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No Exit
9
single-track strategy will almost certainly allow other important issues to slip
through the cracks.
Worse, policies that serve one set of ends may be counterproductive in
other areas. Washington has committed this mistake over and over since the
outset of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. It has swung, pendulum-like, between
different bottom line goals in Pakistan. At times, this meant focusing only on
Pakistan’s role in the Cold War fight against Soviet influence. At other points,
Washington was obsessed with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Since
9/11, it has focused mainly on Pakistan’s cooperation in fighting international
terrorists.
To add another layer to this challenge, it is clear that the United States
cannot achieve its ends in Pakistan through a strategy of pure cooperation
or pure coercion. In some instances the United States will find it exceedingly
costly to address its vital security concerns unless it can find a way to work
with Pakistan as a partner. Securing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, for instance, is a
project that is best undertaken by Pakistanis themselves, with the United States
playing only a supportive role. All things equal, building a close, cooperative
relationship with Pakistan’s military and nuclear establishment would seem
to be the best way for the United States to gain confidence in the security of
Pakistan’s arsenal.
In other cases, however, achieving U.S. goals in Pakistan may require coer-
cion or confrontation. For example, the experience of the past decade suggests
that Pakistan is unlikely to end its support for violent extremist groups unless
Washington forces Islamabad’s hand. As the more powerful party in the rela-
tionship, the United States can put the screws to Pakistan in various ways, but
America’s power is not always easily turned into useful coercive leverage. If,
for instance, Washington were to pressure Pakistan’s military and intelligence
services, it would be targeting some of the same individuals and institutions
responsible for securing the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
The effort to balance U.S. goals and avoid contradictory policy prescriptions
is further complicated by the regional dimension. Washington cannot afford to
deal with Islamabad in a vacuum; it must consider the implications of its policies
with respect to other countries, especially India and Afghanistan. These are
not always simple calculations. For instance, the more frustrated Washington
gets with Pakistan, the more inclined U.S. leaders are to favor a relationship
with India, the more stable, democratic partner in South Asia. Of course, an
increasingly prosperous India offers ample attraction for the United States in
its own right, but there is no escaping the fact that the more Washington tilts
toward New Delhi, the more insecurity that inspires in Islamabad.
At times, such insecurity can pay dividends. Immediately after 9/11,
Pakistani fears led its leaders to cooperate and compromise with the United
States. Throughout 2012, Pakistan energized its diplomatic outreach to India
as a means to avoid simultaneous tension with Washington and New Delhi.
On many other occasions, however, insecurity has led Pakistan to take
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10
No Exit from Pakistan
counterproductive steps: to build more nuclear weapons, lend support to anti-
Indian terrorist groups, or seek a closer relationship with China.
The United States has a full and complicated agenda in Pakistan, fraught
with difficult trade-offs. That said, it is possible to disentangle U.S. interests
into three primary areas of concern. Each deserves particular attention even as
it must be balanced against the others.
First, al-Qaeda remnants, their affiliates, sympathizers, and possible succes-
sor organizations based on Pakistani soil pose an immediate threat to American security. The threat is an urgent one because innocent American lives are at
stake. Successful U.S. military and intelligence operations have diminished, not
eliminated, the terrorist threat. It could be reconstituted if Washington takes
its eye off the ball.
Second, if Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, materials, or know-how end up in
hostile or irresponsible hands, they would pose a vital threat to the United States. Fortunately, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal does not now pose an existential
threat of the sort the United States faced during the Cold War when thou-
sands of nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at America from the Soviet Union.
Even so, the possibility that Pakistan’s warheads might be smuggled onto U.S.
shores or transferred to other states or terrorist groups makes this issue one of
Washington’s highest security concerns.
Third, Pakistan’s size, location, and potential for instability and violence
represent an emergent geopolitical challenge within the context of Asia’s growing importance on the global stage. America’s broader economic, political, and
strategic interests in Pakistan’s neighborhood are less urgent than terrorism
and less vital than nuclear weapons. Yet, the United States must still think very
seriously about them, especially when it comes to navigating relationships with
rising Asian powers like China and India.
