by Shuja Nawaz
25 February Afghanistan peace talks begin in Doha, Qatar, between the United States and the Taliban. Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special envoy and the Taliban founder Abdul Ghani Baradar lead the discussions. Baradar was earlier released from custody by Pakistan.
26 February In response to the Pulwama attack, Indian Air Force aircraft attack a site in Balakot across the Kashmir Line of Control and claim to have killed 300-350 ‘terrorists’ at a religious seminary.
27 February Pakistan claims no damage or human losses and takes foreign journalists subsequently to the site of the attack. It retaliates with an air attack across the LOC in Jammu and Kashmir without claiming any Indian casualties. IAF aircraft fly to meet the PAF attack and loses one aircraft, with its pilot being captured by Pakistan. He is subsequently released as a gesture of goodwill by the Pakistan prime minister, Imran Khan.
5 March Pakistan takes into custody members of the JeM, including relative of the Jaish leader Masood Azhar. It seeks Indian evidence for support of these individuals for the Pulwama attack.
29 April-May 3 Afghanistan convenes a Loya Jirga to pursue peace but the Taliban refuses to attend. Meanwhile, direct US–Taliban talks continue, focused on four key issues: a Taliban guarantee that it will not allow fighters to use Afghanistan as a base to launch attacks outside the country, the withdrawal of US and Coalition Forces, an intra-Afghan dialogue and a permanent ceasefire.
3 July, 2019 IMF approves $6 billion programme to help Pakistan.
10-11 July Pakistan joins trilateral US, Russia, China talks on the Afghanistan peace process in Beijing. The trio says, ‘They believe that Pakistan can play an important role in facilitating peace in Afghanistan.’ Earlier the Taliban sent a team to Beijing. Khalilzad says he is aiming for a September deadline on an agreement.
20-23 July Prime Minister Imran Khan visits Washington DC, principally to meet President Donald J. Trump and congressional leaders, and brings his army chief and DG-ISI to connect with US military counterparts. Trump appreciates Pakistan’s help in Afghanistan and promises renewal of ties and financial flows, provided Pakistan takes further positive actions. He also says he had offered to mediate or arbitrate between India and Pakistan on Kashmir at the request of Indian PM Narendra Modi. India’s Ministry of External Affairs denies that. US State Department later walks back third-party intervention in Pakistan–India bilateral issues. US–Pakistan apparent reset raises Pakistani hopes for the future.
5 August India announces the end of Articles 370 and 35A that accorded special constitutional status for Kashmir. Deems it an internal matter for India. Pakistan objects and tries to involve the United Nations on the basis of historical bilateral discussions between India and Pakistan. Tensions rise on the Line of Control with exchanges of fire.
13 August The US and Afghan Taliban are near a deal to end fighting in Afghanistan and allow US troops to withdraw, as well as intra-Afghan talks to proceed.
19 August Prime Minister Imran Khan announces a full-term three-year extension for Army Chief General Bajwa in light of ‘the regional security environment’.
