Rhetoric, interests strain Pakistan-US alliance

[Omar1984]

Rhetoric, interests strain Pakistan-US alliance

* Washington’s growing impatience with Pakistan’s perceived foot-dragging against Taliban hiding in its borderlands putting heavy strain on an alliance critical to winning Afghan war

* Robert Gibbs says status quo not acceptable

* Congressional aide says Pentagon, chain of command under pressure to show progress

ISLAMABAD: Washington’s growing impatience with Pakistan’s perceived foot-dragging against Taliban hiding in its borderlands is putting heavy strain on an alliance critical to winning the war in Afghanistan.

Since September, Pakistan has seen a surge in drone attacks as well as a cascade of leaks, criticisms and border incursions on the part of NATO forces in Afghanistan, one of which killed three Pakistani troops. Citing security reasons, it closed vital coalition supply routes to Afghanistan and wrung an apology from US Ambassador Anne Patterson for the three deaths.

Washington is concerned that some elements of the Inter-Services Intelligence had interactions with the insurgents that “may be seen as supporting terrorist groups rather than going after them”, said Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan on Thursday.

The White House also sent an assessment of the Afghanistan war to US Congress this week that said Pakistani forces had avoided direct conflict with al Qaeda and the Taliban this spring, in part for political reasons.

Status quo: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Thursday that the status quo was not acceptable, which had been underscored in the report to Congress. The crux of the issue is that Pakistan and the US do not have the same interests in the region.

According to Stratfor, a private intelligence firm, Pakistan wants to regain influence in post-invasion Afghanistan by using Afghan Taliban taking shelter in Pakistan. The US needs to eliminate them and their sanctuaries so it could withdraw from Afghanistan.

“It’s clear the Pakistanis are frustrated with the US,” said Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Centre for a New American Security and former adviser on General Stanley McChrystal’s assessment team in Afghanistan. “What I don’t think the Pakistanis understand is how frustrated the Americans and the American public are with the Pakistanis.”

The recent assessment was especially damaging, because it could fuel concerns in Congress over continued aid to Pakistan, currently set at $7.5 billion in civilian and development aid over the next five years.

“There could be a little bit of poker playing of (the) US military basically saying, ‘We’ll take the risk of humiliating the Pakistani military, let’s see if that prompts them to take some action on their own’,” a congressional aide said.

“You know, they don’t like us doing drone attacks and sending helicopters over. ‘OK, step up and do it yourself’.”

Progress: The reason for the stepped up pressure could be a strategy review on Afghanistan due in December. “The Pentagon and the chain of command are under real pressure to show progress in Afghanistan,” the aide said.

The aide said US generals believed they were unlikely to make enough progress by July 2011 – when US President Barack Obama has said he will start to withdraw forces – as long as the Hamid Karzai government lacks credibility and militants find sanctuary in Pakistan.

“They can’t really do anything to make the Karzai government more credible. So they are trying to go after the sanctuary issue and I think they realise, and I think (General David) Petraeus realises, that the status quo has very little chance of success for them (in the timeframe they’ve been given),” said the aide.

How might these diplomatic spats affect the Afghan war effort?

Although army chief General Ashfaq Kayani is believed to have good ties with the US, other senior officers may grow tired of US doubts over Islamabad’s commitment to fighting militancy.

Hardliners in the army could argue Pakistan had lost thousands of soldiers supporting the war on militancy and is getting little in return except pressure to do more.

“At some stage, they could prevail or would at least be able to influence policy. You can’t totally disregard them,” said Imtiaz Gul, author of ‘The Most Dangerous Place’, a book about Pakistan’s Tribal Areas.

Still, neither side can afford to walk away from the other. Pakistan receives $2 billion a year in military aid and the US needs it to keep the Afghan supply lines open and fight its own militants who are supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Strategic dialogue: Overcoming these disagreements is crucial if the next round of strategic dialogue — scheduled for October 22 in Washington — is going to be successful, said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Centre at the Atlantic Council. “I think it’s going to be critical in the next few weeks that they don’t have any flare-ups, neither do they have any lingering doubts about each other’s intentions,” he said. reuters


Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[Omar1984]

“You know, they don’t like us doing drone attacks and sending helicopters over. ‘OK, step up and do it yourself’.”

Pakistan has been saying that all along. Give Pakistan the drone technology and other weapons to fight the highly trained extremists and then Pakistan will fight them.

