by Shuja Nawaz
Pakistan believed it had done enough to clear the border areas of militant training grounds and sanctuaries and that it could not afford to alienate the Pakhtun tribals who comprised the Afghan Taliban. It saw them as potentially less hospitable to a surging Indian presence in the region, and especially in Afghanistan. The Haqqani Network, previously based in North Waziristan and later believed to be headquartered in Kurram Agency, were identified by the US forces as the main instigators of high-profile attacks in Kabul. Meanwhile, the Taliban leadership, known as the Quetta Shura, was reported to be using Balochistan and even Karachi as its base.
Perhaps under the influence of his new and aggressive NSA, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who favoured relations with India, the ‘sworn enemy’ of the Pakistanis, President Trump took a strong anti-Pakistan turn. McMaster argued with Chief of Staff Reince Preibus over the need to give a grand welcome for India PM Narendra Modi, including a weekend at Camp David. Modi wanted to go to Camp David and have dinner, bond with Trump. ‘It’s not in the cards,’ Preibus told McMaster. ‘We’re just going to do dinner here. It’s what the President wants.’
‘What the fuck?’ McMaster blew up. ‘It’s India, man. It’s fucking India.’ He understood the strategic importance of India, a sworn enemy of Pakistan. Modi got a ‘no-frills’ White House cocktail reception instead. 2
But, after his NSC briefing by McMaster’s team during the Christmas break, President Trump got McMaster’s message and captured the essence of the complaint against Pakistan in a Tweet on New Year’s Day 2018.
‘The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years,’ Trump tweeted on Monday morning, ‘and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!’ 3
He conflated aid with reimbursements under the CSF given to Pakistan to cover its expenses in aid of the war in Afghanistan. But so did every other American leader.
Interestingly, eight years earlier, these were the same factors identified by Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in describing how the US viewed this relationship in a famous note that he had handed to President Obama during a White House meeting in October 2010. 4 So, this was not news to the Pakistanis. But it was not something they wished to hear from the new American president.
Pakistan immediately rejected the Trump assertion but chose not to retaliate by cutting off US access to Afghanistan by land and air. Blocking the air route would have effectively closed US support for the land war in Afghanistan but it would have created an immediate rupture in the relationship between the two so-called allies. Pakistan was caught on the back foot though, since it had not taken any proactive steps to forestall US action in the whole year since Trump took office. Wishful thinking, and a belief that the US would come around to Pakistan’s point of view, in order to benefit from Pakistan’s strategic location, coloured the Pakistani calculations. It chose to take a methodical and measured approach to responding to Trump. But the US and its allies began to tighten the screws, after some years of patience on the part of President Obama, who, according to a senior White House adviser on the region, ‘repeatedly and steadfastly refused to address the US grievances’: (1) The release of Dr Shakeel Afridi, who was jailed by Pakistan, though he had helped in the search for bin Laden; (2) ‘Talibexit’, or the reconciliation with the Afghan Taliban that would allow the US to exit Afghanistan with some honour; and (3) nuclear issues, including the steady development of long-range nuclear-capable missiles, as well as so-called tactical nuclear weapons.
The Pakistani approach to Trump’s broadside against Pakistan was muted, almost non-existent. It ran counter to US–Pakistani history, especially as it is understood in Pakistan.
Historical Ties
Both Pakistan and the US have had their own reasons for establishing an alliance since Pakistan became an independent state in 1947. Indeed, the US was the superpower ally of choice for Pakistan as it looked for security against a larger and actively hostile neighbour India to its east. The Pakistani fear that the avowedly secular but predominantly Hindu India would throttle the newborn Muslim state of Pakistan was founded on the narrative that India pressured, with the active connivance of the British Governor General Lord Mountbatten, the Hindu ruler of the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir to accede to India. The delay by the ruler of Kashmir in announcing his accession led to an incursion from Pakistani tribals with support from some second-tier Pakistani officers at army headquarters. The government and the Pakistan Army (still under command of British officers at the upper ranks) were late into the battle for Kashmir, while India had already airlifted troops into Srinagar. 5 An unfinished war ensued. The subsequent subdivision of Kashmir into areas controlled by India and Pakistan was the cause of continuous conflicts. India also ceased the transfer of military and other assets to Pakistan under the term of independence from British rule. India and Pakistan shared the Indus River basin and the five rivers of the Punjab (a Persian word meaning five rivers). ‘Eight months after Partition . . . India decided to cut off the flow of some of these waters from the Pakistani canals in order to divert them into its own parched areas.’ 6 Pakistan’s India Paranoia Syndrome became an abiding condition as a result of these actions.
