Daniel S Markey
Page 47
relationship with Islamabad. Succumbing to that temptation would represent
a tragic repetition of the already costly mistakes of the past.
comprehensive cooperation
The third option for Washington would be to attempt another round of com-
prehensive cooperation with Pakistan. Unlike a military-first approach, this
would represent a more ambitious strategy of the sort advocated during the
early days of the Obama administration.
Congressman Howard Berman and Senator John Kerry explained the basic
logic behind comprehensive cooperation in 2009, when Congress rolled out
its plan to triple nonmilitary aid to Pakistan. As they put it, their intent was
to establish a “foundation for strengthened partnership between the United
States and Pakistan, based on a shared commitment to improving the living
conditions of the people of Pakistan through strengthening democracy and the
rule of law, sustainable economic development, and combating terrorism and
extremism.”45
Comprehensive cooperation takes seriously the notion that the only way to
achieve long-term security goals in Pakistan is for its people to build a stable,
more healthy society. Measures short of that are, at best, stopgaps. At worst,
narrow U.S. policies designed to meet immediate needs actually contribute to
Pakistan’s instability.
Comprehensive cooperation has few fans left in Washington. The trouble
begins with frustration over Pakistan’s role in fighting terrorism and the Afghan
45 Howard L. Berman and John F. Kerry, “Joint Explanatory Statement, Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009,” October 14, 2009, http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/joint-explanatory-statement-enhanced-partnership-pakistan-act-2009/p20422.
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America’s Options
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war, but it does not end there. Smart policy analysts ask whether Washington
actually has any realistic chance of “fixing” Pakistan and, for that matter,
whether Pakistanis themselves want the country to be fixed. The answer is
complicated and uncertain, but prior chapters of this book offer important
clues as to what would represent unrealistic American aspirations and what
might still be gained from a strategy of comprehensive cooperation.
What is clear from the Obama administration’s attempt to ramp up civilian
assistance to Pakistan, to maintain close ties with the military, and to engage in
a series of diplomatic exchanges or “strategic partnership talks” is that neither
U.S. dollars nor rhetoric can turn the tide quickly in Pakistan. Billions in U.S.
assistance appear to have carried little weight, either with Pakistan’s leaders
or its public. Worse, as Chapter 3 shows, the experience of U.S.-Pakistan
interaction over decades has contributed to three strands of anti-Americanism,
each of which throws up new barriers to cooperation of the sort that might
once have been possible. The post-9/11 era has proven no different. If anything,
comprehensive cooperation is harder to envision today than it was in 2001.
Pakistan is too big, too broken, and too hostile to American influence to be
brought into a cooperative, stabilizing U.S. embrace overnight.
Perhaps, however, the United States can successfully tip the scales in favor of
Pakistan’s reformers over its revolutionaries or build incentives that encourage
greater security and diplomatic cooperation even if Washington and Islamabad
never completely see eye to eye. When the bar is set just a bit lower − at tipping
the scales in ongoing Pakistani political debates rather than wholesale transfor-
mation − comprehensive cooperation begins to look like a more sophisticated
and realistic proposition. Even so, if the United States opts to take another
crack at comprehensive cooperation with Pakistan, Washington would need
to change the way it handles all aspects of the relationship, from politics and
security to assistance and regional diplomacy.
On the political front, Washington would seek a more constructive role
in the context of Pakistan’s civil-military imbalance, quite unlike the stance
prescribed by a military-first style of cooperation. This need not require a
confrontational approach toward the military, which would only jeopardize
cooperation in the near term. It would, however, mean staking out a principled
and public position on the U.S. preference for elected civilian rule. The purpose
of such rhetoric would be to convince Pakistan’s own democrats that they have
an ally in Washington, not a pro-military adversary.
But declaring U.S. principles won’t go far enough when it comes to defend-
ing civilian rule in Pakistan. The real way for Pakistan’s civilians to assert
themselves against the over-dominant military is to demonstrate that they are
actually capable of governing in ways that bring tangible benefits to large seg-
ments of the population. If a civilian government proved itself in this way, it
would also muster public support sufficient to keep the military in its barracks.