 

[muse]

Mr. Almeida seems as frustrated by the stasis as we all seem to be, but he stays "on message" (message: India not enemy) -- Question for Cyril (Question : India, friend? Show me!)

Readers, get ready for a "cataclysmic event" - nothing short of that will do for Mr. Almeida and the policy makers he finds persuasive in their effort to save Pakistan by destroying the Pakistani Fauj


Strategic stasis
By Cyril Almeida
Friday, 08 Oct, 2010


In all of this, the question for any Pakistani ought to be, how does the army’s strategy make Pakistan and Pakistanis more secure? The answer: it doesn’t.


Missiles fired by drones are raining down in North Waziristan. American cage-rattling — in a bid to get Pakistan to do more against militant sanctuaries in Fata, especially North Waziristan Agency — has been stepped up several notches, cross-border raids causing severe friction between the Americans and the security establishment here.

The BBC is reporting “growing anger in Pakistan over increasingly aggressive US attacks along the border”. The New York Times has quoted Prime Minister Gilani warning, “We will not tolerate any act against our sovereignty and integrity in the name of the war against terrorism.”

The Wall Street Journal reports anger has “flared among Pakistan’s senior (army) ranks after a cross-border raid by US Special Operations Forces”. Meanwhile, this newspaper of record has carried Gen Kayani’s statement rejecting rumours of secret deals: “There is no question of any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces whereby they are allowed to conduct operations on our side of the border.”

All of this happened in September/October. Just not in 2010.

Back in 2008, with the clock winding down on the Bush presidency and attention shifting to the forgotten war in Afghanistan, pressure had begun to mount. The American goal: push the envelope with Pakistan to try and enlarge the operational and tactical space for the Americans to pursue their strategic goals in ******.

The Americans didn’t get very far. We know this by the simple fact that two years on they are resorting to the same tactics and getting the same, perhaps even more, fierce response from the Pakistani side.

Fact is, in the larger, strategic, scheme of things American pressure of this sort is unlikely to lead to any significant adjustments by Pakistan. Here’s why.

Post 9/11, the strategic relationship between the US and Pakistan changed. The Americans demanded many things of us; we had to acquiesce to some of their demands because the trigger was a cataclysmic event, the events of 9/11. That’s just how relationships between states work in such situations.

What’s crucial is that relatively quickly Pakistan settled on a band within which it was willing to extend cooperation to the US, a band somewhere along the continuum between full cooperation and total non-cooperation.

Pakistan helped the Americans on the periphery of the Afghan war theatre (rounding up Al Qaeda types in Fata and Pakistani cities, and opening supply routes to Afghanistan), while undermining the Americans in the theatre itself (supporting the Afghan Taliban, or at least turning a blind eye to their activities here — a sub-plot calibrated in response to the ebb and flow of American pressure).

Pakistan did this for two reasons. One, the army’s strategic view of the region mandated it. In simplistic terms: the army feared warlordism in a splintered Afghanistan would enhance the space for Indian ‘interference’, creating two ‘hot’ borders which would have to be managed simultaneously — something the army hasn’t been designed to handle.

Two, and this is crucial, the army could get away it.

Writing in the wake of the WikiLeaks scandal last July, Tom Friedman, a New York Times columnist and a ‘big-picture’ guy, managed to get to the heart of the problem for the US. Americans, Friedman wrote, “are paying Pakistan’s Army and intelligence service to be two-faced. Otherwise, they would be just one-faced and 100 per cent against us.”

Why do Americans put up with this duplicity? Because they have to. The US has little leverage to break the Pakistan Army’s obsession with India. 9/11 was a cataclysmic event but it was not enough to change the army’s raison d’être — fighting India — and so, by extension, was not enough to make the army abandon its Afghan policy.

The US does, though, fear instability in Pakistan because we are bigger and, potentially, badder than anything Afghanistan has to offer.

As Friedman put it: “After expelling Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, we [the Americans] stayed on to stabilise the place, largely out of fears that instability in Afghanistan could spill into Pakistan and lead to Islamist radicals taking over Islamabad and its nukes.”

Or put another way: “So we pay Pakistan to help us in Afghanistan, even though we know some of that money is killing our own soldiers, because we fear that just leaving could lead to Pakistan’s Islamists controlling its bomb.”

