Pakistan at a turning point as U.S. exits Afghanistan

[Aragorn]

As the United States plans its exit strategy from Afghanistan, prospects for Pakistan and all of South Asia look ominous. Pakistan stands to lose lucrative military and economic aid from the United States, with no one else to fill the hole.

With few friends to count on and countless violent jihadis in its territory, Pakistan is on the edge of a precipice. Yet it's possible that Pakistan may turn the region into a peaceful commercial hub of transcontinental gas pipelines and a trading mecca – reminiscent of the ancient Silk Route that benefited the economy and culture of the region.

Pakistan's elite and generals decided to play the Cold War game by exploiting their country's strategic location. They played it so well that despite Pakistan's destabilizing influence in South Asia, the United States ignored the country's dangerous activities, including its use of radical Islamists to fight a proxy battle in Kashmir and Afghanistan, and the development of nuclear weapons.

In a relationship of convenience, where the United States used Pakistan to fight the Soviet Union and keep an eye on Asia's oil-rich region, Pakistan secured vast quantities of economic and military aid in return. Later Pakistan sought and received more money and military aid ostensibly to fight terrorists in Afghanistan – terrorists that Pakistan itself had created and nurtured.

However, the Pakistan military's obsession with India as its archenemy, reliance on terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy, radicalization of its population, and a complete disregard for development of democracy and infrastructure have wrecked Pakistan's economy, polity and reputation. Today, the world sees Pakistan as a rogue nation on the path to becoming a failed state.

Pakistan's sole state project, since its independence, has been to continue its conflict with India and wrest Kashmir from Indian control. That obsession resulted in the army ruling Pakistan covertly and overtly during the last six decades. With little attention paid to infrastructure or economic development, Pakistan needed benefactors to finance its military and proxy battles. It has essentially been a rentier state for decades, offering its territory and military to seek economic and military aid. Its army's shackle-hold on the state stunted many aspects of development. The day of reckoning has finally come and Pakistan stands close to a dangerous upheaval.

However, standing so close to the precipice, there is also a silver lining for the people of Pakistan. The reason is simple: The entire geostrategic calculus of South Asia has changed, painting Pakistan into a corner with no options except self-destruction or remaking itself as a positive state. It is entirely possible that Pakistan may finally end its obsessive conflict with India and make peace with its blood enemy. In fact, India will be the only useful friend for Pakistan when U.S. aid ends – something that could happen soon.

Pakistani generals have often complained of being used by the United States and then left alone once America achieved its objectives. However, they were always confident that the country's strategic location and the rivalry between the United States, Russia and China would keep it in the middle of the Asia's geostrategic game. However, the political and economic dynamics of the world have changed in ways Pakistan's Machiavellian army could not envision. Pakistan will not be in the middle of rivalries, and there will be no one to finance it.

In the past, Pakistan's generals have gloated over China's support, believing that China could provide the economic and military support in the absence of the United States. China, while on good terms with Pakistan, is neither capable nor interested in providing the country with military and economic aid. China relies on trading with the United States and India, and will not jeopardize those critical economic relationships for Pakistan. Furthermore, China is also wary of Pakistan's use of Islam and terrorism because of China's concern over the Muslim separatist movement in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

Far more damaging to the Pakistan army's strategic calculus of yesteryears is the fact that there is no possibility for Pakistan to exploit the rivalry between the United States and Russia anymore, as both countries have moved a long way from their Cold War days. The United States and Russia share the same concerns over Islamic radicalism and terrorism. Russia not only appears unwilling to engage in treasury-draining conflicts, it has achieved its own foreign policy objectives in Afghanistan and Central Asia through the U.S. military.

The use of Pakistan's strategic location is not going to bring the country economic benefits anymore. The most lucrative prospects for Pakistan – oil pipeline projects originating from Iran and Central Asia – have stagnated due to its own violent destabilizing actions in Afghanistan and India. Now, Pakistan faces the prospect of being left on the wayside as the U.S. government weighs its decision about an exit from Afghanistan and a rethinking of NATO supply routes through Pakistan.
Moribund thinking and obsession over conflict with India has landed Pakistan in a dark place. There is no possibility of recovering from self-sustained wounds unless it makes peace with India. It seems that the long-restrained civilian leadership of Pakistan is making the right moves by tamping down rhetoric against India and attempting to initiate some semblance of a peace process.

Peace with India is not favored by the Pakistan army, as it stands to lose all the perks and control over the state that it exercised for more than six decades. However, it is essential for peace in the region and the world that the Pakistani army is once and for all sent back to the barracks. If this is not accomplished, it will once again engineer a Mumbai-type attack to derail India-Pakistan peace process and the region will be forced into a conflagration.

Read more here: Viewpoints: Pakistan at a turning point as U.S. exits Afghanistan - Viewpoints - The Sacramento Bee

 

[Pfpilot]

The article comes across as decidedly biased, but in it's claim, it has a great amount of truth. The optimists who see the American withdrawal as the last obstacle to a prosperous and peaceful Pakistan fail to see the bigger picture. Who are these terrorist going to kill once the Americans are gone? We must not be deluded into thinking this is the era of General Zia, who may have done more damage to this nation than any foreigner could dream of. We are no longer in control of a movement that has blown out of proportions in size and in will. Many portions of Pakistani society have taken on an increasingly Islamic (read Wahhabi) disposition. We not only have a large number of people willing to disrupt any future progress in the name of Islam, but a significant part of the population that would support such a movement.

