Pakistan: a state adrift

A review of the 10 years since the September 11, 2001, attacks for a country that has weathered more crises than most.

Pakistan says 'severely affected' by terror

The "Tribute in Lights" (R) and One World Trade Center (L - lit in red, white and blue) illuminate the lower Manhattan skyline as seen from Jersey City, New Jersey September 10, 2011. PHOTO: REUTERS

 Pakistan paid tribute to the victims of the attacks on their 10th anniversary Sunday, saying it too was a target of terrorism.

“Pakistan joins the people of the United States and of the world in honouring the memory of all those who lost their lives on 11 September, as well as those who have been victims of terrorism around the world,” the foreign ministry said.

(Read: The Pakistani victims of 9/11)

The cataclysmic events of September 11 dragged the nuclear power into a decade of fighting and violence that the government in Islamabad says has killed 35,000 people.

The foreign ministry statement said: “As a country that has been severely affected by terrorism, we reaffirm our national resolve to strengthening international cooperation for the elimination of terrorism.”

It is also appropriate that today the global community renew its commitment to uphold the noble ideals of tolerance, humanity, brotherhood and friendship amongst all peoples and its determination to work for creating a better world.

“Pakistan dropped its support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and became a key US ally, but the relationship between the two countries is often strained.Washington has called Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal region the global headquarters of al Qaeda, where Taliban and other al Qaeda-linked networks plot attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The bulk of the Taliban and al Qaeda escaped the US invasion of Afghanistan by fleeing into Pakistan. The army says more than 3,000 soldiers have died battling them since.

Opposed to the US alliance, jihadist groups — once sponsored by the state to fight in Afghanistan and against India — have splintered into a local Taliban blamed for more than four years of unrelenting bomb attacks.

Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden was killed in his compound in Abbottabad, just two hours north of Islamabad, on May 2 this year in a daring raid by US special forces soldiers deep into Pakistan.



The last 10 years have been something less than kind to Pakistan.
Since it was famously told that it either stood with the United States in its "War on Terror" or faced being bombed "back to the Stone Age" in 2001, it has lost 35,000 citizens to "terror"-related attacks and violence, with 3,500 of those being security forces and military personnel who were either targeted by militant groups or were killed during military operations. To put that second number in context, it is 30 per cent higher than NATO military casualties in the war in Afghanistan in the same period.


It has endured countless attacks against both civilian targets (including mosques) and state personnel and infrastructure, peace deals with militant groups in its largely ungoverned tribal areas (invariably followed by the breakdown of said deals), the storming of a radical seminary in the capital by the army (the Lal Masjid episode of 2008), the emergence of a Pakistani-target centric militant network (the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan), al-Qaeda's designation of it as its primary enemy worldwide,  the imposition of Sharia law in Swat, and a subsequent military operation in the valley (as well as similar operations in South Waziristan (multiple times), Orakzai, Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Kurram and Swat itself on an earlier occasion; elsewhere, the government used armed tribal "lashkars" to fight extremist groups). It has seen the killing of arguably the country's most nationally popular leader in a suicide-bombing-and-shooting attack at a political rally, more bombings against civilians, the assassinations of a provincial governor and a federal minister for opposing a controversial blasphemy law, the killing of a major Baloch separatist leader in a state military operation, an expanded US drone strike campaign since 2009 (killing an estimated at least 2,309 people, of whom at least 392 were civilians, and the killing of the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, on the doorstep of the country's military academy in a covert strike by US special forces.
Economically, its Gross Domestic Product has grown by 22.5 per cent (in real terms) to $174.8m, with an accompanying rise in consumer inflation from 3.7 per cent to 13.7 per cent for the country's now 174 million citizens. It has had two major International Monetary Fund bailouts, seen annual economic growth of around seven per cent give way to economic stagnation due to an over-dependence on credit and foreign direct investment in the growth bubble, and a massive influx of US military and civilian aid, culminating in the Kerry Lugar Bill, under which Pakistan is to receive $7.5bn over five years in civilian-only aid.
Politically, the country has seen two parliamentary elections on either side of seven years of military rule, an unprecedented liberation of media freedoms, a popular mass movement for the reinstatement of its Supreme Court Chief Justice and the overthrow of said military ruler, the killing of the largest national party's leader and the subsequent ascendance of her widely unpopular husband to the country's presidency,  a continuing movement for secession in the country's largest province (by area) and bitter political conflict, sometimes resulting in bouts of violence claiming hundreds of lives, as most recently seen in Karachi.
And all of this is before one gets to the natural disasters: two major earthquakes, a tropical cyclone and major flooding which, put together, killed more than 75,000 people (96 per cent of those in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake) and affected more than 20 million (the vast majority after the devastating floods in 2010).