Add to this the reality that the American/Nato/Isaf war machine in Afghanistan cannot be sustained without Pakistani supply routes and you’re left with a messy relationship: the Americans take whatever help Pakistan extends, while trying and working around the problems Pakistan creates or exacerbates. That basic configuration, ‘The Great (Double) Game’ in Friedman’s reckoning, has held for the last decade.

So while the latest American cage-rattling has whipped up a fair amount of hysteria, even in the US, the fact is little has happened to change Pakistan’s strategic calculus, or for the US to gain the necessary leverage to force change in Pakistan’s strategic calculus — and both sides know this.

The US knows it can push only so hard at present. If Pakistan feels it is being nudged beyond the band of cooperation it has deemed acceptable, Pakistan will push back. Supply routes will be closed, attacks on convoys will mysteriously step up and cooperation in other areas will slow.

So much like in September 2008, the cross-border raids — presently beyond what is acceptable to Pakistan — will quickly be curtailed. Already the apologies for the Kurram attack have been profuse and many.

Does that mean the level cooperation extended to the Americans is fixed come what may? No. 9/11 impelled the last great leap forward (or backward, from the perspective of some here) in Pakistan’s cooperation with the West. Most likely, then, only another cataclysmic event — the next 9/11 — will impel the next big lurch forward, i.e. the next step in the strategic decoupling from the non-state actors.

Kayani & co can resist helicopter attacks and the like at present, but their objections would be brushed aside in the event of another catastrophic attack in the US or against American interests abroad. Pakistan has been warned publicly enough, from Hillary Clinton downwards and even before under Bush, that a major terrorist attack would be a game-changer.

Indeed, it may be the only realistic game-changer. Short of weaning the Pakistan Army off its India obsession, a major terrorist attack is the only likely scenario in which Pakistan could be induced to make the next major shift in policy.

In all of this, the question for any Pakistani ought to be, how does the army’s strategy make Pakistan and Pakistanis more secure?

The answer: it doesn’t. If you don’t subscribe to the India-centric view of national security, the costs of whatever we have done far outweigh the ‘benefits’ of keeping India at bay.

But like it or not, that’s the policy and it’s not likely to change any time soon. Beware the black swan, though, the next game-changer.

cyril.a@gmail.com

 

[muse]

A new bribe for Pakistan - Pakistan as NATO member, but remember American alliance of the past? CENTO, SEATO? what happed to Pakistan in these alliances? Pakistan and the US are just a bad mix, and before you get started about how this is Pakistan's fault, lets grant that Pakistan bears her own responsibility, but the US simply does not get it, not Pakistan, not any Muslim majority country can be an ally of the US (real ally) and that is a problem whose solution begin in the US, from Washington DC, from New York and from the President and the Congress and the Courts American cannot be at war with Muslims and expect alliances with Muslim majority countries like it or hate it, it's just the truth.

Proposing that brother Turkiye agree to be used as if it were toilet paper in exchange "possibly" helping it with EU membership "down the road", in order to deliver Pakistan to the Western gods == a stupid idea, after all, Turkiye is a brother and need not see Pakistan in transactional terms .


Repairing NATO-Pakistan Relations
Posted: 06 Oct 2010


Recent attacks on NATO supply lines in Pakistan and Pakistan’s official suspension of access through the Khyber Pass really underscore the challenges facing NATO in Afghanistan. Shuja Nawaz recently explained

This situation could easily careen out of control. The Obama administration, which is unhappy with what it perceives as Pakistan's lack of action against anti-American militants, is seriously miscalculating if it is using such tactics to pressure Pakistan to launch operations against its will. Better to argue your case behind closed doors, as allies should -- or risk a public split. Similarly, Pakistan risks overestimating its leverage over the United States and NATO by shutting down the coalition's supply routes across the Durand Line. If anything, this embargo will accelerate the U.S. drive to diversify its logistics chain -- while taking money out of Pakistanis' pockets.

Pakistan not only has deep historical, social, and cultural connections to Afghanistan (there are more Pashtuns in Pakistan than Afghanistan), but the Pakistani port of Karachi is essential to NATO’s logistics (75 percent of materiel travels through Pakistan). Further, Pakistan has a better relationship with the Taliban than the Kabul government, so any peace settlement begins in Quetta, Peshawar, or Islamabad. Given how important Pakistan is to NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan, we asked ourselves, “What can NATO do to improve relations with Pakistan while increasing pressure on the Taliban?”