All of these U.S. interests are tied up in the fate of Pakistan itself. Pakistan is
already a failing state in many ways, but it is not yet a failed one. As explained
in Chapter 2, although it is not inevitable or likely in the immediate near
term, Pakistan could fail in ways that are far worse than at present. Pakistan’s
under-performing national institutions could crumble further, its military could
fracture, its ethnic and sectarian cleavages could take the country past the point
of militancy and into outright civil war.
For the United States, these are scenarios to be feared, for however dangerous
Pakistan is today, its collapse or breakup would be disastrous. The human costs,
from violence, refugee flows, and internal dislocation would hurt Pakistanis
and their neighbors. But the Untied States would also have strategic concerns.
Neither Pakistan’s resident extremists nor its nuclear arsenal would go quietly
into the night. It is hard even to imagine the sort of stabilizing military force
required to intervene in a broken Pakistan. In short, for Washington it is better
to deal with a single Pakistan than multiple, warring states or, more likely, a
morass of feuding fiefdoms.
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No Exit
11
Pakistanis will decide how to deal with internal threats, ho
w to manage their
nuclear program, and how to grapple with regional friends and adversaries.
What they decide will have something to do with the character of Pakistan’s
relationship with the United States, which means that Washington can exert
an important influence.
It would be hubristic, however, to argue that Americans can determine the
destiny of nearly 200 million Pakistanis. As with many large, complicated
societies, Pakistan’s future – from the fate of its masses to the character of its
leaders – will first depend on internal developments. Washington may be able
to shield itself from many of the potential ill effects of these developments, but
a healthy Pakistani society and a stable Pakistani state offers the only prospect
for achieving all of America’s objectives in an enduring way.
the immediate threat: terrorism
The 9/11 attacks exposed America’s vulnerability to the threat posed by a
handful of highly motivated terrorists. Armed only with plane tickets, box
cutters, and some flight training, the attackers killed thousands of innocents,
destroyed billions of dollars of property, and sent a nation of 300 million
people into crisis.
Although the United States launched a war in Afghanistan to bring al-Qaeda
to justice, many of the terrorist group’s top leaders have been found in Pakistan.
U.S. drones circling over Pakistan’s tribal areas have killed dozens of al-Qaeda
operatives. The mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was born to
Pakistani parents and captured in Rawalpindi in 2003, near Pakistan’s capital.
Eight years later, and just seventy miles to the north, U.S. Navy SEALs raided
Osama bin Laden’s compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad. No one
can doubt that al-Qaeda’s roots in Pakistan run chillingly deep.
A central question for U.S. policymakers since 2001 has been how the United
States should best defend itself against international terrorism in the future.
Heightened American defenses – from closer scrutiny of all the people and
goods that come into the United States to greater coordination and vigilance
by domestic law enforcement agencies – is a start. Yet shortly after 9/11, the
Bush administration also went on the offensive against al-Qaeda. Washington
launched the war in Afghanistan and extensive manhunts across the globe. Over
time, the United States also relied more heavily on new technologies, such as
unmanned drones, to target and kill suspected terrorists in remote locations
inside Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. In each of these instances, the goal was
to disrupt the safe havens that had permitted al-Qaeda and similar groups to
plan and implement their operations.
The Bush administration also called for an even more ambitious American
undertaking: the transformation of societies within the Muslim world that had
given birth to the violent ideas espoused by al-Qaeda. This push to promote
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12
No Exit from Pakistan
democracy and greater freedom in the Muslim world was driven in large part
by the observation that repressive and autocratic regimes were to blame for the
alienation and anger behind al-Qaeda’s mission. More freedom, the logic ran,
would make for less terrorism.
Some aspects of Washington’s counterterror campaign have been more suc-
cessful than others. The combination of homeland defense and overseas dis-
ruption of safe havens has so far saved America from another devastating
attack. New defenses and procedures make the United States far less likely to
suffer from the specific sorts of suicide hijackings it faced on 9/11. U.S. opera-
tions inside Pakistan and Afghanistan sent Osama bin Laden to a watery grave
and killed or captured many of his top lieutenants. Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and
Afghanistan is but a shell of its former self.
Yet, few U.S. security officials rest easily at night because they recognize that
terrorist plots against the United States continue to be hatched. Some, like al-
Qaeda’s 2009 Christmas Day scheme to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight
bound for Detroit, have nearly succeeded. Nor did President Obama embrace
his predecessor’s sweeping agenda of eliminating the political grievances that
animate terrorism in Muslim societies. The task was considered too daunting,
too costly, and too prone to creating an even greater violent backlash against
American intervention.
