Author:
Publication: Geo-Political Affairs
Date: February 2002
URL: http://www.defencejournal.com/2002/february/policy.htm
Remarks at a seminar on "What Next
for Afghanistan: The War, the Peace and the Impact on South Asia" sponsored
by the Centre for International Policy, Washington, December 13, 2001
Mr. SELIG S. HARRISON talks about
the present regional situation. (Courtesy of Ahmad Faruqui).
I'm going to focus on Pakistan today
for three reasons. First, because Pakistani support has made the rise of
the Taliban possible, and there is a danger that Pakistan will continue
to play a destabilizing role in Afghanistan now. Second, because the United
States has pressured General Pervez Musharraf into a marriage of convenience
that has emboldened Pakistan to step up its pressure in Kashmir, which
could lead to a new war with India. Third, because the American embrace
of Musharraf has polarized Pakistani politics, strengthening anti-American,
anti-Indian hardliners who are deeply entrenched in the armed forces and
who actively support Islamic fundamentalist groups. I will begin with some
essential history, then turn to the situation in Pakistan today and conclude
with a discussion of US policy. My bottom line is that American interests
in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India require serious and sustained US support
for a transition to a civilian democratic government in Pakistan, a broad-based
government based on redrawn National Assembly constituencies that end the
grip of the landed oligarchy on the existing gerrymandered Assembly at
the expense of the urban middle class. The best hope for a secular Pakistan
lies in representative institutions that will dilute the disproportionate
power now enjoyed by Islamic extremists through their alliance with sympathetic
generals.
How did it happen that the Pakistani
armed forces, known for their professionalism, became the sponsors of the
Taliban?
The place to start is the Bangladesh
freedom movement and India's military support for the liberation of Bangladesh.
Pakistan's humiliating defeat in 1971 marked a basic turning point in the
history of the Pakistan army. A whole new generation of officers has grown
up since 1971 nursing a bitter determination to get even with India. This
has coincided with the transition from a Sandhurst-educated generation
of cosmopolitan, elitist officers to a new generation of more insular officers
with rural and middle-class roots. Many of this new generation of officers
have been receptive to the religious appeals made by Islamic groups - groups
that suddenly expanded with the official encouragement of the Zia Ul Haq
regime during the Afghan war. Zia consciously built up a powerful group
of like-minded officers, centered in the intelligence agencies, who were
driven by an ideology that mixed anti-Indian nationalism with a pan-Islamic
vision.
I had a conversation with Zia on
June 29,1988, six weeks before his death in that mysterious plane crash.
He spelled it all out very clearly in that conversation. His goal, he said,
was a "strategic realignment" in South Asia. Pakistan needed a satellite
state in Kabul so that its western front would be secure and it could face
India without worrying about the possibility of a pro-India Afghanistan.
Also-because he had a pan-Islamic agenda.
Here's what he said: "All right,
you Americans wanted us to be a front-line state. By helping you we have
earned the right to have a regime in Afghanistan to our liking. We took
risks as a front-line state, and we won't permit it to be like it was before,
with Indian and Russian influence there and claims on our territory. It
will be a real Islamic state, a real Islamic confederation. We won't have
passports between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It will be part of a pan-Islamic
revival that will one day win over the Muslims in the Soviet Union, you
will see."
It's a painful reality that the
terrorist problem in Afghanistan and Kashmir today is a legacy of the shortsighted
policy pursued by the United States during the Afghan war in giving a blank
check to Zia and his Inter Services Intelligence Directorate - the I.S.I.
The Reagan administration had one single myopic objective after the Russians
blundered into Afghanistan: make it hot for them and tie them down there
so they don't bother us anywhere else. There was little expectation that
the Red Army would be driven out and little thought about the consequences
of this policy after the fighting stopped. As Ahmed and I used to write
in those days, it was a policy of "fighting to the last Afghan." Anything
that made it hot for the Russians was okay. So the United States made the
historic mistake of letting Pakistan decide which groups in the Afghan
resistance got the $3 billion that the United States and its friends poured
in. Most of that $3 billion went to Islamic fundamentalist groups that
represented a tiny minority of Afghans but were favoured by the I.S.I.
