144
No Exit from Pakistan
administration officials tried to remove parts of the Berman bill they thought
would most upset relations with Pakistan (and most tie Washington’s own
hands). Along the way, they were stunned by the intransigence of Berman’s
staff.25
Later, when Pakistanis cried foul over the final version of KLB, Berman
rejected their complaints out of hand: “This is a created crisis, by people who
either haven’t read the bill or don’t want to describe it accurately, and whose
goal is either to destabilize the government or challenge some of the Pakistani
military’s priorities.”26 Since both Berman and Kerry had personally briefed
General Kayani and other Pakistani officials on the legislation, he may have
been correct to believe that, as Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid put it, “there
had clearly been ample opportunities for the army to voice any objections to
the bill months before.”27
Berman may have had principled, political, and institutional reasons to write
the bill the way he did. Pakistan’s generals may have manipulated the crisis to
gain maximum political benefit against the new civilian government. Even so,
there is no discounting the fact that the KLB rollout was a diplomatic disaster
that hurt the U.S. effort to build ties with Pakistan. It went off like a grenade
in the midst of Pakistan’s already tense civil-military standoff.
The crisis should have been avoided. Back in early May 2009, Ambassador
Holbrooke testified before Berman’s committee. In his written remarks, he
suggested that Congress should not exacerbate “the ‘trust deficit’ that plagues
our bilateral relationship. . . . Any legislation should engender the greatest level
of cooperation by winning the trust of our civilian and military partners in
Pakistan.”28
“Whether the Pakistani uproar was warranted or manufactured, it was
foreseeable,” explains Jonah Blank, who at the time of the KLB episode was
South Asia policy director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
intimately familiar with the KLB process. “In fact, it was foreseen. At the staff
level, we warned many administration officials that they needed to manage the
politics and diplomacy of the bill much better. Most, if not all, of the blowback
could have been avoided with more concerted effort ahead of time.”29
For the Obama administration, KLB was worse than irritating; it was
unnecessary. The White House would have done better without the hassle of
shepherding a major new congressional authorization bill. Ever since 1985,
25 Author conversations with House and Senate staffers, January 19–20, 2012.
26 Jane Perlez, “Pakistan Aid Places U.S. in the Midst of a Divide,” New York Times, October 12, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/world/asia/13islambad.html?scp=13
&sq=pakistan&st=nyt.
27 Ahmed Rashid, “Pakistan Civilian-Military Ties Hit New Low,” BBC, October 16, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8309532.stm.
28 Statement by Richard C. Holbrooke, “From Strategy to Implementation: The Future of the U.S.-Pakistan Relationship,” U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, May 5, 2009, http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/111/49547.pdf, p. 12.
29 Author interview with Jonah Blank, April 18, 2012.
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Great Expectations to Greater Frustrations
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when the U.S. Congress passed its last annual Foreign Assistance Authoriza-
tion Act, directives and earmarks for new U.S. foreign aid have usually been
contained in yearly foreign operations appropriations acts without separate
authorization acts.30 In other words, the Obama administration might have
skipped the KLB process altogether and secured funding directly – and with
far less fanfare – from congressional appropriation committees. Senior admin-
istration officials could also have blocked legislation if they had determined it
would be as counterproductive as it turned out to be. Or they could have taken
a more active role in anticipating the difficult diplomacy that would ensue after
the legislation was passed.
Instead, once the administration was convinced that the language in the
bill was all bark and no bite – that is, the bill made it relatively simple for
the administration to waive any of its paper thin “certifications” – Holbrooke
and company focused on the bottom line. For them, getting the money was
all-important. The assumption was that the specific language in the bill would
amount to only a minor distraction.31 That was a serious miscalculation.
A Flood of Cash
Much maligned at the outset, KLB nevertheless offered an important oppor-
tunity. The Obama administration now had a flood of cash to help grow
Pakistan’s economy, support its democratically elected government, and show
millions of its people that America could be a trusted and helpful partner in
the civilian as well as the military realm.
Turning cash into progress on any of these fronts would be the next chal-
lenge. Washington needed to answer two basic questions. First, precisely what
sorts of projects should the United States fund given its sweeping goals in Pak-
istan? The answer was not immediately evident in a country where vast needs
could easily outstrip the most generous American financial contributions. In
a country of nearly 200 million people, even KLB’s authorized $1.5 billion
per year would amount to only about $7.50 per person. Clearly, Washington
would need to prioritize its goals, to decide which sorts of projects were likely
to offer the most bang for the buck.