Pakistan has emerged as one of the largest recipients of U.S. international assistance, which includes over $3 billion in the current fiscal year. The United States provided substantial disaster relief assistance in response to the 2005 earthquake and is providing humanitarian assistance to ongoing flood relief efforts. In spite of these efforts, Pakistan’s people and government have a long memory of previous unmet promises and worry about eventual NATO withdrawal beginning in 2011. To illustrate that NATO countries are committed to the long-term security and stability of Central and South Asia, NATO should invite Pakistan to join the Alliance. A bold move like this signals a long-term commitment that Pakistan will not be abandoned.

Pakistan would also fill a vital role in NATO too. First, its inclusion formally accepts that NATO is a global security organization not just an Atlantic one. Second, Pakistan provides NATO the peacekeeping experience it needs to confront contemporary security challenges (Pakistan is one of the largest contributors to United Nations peacekeeping operations around the world). Third, Pakistan could shift its military focus from deterrence of India to the more natural counterterrorism and counterinsurgency roles its military can fill.

It is difficult to see how any NATO government will be enthusiastic about extending Article 5 security guarantees to a country that has territorial disputes with a nuclear-armed neighbor and which has in the past proven both unwilling and unable to prevent terror attacks launched against India (and other states) from being plotted and planned on its territory, sometimes with the support of elements within its own national security apparatus. Pakistan may be a bridge too far for an organization that cannot agree on the desirability of including Ukraine and Georgia. And Pakistan already holds the status of a major non-NATO ally in the U.S. book.

If this idea, bold as it may be in its imagination, is a non-starter for a long list of practical reasons, it should not preclude us from considering other out-of-the-box proposals. One might be to reactivate (or recreate) CENTO, the old NATO-style alliance that Pakistan did belong to during the Cold War. But even this idea is fraught with risks. Without significant progress on the Indo-Pakistani front, any formal U.S. alliance with Islamabad risks alienating the emerging rapprochement with India (a non-starter for Washington) or must otherwise guarantee Pakistan’s security in all areas except a potential clash with India, making such a project worthless in Pakistan’s view. And China and Russia are likely to argue that such a nascent regional security organization already exists—in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to which both India and Pakistan sit as observers.

But perhaps a NATO-Pakistan agreement, that would spell out the two items of greatest concern to Islamabad? One guaranteeing no preemptory withdrawal, leaving Pakistan “in the lurch,” the second, acknowledging a defined Pakistani “zone of privileged interests” in Afghanistan?

Since NATO is the kink in the relationship, why not approach Turkey – a Muslim NATO member country – to leverage the US-Pakistan relationship and calm the tensions between Pakistan and NATO? This would be a major political achievement for Turkey, and could potentially strengthen its argument for EU membership down the road.

In a broader context, NATO’s ability to increase pressure on the Taliban has to take into account two pressing questions: (1) can a purely military/kinetic strategy to pressure the Taliban be effective? And, (2) even in the event of NATO-Pakistan relations improving, why should we expect Pakistan’s national interests to drastically change towards an anti-Taliban stance – especially since the Taliban directly and indirectly serve certain Pakistani interests in the region?

For the first question, it is necessary to trace the source of Taliban empowerment in the early 1990s: It was not just military prowess, but it also included social justice – however distorted. Therefore, part of the solution involves strengthening and empowering a credible Afghan judicial system, in order to bring law and order into Afghan society with concrete results, and undermine the Taliban in the process.

For the second question, there is no easy answer. There are religious constituencies within Pakistan, along with some ISI elements, who view the idea of supporting the Taliban as a sound one. How can these elements be divorced from influencing Pakistan’s national interests and strategies? Pakistan is one of the “founding members” of the Taliban. We fail to appreciate that fact.

Undoubtedly this short discussion is limited, but Pakistan needs real incentives to cooperate with NATO. Humanitarian and development assistance are not re-aligning Pakistan’s national interests. Perhaps Turkey can play a significant role in presenting those incentives and not be resented as a “Western imperial power.”

Derek S. Reveron, Nikolas K. Gvosdev and Hayat Alvi are professors of national security affairs at the US Naval War College. These views are their own

 

[muse]

Even as it flounders, the US imposes terms on Pakistan or else the relationship will suffer it says, it imagines there is something left of the so called relationship, perhaps finding the politicians worn from use, the US has now taken to blackmailing the army and the Chief of Army staff himself - how Kiyani will play his cards will reflect not only on his political future but that of the Fauj - Pakistanis delude themselves imagining that relations with the US can ever of the quality they would think could further Pakistani interests, unless of course being blackmailed is in the interests of the Pakistan army Chief of staff, the Fauj and the Pakistani state.



