US tightens its grip on
Pakistan By M K Bhadrakumar
Alphonse Karr, the 19th-century French
novelist and pamphleteer, is principally
remembered for the epigram, "The more it changes,
the more it is the same thing." That could be the
thought that comes to mind at first glance of
speech made by US Deputy Secretary of State John
Negroponte at the National Endowment for
Democracy's (NED) Pakistan forum in Washington on
Monday. Yet, the speech merits attention.
In all practical terms, the speech is a
final summing up but at the same time it sets outs
the tone of the US policy towards Pakistan in the
remaining months of the George W Bush
administration. Pakistan is indeed a transformed
home. New applications of new
principles must be quickly
forthcoming.
It is extraordinary that a
seasoned diplomat like Negroponte has chosen the
NED forum to make such a major speech on Pakistan.
But then, "promoting democracy" - the motto of NED
- also happens to be a stated objective of US
policy towards Pakistan. Over the past quarter
century, the US government-funded NED has
specialized as a handmaiden of American regional
policies.
The NED is well known for
covertly funding and supporting politicians in
Latin American countries with strong support to
the military. Its activities in many countries are
known to run parallel to those of the Central
Intelligence Agency. Its sensational role in
conceptualizing and orchestrating the "color
revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia was a
high-water mark in the organization's history
since its inception in 1983, mitigating to an
extent its dismal failures in Iran, Venezuela and
Cuba.
Rarely does a top diplomat speak so
openly from a public forum as Negroponte did on
the centrality of Pakistan for the US's national
security. He spoke in Winston Churchill terms.
"More than ever, our [US] national security
depends on the success, security and stability of
Pakistan ... We recognize that our fate - that is,
our security, our freedom, our prosperity - is
linked to the fate of the people of Pakistan,"
Negroponte said, echoing the gravitas of the
British statesman during World War II.
What Negroponte implied was that
Washington will categorically assure Pakistan that
no matter the change of administration in the
White House next year, the US commitment to a
"long-term, substantial and comprehensive"
partnership with Pakistan will remain a
cornerstone of American regional policies.
Negroponte seems to have perceived that
allies like Pakistan are increasingly beginning to
look beyond the Bush administration and that is
not going to do the "war on terror" in Afghanistan
any good. In his recent visit to China, President
Pervez Musharraf's mind desultorily wandered,
inviting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) to come and help stabilize the Afghan
situation. But, why go to the SCO when the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) could still do
a first rate job? The SCO comprises China, Russia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Negroponte, therefore, proceeded to
underline that in its remaining months in office,
the Bush administration will endeavor to establish
a new framework of political, economic and
security assistance to Pakistan. He singled out
military cooperation as an important feature of
that partnership.
Negroponte acknowledged
that the weakening or "estrangement" in the
US-Pakistan alliance in the post-Cold War setting
in the 1990s had led to a "strategic disconnect"
between the two militaries. The result has been
that there are serious limits today to the US
military's capacity to influence the officer corps
of the Pakistani military. That deficiency needs
to be rectified. The solution lies in reviving the
old practice when as Cold War allies, the US
military used to engage the middle and senior
ranking Pakistani military officers within the
framework of a "robust training and education
program" so as to establish links with them on a
sustained, enduring basis.
But Negroponte
implied that Washington expects the Pakistani
military to reciprocate by accommodating the US's
strategy in the "war on terror" in the tribal
areas of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where
military operations must continue. He said the
Bush administration will have no objection in
principle to the Pakistani civilian leadership's
emphasis on the economic development and
integration of the tribal areas, but "any kind of
agreement or understanding which might be
negotiated [with the Pakistani Taliban] will have
to be consistent with the imperatives of the US
strategy towards the war on terror".
Negroponte explained, "Whatever the
approach, it's got to be multi-faceted ... it also
has to include a security component. You can't let
the irreconcilables, as I call them, have a free
hand, have a free pass. They must be confronted."
In other words, the imperatives of the US strategy
are clear: Pakistan's tribal areas should cease to
be a platform for the Taliban and al-Qaeda to
stage cross-border attacks inside Afghanistan
where US troops and other NATO troops "end up
being the victims of such attacks". Therefore, the
security operations must continue at any cost.
Negroponte made it clear that the US
remains skeptical about the efforts of the
Pakistani government to negotiate with militants
in the tribal regions. He said, "I think that one
would have to wait and see what is actually
concluded, if such an agreement were to be
concluded. Certainly, our past - our concern with
past agreements regarding South Waziristan have
gone to the issue of how much it really - these
agreements really limited the scope of action of
terrorism - of terrorists, extremist elements
operating in the area, or was it some way of
allowing them greater scope for action than we're
comfortable with."
As could be expected,
Negroponte put emphasis on Pakistan's transition
to democracy as a development that is
"strategically significant" insofar as the people
rejected extremism by supporting moderate,
pro-democratic forces and parties in the last
elections, which in turn has provided an
opportunity to the US to build a "broad national
consensus to defeat terrorism". He reaffirmed the
US commitment to strengthen Pakistani civil
society and civilian institutions. On the
Pakistani political scene, Negroponte singled out
Asif Ali Zardari as Washington's principal
interlocutor. Zardari, widower of former premier
Benazir Bhutto, is co-chairman of the Pakistan
People's Party, the leading party in the new
ruling coalition in Islamabad.