The second basic question had to do with the mechanisms for spending
U.S. money and implementing projects once they were selected. Who would
do the work and how would they do it? Here too, the United States had many
options. Washington could provide financial support to Pakistani government
programs, hire private contractors, partner with nongovernment organizations,
or even hire and deploy its own technical experts. While $1.5 billion would not
be nearly enough to meet every Pakistani need, it was still vastly more money
30 For the history of the Foreign Assistance Authorization Act and efforts to reform the process, see Susan B. Epstein and Matthew C. Weed, “Foreign Aid Reform: Studies and Recommendations,”
Congressional Research Service, July 28, 2009, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40102.pdf.
31 Author conversation with former State Department staffer, January 19, 2012.
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No Exit from Pakistan
than U.S. officials had been spending to date. Such a sea change would require
new personnel and new procedures.
To help answer these questions, the Obama administration appointed
Ambassador Robin Raphel as the “coordinator for non-military assistance
in
Pakistan,” a job that had not existed before her. A thirty-year veteran of the
Foreign Service, Raphel is a confident, articulate woman with an almost aris-
tocratic bearing. As befitting someone who has worked in Pakistan as well as
India, she often drapes bright South Asian shawls over her well-tailored West-
ern suits. In the Clinton administration, she served a contentious term as the
assistant secretary of state for the department’s newly minted Bureau of South
Asian Affairs. Raphel landed in hot water with Indians for her blunt comments
about Kashmir and with Afghans for her interaction with the Taliban leaders.32
After retiring from the State Department in 2005, Raphel’s professional
relationships with Pakistanis remained strong. In 2007, she was hired by the
lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates to lead a contract to represent the gov-
ernment of Pakistan in Washington. She also enjoyed close, long-standing ties
with the Clinton family. So, when Obama asked the former First Lady to take
the helm of the State Department, it was hardly surprising that Raphel might
be called back to work the Pakistan aid beat.
In September 2009, as Raphel was preparing to depart for Islamabad, she
met with a small group of Pakistan watchers at the Middle East Institute in
Washington. While each of the participants wished her the best of luck in her
new assignment, there was a strong consensus that she had embarked upon an
impossible mission. For her part, Raphel was careful to temper her ambition.
In late 2011, after having returned from a two-year stint in Islamabad,
Raphel concluded that “it was unrealistic to think we could spend such a large
amount of money so quickly.” She added, “perhaps it would have been smarter
to spread the same amount of money over a longer period because neither the
Americans nor the Pakistanis were prepared to handle it.”33 Raphel is hardly
alone in her basic conclusion.
Sadly, the KLB aid figure of $1.5 billion per year was not grounded in
an assessment of specific Pakistani development needs or America’s ability to
meet them. The figure was a grand, symbolic gesture but laden with the heavy
responsibility of considerable resources to manage. When it came down to
the practical business of delivering aid to real people and projects, the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID) was ill-prepared to design and
implement a program of such magnitude.
After decades of debilitating staffing and budget cuts, USAID lacked the
sorts of technical experts who in the 1960s and 1970s had managed such high
32 See Coll, Ghost Wars (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 328–30; Ashish Kumar Sen, “Old Pak Hand Robin Raphel Returns,” Tribune India, August 8, 2009, http://www.tribuneindia.com/
2009/20090808/world.htm#1.
33 Author conversation with Ambassador Robin Raphel, Washington, DC, October 4, 2011.
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Great Expectations to Greater Frustrations
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profile, big ticket infrastructure projects as dams or power plants that could
offer tangible displays of U.S. partnership. Instead, USAID’s focus had shifted
to service delivery (health and education) and various training programs. Even
in those areas, USAID officials were rewarded for soliciting and reviewing
proposals and granting awards to a select group of outside contractors. As a
consequence, they were far less skilled at getting out into the field to implement
projects themselves.
From the start of KLB, there was a cultural, even a philosophical, difference
between the State Department and USAID. State officials, including Holbrooke
and Raphel, tended to emphasize the political and diplomatic utility of KLB
funds. They wanted to help the Pakistani people, but also to do so in ways
that would make the government more credible with its public and thus more
able to cooperate with the United States on immediate issues like fighting
terrorism. Most USAID officials, on the other hand, viewed development work
in humanitarian, broadly apolitical terms. Properly crafted aid projects, from
the traditional USAID point of view, would bear fruit in terms of alleviating
poverty and stabilizing the society over the long term. They did not even need
to wear an American label in order to serve Washington’s core interests.
