The Nov 26, 2011 Salala incident when 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed on an attack by US Apache helicopters, an AC-130 gunship and two F- I5E fighter aircraft on two Pakistani border outposts capped a hard six months after Osama Bin Laden was disposed off in a US raid on his secret hideaway in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011. There have been many tough years in the history of the US Pakistan relations, 2011 and 2012 were by far the two worst. It does not help when those whom you pay to serve the country’s interests are engaged in using the information and resources they thus have access to for undermining its interests on a fulltime basis.
While there are areas of convergence between the US and Pakistan in our core interests, there are also serious areas of disagreement. These areas in order to priority are viz (1) our nuclear potential and the means to deliver them and (2) our obsession with Afghanistan and consequent actions thereof. What Afghanistan has given us all these years is not strategic depth but strategic headache, with no likelihood of that ending soon. Our soft corner for the Taliban has been to our detriment, the so-called Jihadi groups whom we supported in the 1980s for the war in Afghanistan have morphed into terrorist groups that have become an existential threat to the nation.
The world had tacitly accepted our India-specific nuclear deterrent before we were put into dire trouble by the passing of nuclear-related information to some other countries. While AQ Khan (AQK) played a tremendous role in developing our nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, the US had reason to view Pakistan’s nuclear potential with suspicion after the nuclear proliferation came to light, it put paid to our credibility as a responsible nation. While clandestine means were necessary for acquiring nuclear and missile know-how in the face of the nuclear quarantine, a grey area exists about the commercial enterprise thereof, and if so, was it state-related or an individual venture for personal benefit? For the record, it was wrong and it was immediately stopped.
The US (and coalition partners) will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, creating a vacuum that will be worse than that of the early 1990s. The US knows that the tens of US $ billions it has pumped in annually for the last decade will not ensure that the Afghan forces will not disintegrate in the way manner they did after the Soviets left Afghanistan in February 1989. Soviet puppet Najibullah was ousted from power after three years in 1992 once the Soviet aid amounting to US$ 3 billion (approximately US$ 9 billion in today’s terms) stopped, it was still another four years before the Taliban took over from the Northern Alliance in 1996. By then a major portion of the Afghan Army, including some of its Tajik and Uzbek complement, had defected to the Taliban. The US has promised US$ 4 billion in annual aid post 2014, the same scenario as in the early 1990s is likely to play out once that aid diminishes.
The vacuum after 2014 will be a major problem for Pakistan, we will continue to economically and militarily bear the burden of Afghanistan for a long time to come. Whether anyone likes it or not the Pakistan Armed Forces will be the only bulwark between peace and conflict spreading in the region. Many would want to believe otherwise but it was the US that needed the relationship with Pakistan in 2001 as a transit area and major staging base for its Afghanistan operations, for its part Pakistan did need the economic and military aid on offer. Interestingly enough “Life” magazine’s Margaret Bourke-White is quoted by former Ambassador Husain Haqqani as the Quaid telling her, “America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America. Pakistan is the pivot of the world, the frontier on whether the future position of the world revolves”. Prophetic words given that 65 years ago the Quaid would hardly have any way of anticipating the future dependence of US and the west on Middle Eastern oil, the precedence the US relationship with Israel would take over any other US foreign policy imperative and that ultimately China rather than Russia would become the focus of US apprehensions.
Even the greatest skeptics in the US recognize Pakistan being central to any lasting solution within Afghanistan, post-2014 this can only be confronted by the skill and expertise potential of a strong and stable Pakistan there remains a yawning gap (and reluctance) to translate skepticism into fact, failure to recognize this will render gains made in Afghanistan reversible, as in the past in this unfortunate country. Incidentally the stakes are much higher for Pakistan than they are for the U.S, Pakistan has more to lose because we do not have the luxury to walk away from the region as the U.S. has done before.
The U.S. must look beyond short-term gains and help make Pakistan economically strong. What we really need is large energy projects across the board as well as re-building of our communications infra-structure, roads and railway, etc. More than aid we need market access for our cotton industry. We need to re-furbish the Pakistani armed forces, not with high-tech weapons, tanks, state-of-the-art aircraft, artillery, etc but replenish, replace and augment downstream equipment needed by our foot soldiers to fight the battle. These include combat helicopters and heliborne troop-lifting capacity, without these COIN operations on our western borders in the mountainous terrain are impossible. We badly need night vision capability and advanced communication capability alongwith modern explosives detection equipment. A dedicated Counter-Terrorism Force (CTF) is a necessity, there being a vast difference between COIN operations and countering terrorism of the urban kind that we are now confronting.
US gave nuclear access to India with reciprocal inspection rights in order to overcome its severe energy shortages. Our energy deficit is worse than India’s, somehow the US and Pakistan must come to terms with each other with respect to our nuclear assets, Maybe the same treaty arrangements with India, with the same limited inspection access? Pakistan cannot be a responsible nuclear nation if we have to depend upon clandestine sources to sustain our nuclear potential.
One major gain is Haqqani’s replacement in Washington DC. Ambassador Sherry Rahman may not have yet reversed the tide, she certainly has contained the rapid downslide. Anyone who believes that in the availing circumstances the US will break up its relationship with Pakistan is seriously delusional. Pakistan’s geo-political position is pivotal for the region, chaos here will affect the world. Realpolitik dictates that the need for each other will continue. While the many enemies of Pakistan pursue the similar objectives of trying to scuttle this relationship, it behoves both the US and Pakistan to take stock of the situation as it exists on the ground today, and as it is likely to be in the future, and to restructure the relationship pragmatically for mutual convenience (Extracts from the second and concluding part of talk given as Director EWI at the EastWest Institute (EWI) New York on April 16, 2013).
Courtesy: The News
