MilSpec
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If there were an award for committing international public relations suicide, Pakistan would be a perennial frontrunner. Last week's effort: the sentencing of Shakil Afridi, a doctor who helped the CIA track Osama bin Laden last year, to 33 years in prison for treason. In response, the U.S. Congress docked a symbolic $33 million from Pakistan's annual aid budget, or $1 million for every year of the doctor's sentence.
Washington's anger is understandable. In the year since bin Laden was discovered in a fortified mansion in the garrison town of Abbottabad, Pakistan has done little to dispel the widespread belief that the world's most wanted terrorist was sheltered by elements in the country's army and its spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence. Nobody has been punished for aiding bin Laden, part of a pattern of omissions whose beneficiaries certainly include the rogue nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan and Lashkar-e-Taiba's Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.
But as U.S.-Pakistan relations continue to nosedive, the risks for Islamabad run deeper than a mere PR disaster. For the first time since the country came into being in 1947, Pakistan is in danger of being seen as implacably hostile to the West. Should the U.S. switch from a policy of engagement to active containment, Pakistan's economic and diplomatic problems, already acute by any measure, may become unmanageable.
Dr. Afridi's punishment is only the most recent example of Pakistan's slide away from its founding pro-Western moorings. Earlier this month, Islamabad annoyed NATO countries at a summit on Afghanistan in Chicago by refusing to reopen overland supply routes it shut after the U.S. mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a border clash last November. Pakistan's negotiators are reportedly demanding upward of $5,000 per supply truck, more than 20 times what they charged six months ago.
In Pakistan itself, rampant anti-Americanism shows no sign of abating. Last week the Supreme Court suspended Farahnaz Ispahani, a close aide to President Asif Ali Zardari and an outspoken defender of human rights, from the lower house of the legislature. Her alleged crime: having acquired a U.S. passport in addition to the Pakistani one she was born with.
Enlarge Image
Associated Press
Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped track Osama bin Laden, was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Meanwhile, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan continues to attract thousands of supporters to public rallies where he fulminates against America and declares affection for the Taliban. A Pew Research Center survey released last month shows that only 55% of Pakistani Muslims disapprove of al Qaeda. In Lebanon and Jordan that figure is 98% and 77% respectively.
Oddly enough, for many Pakistani elites, their compatriots' loathing of America is somehow Washington's problem rather than theirs. They see Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal and proxy terrorist groups, as too big to fail. In the final analysis, their view holds, the U.S. will always be there to prop up Pakistan's ailing economy with aid and support from multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund.
These elites are encouraged to think this way because a superficial reading of U.S.-Pakistani history supports this view. For the most part, Washington has not allowed episodic disagreements to get in the way of the larger relationship. Even Islamabad's clandestine acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1980s, and proliferation to Iran and North Korea in the 1990s, did not lead to a complete rupture in ties.
Even now, only a handful of hotheads in Washington are calling for all assistance to Islamabad to be scrapped. Most responsible Pakistan-watchers, both inside and outside the U.S. government, would rather fix the relationship than scrap it.
Nonetheless, Pakistanis who expect the future to faithfully echo the past tend to forget one important detail: Pakistan has never confronted the West in the fashion it is today.
The country's founders were drawn largely from the ranks of Indian Muslims who embraced Western learning and acknowledged Western power. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the father of Pakistan, instinctively understood that he could better advance his interests by coming to terms with the West than by opposing it.
Successive generations of Pakistani leaders, from Ayub Khan to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to Gen. Zia ul-Haq to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, stayed true to this belief. Even when they pursued policies at odds with U.S. interestsGen. Zia's nuclear bomb or Gen. Musharraf's double-dealing in Afghanistanthey were careful to avoid sustained public confrontation. They knew it was counterproductive to needle a superpower they depended on for both resources and global credibility.
Pakistan's current rulers, especially the powerful army that calls the shots on national security policy, forget this lesson at their peril. The U.S. may not want to see Pakistan fail, but nor can it be expected to be endlessly patient.
Pakistan's dismal favorability rating in America means there's no real political cost to bringing Islamabad to heel by stepping up drone strikes, giving it a diplomatic cold shoulder and withholding financial supportall at the same time. Washington may even choose to add targeted sanctions against top ISI officials directly implicated in supporting terrorism.
