisted. Not that it’s Petraues’ fault – there are internal divisions, institutional biases and other complicating factors that lead to resistance from various military actors. Yet it is this inconsistent application of counterinsurgency doctrine, as blended with counterterrorism and conventional tactics (which often work at cross purposes), which calls into question the overall likelihood of success.

Cognizant of the importance of the issue of civilian casualties, in his Senate confirmation hearing in June the new commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, testified that their avoidance "may be the critical point" of American military operations, adding, "I cannot overstate my commitment to the importance of this concept." McChrystal, generally regarded as one of the most effective officers of his generation, has now put the avoidance of civilian casualties at the core of his military strategy in Afghanistan, and that message will undoubtedly filter down the chain of command.

Let’s see if it does.

While Bergen does raise some reasons to be encouraged about the game plan (the switch from poppy eradication to targeting the drug lords themselves for one), he saves the biggest obstacle for the very end – the one that renders much of his prior optimism arguably moot.

This brings us to the one skunk at this garden party, and it is a rather large one: Afghanistan’s nuclear-armed, al-Qaeda- and Taliban-headquartering neighbor to the east. The Pakistani dimension of Obama’s Af-Pak strategy is his critics’ most reasonable objection to his plans for the region. It is difficult for the United States to have an effective strategy for Pakistan when Pakistan doesn’t have an effective strategy for Pakistan. There is a set of interwoven problems that the country must face if it is to effectively confront the militants in its own territory. If it fails to do this, the regional insurgency that encompasses both sides of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border will continue to gather strength.

So, in a nutshell, everything that we are trying to achieve is dependent on Pakistan getting its house in order. In order to do so, it must tackle a series of long-standing, fundamental, interwoven and fraught problems that call into question the nature of Pakistani society/government structure, that have withstood myriad prior efforts to address, that have proven resistant to outside pressure from the US (its chief benefactor) and that threaten to plummet the nation into civil war. What could possibly go wrong?

The nuclear-armed unstable Pakistani specter looming right across the border is another way in which our present Afghan war is different than Vietnam. But does that make you feel any better about our chances?