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Agency for International Development USAID
Border Coordination Centres BCCs
Central Intelligence Agency CIA
Chief of General Staff CGS
China–Pakistan Economic Cooperation Corridor CPEC
Coalition Support Funds CSF
Counter-insurgency COIN
Counterterrorism CT
Defence Housing Authority DHA
Department of Defense (US) DoD
Director General Inter-Services Intelligence DG-ISI
Director General Military Operations DGMO
Director General DG
Economic Affairs Division EAD
Foreign Military Financing FMF
Foreign Military Sales FMS
Forward Operating Base FOB
Frontier Corps FC
Frontier Force FF
General Officer Commanding GOC
Improvised Explosive Device IED
Inspector General Training and Evaluation IGT&E
Inspector General IG
International Military Education and Training IMET
International Security Assistance Force ISAF
Inter-Services Public Relations ISPR
Inter-Services Intelligence ISI
Joint Chiefs of Staff JCS
Joint Special Operations Command JSOC
Junior Commissioned Officer JCO
Low-intensity Conflict LIC
Memorandum of Understanding MoU
Ministry of Defence (Pakistan) MoD
National Action Plan NAP
National Counter Terrorism Authority NACTA
National Counterterrorism Center NCTC
National Defence University NDU
National Directorate of Security NDS
National Disaster Management Authority NDMA
National Security Adviser NSA
National Security Council NSC
National Training Mission, Afghanistan NTMA
Non-commissioned officer NCO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO
Office of Defense Representative in Pakistan ODRP
Pakistan Military Academy PMA
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz PML-N
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf PTI
Navy Sea, Air and Land Team SEAL
Special Operations Command SOCOM
Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan SRAP
Strategic Plans Division SPD
Supreme Allied Commander, Europe SACEUR
Tactical Exercises Without Troops TEWTs
United States Central Command CENTCOM
Preface
Salvaging a Misalliance
The US–Pakistan relationship has often been compared to a bad marriage. Some have also described the relationship using the Chinese and Japanese sayings about an estranged couple that share the same bed but dream different dreams. It has been a true misalliance that is hurtling towards a bad break-up, but one that needs to be rescued for the sake of both parties and for the region in which Pakistan is located and where it can play a crucial role.
The French word ‘mesalliance’ was borrowed by George Bernard Shaw’s brilliant satirical play on the class battle in British society. It was based on an unequal partnership between the daughter of a businessman who made his money selling underwear, and the son of an upper-crust British proconsul in an Indian province. Indeed, the Shavian commentary from the father of the boy may also apply to the case of Pakistan and even Trumpian America today: ‘Democracy reads well; but it doesn’t act well.’1
In many ways, the seventy-year-old US–Pakistan relationship, with its many ups and downs, alternately filled with both tantrums and fulsome praise for each other, has become a tragicomedy on a regional political stage, with numerous bad actors and confused heroes and heroines. Meanwhile, the sorry chorus of their hoi polloi tries to make sense of the ‘tangled web’ that the often-cynical leadership of both countries has woven. Pakistan continues to struggle to craft a democracy, as its successive governments continue to battle for supremacy with the military, even while they pretend to be ‘on the same page’. It also faces a hostile, much larger India to the east that continues to inform its security policy and its regional relationships. The US fails to fully appreciate this aspect of Pakistan’s existential struggle. The internal Battle for Pakistan forms one side of a triangle of turmoil that reflects the country’s roller-coaster relationship with the US. The other two sides are the US relationships with the civil and the military in Pakistan.
Today, as at critical junctures in the past seventy years, the US is trying to shape a new global strategy that involves preparing for economic and even military conflict with potential enemies in distant parts of the world. China is one major target of the administration of President Donald J. Trump, reflected in the Indo-Pacific alliance with India and preceded
by the pivot to the Pacific of President Barack H. Obama. The US brushed off all Pakistani concerns about its tilt towards India. Russia may be another US target, though Trump, whatever his reasons, remains silent on that very real and growing conflict. The US persists in stumbling into the darkness of an ill-defined ‘war on terror’, as it struggles to place the Band-Aid of military intervention on numerous wars across the world against irregular forces of extremist Islamic warriors. It is trying to fight ideologies with military weapons. And failing. At the same time, it is preparing to confront poor Central American civilians attempting to breach its southern frontier in search of economic and political freedom. For seventeen years, the US struggled to find a direction in the seemingly endless and losing war inside Afghanistan. How it manages its military exit out of that battlefield will determine its relationship with Pakistan, Afghanistan’s larger neighbour to the east, and the US’s role in greater South Asia.