Holbrooke, in particular, had no patience for this USAID approach in Pak-
istan. He was in a hurry to shake things up, convinced that the prior admin-
istration had wasted billions of dollars in projects that had failed to help
the government or improve Pakistani perceptions of the United States. Like
many Pakistanis (and more than a few Americans), he railed against USAID’s
dependence on expensive private contractors. He vowed to funnel a far greater
percentage of aid dollars into Pakistan’s own government and local businesses
rather than lining the pockets of Washington’s “Beltway bandits.” Holbrooke
and Raphel also sought to focus U.S. spending on several critical needs, like
Pakistan’s infrastructure, in the belief that otherwise the money would be
spread too thin to make a meaningful difference or to attract the attention of
the Pakistani public.
USAID reacted defensively but lacked a political champion of Holbrooke’s
stature or energy.34 Nevertheless, USAID personnel waged a rearguard cam-
paign against him, citing the disruptive nature of his demands. One USAID
economist in Islamabad cabled back to Washington that even if Holbrooke’s
“worthy goals” could all be achieved over time, without a reasonable tran-
sition period the desire to spend such huge sums quickly, smartly, and
through all-Pakistani channels would end up representing “contradictory
objectives.”35
34 USAID did not even have an administrator in the Obama administration until December 31, 2009.
35 “Dissent Channel: Contradictory Objectives for the USAID/Pakistan Program,” letter from C. Stuart Callison to Anne-Marie Slaughter, October 2, 2009, http://i.usatoday.net/news/pdf/
Dissent%20on%20Holbrooke%20FATA%20actions.pdf.
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148
No Exit from Pakistan
Holbrooke dismissed the excuses offered by sluggish bureaucrats. “He
thought everything we were doing was a failure,” recalled one U.S. aid official.36
Befitting his Balkans-era nickname, “the bulldozer” rolled over any lesser mor-
tal who stood in the way. To ram home his disdain for business-as-usual in
U.S. assistance programs in Pakistan, he inserted himself in the review process
for ongoing projects and threatened to cancel some contracts.
After his untimely death on December 13, 2010, Holbrooke’s admirers
portrayed him as a tough, terrifically effective political operator.37 Yet as
one of Holbrooke’s close friends, the former New York Times correspon-
dent and
president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb,
put it, “Only a novel could render his mythic contradictions – his stun-
ning ability to see into the hearts and minds of others, but his blindness to
how they saw him; his unrivaled gift for knocking down doors and walking
smack into them.”38 Gelb’s assessment rings true for Holbrooke’s behavior in
Pakistan.
Holbrooke was right to see grave failings in USAID’s Pakistan mission. He
zeroed in on problems that plagued American aid efforts there and elsewhere
around the world. But the fact remained that neither the Pakistani govern-
ment nor local contractors and NGOs were prepared to manage new flows of
American money or implement big programs overnight. They did not know
how to work with USAID – or vice versa. By picking fights and belittling staff
in Islamabad’s USAID mission and throughout the embassy, Holbrooke made
enemies of the people who were on the ground to implement new programs.
There was dissent, turmoil, and more than the usual turnover of personnel.
Delays ensued. Given Washington’s grand promises of assistance and the Pak-
istani skepticism that already prevailed about U.S. intentions, such delays were
costly.
Holbrooke’s bureaucratic wrangling and USAID’s lack of experience in
working through governments and other local institutions were not the only
reasons for KLB’s slow start. In late summer 2010, Pakistan suffered its worst
floods since 1929.39 One-fifth of the country – a piece of land the size of Italy –
was inundated, and some 20 million Pakistanis were affected. Many new plans
for American-funded projects were also washed away. Instead, the United
36 Tom Wright, “Setbacks Plague U.S. Aid to Pakistan,” Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703583404576080113980804354.html.
37 Holbrooke died after emergency surgery failed to repair a torn aorta. See Daniel Dombey, “Holbrooke Dies after Heart Surgery,” Financial Times, December 14, 2010, http://www.cbsnews
.com/8301-504763_162-20025578-10391704.html.
38 Leslie H. Gelb, “The Richard Holbrooke I Knew,” Daily Beast, January 2, 2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/02/leslie-h-gelb-on-the-late-richard-holbrooke s-contributions-to-foreign-policy.html.
Daniel S Markey Page 31