The country lurches, then, from crisis to catastrophe and back again, stopping briefly at moments of opportunity.


Crises of duplicity
The armchair debate in Pakistan is often focused on how the country's support for the US-led "War on Terror" has led Pakistan into this delicate balance – realistically, however, when then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell told then-Pakistani President and General Pervez Musharraf that Pakistan was either an ally or a target, there was no real choice involved.
"I don't think Pakistan had a choice. In that climate, I don't think Pakistan could declare neutrality, and I don't think that anybody would have considered neutrality as credible for Pakistan," Dr Rasul Baksh Raees, a professor of political science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and columnist, told Al Jazeera. "I don't think that Pakistan could really get through the crisis [if it had said no] ... Today, although it is wounded, it is still alive."
Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and defence analyst, agrees, pointing out that at the time, only Pakistan's Islamist political parties (the most prominent of whom, the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, have historically fared poorly in national elections) publicly opposed Pakistani co-operation with the United States. 

"Mainstream political parties were not opposed to the decision," he told Al Jazeera. "It is only at a later stage that this confusion about what Pakistan should do increased [amongst the political leadership]".

"What 9/11 did was that it made the military, through General Musharraf, come out of alignment with the mullahs [clerics] and the militants" [GALLO/GETTY]

As the years progressed, however, and the war in Afghanistan continued well beyond initial expectations, the Pakistani position, as articulated by Musharraf, of co-operating at the wrong end of a gun began to change, as did citizens' perceptions.
"The roots of the violence [in Pakistan] can be traced back to the pre-9/11 period. What happened after 9/11 was that the different militant Islamic groups gradually turned against the Pakistani state and they increased their mutual coordination, all aimed at the Pakistani state," Rizvi says.
The Pakistani state, and society at large, meanwhile "could not really make up their mind about how they should deal with all kinds of militant Islamic groups, including the Taliban", he continues. Raees argues that the result has been a country that is "socially and psychologically fractured", where citizens feel a sense of "anxiety and insecurity" at the lack of clear answers regarding their lives.


"What was lost in [the US support for Musharraf] was democracy and democratisation. Because Musharraf always said that Pakistan was fighting America's war … it gave the Pakistanis the very real belief that they were a rental army, and you see that anger. It really enabled Pakistanis to conclude that the war that they were fighting against the Taliban was not their war," argues Carol Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and an expert on the region.


The ambivalence comes in no small part from the fact that the Pakistani state has historically fostered groups such as Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba to further its foreign policy objectives in the region (mainly with regards to the dispute over Kashmir with India). While its compact with the United States may have exacerbated the rate of the problem, however, there was always going to be a moment for Pakistan when the suicide bombers came home to roost.
"What 9/11 did was that it made the military, through General Musharraf, come out of alignment with the mullahs [clerics] and the militants," explains Fair. "And [in response to that], some of the militants, like Jaish-e-Muhammad, said 'Screw you'."