Another historic mistake made by
the C.I.A. was encouraging Islamic militants from all over the world to
come to Afghanistan to join in the jehad. Afghanistan became a base for
Osama and for a wide variety of kindred groups beginning in the last half
of the 1980s while the war was still on. This was actively encouraged by
the I.S.I. and the C.I.A., notwithstanding C.I.A. denials. I often talked
with American diplomats and the C.I.A. people involved and warned them
that we were creating a monster. They said that the more militant the jehadis
were the more fanatically they would fight against the Russians. Many of
the former I.S.I. generals who are key players in the recycled military
regime today were responsible for bringing in the foreign jehadis. For
example, General Mohammed Aziz, who was corps commander in Lahore until
recently and is now chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
Why did Pakistan want to control
the allocation of US aid to the Afghan resistance? They were thinking ahead,
looking for trusted collaborators who would help them to establish a Pakistan-oriented
client state in Kabul after the war in order to realize Zia's dream of
"strategic realignment. They wanted to make sure that no US guns or money
went to Pushtuns who might try to get back the lost Pushtun tribal areas
that now make up the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. It's important
to remember that Afghanistan extended deep into what is now Pakistan until
the middle of the nineteenth century. There are twenty million Pushtuns,
and half of them were part of Afghanistan until the British Raj annexed
forty thousand square miles of ancestral Pushtun territory between the
Indus River and the Khyber Pass. When the British left in 1947, they handed
over this large Pushtun population to the newly-created state of Pakistan.
Afghanistan has never accepted that, and a series of Afghan leaders starting
with former king Zahir Shah have periodically sponsored an irredentist
movement for an autonomous "Pushtunistan" linked to Afghanistan.
Throughout the Soviet occupation,
the I.S.I. gave only token aid to the Pushtun tribes identified with Zahir
Shah even though they were the most important tribes. Zahir Shah himself
was not allowed to come to Pakistan to organize Pushtun resistance forces
under his banner, which he attempted to do on several occasions. Of course,
the Pushtuns fought the Russians with whatever weapons they could get,
and the I.S.I. did find some Pushtun collaborators like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
After the Russians left, Pakistan picked Hekmatyar to be its man in Kabul,
but he had little popular support so he was dropped when the Taliban appeared
on the scene.
The I.S.I. liked the Taliban because
it was dedicated to Islam, not Pushtun nationalism. At first the Taliban
did have the support of many Pushtuns who were disgusted with the corruption
and endless factionalism of the existing resistance groups. The mullahs
who created it did have some indigenous standing, unlike Gulbuddin.
But the Taliban acquired the military muscle and the money to defeat its
rivals only through Pakistani and Saudi support. The I.S.I. and the Pakistani
armed forces not only provided weaponry and logistical help but also Pakistani
manpower, and then the Al Qaeda moved in with more money and weapons. The
Taliban were tolerated, not supported, by the Pushtun tribal hierarchy,
and of course in the north the Taliban were foreigners, since they were
Pushtuns. That's why defeating them militarily has been relatively easy.
There is a danger now that elements
in the I.S.I. and in Pakistani Islamic groups will continue to help diehard
Taliban fighters with two objectives in mind. First, to use them in Kashmir.
Second, to keep the Pushtuns divided. Now, as in the past, Pakistan is
likely to view a client state in Kabul as necessary for its security against
India. This is not what Hamid Karzai has in mind. Let us hope that when
the Loi Jirga meets in six months there is not a Trojan Horse present in
the form of delegates bought and paid for by the I.S.I. who are lined up
against Pushtun leaders identified with the King and against ethnic minority
leaders committed to an independent Afghanistan.
At the moment, the prospects for
the interim government and for the Loi Jirga look good, but six months
from now, two years from now, five years from now, if Pakistan does play
a destabilizing role, the United States does not stay the course, and the
new government proves to be ineffective, the result could be a de facto
division of the country into northern and southern zones. Some people
talk loosely about the desirability of such a breakup. Local autonomy,
yes, but within the framework of a viable central authority. A breakup
along north-south lines would invite Pakistani manipulation of the Pushtuns
and guarantee built-in instability.
What could make the present situation
different from the past and more hopeful would be a sustained international
commitment to Afghan reconstruction and the constructive use of the leverage
that the United States now has in Pakistan. The United States is giving
Pakistan grant economic aid totaling $1.1 billion in cash budgetary support,
not earmarked project aid, which means it is fungible and can be used for
military purchases. In addition the United States and its allies are giving
Pakistan debt relief, a relaxation of the conditions governing $1 billion
in IMF aid, and more liberal access for Pakistani exports.