Pakistan is playing a game of chicken without fully grasping the consequences of losing. The shrewd and practical Jinnah would have recognized the folly of this course. His successors have already betrayed his message of religious tolerance at home, and now they're on track to subvert his legacy abroad
Washington's anger is understandable. In the year since bin Laden was discovered in a fortified mansion in the garrison town of Abbottabad, Pakistan has done little to dispel the widespread belief that the world's most wanted terrorist was sheltered by elements in the country's army and its spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence. Nobody has been punished for aiding bin Laden, part of a pattern of omissions whose beneficiaries certainly include the rogue nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan and Lashkar-e-Taiba's Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.
But as U.S.-Pakistan relations continue to nosedive, the risks for Islamabad run deeper than a mere PR disaster. For the first time since the country came into being in 1947, Pakistan is in danger of being seen as implacably hostile to the West. Should the U.S. switch from a policy of engagement to active containment, Pakistan's economic and diplomatic problems, already acute by any measure, may become unmanageable.
Dr. Afridi's punishment is only the most recent example of Pakistan's slide away from its founding pro-Western moorings. Earlier this month, Islamabad annoyed NATO countries at a summit on Afghanistan in Chicago by refusing to reopen overland supply routes it shut after the U.S. mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a border clash last November. Pakistan's negotiators are reportedly demanding upward of $5,000 per supply truck, more than 20 times what they charged six months ago.
In Pakistan itself, rampant anti-Americanism shows no sign of abating. Last week the Supreme Court suspended Farahnaz Ispahani, a close aide to President Asif Ali Zardari and an outspoken defender of human rights, from the lower house of the legislature. Her alleged crime: having acquired a U.S. passport in addition to the Pakistani one she was born with.
Enlarge Image
Associated Press
Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped track Osama bin Laden, was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Meanwhile, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan continues to attract thousands of supporters to public rallies where he fulminates against America and declares affection for the Taliban. A Pew Research Center survey released last month shows that only 55% of Pakistani Muslims disapprove of al Qaeda. In Lebanon and Jordan that figure is 98% and 77% respectively.
Oddly enough, for many Pakistani elites, their compatriots' loathing of America is somehow Washington's problem rather than theirs. They see Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal and proxy terrorist groups, as too big to fail. In the final analysis, their view holds, the U.S. will always be there to prop up Pakistan's ailing economy with aid and support from multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund.
These elites are encouraged to think this way because a superficial reading of U.S.-Pakistani history supports this view. For the most part, Washington has not allowed episodic disagreements to get in the way of the larger relationship. Even Islamabad's clandestine acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1980s, and proliferation to Iran and North Korea in the 1990s, did not lead to a complete rupture in ties.
Even now, only a handful of hotheads in Washington are calling for all assistance to Islamabad to be scrapped. Most responsible Pakistan-watchers, both inside and outside the U.S. government, would rather fix the relationship than scrap it.
Nonetheless, Pakistanis who expect the future to faithfully echo the past tend to forget one important detail: Pakistan has never confronted the West in the fashion it is today.
The country's founders were drawn largely from the ranks of Indian Muslims who embraced Western learning and acknowledged Western power. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the father of Pakistan, instinctively understood that he could better advance his interests by coming to terms with the West than by opposing it.
Successive generations of Pakistani leaders, from Ayub Khan to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to Gen. Zia ul-Haq to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, stayed true to this belief. Even when they pursued policies at odds with U.S. interestsGen. Zia's nuclear bomb or Gen. Musharraf's double-dealing in Afghanistanthey were careful to avoid sustained public confrontation. They knew it was counterproductive to needle a superpower they depended on for both resources and global credibility.
Pakistan's current rulers, especially the powerful army that calls the shots on national security policy, forget this lesson at their peril. The U.S. may not want to see Pakistan fail, but nor can it be expected to be endlessly patient.
Pakistan's dismal favorability rating in America means there's no real political cost to bringing Islamabad to heel by stepping up drone strikes, giving it a diplomatic cold shoulder and withholding financial supportall at the same time. Washington may even choose to add targeted sanctions against top ISI officials directly implicated in supporting terrorism.
Pakistan is playing a game of chicken without fully grasping the consequences of losing. The shrewd and practical Jinnah would have recognized the folly of this course. His successors have already betrayed his message of religious tolerance at home, and now they're on track to subvert his legacy abroad
