Transcending the Past
Over four years of constructive US engagement with Pakistan’s military dictatorship, since the catastrophic 9/11 events, have failed to produce the fundamental and necessary transformations in Pakistan that would justify continuation of such a policy. It is significant that these four years of continuous effort and massive investment in Pakistan – while they have helped ‘turn around’ the economy, with large benefits accruing to the dominant elite in the country – have only seen a spread of disorder in the country, a further erosion of institutions and the structural foundations of democracy, and a failure to implement the most basic reforms necessary to effect a political turnaround, and to expand democratic spaces. Indeed, there is mounting evidence of a consolidation of authoritarian tendencies and a proclivity to use excessive military force against increasingly restive populations – who have benefited little from the generous flow of international aid – in wide areas of the country, particularly in Balochistan, the North West Frontier Province and Gilgit-Baltistan.
There is also strong and cumulative evidence that the Pakistani power elite, located in the regressive military-mullah-feudal combine, is yet to abandon terrorism as a tactical and strategic tool to secure what it perceives as the country’s quest for ‘strategic depth’ in the region. Despite the numbers of ‘al Qaeda terrorists’ arrested and handed over to the US – a large majority of whom have proven to be of ‘zero value’ – and the fact that the Pakistani state and Army have taken selective action against particular groups of Islamist terrorists, particularly those who have turned against the state, who have attacked President Pervez Musharraf and senior Army and Government functionaries, and who have engaged in sectarian terrorism within the country, it is the case that Pakistan continues to support and encourage the activities of a wide range of terrorist and Islamist extremist organisations. This is particularly the case with organisations that are active in Afghanistan – including remnants of the Taliban – and in India. Moreover, Pakistan continues to exploit Islamist extremist mobilisation to secure its perceived objectives in the wider Asian region, notably in Central Asia.
Despite cosmetic policy changes and some tokenism – including formal bans on a number of terrorist organisations (overwhelmingly unenforced) – many prominent Islamist terrorist organisations continue to operate with a high measure of freedom in and from Pakistan. Further, the processes of Islamist radicalization, both through the Madrassa (seminary) and the school education system[1], continue apace, and none of General Musharraf’s promised reforms have reached effective fruition.
Pakistan has also played an active and prominent role in the growth of Islamist radicalism and terrorism in and from Bangladesh, another theatre of urgent concern in the South Asian region. There is increasing evidence, moreover, of a rising trend in operational cooperation between Pakistani and Bangladeshi intelligence agencies and jihadi organisations, particularly in their efforts to target India. A number of recent terrorist attacks and arrests in different parts of India, including the suicide attack at Hyderabad on October 12, 2005, the attack at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore on December 28, 2005, the Diwali bombings in Delhi on October 29, 2005, and the Mumbai serial bombings of July 11, 2006[2], among others, have exposed evidence of joint Pakistan-Bangladesh operations and terrorist modules. This pattern of collaboration and networking compounds the dangers within the region, and acts as a force multiplier for Islamist terrorist organisations seeking to project their capacities internationally.
There is, consequently, a need to ‘reverse lines of action based on earlier views’, and to radically revise US policy on Pakistan in particular, and South Asia in general, to bring it in line with evolving US geostrategic perspectives and thinking. It is important to recall, within this context, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s observation (in the context of the Middle East) that "we must transcend the doctrines and debates of the past and transform volatile status quos that no longer serve our interests", to create "a balance of power that favours freedom." Secretary Rice rightly notes that "stability without democracy will prove to be false stability", and argues that "the fundamental character of regimes matters more today than the international distribution of power… In these societies, it is illusory to encourage economic reform by itself and hope that the freedom deficit will work itself out over time[3]."
There is urgent need, today, to bring US policy to bear directly on the objectives of altering the ‘fundamental character’ of the regime in Pakistan, and of transforming the ‘volatile status quo’ there.
Pakistan’s Destructive Dynamics
It is useful, within this context, to recognize certain aspects of the essential character and dynamic of the state and power structure in Pakistan, as well as its underlying and deeply entrenched social, political and cultural pathologies.