This suggests that as part of a comprehensive cooperation strategy, Wash-
ington should pay at least as much attention to the practical performance
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No Exit from Pakistan
of Pakistan’s civilian leaders as to their florid rhetoric about democratic val-
ues. Washington should never be in the business of propping up repressive
Pakistani leaders – military or civilian – who have little inclination for improv-
ing and reforming the country just because they spout “pro-American” rhetoric.
Nor should Pakistan’s idealistic reformers feel – as they often have – that Amer-
ica stands in their way. The aim of comprehensive cooperation would be to
improve Pakistan’s prospects over the long haul, not to install unpopular Amer-
ican mouthpieces in Islamabad.
To be sure, this is much more easily said than done. Pakistan’s elites will
always be better placed to forge ties with American officials, better equipped
to argue their case to American audiences, and, one way or another, to shut
out other voices of opposition and reform. One way to improve Washington’s
effort would be for U.S. officials to focus on a set of internationally accepted
standards related to good governance, such as progress on the United Nations’
Millennium Development Goals related to education, among others. If U.S.
assistance were conditioned on progress in these areas, or if its disbursement
of U.S. funds required matching Pakistani commitments, incentive structures
would be improved on both sides.
Rather than doling out U.S. aid on a tight timetable as a symbolic gesture of
support, Washington would make the same resources available over a longer
timeframe, and only to Pakistani government agencies and nongovernmental
organizations
(NGOs) that demonstrate success and can make the case that
their work would benefit from outside assistance. Many Pakistani reformers
would appreciate a transparent aid process, one that holds Pakistani feet to
the fire.
On the security front, many of the cooperative efforts that Washington
would undertake in a military-first approach could also be a part of a compre-
hensive strategy. As in the past, American-made high-technology weapons and
U.S. financial support would be used to win influence with Pakistan’s generals
by demonstrating the tangible benefits of partnership with America.
Unlike a military-first approach, however, U.S. officials would need to tem-
per their dealings with the generals in ways that encourage greater involvement
by Pakistani civilians in defense and foreign policy making. The balance is not
an easy one to strike, particularly when Pakistan’s army is primed to swat
down American political interference. The process would have to be gradual
and subtle. That said, comprehensive cooperation would not survive a return
to military dictatorship in Pakistan, and U.S. officials would need to make that
point painfully clear to their Pakistani counterparts.
Beyond the standard military-to-military cooperation, U.S. officials would
also attempt to work with Pakistani civilian police forces and even with citizen
groups like the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) of Karachi. CPLC
was founded in 1990 to help address a range of citizen concerns that were
not being handled by the police. The organization maintains extensive crime
databases, tracking everything from car thefts to cell phone snatchings. It works
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America’s Options
225
directly with families of kidnapping victims to rescue their loved ones. In late
2011, one of these investigations netted the head of the Pakistani Taliban in
Karachi.46
If Washington could establish a cooperative working relationship with
CPLC, American technical and financial assistance could advance the group’s
crime-fighting agenda. Given the extent to which Pakistan’s terrorists and mil-
itant groups have found refuge in megacities like Karachi, cooperative U.S.
relationships with groups like CPLC would then offer an obvious opportunity
to enhance America’s counterterror reach throughout Pakistan. Obviously,
such relationships would first require the consent of Pakistan’s civilian and
military leadership to get off the ground.
What then about U.S. aid to Pakistan? Of the three strategies considered
here, only comprehensive cooperation takes up the challenge of translating U.S.
taxpayer dollars into greater stability inside Pakistan. To pursue this ambitious
venture, Washington first needs tangible evidence that its aid offers the prospect
of bringing meaningful change.
One example from the past demonstrates how American aid to Pakistan
can pay off many times over. U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) funds helped to establish the Lahore University of Management
Sciences (LUMS) in the 1980s. It is now one of the nation’s best schools.
That investment may not have won a great deal of public recognition, but it
did indirectly nurture generations of top Pakistani students who have since
gone on to leadership positions in a wide range of fields. Similarly, American
contributions to India’s various Institutes of Technology in the 1960s helped
to build the incubators of computer wizardry that have done so much to drive
India’s recent economic growth.