The US needed partners in a global and regional alliance against the spread of the influence of the Soviet Union. Pakistan became a more than willing partner in that alliance that tied together Turkey and Pakistan, and to some extent Iran, to protect Middle Eastern oil against the Soviets. So, military needs became the bedrock of the alliance between Pakistan and the US, based on Pakistan’s strategic location and its professional armed forces that were arguably among the best in the Muslim World. The US was fully aware that Pakistan’s expanding military and equipment needs were designed for use in defending itself against India. But it needed an alliance in a Cold War in which India ostensibly had chosen to take the path of neutrality while consummating military deals with the Soviet Union and, initially, political ties with China too. Later, as the first and only Muslim nuclear-armed state, Pakistan acquired additional heft. The US persisted in the Pakistan relationship with its eyes wide open. Pakistan took full advantage of that. Now that was being held against Pakistan by a combative new US president with limited knowledge of and interest in history or foreign policy.
The perennial question that was asked over the decades is what appeared in a New York Times editorial in 2015, when the Obama administration decided to withhold aid to Pakistan: ‘Is Pakistan Worth America’s Investment?’ The nub of that editorial was:
Since 9/11, the United States has provided Pakistan with billions of dollars, mostly in military aid, to help fight extremists. There are many reasons to have doubts about the investment. Still, it is in America’s interest to maintain assistance—at a declining level—at least for the time being. But much depends on what the money will be used for. One condition for new aid should be that Pakistan do more for itself—by cutting back on spending for nuclear weapons and requiring its elites to pay taxes.
Doubts about the aid center on Pakistan’s army, which has long played a double game, accepting America’s money while enabling some militant groups, including members of the Afghan Taliban who have been battling American and Afghan troops in Afghanistan. 7
Behind this accountant approach to aid was the obvious calculation that the purpose of US aid to Pakistan was to get military help in fulfilling the strategic aims of the US in the region. But it was also based on the view that US aid was a major determinant of Pakistan’s economic development and financial stability. This was a false assumption, based on an inaccurate assessment of Pakistan’s own economic resources, its access to other sources of funding, its regional strategic calculations and needs, and the US inability to remember its own historical relationship with Pakistan. To wit, the US got the most of the relationship when it did not overtly tie strings to it
s aid to Pakistan and when it helped make Pakistan stronger as an economy and polity. As a corollary to this approach, the US laid the grounds of mistrust among the Pakistani people (separate from their government of the hour) when it supported autocrats and dictators who were more than willing to feign friendship with the US and thus garner US approval.
The New York Times editorial missed the mark on two points by positing that aid could be used ‘as a cudgel to extract better performance from the government in its fight against terrorism’. An experienced and empathetic South Asia hand with deep ties to Pakistan, Andrew Wilder, wrote about the securitization of aid to Pakistan in a study of the earthquake relief:
Security objectives have always had a major influence on US foreign assistance to Pakistan. Aid flows have therefore oscillated wildly based on whether Pakistan was a ‘frontline state’ or a ‘forgotten state’. The resulting feast or famine of aid has undermined the effectiveness of US development assistance to Pakistan (Wilder, 2009). It has also contributed to an image in Pakistan of the US as a ‘fair-weather friend’ whose aid programmes have much more to do with buying or renting influence, especially with the Pakistan military, and promoting US security interests, rather than helping Pakistanis . . . this approach is based in part on misplaced faith in the effectiveness of development aid in promoting US security interests. 8
As Nancy Birdsall, an experienced development economist from the World Bank who later headed the Center for Global Development in Washington DC, countered, there were two arguments against the common American view of economic aid to Pakistan:
The first is that America’s $500 million a year of ‘economic’ aid brings any leverage. Compared to the Pakistani government’s own budget of around $30.7 billion annually, $500 million is a pittance. Threatening to withdraw this money, which is designed, for example, to increase access to schooling or provide minimal access to energy in the interests of job creation is unlikely to persuade the Pakistani government to do a better job of, say, raising taxes on its insider elites or improving its own education systems. No doubt the civilian government would like to raise taxes and spend more on schooling; no doubt it has difficulty doing so because of its own internal politics, and because the army will take first dibs on any additional domestic revenue. But the United States’ ability to influence this through its economic aid is minimal [emphasis added].
Second is the assumption that the purpose of the American ‘economic’ or development aid is leverage. In fact the purpose is to invest in democracy and economic opportunity in Pakistan, in the interests of prosperity and stability there. The military aid to Pakistan may provide a vehicle for dialogue with the army which may or may not be thought of as ‘leverage’ in the fight against terrorism. The development aid is about investing in making Americans more secure in a dangerous world; Americans will be more secure when Pakistan, a nuclear power, is itself more secure, prosperous and democratic. Development aid has the additional benefit of reflecting America’s values and generosity as well as its security and commercial interests. Conflating development aid with military is a dangerous trap that we should try to avoid. 9
Indeed much of the history of the early US intervention in Pakistan and my own analysis of this relationship supports Wilder’s and Birdsall’s arguments. The most effective US assistance involved creation of human capital and institutions that allowed Pakistan to take on economic management at a much higher level than most developing countries. The export of knowledge and technology that introduced the Green Revolution in Pakistan (and India), as well as the path-breaking work of the Ford Foundation and the Harvard Advisory Group in helping set up the Planning Commission of Pakistan and train Pakistan’s stellar crop of internationally acclaimed development economists, 10 was much valued in Pakistan, and not seen as an attempt to influence Pakistan for political purposes. Funding for the Mangla and later Tarbela dams, and the US support for the World Bank to assist India and Pakistan in agreeing on the Indus Basin Treaty did more to avert war and secure the peace in the region than any direct aid from the US. Similarly, provision of wheat under the PL480 programme allowed the US to dispose of its wheat surplus while giving Pakistanis access to a very visible form of US help.