What is the United States getting
in return? Pakistan has provided the use of several airfields that have
been indispensable for helicopter operations. At the moment the border
is being patrolled to prevent Al Qaeda units from escaping to Pakistan.
But the big US planes used in Afghanistan have not been based in Pakistan.
They've come from aircraft carriers, Diego Garcia, from Central Asia, and
from captured airfields in Afghanistan itself. The I.S.I. is so divided
that Pakistani intelligence has been much less helpful than expected. Musharraf
replaced the head of the I.S.I., but it's increasingly clear that he has
not really purged the I.S.I. or the armed forces in general of hard-line,
anti-Indian elements allied with the Islamic extremists. Nor can he do
so without undermining his own position. For example, General Mohammed
Aziz, the leading hardliner, has been kicked upstairs from corps commander
in Lahore to chairman of the joint chiefs. But he has not been kicked out.
The hardliners appear to recognize that it's in the interests of Pakistan
to get as much from the United States as possible while the getting is
good and to go along with Musharraf and bide their time.
The question now is whether the
United States will use its new leverage to promote the long-term
stabilization of South Asia as a whole and to make sure that its
relations with Pakistan do not undermine friendly US relations with
India, a rising power of much greater long-term importance to American
interests than Pakistan. I would suggest three policy priorities:
First, any new US aid should be
earmarked for specific civilian uses so that it does not subsidize
military spending, and the United States should not succumb
to blandishments for the sale or grant of new military equipment.
Second, the United States should
condition the fulfilment of existing economic aid commitments on
an end to Pakistani terrorism in Kashmir. General Musharraf
has commendably begun to restrain the use of the madrassas in Pakistan
for military purposes. However, Pakistan continues to sponsor
Pakistani terrorist groups operating in Kashmir, notably Lashkar-e-Taiba,
which assassinates moderate Kashmiri leaders as well as government
officials and police. This is a different issue from Pakistani weapons
support for Kashmiri insurgents. The Lashkar-e-Taiba consists of
Pakistanis, not Kashmiris. It is time for the United States
to put Lashkar-e-Taiba on the list of foreign terrorist organizations
as Britain did last February and to insist that the paramilitary
capabilities of Lashkar- e-Taiba and other Islamic extremist groups be
dismantled.
Finally, and most important, the
United States should condition the fulfilment of economic aid commitments
on steps toward a meaningful transfer of power to a broad-based civilian
government. General Musharraf has appointed himself as president
in perpetuity and is planning to set up a facade of phony civilian
rule with the armed forces continuing to maintain control through
a veto power in the National Security Council. Permanent de facto
military rule would lock in the power of the generals who were responsible
for the rise of the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba and who are waiting
for their chance to unseat Musharraf. The Islamic parties are
a minority in Pakistan. Their strength rests primarily on their support
from powerful generals, and their power would be greatly diluted
by democratic elections.
Past so-called democratic elections
in Pakistan have been based on gerrymandered National Assembly constituencies
that have kept politics confined to a small circle of landed oligarchs
and their conservative allies in monopolistic sections of big business
and in the armed forces. This inbred, closed system has encouraged
corruption, made the rich richer and blocked egalitarian economic
reform measures targeted on the impoverished majority of Pakistanis.
The United States should press for a new electoral system based on
Assembly constituencies that would give the educated urban middle
class fair representation - the Ahmed Rashids, if you will.
In conclusion, democracy has never
had a chance in Pakistan. But even the flawed, narrowly-based civilian
governments of the past- from Suhrawardy to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Benazir
to Nawaz Sharif have been better for the regional stability of South
Asia than the periods of military rule. It was not the generals who
went to the Lahore summit. It was not the generals who negotiated
the Simla agreement or the conventional force redeployments that
Benazir was discussing with Rajiv Gandhi until her wings were clipped
by the military. Nawaz, for all of his sins, did go to Lahore and
did pull back the Pakistani forces that had crossed the cease-fire
line in Kashmir, and this was the underlying reason for his downfall.
Now the way to get a Pakistani government that will respect the
sovereignty of Afghanistan, stop stoking the flames of war in Kashmir
and talk peace with India does not lie in supporting continued military
rule. It lies with representative institutions. In both Afghanistan
and Pakistan, democracy and secular values are inseparable.