Missed opportunities
"[The post-9/11 scene] was an opportunity for Pakistan to really change its foreign policy away from supporting militancy. […] Initially, the world community would have supported Pakistan if it saw this as a way of abandoning its proxy wars and groups," she argues. "Pakistan kind of squandered that opportunity to reverse its decades old dangerous foreign policy and of course this Pakistani Taliban phenomenon: well, there would be no Pakistani Taliban if there were no militants that Pakistan had supported over a number of years. And Pakistanis have paid a heavy price for this [in lives]. […]


"I don't think 9/11 was pivotal about the identity questions [that Pakistanis face] … those questions were already there. The fact is that well before 9/11 you had groups slaughtering members of the Ahmadiyya and Shia communities."
Today, while the Pakistani government has repeatedly said that it "owns" the war against extremists on its soil, it continues to differentiate between targets, based on its understanding of the strategic calculus at play.


"The Pakistani position is really riddled with hypocrisy and duplicity," says Fair, when speaking of tacit Pakistani support for groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (or its more peaceable front, the Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa) or the Haqqani network, which is fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan out of bases in North Waziristan, but refrains from attacking Pakistani targets. She quickly adds, however, that the same could be said of the US position, given how it has treated a country which was "pulling their weight more than other ally" in the early years of the war.

"If you analyse this issue, you run deep into a cultural, intellectual and social crisis and the crisis borders on duplicity and a total lack of integrity: you don't want to say it is your war, although it is. And you don't want to say that you are an American ally, but you are" Dr Rasul Baksh Raees

"The problem was that as Pakistan became more important in the 'War on Terror', it became increasingly difficult to make Pakistan abide by promises that were made [regarding support for proxy groups]," she says.


"If you socially analyse this issue, you run deep into a cultural, intellectual and social crisis and the crisis borders on duplicity and a total lack of integrity: you don't want to say it is your war, although it is. And you don't want to say that you are an American ally, but you are," rails Raees.
Pakistan refuses to confront the Haqqani network and other Afghan Taliban leaders based on strategic calculations regarding their likelihood to figure in any post-war Afghanistan as a counterweight to the perception of a Northern Alliance-based government that is dominated by Indian influence, most analysts agree.


That still leaves its support for groups such as Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, historically used by the state against India. Rizvi argues that such groups have by now "established strong roots in Pakistani society because of the tolerance shown by the Pakistani security forces. By now, a strict action against LeT or Jamaat ud Dawa or Jaish-e-Muhammad would mean fighting a war in the cities, which the Pakistan army would avoid. In other words, the military has lost the option of controlling them because of its own policies in the past".


He points to the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (both anti-Shia groups) as examples of groups that the state has no explicit use for externally, but which can nevertheless not be controlled domestically.


Rizvi says that going forward, Pakistan will likely continue to tolerate certain militant groups so that they can maintain influence with them, even if the Afghan Taliban would not necessarily be "directly amenable to Pakistani influence. They may listen to them, but they are not likely to act on their advice, because from their perspective Pakistan has betrayed them [by co-operating with the United States post-2001]".
Nevertheless, Pakistan does possess leverage over several Afghan groups, and over the Afghan economy in particular through its control of land trade routes into the country from the Arabian Sea, and Rizvi feels that Pakistan will operate those levers in order to ensure that it does not face unfriendly neighbours on both its eastern and western borders.


"I think that Pakistan has this mythical idea that when [the US withdraws], life will return to status quo. It's not going to happen. The whole region is going to be engulfed in further militancy and violence. Only part of it can be attributed to the US," says Fair, adding that the US has "put in a lot of structures that will make civil war [in Afghanistan] more likely", such as a police based on "local militias". She adds that Pakistan may have a particularly difficult time with the Afghan Taliban after the withdrawal, given that most of its commanders are now young men who grew up in refugee camps in Pakistan.


"These are kids who have become mid-level commanders who hate Pakistan and hate the ISI [Pakistan’s main intelligence agency]."


