A U.S.-Pakistan Reset
A charismatic envoy's sudden downfall is the chance for Washington to move from engagement with Islamabad to containment.
It's not every day that an ambassador's departure from office makes international headlines. But then Husain Haqqani, who resigned Tuesday after serving for more than three years as Pakistan's envoy to Washington, was no garden-variety diplomat. He managed to be unapologetically pro-American, while representing one of the most anti-American places in the world.
The extraordinary circumstances of Mr. Haqqani's departure reveal much about Pakistan's precarious politics. He was forced to step down, reportedly under pressure from the country's notorious intelligence agencies, amid unconfirmed allegations that he secretly sought U.S. assistance to weaken the grip of the military. His exit should make clear that Pakistan's generals have no intention of accepting the democratic principle of civilian supremacy. In turn, that should compel American policy makers to reset their relationship with Pakistan into something more limited, transactional and realistic than before.
For now, the focus is on Mr. Haqqani and the dramatic revelations leading up to his resignation. Last month, an op-ed in the Financial Times by Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American businessman, hinted at the ambassador's involvement in a backchannel effort to rein in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency right after the U.S. raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden. A few weeks later, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani asked for his resignation pending an official inquiry into the scandal.
Mr. Haqqani denies any involvement in the alleged plot. But Mr. Ijaz, who has a reputation for grandstanding about his diplomatic derring-do, has released Blackberry chat transcripts with the ambassador that seem to show Mr. Haqqani was one of the authors of the memorandum at the heart of this scandal.
In a nutshell, the memo, delivered on May 10 to Adm. Mike Mullen—then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama administration's point person for contact with Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani—offered to curtail Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism and bring more transparency to its runaway nuclear program. In return, it sought U.S. assistance in warding off an alleged coup attempt by an army made skittish by the U.S. raid on bin Laden's compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad, 40 miles outside Islamabad. Despite the absence of firm evidence linking Mr. Haqqani to the alleged plot, and Adm. Mullen's denial that he paid it any heed, the memo's publication last week seems to have convinced many Pakistanis that Mr. Haqqani is a traitor.
For Pakistan, Mr. Haqqani's departure is bad news. That the army was able to claim his head despite his public profession of innocence, and before a formal inquiry could prove the charges against him, highlights the disproportionate power unelected generals wield over their ostensible civilian masters. The shrill public trial conducted by the Pakistani media show how public space for reasoned debate in the country continues to shrink and how easy it is to drum up anti-Americanism.
With Mr. Haqqani gone, there is one fewer civilian official in Pakistan resisting the military and maintaining some semblance of Islamabad's friendship with Washington. A professed fan of Thomas Jefferson and the Boston Red Sox, he steadied the hand of bilateral relations at a turbulent time for both nations. Mr. Haqqani has been a voice of reason at home too: His 2005 book "Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military" is the definitive account of how the army has flamed the fans of jihadism to retain power and influence.
On a more practical level, his departure means that Pakistan—including its military—loses a diplomat widely lauded for his work ethic, impressive rolodex, and mastery of policy detail. His successor, Sherry Rehman, while a well-regarded liberal lawmaker, lacks her predecessor's political clout and intellectual heft.
Ironically, the worst effects will be felt by Pakistan's army and its powerful spy wing, the ISI—even though they may not realize it yet. The treatment the ISI reportedly meted out to Mr. Haqqani shows how the military remains unreformed. This will surely open the door to tougher U.S. action against both institutions should they fail to quell long-standing support for radical Islamist terrorist groups such as the Afghan Taliban.
For the U.S., then, the end of the Haqqani era in U.S.-Pakistan ties is an opportunity to transition from cautious optimism to hard-bitten realism. Arguably, the process was already well under way. In January, the two countries clashed over what Washington saw as Islamabad's failure to honor the diplomatic immunity of Raymond Davis—an alleged CIA subcontractor who shot two Pakistanis dead in Lahore, supposedly in self-defense during a botched robbery. In May came Abbottabad and its implications of Pakistani complicity in hiding the world's most wanted terrorist. Since then, stepped-up attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan by Pakistan-based militants have further soured the relationship.