Pakistan: Is It Over, Over There?
Posted: 06 Oct 2010



Just when it seemed that things could not get worse, they do. One would have thought that given the ongoing catastrophic floods, conditions in Pakistan were at a nadir. But last week, several incidents lowered even that bar regarding U.S.-Pakistani ties.

NATO forces in Afghanistan made two unauthorized incursions into Pakistan, the second killing three Frontier Corps soldiers. CIA drone strikes soared possibly provoked last week by threats of al-Qaida attacks in Europe using operatives trained in Pakistan carrying U.S. and friendly passports.

In response to these incidents, Pakistan closed one of the major supply routes from Karachi to Afghanistan citing "security" concerns arising from a backlash to the NATO forays into Pakistan territory.

However, the signal was unmistakable regardless of the rationale -- violate our territory again and suffer the consequences.

But the potentially most damaging incident was a cellphone camera video showing Pakistani army soldiers summarily executing a handful of prisoners in their custody. The most careful investigation as to determine the real identity of the executioners is essential because the impact could be powerful in shaping even greater negative public opinion in Pakistan and in the United States.

Without a transparent, credible inquiry, hearings by the U.S. Congress into allegations of extrajudicial executions and illegal detentions by Pakistan security forces will be inevitable. The U.S. Senate had deferred these investigations including charges that the army held hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners suspected of terrorism refusing to turn them over to the courts on the grounds that these suspects would be released and would return to the battlefield.

Ironically, America's categorization of prisoners captured in the war on terror as "enemy combatants" and incarcerating them at Guantanamo Bay to circumvent trials in civilian U.S. courts suggests this dilemma of dealing with terrorist suspects isn't limited to Pakistan.

And, unfortunately, Pakistan's interior minister asking whether Americans were "friends or enemies" in light of the incursions and other incidents isn't an idle question in either Pakistan or the United States, reflecting the growing strain.

Both Pakistan and the United States tried to reduce the impact of these events. A joint investigation of the NATO incursions and an apology by International Security Assistance Force commander U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus to Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani will help. However, inherent difficulties and tensions in the overall relationship have never been fully resolved and have been exacerbated possibly to the breaking point this past week.

The crucial divergences and competing interests between America and Pakistan are no secret. If Bob Woodward's newest book "Obama's War" is accurate, the White House regards Pakistan as "the cancer" that must be cured and on which success or failure in Afghanistan rests.

Americans rightly won't tolerate sanctuaries in Pakistan from which Taliban fighters can rest, recuperate and return to Afghanistan to kill and maim American, NATO and Afghan forces. These sanctuaries and Pakistani reluctance to take on terrorist groups such as the Haqqani network remain major bones of contention.

Pakistan sees any encroachment on national sovereignty as intolerable. Further, given strong public antipathy to the United States (as opposed to individual Americans), any presence of U.S. forces in Pakistan is politically risky and must be limited.

Given conspiracy theories that abound, distortions and exaggerations of American military and CIA presence in Pakistan are taken as ground truth and used to whip up negative public sentiment.

Because of the historical record, many Pakistanis doubt America's staying power in Afghanistan and resent its fickleness in using and then abandoning Pakistan at key junctures. The consequence is that Pakistan would be justified in its long-term planning "going it alone" given the hollowness of some of Washington's prior reassurances. The effect is to widen the growing "trust deficit" between the two allies.

Opportunities must be seized from these worsening conditions. Here are two.

First, the forthcoming strategic dialogue in Washington this month can be the forum for addressing these key issues that divide and unite us. However, the two sides must agree to be candid, forthcoming and willing to compromise based on better mutual understanding of the other. That will require presidential leadership on both sides to repair the relationship.

Second, Pakistan must determine who was responsible for the summary executions and take appropriate action. If the army wasn't responsible, that must be shown beyond a reasonable doubt. If guilt is established, either a court-martial or civil trial is essential. That happened in 1992 when the then army chief took strong action in similar circumstances.

But make no mistake: the U.S.-Pakistani relationship is suffering. The worst outcome is for that relationship to be over, over there. Both sides must understand how severely tested this relationship has become and that without bold action by Washington and Islamabad, it may not be repaired.

Harlan Ullman is Senior Advisor at the Atlantic Council, Chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business, and a frequent advisor to NATO