'Wounded, but still alive' 
On the political front, meanwhile, wrangling continues between the democratic government and an activist judiciary, empowered by the mass movement to bring its chief justice back to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, the PPP-led coalition government, faced with crises on both the economic and security fronts, continues to totter, but not topple. Perhaps the only reason this government may well see out its term until 2013 (making it the only democratically elected and led government in Pakistan to do so in the country's 64 year history) is that no one else really wants to take the reins faced with such dire circumstances.


Ultimately, Pakistan's problems remain more deep-rooted than simply those of circumstance – or, in this case, a particular circumstance, which killed more than 3,000 people in cities on the other side of the globe. With space of political discourse ever narrowing, the challenges Pakistan faces are both existential and pragmatic: it needs to answer questions of identity whilst simultaneously paying its bills, feeding 174 million citizens and, in a both real and metaphorical sense, holding itself together.
A foreign policy that appears to be based on running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, however, indicates that when it comes to the international community, and particularly its immediate neighbours, it will likely continue to muddle through on the knife edge of stability.
Or, put in a local idiom: Pakistan is the dhobi ka kutta: na ghar ka, na ghat ka. It is the washerman's dog, belonging neither inside his home nor in his workplace. It sits, a state at war with both itself and silently with those around it, licking its wounds.

What if 9/11 never happened?

They say you cannot understand a beginning until you see the end. And despite the passage of 10 years since that Tuesday morning, we still live in the dust cloud of the fallen towers, unable to pierce the gloom of the present to see where the future will take us. While time will be the best judge of the true importance of the day four hijacked planes were used to attack the world’s sole superpower, a decade on, one can question if September 11, 2001 was indeed a true ‘turning point’ of history, especially for Pakistan. What if 9/11 had never happened? How big a difference would it have made?

According to security analyst Gen. (retd) Talat Masood, the first consequence of 9/11 was that it “brought about a comprehensive change in world outlook as far as the American public was concerned.” Secured by two oceans and safe borders, America had considered itself untouchable.

“It punctured the ‘security bubble’ in which most Americans lived, imagining that wars and violence only happened ‘over there’; that Americans could watch conflict in distant lands on their TVs and occasionally send forth expeditions to help,” says Graham Allison, Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

He adds: “Had the US not been victim to an act of mega-terrorism, American policy would not have adjusted to the reality that all civilized people now live in a world where super-empowered individuals and small groups can kill on a scale that was previously the preserve of nations.”

And with this realisation came action and consequences – particularly for Pakistan.

A victim of geography

Foremost of the by-products of 9/11 was the launching of a US-led global offensive, military and ideological, which we today call the “War on Terror” – under which the US invaded Pakistan’s neighbour to the west, Afghanistan. The impact on Pakistan was inevitably devastating.

“Pakistan is the one country, aside from Afghanistan, that has suffered the most [as a result of 9/11],” says Masood. “Afghanistan would have continued to be unstable, but the impact [of that instability] on Pakistan would not have been as great,” he says, adding that after the US invasion, there was an “inflow” of militants who escaped from Afghanistan into Pakistan, thus sowing the seeds for future conflicts.

Bad Romance

The invasion of Afghanistan brought Pakistan to the frontline. Pakistan became a ‘key ally’ – a big step up from its near-rogue state classification in the aftermath of the 1998 nuclear tests which resulted in punitive sanctions. To make matters worse, there was a military coup a year later, which further isolated Pakistan from the world.

But after 9/11, things changed.

“US interest in Pakistan would have been peripheral [had 9/11 not occurred]. There were other interests such as [proximity to] Iran, China etc, but not at the level that exists today … It would not have been a key ally to the US in terms of vital strategic interest,” says Masood.

But to establish whether the sudden surge in relations was sustainable, leave alone beneficial, one must re-examine where Washington and Islamabad stood on the eve of 9/11.