Clearly,
the Bush administration banks on a working
relationship to develop between Musharraf and
Zardari, which will go a long way in ensuring that
Pakistan remains a dependable ally in the "war on
terror" in general and in the conduct of the
security operations in the tribal areas along the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border region in particular.
It is interesting that Negroponte spoke
soon after talks between the Pakistani government
and the so-called Pakistani Taliban broke down in
late April. The impasse in the talks came about
when the Taliban demanded that the Pakistani army
should withdraw from Waziristan, Darra Adamkhel
and Swat as a confidence-building measure prior to
reaching an agreement. The Taliban insist that
this was a prior commitment given by the
government. They allege the US will be averse to
any such withdrawal by the Pakistani military from
the tribal areas and Washington has pressured the
latter to resile from the earlier commitment.
Conceivably, Washington would be viewing
with unease that the talks between the government
and the Taliban have not completely broken down.
According to the latest reports, a tribal
jirga (council) comprising the Afghan and
Pakistani Taliban has met with Baitullah Mahsud -
almost certainly with the knowledge and tacit
approval of the government. To quote noted
Pakistani expert, Rahimullah Yusufzai, "Pakistani
authorities are hoping that Baitullah Mahsud will
use his influence to restore peace and stability
in the rest of the tribal areas and the NWFP
[North-West Frontier Province]." Mahsud is a
hardline Pakistani Taliban leader accused of
implication in Bhutto's assassination last
December.
But the US priorities are
diametrically opposite. The central issue for the
US is, as Yusufzai pointed out, "Once the TTP
[Tehrek-e-Taliban or the umbrella body of the
Pakistani Taliban groups] signs a peace accord
with the Pakistani government, it would be able to
free its fighters to join the Afghan Taliban and
launch attacks inside Afghanistan." That is to
say, Washington would like the locus of the war to
be kept on Pakistani soil in the tribal areas,
whereas the elected government in Islamabad wants
to limit and control the unrest in the tribal
areas so that the NWFP or the rest of Pakistan
does not get destabilized.
To complicate
matters, as far as the Pakistani Taliban are
concerned, they are only too willing to reach an
agreement with Islamabad since their main agenda
is not the "Talibanization" of Pakistan but the
jihad against the US and the other "occupying
forces" in Afghanistan. In Yusufzai's assessment,
the Pakistani Taliban are under no illusions that
they have the capacity to establish their writ in
the tribal areas and NWFP, let alone the whole of
Pakistan. Therefore, all that they seek at the
moment is an accord that respects their interests
in their strongholds, though they know that such
an accord may not prove durable, given the staunch
opposition to it by the US, NATO and, possibly,
the Afghan government.
Negroponte's appeal
from the NED forum is directly addressed to the
Pakistani military. His speech underscores that
fundamentally speaking, US policy continues to
repose faith in the Pakistani military as its
principal interlocutor in Pakistan. (In a highly
nuanced parenthesis, by way of allaying the
Pakistani military's apprehensions about US
intentions, Negroponte added that no matter
Washington's reservations in the past, "I think
that you could fairly say that the United States
has accepted the fact that Pakistan has nuclear
weapons and I think I would leave it at that.")
The top US diplomat has appealed to the
Pakistani military brass that the security
operations in the tribal areas are a "national
security imperative for the United States, an
essential condition for success in Afghanistan".
He has, therefore, gone out of the way to give an
undertaking that Washington will comprehensively
take care of the Pakistani military's corporate
interests on a long-term footing and provide it
with modern weapons and training worthy of a close
ally, provided the latter reciprocates by
relentlessly conducting security operations in the
tribal areas.
But the US's current
problems do not end there. In immediate terms,
Washington is also called on to get the elected
civilian governments in Islamabad and Peshawar on
board. Unsurprisingly, the elected governments are
sensitive about public mood, which is anti-US and
disfavors Islamabad's close association with the
"war on terror". The recent elections brought to
light that the US's capacity to influence
Pakistani political parties, including some major
ones, is severely limited. And it is here that the
NED has a vital role to play in the period ahead.
The NED has gained vast experience in
cajoling unwilling politicians in foreign
countries to play ball with the US regional
agenda. Its expertise will come in handy in
building working relationships between civilian
politicians and the military in Pakistan, as well
as in persuading recalcitrant Pakistani
politicians to see the light of reason and to
cooperate with the imperatives of US strategy.
Its role will be truly decisive for US
policy if Pakistan finds itself facing another
parliamentary election any time soon, in case the
present uneasy ruling coalition sharing power in
Islamabad begins to unravel. The NED's forte lies
in finessing effective ways of promoting favored
politicians and political parties abroad.
M K
Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat
in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years,
with postings including India's ambassador to
Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
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