Fighting to the End

by C Christine Fair

  Not only does this understanding of Lashkar-e-Taiba explain Pakistan’s reliance upon the group, but it also helps to illuminate LeT’s use of its own resources. Given LeT’s large role in domestic politics, it makes perfect sense that the group actually sends only a small percentage of its trainees on external missions. But members who are never deployed outside of Pakistan are not wasted investments: they further LeT’s domestic mission by countering the Deobandi message of sectarian violence, promoting the group’s pro-state agenda of external jihad, and cultivating ever more recruits who will continue the same cycle of training and domestic deployment.

  This pattern is crucial to LeT’s continued viability. The group does not primarily recruit from among adherents of the theological tradition from which it derives (Ahl-e-Hadith) (Fair 2004b, 2008; Rassler et al. 2013). There are two reasons for this: first, because many of the Ahl-e-Hadith ulema have rejected violent jihad, LeT has drifted from its theological roots. Given its differences of opinion with the ulema, it should not expect many strict Ahl-e-Hadith adherents to join (Rana 2004). Another reason is that the Pakistani Ahl-e-Hadith community is quite small, perhaps less than 10 percent of Pakistan’s population of 180 million.11 Thus, LeT overwhelmingly recruits Deobandis and Barelvis, who together comprise the majority of Pakistan’s population. In Daur-e-Aam (basic training), recruits undergo rigorous religious indoctrination. This is an important opportunity to attract those with a taste for violence to a pro-state militant organization rather than a Deobandi group. It also provides LeT the opportunity to dissuade Deobandis (or others) from attacking Pakistani political leaders, security forces, or civilians.

  Pakistan’s support of LeT’s expansion into providing social services after 2002 (particularly in its guise as Jamaat-ud-Dawa) comports well with this understanding of the organization’s increasingly important domestic utility. By 2004 LeT was building schools (not madrasas) and clinics and providing other social services throughout Pakistan, including Sindh, Balochistan, and beyond. The group contributed large quantities of money and relief supplies to the victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia; organized relief and medical assistance after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake; provided social services to internally displaced persons fleeing the military offensive in Swat in 2009; and helped the victims of the 2010 monsoon-related flooding.12

  Pakistan has endured serious criticism for its continued patronage of Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Daawa or its latest incarnation, Filah-i-Insaniat Foundation (US Department of State 2010). But when one appreciates LeT’s importance in countering the violent agendas of the rival militant groups savaging Pakistan, it is clear that the state has an enormous incentive to encourage and facilitate LeT’s expansion throughout Pakistan. By bolstering the organization’s domestic legitimacy through the provision of social services, Jamaat-ud-Dawa makes LeT ever more effective at countering the competing narrative offered by Deobandi groups. Those who doubt Pakistan’s ongoing support for the organization should note that after the Mumbai attack of 2008 the Punjab provincial government began managing the organization’s substantial assets in the Punjab and has even placed many Lashkar-e-Taiba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa members involved in various ostensibly charitable activities on its official payroll. In addition, the Punjabi government has made substantial grants to the organization (Dawn 2010; Geo TV 2009).

  Given the important domestic role that LeT plays in helping to counter the Deobandi violence that has ravaged Pakistan, the organization will become more important as Pakistan’s domestic security situation degrades. This suggests that no matter what may happen vis-à-vis India, Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies will resist cutting ties with the group. Unfortunately, there is little cause to be optimistic that Pakistan’s civilian institutions will see this issue very differently; after all, it was Bhutto who first instrumentalized Islamist groups in Afghanistan in the early 1970s, laying the foundation for what would become Gen. Muhammad Zia’s Afghanistan strategy after the Soviet invasion. Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, continued to support Islamist militants in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, during her time as prime minister, and both she and her main political rival, Nawaz Sharif, have long histories of supporting the so-called Kashmiri groups operating in Kashmir and India. Sharif also maintained Bhutto’s support for the Taliban.

  Conclusions and Implications

  In this chapter, I sought to explain the strong positive statistical correlation between the increasingly overt nuclearization of the subcontinent and the level of conflict between India and Pakistan. As a first step, I have demonstrated that the Pakistani doctrine of proxy warfare and low-intensity conflict has undergone a systemic evolution since the earliest years of the state’s existence. From the 1970s onward, Pakistani military planners increasingly saw irregular warfare as enabled by Pakistan’s expanding nuclear umbrella. As Pakistan’s militant groups continued to proliferate and as its nuclear deterrent evolved from covert to overt, Pakistan’s brazenness as regards these proxies increased as well. As a result of the events that followed 9/11 and Pakistan’s decision to support some aspects of the US War on Terror, many of these militant groups have forged an antistate alliance. The Pakistan Army has sought to manage this threat, preferably by brokering peace deals but using military force when necessary (Jones and Fair 2010).