When asked about the state of Pak-US relations prior to 9/11, former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence Gen. (retd) Asad Durrani says “there was some sort of rapport … but not very cosy relations.” Durrani, who was the chief of the ISI from 1990-92, a period in which Pak-US relations soured after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, points out that “Nawaz and Clinton had managed to strike some sort of relationship … after all it was Nawaz who went to Washington after Kargil.”

That said, Prof Allison adds in an important qualifier: “US-Pakistan relations were troubled before 9/11, were troubled after 9/11; [and] will be troubled as far as the eye can see.”

While a temporary period of warmth followed in Pak-US relations post 9/11, things appear almost back to square one a decade later. Pakistan is once again under pressure for its nuclear arsenal, is on the verge of sanctions and is still being lectured for its alleged support for militant outfits.

There are relations – but troubled, much like before 9/11. Indeed, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Of Dictators and Democrats

Running Pakistan in 2001 was Gen Pervez Musharraf, who had taken over in a military coup back in 1999. The US, the stated policy of which is to support democracy, had frosty relations with Pakistan under his military leadership until 9/11, when they needed Pakistan on board and had no option but to work with the general.

On the other end, it can be argued that any sane leader in Musharraf’s place would have inevitably had to join hands with an irked superpower which was, quite literally, out for blood. And inevitably whoever was at the helm of affairs would also have had to deal with the backlash – when the aggrieved militants turned their guns on Pakistan.

It remains a fact however that the war gave an otherwise floundering Musharraf legitimacy and international support, much like the 1979 Soviet invasion had come to General Ziaul Haq’s rescue.

In exchange for his support against extremists, Musharraf was seemingly given a free hand to subvert the political process.

“American support for dictatorial rule would not have been there, and Pakistan would have moved towards democracy a great deal sooner,” says Masood, adding, “Musharraf would not have lasted. Ties were cool – difficult – after Kargil and Musharraf. But that was not a bad thing. Sustained US pressure would have brought about democracy.”

Gen (retd) Hamid Gul, however, thinks otherwise. He says the notion that the US had to support Musharraf after 9/11 is simply false. “Musharraf was put there by the US … they demolished democracy,” he claims, adding that Musharraf was told to take over  but not to declare a full-blown martial law. “Remember, he became the CEO and not a martial law administrator.” Further proof of this collusion, he says, is that the US also accepted his referendum.

‘Betrayal’ and Blowback

Pakistan’s involvement in the War on Terror had a major impact on its own policies, especially when it comes to dealing with militant outfits – patronised or otherwise.

“Pakistan had serious problems – home grown militants promoting its interest in Kashmir, and promoting talibanisation in Afghanistan,” says Masood, but adds that, “this phenomenon could have been managed much easier [had it not been for 9/11]. It would have corrected itself on its own.”

In a world where the towers never fell, Pakistan would have had to ultimately deal with these elements for its own interests, but 9/11 and the US’ new resolve meant that there was little time for dillydallying. They had to do it now, and do it on the US’ terms. Consequently, anti-militancy efforts were to be handled at a pace that wasn’t domestically sustainable or even possible. What was initially a creeping threat of extremism and radicalisation turned into full-blown militancy once Pakistan took an about turn in its domestic policy against militant groups.

“To say that militants suddenly appeared after 9/11 is wrong … there were such people before that as well. However, after 9/11 – as a result of that cooperation [with the US] – it was obvious that these people completely turned against us,” recalls Durrani. Part of the reason was that Pakistan’s reversal was seen as a betrayal by many such groups. The former ISI chief says that there was “an exponential rise in militancy after 9/11 … dormant figures and groups re-emerged … militant groups found space in which to grow.”

Gul, however, strikes a dissenting note, saying it is not the local groups that are attacking Pakistan’s interest, but only those groups being sponsored and funded by foreign powers such as the US. He does agree though that Pakistan was not allowed to find a solution to these elements on its own – and at its own pace.