Anyone who has any understanding of economics could see that the most prosperous years of the Musharraf era were built on aid and return of Pakistani money from foreign lands. The economic model was never sound, and in turn, never sustainable. External peace, were it ever realized, would do little to bring about long term economic growth. The answer to prosperity lies in the same place as peace: within. Until the Pakistani government provides law and order and basic infrastructure to at least a majority of the nation, we are going nowhere fast. Equally, until we don't stop playing with fire and decide to pick a side in this conflict of extremism, we will not see peace.

I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that Pakistan finds itself static in a changing world. The Cold War is over; we live in an era of economic warfare, where the decision on tariffs or quotas could transform in the positive or decimate a neighboring economy. We keep trying to play political games from a position of leverage, but we have none. Pakistan today, lacks friends, money, and a distinct identity. As the Indians and Chinese have shown us in extreme and painful detail: gain economic prosperity and the world will bow to one's needs. The Chinese will only be there, till the economic gains of a deeper relationship with India overpower any strategic aims involving Pakistan. Again, it does not take an economics major to see the increasingly interdependent nature of Indian and Chinese economic growth and the ominous signs our leaders are unwilling to see

Our deep rooted problems will not go away with the American withdrawal; our leaders will just find a new person or nation to blame for our shortcomings; while they drive around in cars displaying the latest in German engineering.

 

[Porus]

Pakistan after the American withdrawal
By Khaled Ahmed
Published: April 22, 2012

Most observers are worried about Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US-Nato forces from there in 2013-2014. It should be interesting to see what would happen to Pakistan once the Americans are gone.

Islamabad’s Jinnah Institute in its briefing (July 25, 2011) spelled out Pakistan’s ‘objectives’ in relation to post-withdrawal Afghanistan. The most outstanding point made in the report pertained to India: “Pakistani foreign policy elite accept that India has a role to play in Afghanistan’s economic reconstruction … but Pakistani security establishment [thinks] a reluctance to address Pakistani misgivings increases the likelihood of a growing Indian footprint, and in turn, New Delhi’s greater ability to manipulate the endgame negotiations and the post-settlement dispensation in Kabul”.

Will India get out of Afghanistan after the American withdrawal? From a statement by the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (“we will support the Afghan people&#8221, it appears that it plans to retain its presence in Afghanistan.
The most likely post-withdrawal scenario is that there will be a civil war in Afghanistan. A parallel war will take place between the Afghan National Army and the non-state actors from Pakistan. The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, has told Congress he thought a future 230,000-strong Afghan force, scaled down from a planned 352,000, was enough after 2017. That will historically be the largest army Afghanistan will ever have.

Ahmed Rashid in his latest book Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of Pakistan and the West (Allen Lane 2012) discusses the Afghan Army: “US recruitment policy includes a strict ratio established in 2003 among all ethnic groups. Thus Tajiks could not be over 25 per cent in the army, but in 2010 they constituted some 41 per cent of soldiers and officers in the army, while Tajik officers commanded 70 per cent of the units (P 87).

The Taliban will have 25,000 men, counting on the basis of the maximum mustered so far. The uneven battlefield will be ‘equalised’ by inserting additional fighters from Pakistan. The Tehreek-e-Taliban will raid across the Durand Line, but the manpower it mobilises may not suffice.

Pakistan expects Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami, ragtag warlords of Fata and Malakand to battle an Afghan Army already inclined to defection. But manpower will still be needed to even the scales and speed up defections. The Taliban will be helped by the Punjabi Taliban, of which the Asian Tigers are already aligned to the Haqqanis. The Defence of Pakistan Council headed by the powerful Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) will oblige with more Punjabi manpower. The JuD leader Hafiz Saeed allegedly says he alone can muster 100,000.

Pakistan is home to the armies that will enter Afghanistan but it hardly controls them. Therefore, the blowback from Afghanistan this time will be transformational for Pakistan. It may not survive the ‘fundraising’ by its non-state actors through kidnappings and bank robberies in its major cities. This trend among the state-supported jihadi outfits has been in evidence.
The Taliban in Pakistan have been criminalised. In affected areas, criminals are in the process of becoming Talibanised. Vendettas are carried out increasingly with suicide bombers because Taliban are busy selling their surplus fedayeen. Karachi and Peshawar are already paralysed by kidnappings for ransom. From the current trend in its Defence Housing Authority, Lahore too, is expected to be targeted in a big away.

Pakistan has sought to appease terrorism by becoming anti-American and pro-Taliban. After the withdrawal, a Talibanised Afghanistan will survive only if Pakistan, too, fulfils its promise of becoming a khilafat.
The policy of appeasement will proceed to its logical end. The remaining attributes of the state will fall off, with religious parties, plus madrassas with jihadi capacity, increasingly exercising authority in its name.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 22nd, 2012.