In Pakistan, the United States still faces the threat posed by al-Qaeda rem-
nants, quite possibly including bin Laden’s Egyptian-born successor, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, who may have found safe haven along the rugged border between
Pakistan and Afghanistan or may, like bin Laden, be more comfortably
ensconced in some hideout elsewhere. Either way, as long as the United States
maintains a strong virtual presence in Pakistan through drones and intelli-
gence operations, some in coordination with Pakistani authorities, al-Qaeda’s
remnants are likely to be picked off, one by one, over time.
If, however, U.S. relations with Pakistan rupture, important elements of the
U.S. counterterror mission would be jeopardized. Intelligence sharing would
cease, and it would be an easy military matter (if not a simple choice) for
Islamabad to close its airspace to the slow-moving, low-flying U.S. drones.
Under those conditions, al-Qaeda might again take advantage of the remoteness
of Pakistan’s forbidding mountain ranges or the lawlessness and anonymity of
its teeming cities.
Even if al-Qaeda is never able to reconstitute, other like-minded Pakistani
terrorist groups have been influenced and strengthened by their contact with
al-Qaeda operatives. They have learned new, more sophisticated tactics and
adopted aspects of al-Qaeda’s worldview, at times trading local and parochial
grievances for the rhetoric of global jihad. If the world ever sees the likes of
a second Osama bin Laden, there is a very good chance that he would be
a Pakistani, raised in a climate of violent anti-Americanism and surrounded
by experienced terrorists who command resources from networks of financial
support and ideological sympathy.
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No Exit
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The Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP), founded in 2007
by the ferocious Baitullah Mehsud, has particularly close ties to al-Qaeda. By its
own claims and official U.S. statements, the TTP has already struck the United
States once. On May 1, 2010, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born American
citizen, drove his dark green Nissan Pathfinder into New York’s Times Square,
where he left it at the curb, hazard lights on and engine running. Minutes later,
nearby street vendors heard the sound of exploding fireworks and noticed
smoke drifting fr
om the interior of the SUV. Fortunately, the fertilizer bomb
that Shahzad had rigged in the back of the vehicle was an amateurish affair,
disarmed by the city’s bomb squad without injury. The Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) arrested Shahzad days later, just as his Dubai-bound flight
from New York was pulling away from the terminal.5
In his own court testimony, the American-educated Shahzad admitted to
receiving funds to purchase the SUV and bomb materials from a TTP source.
In 2009, Shahzad trained briefly in the rugged tribal region along Pakistan’s
border with Afghanistan, where he translated a bomb-making manual from
Urdu to English and received some additional lessons in explosives. In a TTP-
produced video released online after the attempted attack, Shahzad menacingly
explains his decision to join in a global struggle against those who would
oppress Muslims, his desire to bring violent jihad into the United States, and
his collaboration with top TTP leaders in conceiving the attack on New York
City.6
Shahzad was unusual, perhaps even unique, for being an American citizen
who chose for his own personal reasons to approach members of the Pakistani
Taliban and join their cause. And like al-Qaeda, the ranks of the TTP have been
decimated by Washington’s relentless drone campaign. So Americans need not
fear that a tidal wave of Pakistani-trained bomb makers is about to hit U.S.
shores. That said, Shahzad’s plot shows that al-Qaeda’s Pakistani affiliates
are willing to expand the scope of their terrorist activities beyond Pakistan’s
borders if given half a chance. They are opportunistic and highly motivated.
The TTP is hardly the only al-Qaeda affiliate inside Pakistan with the intent,
if not always the means, to attack the United States directly. A range of
other terrorist outfits and splinter factions operate throughout Pakistan, from
the country’s largest city of Karachi to its rural heartland of Punjab. Unlike
the sparsely populated Pashtun tribal areas, it is nearly impossible to imagine
drones (American or otherwise) raining missiles upon these settled parts of the
country. Traditional tools of law enforcement and intelligence collection would
5 On Faisal Shahzad, see James Barron and Michael S. Schmidt, “From Suburban Father to a Terrorism Suspect,” New York Times, May 4, 2010, p. A1; James Barron and Sabrina Tavernise,
Daniel S Markey Page 4