  While much ink has been spilled over the external utility of these actors, analysts of South Asia have not considered the domestic utility of such groups. LeT should be seen as serving two functions simultaneously: prosecuting Pakistan’s external policies while also undermining Deobandi groups that advocate attacking within Pakistan. (It is possible that similar arguments could be made concerning other militant groups, including the sectarian groups and Hizbul mujahideen, but making such a case is beyond the scope of this volume.) Without understanding the domestic and foreign functions of these militant groups, one cannot fully comprehend how they align with the strategic goals of the Pakistan Army: to preserve and protect not just the state but also the state’s ideology. Lashkar-e-Taiba has long served both purposes.

  CHAPTER 10

  Is the Past Prologue?

  It is difficult to imagine what sort of defeat would compel Pakistan to abandon its persistent revisionism and its reliance upon the use of Islamist proxies under its expanding nuclear embrella to pursue its revisionist agenda. Despite losing half of its territory and population in the 1971 war with India, Pakistan redoubled its commitment to overturning the territorial status quo and undermining India’s ascent. Given the increasing international commitment to intervening in any Indo-Pakistan military crisis to prevent escalation to a full-scale war, it is doubtful that any crisis would evolve to such a point where India would be able to inflict a devastating defeat on Pakistan. This necessarily assumes that India would have the capability and will to do so (Joshi 2013; Ladwig 2008). It is useful to consider other means by which Pakistan’s strategic commitments could evolve. After all, strategic cultures do change despite their conservative qualities. A number of plausible scenarios could bring about a slow reshaping of the Pakistan Army’s strategic culture and the behaviors it facilitates. This chapter proposes and evaluates several endogenous (internal) and exogenous (external) shocks that could galvanize change within the Pakistan Army’s strategic culture and place the country, over time, on a different course. This list is certainly not exhaustive, but it does include the most probable sources of change.

  Endogenous Game Changers

  Several plausible endogenous developments could influence the way the Pakistan Army as well as Pakistan’s citizens understand the army’s role in society and the capacious freedom the army has seized to shape domestic and foreign policy per its preferences. One such endogenous change is a fundamental evolution away from army-dominated governance. A second is that Pakistani civil society will force the army to alter its policies. A third possibility is the further erosion of Pakistan’s economy, which may drive the Pakistan Army to acquiesce to some degree of
economic liberalization as regards India. Fourth, change may come from within the army itself as a result of changing patterns of recruitment its policies has precipitated.

  DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION?

  One possible source of change in the way the army understands the world and the ways it can behave is a genuine democratic transition. While this may have seemed far-fetched a few years ago, observers are now willing to cautiously consider the possibility that Pakistan is on the verge of such a transition away from praetorianism (Grare 2013; Mallet and Bokhari 2012). The government led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) that was ousted in the May 2013 elections was the second consecutive government to serve out its term since the restoration of democracy in 1988, albeit with some important caveats, and the first since the 5th National Assembly (1972–1977) to do so under an entirely civilian dispensation. (The first government to serve out its complete term since 1988 was the 12th National Assembly, which was elected in October 2002 and served until 2008. However, it did so under the auspices of President Pervez Musharraf’s military-dominated government.) The March 2008 elections marked Pakistan’s first constitutional change of government under a fully civilian dispensation, and those of May 2013 heralded the second.

  While the previous PPP-led government was distinguished mainly for its corruption, it did take several important steps toward consolidating democratic processes and institutions. The 13th National Assembly (2008–2013) passed more legislation than any other in Pakistan’s recent history (National Assembly of Pakistan Official Website n.d.). Only the 5th National Assembly, which promulgated the current 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, passed more bills than did the 13th National Assembly. The Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), an independent organization that monitors legislative affairs in Pakistan, observed that “while the outgoing Government deserves appreciation as it did not bulldoze legislation through the House, the opposition should also be applauded for playing a positive and constructive role in bringing major changes in the 1973 constitution and for positively contributing to key legislation” (PILDAT 2013a, 7).

  The PPP-led government made considerable strides in institutionalizing democracy. Perhaps the most surprising was the government’s efforts to take greater responsibility for foreign and defense policymaking, which have been traditionally the exclusive bailiwicks of the powerful army. The parliament set up the Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS) in November 2008 through a Joint Resolution of the House. According to PILDAT (2013a), the PCNS has been “one of the effective Committees during the past five years. The unanimous passage of the 14-point recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security by the Parliament marked the beginning of an oft-demanded Parliamentary overview and ownership of Pakistan’s foreign policy” (7). It is likely that the PCNS garnered support from the popular outrage over events such as the unilateral US raid in May 2011 to kill Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad safe house (Schiffrin et al. 2013); the Raymond Davis affair in which Davis, a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contractor, shot and killed two suspected Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) contractors whom he claimed attempted to rob him at gunpoint (Waraich 2011); and the accidental US/North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) assault on Salala, a Pakistani military post near the Afghan border, which killed 24 Pakistani troops (Masood and Schmitt 2011).