The challenge rests in improving USAID’s ability to identify new LUMS-
type investments: programs that leverage resources to bring about lasting and
significant change. Unless USAID retools itself, and quickly, Washington would
probably have a better shot at success by channeling at least a portion of its aid
dollars through other organizations with greater on-the-ground experience that
can devote more time and energy to the task. One possibility would be to place
U.S. aid into a trust fund managed with help from the World Bank or another
international organization with a more consistent presence in Pakistan. That
would offer a transparent, accountable way to ease the workload and danger
for USAID staff. In addition, a trust fund would operate outside the annual
U.S. budget cycle. As a consequence, the fund’s programming would be less
politicized and more reliable over the long run.47
46 Author conversation with Ahmed Chinoy, CPLC chief, May 2012; for more, see “Three
Alleged Taliban Militants Killed in Karachi Encounter,” The News, December 6, 2011, http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=10806&Cat=13.
47 For a version of this argument, see C. Christine Fair, “A Better Bargain for Foreign Aid to Pakistan,” Washington Post, May 30, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2009/05/29/AR2009052902620.html.
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No Exit from Pakistan
Another option would be to invest in a variety of “portfolio managers”
that would diversify the risk to USAID and take responsibility for making the
most of its money. One small but impressive example of such an organization
is the Acumen Fund. As Acumen’s visionary leader, Jacqueline Novogratz,
explained during a visit to Washington in 2009, the fund follows a model
of “patient capital,” which means that Acumen is not looking to turn quick
profits.48 Instead, its goal is to use donor funds to maximize social benefits while
building businesses that eventually make money. Part of the reason Novogratz
came to Washington in 2009 was to see whether USAID would be willing to
help Acumen expand its Pakistan portfolio. Unfortunately, Acumen has so far
come away from its many conversations with USAID empty-handed.49
The good news is that groups like Acumen have found a number of Pakistani
projects worth supporting. Progress is indeed possible in Pakistan, but not
always at the speed or in the manner that Americans might hope.
In 1996, a Pakistani-born graduate of Wharton Business School, Roshaneh
Zafar, founded the Kashf Foundation, Pakistan’s first microfinance bank.
Building on the model established by the famous Grameen Bank in Bangladesh,
Kashf innovated by directing its tiny loans – up to about a $100 at a time – to
women and by working in cities, where microfinance banks had never before
succeeded.
Kashf’s initial strategy worked, at least until 2008, when a massive bout
of loan delinquency brought Kashf to its knees. As Chief Operating Officer
Kamran Azim explained in 2012, newly elected civilian politicians oppor-
tunistically colluded with borrowers, telling them that they did not need to
repay Kashf if they would pay a fraction of what they owed to the politicians
>
instead.50 Others suggest that Kashf managed the crisis poorly, and that
inadequate oversight made the organization susceptible to this crisis in the
first place.51
Either way, rather than giving up, the leaders of Kashf decided to try out a
new lending process. Instead of granting tiny loans to individuals with minimal
oversight, they decided to give slightly larger loans to female-owned businesses
and treat the loan more like an investment, collecting additional information
and collateral at the outset, monitoring progress, and providing simple business
training courses to encourage effective practices. The new loans would run into
the hundreds of dollars, enabling clients to buy things like sewing machines or
livestock.
48 Author conversation, June 4, 2009. For more, see Jacqueline Novogratz, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World (Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books, 2009) and http://www.acumenfund.org.
49 Author conversation with Acumen officials, Karachi and Lahore, May 2012.
50 Author conversation, Lahore, May 24, 2012.
51 Roshaneh Zafar addresses this issue in her essay, “The Conundrum of Microfinance Growth in Pakistan,” April 2012, p. 19, http://www.kashf.org/administrator/attachment/file/Publications/
TheConundrumofMicrofinanceGrowthinPakistan-RoshanehZafar.pdf.
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America’s Options
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In the winding lanes of urban Lahore, the Kashf branch office – just a small,
unremarkable if slightly shabby building – is a busy place. Women arrive,
usually accompanied by husbands or fathers, to apply for loans. They fill out a
short worksheet designed to help Kashf personnel assess whether their business
plans are viable. All of the information is then keyed into a nearby computer
connected to a remote server and loan database.
Nearby, just off a dusty alleyway is the simple two-room home of a Kashf
borrower. Newly married, she lives with her husband and mother-in-law. They
are retailers of ladies’ undergarments. The model is simple: buy wholesale and
resell door to door so that modest neighbors need not venture out of their