The US appears to have chosen the path of regional partnerships with powerful surrogates in pursuit of its global aims and to help stabilize or police regions. A closer relationship with India in the context of the US antipathy towards China on the global stage, and India’s tremendous potential as a rising economic power, a market for American goods and services and the world’s major arms importer, all give great impetus to the US courtship. This de-hyphenation of the India–Pakistan relationship and the US focus on economics and military cooperation with India colour Pakistan’s view of its American ‘friends’. Fear of India and its hegemonic potential in South Asia informs Pakistan’s paranoia about the growing US–India relationship.
Against this background, Pakistan has tried unsuccessfully to maintain a relationship with the US. But, its own regional dynamics and the unending conflict with India has made it a sometime ally of the US, often at odds with emerging US policy aims in the neighbourhood. Both the US and Pakistan depend heavily on each other, but periodically have lapses of memory and judgement that allow the relationship to become transitional and mercenary rather than truly strategic and long-lasting. As Peter Lavoy, an experienced regional hand, explained to me, ‘The problem in Pakistan . . . is that the expediency often trumps the more considerate long-term benefits.’2 This could well apply to the US too. In spades.
The US, a superpower, has yet to exhibit the full gravitas and sense of history that is demanded by its position as a modern-day Global Gulliver. Its goals often appear to the world to be fixed on the near horizon of the next domestic election, rather than distant, demanding and persistent global needs. It calls the shots on the world stage, yet it keeps changing the goal posts to its own detriment and thus confounds friends and enemies alike. Over the past two decades or so, for example, it professed deep friendship for Pakistan, elevating it to a non-NATO ally status, but then proceeded to bomb its territory from drones in an undeclared war, oddly enough with the connivance of Pakistan’s own governments. In the process, it lost the trust of the Pakistani population. And its troops invaded Pakistani territory at will since 2001, notably in the border region with Afghanistan at Angoor Ada and Salala. In May 2011, its forces went into the heart of Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
Pakistan, meanwhile, struggles to define itself. Harking back to its founder’s vision of a modern and tolerant polity and paying lip service to Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan, its people and leaders have yet to clearly define what country Jinnah wanted to place on the map of the world in 1947—an Islamic state or a more liberal entity where Muslims could pursue their lives alongside other religious groups. Its people are now increasingly besieged by highly contentious and divisive arguments of dogmatic Islamic sects trying to expand their influence beyond the mosque. Recent governments have chosen not to challenge the extremist Islamists who use religion to gain a political foothold and are eroding the writ of the state. Even the powerful Pakistani military has been seen by many as abetting this behaviour in two successive governments, becoming party to written agreements that conceded to a new Islamist group known as the Tehreek Labaik Pakistan, a group that celebrated the killing of the governor of the Punjab for having committed blasphemy by seeking justice for a Christian woman accused of having insulted Prophet Muhammad. Leadership of the Tehreek Labaik Pakistan publicly preached the murder of the Chief Justice of Pakistan, and mutiny in the armed services against the army chief, whom it was accusing of being a non-Muslim. And it remained at large till late 2018, when the new government of Imran Khan attempted to rein it in. But the final chapter of that story has yet to be written.
Pakistani society is riven by linguistic, provincial, caste (yes, caste or ‘zaat’, often inherited from its Indian societal origins) and class distinctions. The military remains the strongest political force and source of continuity and security in the country. However, the state has been losing its monopoly on weaponry as an instrument of power, allowing the formation of armed militant groups, some even with the blessing of the state. And, the military’s leadership, even when it means well, does not have the ability to effect massive societal change without the change emerging from the heart of the general population itself. Pakistan’s major political parties often are family businesses or autocratically run enterprises, largely intent on making money and often using that wealth to purchase elections and overseas real estate. Their interests and those of the military clash frequently. The better-organized and disciplined military tends to win those battles. Indeed, in the words of a sympathetic US observer, ‘It is like a huge tree that does not allow other plants to grow under its shade!’ Pakistan also tends to treat the US as a gullible partner that can be fooled to part with its money in return for vague promises that may or not be fulfilled.