The best American response to Pakistan's double game of fighting some terrorists while helping others is to move from a strategy of engagement to one of containment. This would place less emphasis on carrots such as aid and advanced equipment. Neither Washington's promise of an enhanced security partnership nor upward of $20 billion in aid over the past decade have worked. Grand initiatives like granting the country non-NATO ally status haven't reduced anti-American sentiment in the country.
Home to 180 million people, a fast-growing nuclear weapons program, and a plethora of jihadist groups, Pakistan is simply too important for the U.S. to ignore. The U.S. does nobody—least of all ordinary Pakistanis—a favor by refusing to nudge the Pakistani army toward reform. As Mr. Haqqani's experience shows, unchecked, the generals in Rawalpindi will continue to encroach on both U.S. interests in the region and Pakistan's fragile democracy.
Mr. Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and a columnist for WSJ.com. Follow him on Twitter @dhume01.
.......................................................................
President snubs Rabbani over Haqqani
A tense exchange of words reportedly took place between President Zardari and Senator Raza Rabbani over former Pakistani ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, in the hours-long meeting of the PPP core committee held late on Friday night.
The president spoke for almost 45 minutes with most of the meeting’s time consumed by the Husain Haqqani sacking saga. According to one of the participants, the president was “literally forcing” the agenda of the party, throwing his full weight behind the sacked ambassador while describing the entire memogate affair as “a conspiracy against the government, hatched outside Pakistan to create a rift between the civil and military leadership.” And it was on this count that the ever blunt veteran PPP stalwart, Raza Rabbani, refused to blindly follow the stated logic and throw his unconditional support behind Mr. Haqqani.
Sources said a visibly irritated president chided the ‘stubborn’ Rabbani, also the Chairman Parliamentary Committee on National Security, for not lending the required support to Haqqani and for his tendency to go his own way all the time. The President was insistent that Rabbani follow the rest of the pack since Haqqani had always “stood by the party in difficult times.” Sources told The News that an unconvinced Rabbani retorted that he always preferred making up his own mind over issues and that the Haqqani affair was no different. Upon hearing Rabbani’s independent thinking mantra, the president reportedly snapped, “I agree to disagree with you,” and put an end to the uneasy exchange.
Sources said President Zardari consumed the bulk of the meeting’s time by speaking about the memogate scandal and was of the view that while Husain Haqqani had been the focus, the real target had actually been the government.
Sources said the president also narrated his jail days and one of the participants of the meeting remarked that “it seemed that the days spent by the president in jail have forever stuck in his mind.” Sources said while praising Husain Haqqani, the president recalled that during her second term in office, he had advised Benazir Bhutto to allocate a party ticket to Husain Haqqani but she instead chose Shafqat Mehmood. However, when the government was overthrown, Shafqat Mehmood sided with Farooq Leghari while Husain Haqqani stood with the party. “Husain Haqqani was earning more money giving lectures in an American university but when he was asked to become ambassador in the United States he left the lucrative job to serve the country,” sources quoted the president as saying.
The president, according to the sources, told the committee that it was time to stand with Husain Haqqani rather than being impressed with the propaganda against him.
Some members of the committee advocated the establishment of a parliamentary body to “probe this controversy so that the foreign connection may be exposed.”
According to the sources, the government remained undecided about the mode of inquiry on the memogate scandal while two options were discussed in greater detail: handing over the issue to the Parliamentary Committee on National Security or having a top level enquiry conducted by the Foreign Office itself. For the time being, however, sources say the government has decided to wait for the report of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security before delegating an investigative probe into the matter to any particular agency or department.
The Parliamentary Committee on National Security will hold its meeting on this issue after Ashura in Muharram. The committee shall be briefed by the secretaries of defence and foreign affairs. Meanwhile, a majority of the core committee members were of the view that any Foreign Office enquiry would be tantamount to an eyewash and would be rejected by the opposition and the media.
No comments:
Post a Comment