“They forced us to go into the tribal areas. But when we did, we did so with our own strategy. Remember that there was a peace pact in 2004.” This, he says, angered the Americans who then decided to ramp up pressure and take matters into their own hands.

Naik Muhammad, a militant leader based in the tribal areas, with whom there was a peace pact was killed in the “first American drone strike” many years after 9/11.  The first suicide attack only took place after this, he says.

Isolation was not inevitable

Proponents of Musharraf’s support for the War on Terror would argue that Pakistan did benefit greatly from US support following 9/11. Economically and politically, wasn’t Pakistan in a critical condition before US-led international attention shored it up and bailed it out from a crisis, they ask?

“Though difficult, [the international isolation before 9/11] would have soon been over,” says Masood, talking about the pressure Pakistan faced for its nuclear tests, Kargil and, of course, a military dictatorship.  It’s a view shared by Durrani. “Yes, there were some problems after the nuclear [tests] – but to say we were bankrupt is wrong,” insists Durrani. “Policies pursued by Nawaz and Benazir did have an effect on the economy.”

Things during Musharraf’s era may have “looked better” says Durrani, but he questions how “solid” that economic development was. There was a “squeeze” after Pakistan’s nuclear tests admits Gul. “But other countries were quietly helping. We would have handled it.”

Believing that Pakistan’s economy would have resurged on its own requires Panglossian faith, but one thing is certain: we would have had to take tough decisions, which we’re taking now – on energy, subsidies, and fiscal prudence – back then.

Bailing out Pakistan only delayed the resolving of structural issues in our economy that have persisted to this day.

Pressure and priorities

The most obvious impact of the post-9/11, US-Pakistan ‘partnership’ has been massive loss of life, insecurity and infrastructural destruction.

“Social fabric, political institutions and law and order were affected,” says Masood. But the damage has been more comprehensive than that.

Other, long-term compromises were made as a result of the US presence in Afghanistan and the pressure on Islamabad to make the War against Terror its utmost priority.

The collateral was “the domestic emphasis on education, and improving the economy – the economy has never been given the attention it deserves – critical infrastructure [and] institution building … as a result of a heavy foreign presence in the neighbourhood, these sectors were compromised,” says Masood. We are paying the price for this reorientation today.

If Musharraf’s two years before 9/11 are anything to go by, Pakistan was on a markedly different trajectory priority-wise: the Higher Education Commission had been set up, the National Accountability Bureau had been unleashed and the country was being run by a cabinet of technocrats, not politicians. Another casualty of reprioritising the war on terror was the security that came with an extremely expensive nuclear weapon programme. With a secure nuclear arsenal in hand to fend off Indian adventurism, one can speculate Pakistan would have been able to lessen its expenditure on conventional weapon systems. But fighting militants meant you needed conventional weapons again – and Pakistan’s biggest military asset was useless against this faceless and flexible enemy. Ironically, the nuclear asset itself seemed to now need protection.

When we look back at 9/11 now, it is with the benefit of a decade of hindsight. And hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20.

“We could have managed the situation much better,” concludes Durrani. “It was our responsibility – we could have taken care of it. But our leadership failed [then] and continues to fail [now].”

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, September 11^th,  2011.

‘Altaf’s address waste of time’

All the political parties except the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) described Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief’s video address on Friday a non-event and a waste of time.

Altaf Hussain, during almost four hours of address — the longest in Pakistan’s political history and shown live on all private channels — actually revealed nothing except for allegations without any proof that the Awami National Party (ANP) received money from the US to win general elections in 2008, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) workers were heavily armed and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) was running an underground armed group called ‘Thunder Squad’.

All three named parties, however, scoffed at the allegations saying the accusations coming from the MQM chief were meanningless when everyone knows who started extortion rackets, ran death squads, grabbed lands and killed own supporters in Karachi if they dared to speak against the party leader.