The US also helped Pakistan acquire its first nuclear training and research reactor for the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) at Nilore in 1965. It also helped provide seed money via USAID for the Lahore University of Management Sciences, the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi and development of the Forman Christian College in Lahore. The US also helped set up important agriculture universities in Pakistan to support its Green Revolution. There was no visible quid pro quo involved in these actions as was also the case of US aid to Pakistan during natural disasters such as catastrophic floods or earthquakes (mentioned in detail in earlier chapters).
Both the US and Pakistan failed to recall these earlier successes and focused instead on the failures and the negative spin-off from their more recent partnership. As a result, even high officials were wont to provide caricatures of the relationship, ascribing evil motives to the other side. Distancing the general Pakistani population from the debate and engagement on issues also provided an opportunity for nationalistic and religious elements inside Pakistan to muster public discontent with the US relationship.
The focus then would turn on to failures. These included, among others, the US involvement in the Afghan Jihad that ousted the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. Pakistan took on the role of facilitator. The US provided the funding, along with Saudi Arabia. The US also helped design Islamic school curricula for use in Afghan refugee camps to prepare for and recruit warriors in the jihad. Cheap weapons imported for the jihad leaked into Pakistani society, leaving behind the so-called Kalashnikov Culture that became the bane of Pakistani existence.
The US also had a large part to play in the spread of the madrassahs in Pakistan. Under President Jimmy Carter, the US established a $500 million fund to prepare Mujahideen to fight against the occupying Soviet forces in Kabul. This figure eventually increased to $4 billion and the project was given the title ‘Operation Cyclone.’ It primarily aimed at promoting Jihadi culture in Pakistan, and the establishment of Islamic seminaries was an integral part of the operation. 11
The Saudis and other funders continued to support the madrassahs in Pakistan after the US decamped from Afghanistan and the region in 1990, placing Pakistan under sanctions for developing nuclear processing facilities, something that had been ignored by US officialdom through a ‘willing suspension of disbelief ’. 12
The Aid Strategy
The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, following the 9/11 attacks on the US by Al-Qaeda, was a military plan. Economics was given a back seat till quite late in the game. As a result, security and aid became intertwined, with aid becoming a junior partner in the process.
Both Afghanistan and Pakistan became the recipient of US aid. Afghanistan received a much larger quantum of assistance, producing the equivalent of the Dutch disease in that war-torn country: when too much money becomes available, it creates its own problems. Corruption ensued, and the results of the investments were hard to identify or measure. Pakistan had been a recipient of US assistance for many decades. But it was a flow with many peaks and valleys. The earliest peaks had been in the Cold War period of the 1950s up to the mid-1960s, when US aid stopped with the advent of the Indo-Pakistan war of September 1965. Pakistan was then under a military autocrat, General, later Field Marshal, M. Ayub Khan. The second peak occurred in 1980 and lasted till 1988 when another military dictator, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, who had usurped power in 1977, had at first been ostracized but then became an indispensable ally against the Soviet Union in the Afghan jihad. When the Afghan conflict ended with the departure of the Soviets, aid dried up under the pretext of sanctions for Pakistan’s nuclear activities. The third major peak of US aid flows reoccurred from 2002 onwards when another hitherto-shunned military usurper, Gen. Pervez Musharra
f, suddenly became a friend of the US in the Global War on Terror of President George W. Bush. 13
History of US Obligations to Pakistan, millions US$(2011)
Source: US Overseas Loans and Grants, ‘Obligations and Loan Authorizations’ (aka the Greenbook). For the years 2002–2011 we have added data on CSF spending to the military assistance category; while CSF is not technically foreign assistance, it has constituted the bulk of military assistance to Pakistan during the post-9/11 period. Source for CSF amounts is ‘Direct Overt US Aid Appropriations and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan’, prepared for the Congressional Research Service by K. Alan Kronstadt.
Between 1951 and 2011, the US obligated some $67 billion dollars to Pakistan, according to the Center for Global Development. The driving force behind much of this aid was US global or regional security needs. In the period FY 2002–FY 2009, that is, immediately after the Afghan invasion, only 30 per cent of the aid was for economic purposes. The rest was security-related. This general trend continued, even as the overall amount of aid and financial flows trended downward after FY2010. Pakistan ranked fourth in terms of overall foreign assistance from the US, at 3.4 per cent of total US aid, well behind Afghanistan, which received 26.1 per cent of aid. It was ranked fifth in economic assistance with 3.2 per cent of such aid, again well behind Afghanistan which accounted for 8.4 per cent of economic aid. It also ranked fifth behind Afghanistan in military aid at 3.8 per cent, with Afghanistan leading the pack at 57.5 per cent. 14