Located at a strategically important point on the map, Pakistan inhabits a tough neighbourhood. It abuts Afghanistan, Central Asia, Russia, China, Iran, India and the Arabian Peninsula. It trumpets its location as an asset, but its myopic leadership has, as yet, refused to take advantage of its position as a potential trade hub and source of economic and political stability for the neighbourhood, especially for its benighted cousins in war-torn and landlocked Afghanistan.
The Pakistani people are resilient, hardworking and adventurous. They have spread throughout the world and have done extremely well, whether it is in building up the economies of the Gulf States, or in business and politics in Britain, Europe or the US. Contemporary Pakistan has given the world some of the best poetry, plays and fiction in the recent past. There is much to celebrate Pakistan; beyond the seemingly ubiquitous images of bearded terrorists or angry mobs burning the American flag. The majority of Pakistanis are honest and enterprising. But their leadership has often not served them well.
There is much that can bring the US and Pakistan together. The frontier spirit that is embodied in the striving expatriate Pakistani men and women. The rebellious youth, brilliant women, path-breaking scientists and intellectuals operating on a global level. Their spirit cannot be bottled up. Indeed, the dreams of the people of America and Pakistan do intersect despite the hurdles their governments keep throwing in their paths. The challenge is to make their respective dreams and realities converge, inside both countries, and between them, improving the possibilities for greater trade, travel, educational and cultural exchanges. For the longer run, the US will be looking for stable partners in the Near East and Central Asian region, as sectarian conflicts create conflagrations in the Arab world and between Shia and Sunni Islam. Pakistan could become one such partner, provided the US works with the Pakistani people more than with corrupt and self-serving politicians to help ordinary Pakistanis achieve their aspirations. Here, the US can revisit its early relationship with Pakistan when it connected the people of the two countries together with exchange of expertise, technology and knowledge, while helping build for the long term much-needed infrastructure and educational institutions.
What Do Pakistanis Need?
In order to create a prosperous and stable Pakistan, its people need an enab
ling environment that gives them room to breathe and the tools to build their lives, unfettered by the heavy and dead hand of government and regulations and laws that are rooted in the stifling and dusty history of colonial rule or increasingly buried under religious obscurantism. No wonder they do well outside Pakistan and no wonder that the huge informal sector of the economy operates so effortlessly and well outside the reach of the taxman in Pakistan today. Its biggest asset and most critical part of security is its people. Then why has it invested less in them than it has in acquiring unproductive debt or in physical or military security? The symbiotic relationship between human development and security needs to be better understood for both sectors to be properly developed, so Pakistan can become the great state that its founders envisaged. An uneducated and growing population cannot help sustain a growing military, nor contribute to economic development in general.
Pakistan also needs to learn to live with its neighbours and to trade with them more than it does with distant friends. This will need much more than the ritualistic lip service that this goal has garnered. The opportunity cost of lost time in pursuing this goal is very high in terms of forgone benefits to the economies of the region. A connected South Asia remains Pakistan’s best hope for growth and development. It cannot continue to rely on the kindness of friends around the world, nor the conditionality-based largesse of international financial institutions. Neither can Pakistan be seen as the petri dish for the growth of militancy and terrorism across borders and, worse, within its own society.
It has the wherewithal to become a stronger and more vibrant society. A politically awakened population, a large and enterprising middle class, a strong business community, a powerful and disciplined military, a critical mass of urban and educated men and women, and more than 60 per cent of its population that is still classified as youth. More than 150 million persons in the total population of 210 million now have a cell phone.3 The Pakistani middle class is now around 50 million, largely urban, and generally invests in greater education for its male and female children.4 If Pakistan makes the right policy choices and investments, it could become an important part of a developed South and Central Asia, the potential centre of gravity of global stability and development. This is the Peace Dividend that it must seek from itself and its leaders. If Pakistan gets its own house in order, its friends abroad will come knocking to help further. The counterfactual is unimaginable and unacceptable.