 ‘Pakistan views India as the perpetual enemy and the US as an unfaithful ally’

 

It’s a rare opportunity to come across an American diplomat who understands the South Asian culture and speaks fluent Urdu and Hindi. Former ambassador Teresita C. Schaffer, 66, is one of those rare individuals who are not only aware of the cultural nuances of the Indo-Pak region, but happens to be an elegant speaker of Hindi and Urdu. An ex-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East and South Asia, Schaffer, in her 30-year diplomatic career, has served as the US ambassador to Sri Lanka and worked at diplomatic missions in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. She has authored Pakistan’s Future and US Policy Options (2004) and India at the Crossroads: Confronting the Challenge of HIV/AIDS (2004). One of her popular books she co-authored with her husband Howard B. Schaffer, also a former US ambassador, is How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States.
A widely respected expert on South Asia, Ambassador Schaffer spoke exclusively with Dawn.com about Pakistan’s negotiating style with the United States.
Q. The United State and Pakistan have had three ‘marriages’ and two ‘divorces’. Are the interests that lead to an eventful marriage and factors which caused divorce always the same or do they keep changing with every new partnership?
A. The immediate impetus for the three marriages came from factors external to Pakistan such as the Cold War and Afghanistan. What caused the two divorces is different.
The first divorce came in 1965 during the Pakistan-India war when Pakistan used US-supplied weapons  which Washington had warned were not supposed to be used against each other.
Pakistan’s nuclear program caused the second divorce. In the 1980s, the US restored a large aid program to Pakistan, but to get the aid through Congress, it also had to pass the Pressler Amendment. In 1990s, the US could no longer certify that Pakistan possessed a nuclear explosive device because of which its assistance had to be cut-off.
In both cases, divorce was the culmination of Pakistan’s unwillingness to accept US terms and conditions.
Q. What would you describe as the striking findings of your study about Pakistan’s negotiating style with the United States?
A. There are three big influences on Pakistan’s negating style with the United States. The first is Pakistan’s view of its place in the world with India as the perpetual enemy and the US as an unfaithful ally. The second is the supreme importance of personal connections in the Pakistani culture. The third influence is the complicated structure of the government and complex relationship between the military, civil administration and the bureaucracy.
Pakistan tries to put the United States on a guilt trip and has been remarkably successful in doing that.
Q. The United States has historically personalised rather than institutionalise relations with Pakistan.  How much has that benefitted both the countries?
A. Both the sides have personalised the relationship. Without some degree of personalisation you are not going to get anywhere with a Pakistani leader. But by allowing the personal relationship to substitute for an institutional one, the United States makes itself vulnerable to the guilt trip.
Q. Do you see a dichotomy between the objectives of a US-Pakistan strategic alliance and expectations of both the countries from each other?
A. Yes. This is the real challenge of US-Pakistan relationship. The assumption during all three alliances was that our strategic interests were the same. In fact, they had some points in common, but were not the same. The key to these differences in each case has been India.
For Pakistanis, India is the long-term existential threat. For the United States, India is not an enemy. In Afghanistan, Pakistan’s prime objective is to minimize Indian influence but the US goal is to minimise the al Qaeda influence. These are not the same.
Q. How much is the growing US-India alliance going to influence US-Pakistan ties?
A. I have no doubt that the US-India relationship makes a lot of Pakistanis uncomfortable. They see this as inconsistent with US-Pakistan relationship. If you had a real economic revival in Pakistan at rates comparable with India, you would see the balance of Pakistan’s interests changing in such a way that the US-India relationship would seem less threatening to Pakistan.
Q. Why has the United States rephrased the term “Indo-Pak” and categorised Pakistan into the newly coined term “Af-Pak”?
A. I hate the term Af-Pak. It sounds demeaning in Pakistan. The term and the bureaucratic structure are the products of the decision by President Obama and Secretary Clinton to bring in Richard Holbrooke as the envoy.
Richard Holbrooke was a man of enormous talent. I think the term was his because he meant you can’t only talk about Afghanistan and forget Pakistan. He was trying to convey the message that Afghanistan was sitting next door to Pakistan.