There is an increasing realization among informed experts – including many who are sympathetic to Pakistan – that "There are compelling reasons why Pakistan’s comprehensive strategic makeover will not happen."[4] Chris Fair, for instance, notes, among other factors, the dilatory approach to the collection of firearms, failure to suppress financing of terrorism, highly selective targeting of terrorist organisations, and extremely half-hearted efforts on education, including Madrassa reform; and a host of liabilities arising from Pakistan’s fiscal weakness and pervasive dearth of resources, including human capital, facilities, infrastructure, and effective bureaucratic culture.[5] Ashley Tellis has underlined the sheer sweep of transformations that would be required for the "transformation of Pakistan as a state." This would require, he notes, "not only strategic, economic, and political reform but also the revitalization of Pakistani society… (to include) correcting gender inequalities, containing ideological mobilization, improving civil society, and selectively expanding state control."[6] Robert Wirsing rightly notes that "Transformations on this scale have been witnessed in few, if any of the world’s fifty-odd Muslim states; and the societal overhauls implicit in them have almost never been realized – certainly not in a time span reckoned in anything less than decades – anywhere else in the non-Western world."[7] Wirsing concludes that it is, consequently, necessary to "brace for continuity in Pakistani behaviour, to take a more sceptical view of Pakistan’s commitment to reform…[8]"
It is useful, here, to briefly list some of the most significant elements of the causal dynamic that yields this assessment.
Addressing Enduring Pathologies
Given these circumstances, the broad contours of a strategy to secure US interests in the South Asian region would need to include some of the following lines of approach.
Strategic Coherence
If this trend is to be reversed, short-term US policy must be consistently reconciled with a coherent projection of long-term objectives.
Current US policy on Pakistan seeks incremental changes in various components of the system, working towards ‘greater democracy’, containment of Islamist extremist forces, and a diminishing role for the military. The policy ignores the fact that, not only are civil institutions in Pakistan weak, the Army has powerful incentives to keep such institutions weak, and has entered into a long-standing arrangement with Islamist extremist forces to consolidate its hold over the affairs of the country. Repeated assurances and some symbolism notwithstanding, this process has continued into the more than six years under the Pervez Musharraf regime – and for over four years since the 9/11 attacks. Over this period, Musharraf has emerged as a ‘minimal satisfier’, meeting the formal requirements of compliance with the US and international community’s demands on democratization and the containment of extremism and terrorism, even as he ignores their substance. In some measure, the very nature of such demands is problematic, since their content is substantially subjective, "leaving room for endless arguments about what constitutes compliance and how it is to be measured".[13] More significantly, many of the objectives simply do not lend themselves to ‘incremental reform’.
There can, for instance, be little possibility of ‘incremental reform’ of the Islamist extremist and terrorist forces in the country. Any effort to absorb them into the ‘mainstream’ political system results in an increasing radicalization of that system, rather than a moderation of the radical elements. The case of the Madrassas is comparable. Adding science, English language, and computer courses to their existing curricula – itself a task that Musharraf has failed to achieve – will not result in the blossoming of a scientific and rational mindset among their students. Rather, to the extent that the radical Islamist content of these curricula remains unaffected, this would produce a stream of English speaking and progressively technically competent cadres for Islamist terrorist organisations, infinitely compounding the dangers to the West, and particularly to the US. It is important to note, here, that the Madrassa alumni, while they do contribute significantly to the violence within the South Asian region, are yet to make their mark on Western theatres of Islamist terrorism, simply because the Madrassa graduate lacks the skills, the knowledge and the capacity to function in these alien cultures. To the extent that this ‘competence gap’ is bridged, increasing numbers of Madrassagraduates will become available for operation in Western theatres. Liberal funding for ‘Madrassareforms’, consequently, contributes directly to Western vulnerabilities to Islamist extremist terrorism.