  US officials were ambivalent about the PCNS in part because several of the PCNS recommendations undermined US interests, particularly the closure of the ground lines of supply to the war in Afghanistan between November 2011 and July 2012 (CNN 2012) and the denial of drone operations from the Shamsi airbase (Masood 2012). In the long run, the PCNS’ activism ultimately advanced US long-term interests in having Pakistan’s civilian institutions of governance assume a more prominent role in providing security governance in the country. To the dismay of many Pakistanis, the government did not rigorously adhere to the entirety of the PCNS framework to restructure the US–Pakistan relationship. This road map to restructuring bilateral relations with Washington was the cornerstone of the Parliamentary resolution that came out of the PCNS review. PILDAT (2013a) observed of this process that “the facilitation of this review and the unanimous approval of these recommendations indicated the Government’s maturity and due regard to the institution of Parliament” (7). The PCNS review also helped establish some semblance of parliamentary oversight of governmental policies in the realms of defense and foreign policy, which have long been the exclusive bailiwick of the army. Even though the government did not execute the PCNS guidelines with fidelity and while the parliament and the PCNS carefully managed this process to avoid fundamentally challenging the preferences of the army, Pakistan’s peoples have become more accustomed to seeing politicians weighing in on foreign and defense policy issues. Attesting to the importance accorded to politicians engaging in these hefty affairs, all of the major political parties featured civil–military relations in their various party manifestos in the run-up to the 2013 elections (PILDAT 2013b).

  Although the 13th parliament made important strides in asserting itself in national security affairs and security governance, with the passage of the 18th Amendment in April 2010 President Asif Ali Zardari became the first sitting Pakistani president to devolve voluntarily his extensive presidential powers to the prime minister. This is no small accomplishment in a country where the president has often enjoyed more power than the prime minister or parliament. The 18th Amendment modified some 97 of 280 articles of the 1973 Pakistani constitution. This amendment denuded the president of the powers to circumvent the legislative function of the parliament and decreased the period of time that the president can consider bills that have been passed by the parliament before approving them. It also removed the deeply problematic Article 58-2(b) that was promulgated first under the military dictator Zia ul Haq and then revived under Musharraf. This provision permitted the president to unilaterally dismiss the government. It also required the appointment of a caretaker government, with appointments to the same deriving from consultations of the outgoing prime minister and opposition leader. It also removed the term limits that precluded prime ministers from serving more than two terms.

  With the 18th Amendment, Pakistan formally returned to a parliamentary democracy with the prime minister and his ministers composing the “federal government.” It reinstated the prime minister as the chief executive of the nation rather than the president. However, despite this important constitutional change, for all intents and purposes Zardari retained his hold over those aspects of the state in which civilians might have been able to engage meaningfully until Zardari was ousted in the July 2013 presidential elections. Equally important, the international community continued to engage Zardari as well as the army chief in its interactions with Pakistan after the promulgation of the 18th amendment. Despite the important reallocation of power from the presidency to the prime minister, the prime minister remained largely irrelevant. A testament to the irrelevance of this post is the ubiquitous celebratory contention that this current government served out its terms even though the 18th Amendment clearly defines the government as the prime minister. Since Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani was ousted in June 2012, the claim that this government has served out its term would be suspect in any country with a more robust tradition of parliamentary democracy.

  Another important contribution of the 18th Amendment is that it was the first serious effort to devolve power to the provinces. It eliminated the so-called Concurrent List, which enumerates state function for which federal and provincial governments may legislate but provides supremacy to the federal law. As a part of devolution of power from the center to the provinces, the amendment also altered the way the National Finance Commission establishes the distribution of national revenue to the provinces. Unfortunately, this remains a likely source of increased friction between the central government and provinces. Significant devolution of power to the provinces may be an important means
of tempering the significant concerns of ethnic groups who feel dominated by the Punjabi state. While the 18th Amendment draws most of the attention, the 13th National Assembly also passed the 19th Amendment, which changed the way judges are appointed to the superior judiciary, and the 20th Amendment, which established a new procedure to handle government transitions through the consensual appointment of a caretaker government.

  This impressive slate of legislative initiatives represents an important and unprecedented step in ensconcing civilian institutions—perhaps modestly—in the security governance of the state (Malik 2009). This does not mean, of course, that Pakistan’s democracy is in the free and clear. There are numerous and daunting tasks ahead for the next government. The Nawaz Sharif government must consolidate democratic institutionalization, strengthen civilian control over the military, forge consensus among the various political parties at the level of the federal government and in the provincial governments, resist political infighting, preempt military interference, and bravely seek economic reforms against the wishes of the party’s constituents and the party’s own economic interests. This may prove too herculean an agenda.