Efforts at ‘incremental reform’ of various component systems within the broad dynamic of the Islamist extremist and militarized politics of Pakistan fail to accommodate the sheer size and complexity of the system, and the impossibility of monitoring compliance. US compellent strategies must, consequently, target the "enduring strengths and weaknesses"[14] of the larger system, to secure clearly defined objectives that comprehend the fullest restoration of democracy, complete military subordination to civil authority, constitutional government and rule of law, and the dismantling of the Islamist terrorist infrastructure and its feeder mechanisms – the Madrassas, components of the school and university curricula, the wider network of radicalized social and cultural institutions, laws and practices that have systematically promoted religious fanaticism and hatred throughout society. Such a strategy would require:
Escaping ‘Ugly Instability’
The ‘ugly instability’ that currently prevails in South Asia jeopardizes critical US interests in the region, and cannot be allowed to persist indefinitely. This instability is accentuated by the international proclivity to impose a contra-factual parity between Pakistan and India, and efforts to secure a ‘balance’ between the two. Such a perspective militates against the realities of the ground, and also undermines the increasing sphere of convergent interests between the US and India; this is of particular significance in view of China’s growing power in the Asian region, including its dramatic thrust into Central Asia. A visible US ‘tilt’ in India’s favour would have powerful compellent effect on Islamabad, and would impose a far greater measure of rationality and realism there than any set of incentives and concessions possibly could. The emerging strategic partnership with India is securely based on a multiplicity of shared values and interests – unlike the opportunistic alliance of the unwilling that is the current arrangement with Pakistan.
The radical transformation that is necessary within Pakistan’s power structure – both for the country’s own future and for the South Asian region in general – cannot be secured unless the Pakistani leadership and elite are convinced that their present course of action is unsustainable and will confront them with a proximate existential choice regarding the country’s future. US compellent strategies should seek to convey precisely such a choice in the immediate future, predicated on the demands for the restoration of democracy, the dismantling of terrorist and extremist networks, and the subordination of the military to civil authority. As long as the US seeks to retain a client-patron relationship with Pakistan, such a strategy cannot be implemented, and present contradictions will persist.
While it is the US that would need to design and initiate such a compellent strategy, it is not the case that the entire onus for transformation must fall upon America. Indeed, the building up of a coalition and coordination with other countries that can be prevailed upon to share this vision would be an integral element of the compellent strategies envisaged. American leadership in any such initiatives would, however, remain an imperative, in the absence of any other influential nation or bloc evolving such a strategy, as also in view of the centrality of US interests and influence in the region.
Finally, action in this direction has generally been impeded by a number of false dichotomies – ‘Musharraf or the Taliban’, the military or anarchy, etc. – and the imagining of scenarios of collapse, chaos, and worse, an Islamist terrorist takeover of the country and more dangerously of its nuclear assets. These doomsday scenarios are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the processes of transition, which are generally conceived of as a one-time event, rather than the gradual re-engineering of the structures of power in Pakistan envisaged by the notion of targeting the "enduring strengths and weaknesses" of the larger system. The ‘one-time’ approach takes the structure and equations of power as a given; the ‘process’ orientation targets these structures and equations, seeking to alter the balance of power in favour of a schema that is consistent with US strategic objectives and goals, on the one hand, and norms of civilized international discourse and internal democracy, on the other. To be sure, the latter approach has its own imponderables and uncertainties, but these are far removed from the false dichotomies and catastrophic projections that characterize the ‘singular event’ approach.
Condoleezza Rice, “The Promise of Democratic Peace: Why Promoting Freedom is the Only Realistic Path to Security”, The Washington Post, December 11, 2005. Secretary Rice notes further, “How could it have been prudent to preserve the state of affairs in a region that was incubating and exporting terrorism; where the proliferation of deadly weapons was getting worse, not better; where authoritarian regimes were projecting their failures onto innocent nations and people?” Secretary Rice was writing in the context of the Middle East, but her observations apply equally and acutely to Pakistan.
Ashley J. Tellis, "U.S. Strategy: Assisting Pakistan's Transformation", The Washington Quarterly – Vol. 28, No. 1, Winter 2004-05, pp. 97-116.
Mahbub-ul-Haq and Khadija Haq, “Human Development in South Asia,” Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 17.
John Stuart Mill, “Considerations on Representative Government,” 1861.
K.P.S. Gill, Brief on Islamist Extremism & Terrorism in South Asia, January 2004, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi, pp. 5-6.
David J. Andre, “Competitive Strategies: An Approach against Proliferation,” in Henry D. Sokolski, Ed., Prevailing in a Well Armed World: Devising Competitive Strategies Against Weapons Proliferation, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, Undated, p. 8.
Ajai Sahni & Saji Cherian, “Gilgit-Baltistan: The Laws of Occupation”, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution, New Delhi, Vol. 18, January 2007, pp. 155-84.
Tanvir Ahmad Khan, “Challenges Ahead”, The Dawn, Islamabad, January 2, 2006.