There was a lot of speculation whether Ambassador Holbrooke’s mandate should include India.  From the American point of view, the decision not to include India was correct, because a special envoy whose chief responsibility is Pakistan cannot effectively broker with India.
Q. Why is the United States reluctant to play the role of a mediator between India and Pakistan on Kashmir dispute?
A. The US believes that without the strong support of both India and Pakistan no such effort could succeed. India hates the idea of third-party intervention. The US has urged both countries to work things out directly on their various problems, including Kashmir.
Q. In your book, you mention the element of lies in diplomatic relations. Do both the countries lie to each other? What have been the biggest historic lies told to each other?
A. In American court rooms when you are sworn in as a witness, you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth or nothing but the truth. “Nothing but the truth” is the easiest standard to meet while “the whole truth” is the hardest standard to meet. Neither of the governments has met the standard of telling the whole truth. We have, on a number of occasions, withheld things from one and other.
Sometimes, Pakistan has also fallen short of the standard of “nothing but the truth.” For example, when President Musharraf came to the United States and was asked about Daniel Pearl, he said he was “sure” that Pearl was alive. Afterwards, it became clear that Daniel Pearl was already dead and it seemed likely that Musharraf actually knew this. He may have considered that as the right thing to do in protecting Pakistan’s security interests.
We need to understand the impact lies have on both sides. An American official who believes he has been lied to takes this as a real insult to his intelligence and friendship with the other side.
Having lived in Pakistan, I would say it is almost impossible that no one in the army knew that Osama bin Laden was living in Abbottabad.
Q. Are there any phases in the US-Pakistan relation where you find Pakistan successfully influencing American policies?
A. Yes. Pakistan achieved some of its objectives by applying American cultural traits. One instance is Pakistan’s success in 1999 in obtaining a refund of the money it had paid for F-16 aircraft. The Pakistani diplomats based their argument to the United States on the concept of fairness —- which is very important in US culture— and hired a lawyer to file a lawsuit against the US government. Everyone accuses the Americans of being overly legalistic but this time the Pakistanis turned the tables. They used their understanding of US procedure and culture to obtain a result that was very important.
Q. Which US government in the history would you rate as the most Pakistan-friendly?
A. There are a lot of governments which have done really important things for Pakistan. The whole China connection for President Richard Nixon was something that fit in his strategic framework. George W. Bush initiated the big aid program for Pakistan which was carried over by the Obama administration.
Q. What do you think are the causes of growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan?
A. Some anti-Americanism is the inevitable byproduct of the United States being the most powerful country in the world, which makes it a magnet for discontent. Anti-Americanism has become much stronger now because there is a widespread perception in the Islamic world and particularly in Pakistan that the Muslims are being treated with injustice by the west in general and the United States in particular.
This is intensified by the message that is being put out not just by the Islamic militant groups and right-wing parties but also by the government of Pakistan suggesting that Pakistan’s present troubles are entirely the fault of the United States. I don’t agree with that statement. I think frankly no country can blame its entire troubles on anybody else.
If enough important people in Pakistan pointing fingers at the United States for its domestic troubles then it becomes easier to believe that than to search for the roots of homegrown problems.
Q. Pakistanis complain that the Americans do not sufficiently acknowledge and appreciate their contributions in the war on terror.
A. The Americans value Pakistan’s contributions but they also feel betrayed by some of the moves Pakistan is making particular by continuing the relationship with insurgent groups in Afghanistan which are killing American soldiers. Both sides have some reasons to complain that the other side is not respecting their sensitivities. In order to achieve an American policy that is in some sense more responsive to Pakistan’s need, you also need a Pakistani policy that is more responsive to US needs.
Q. Will Pakistan and the US be able to avoid a third divorce this time?
A. I hope so. We have always tried to develop a strategic relationship in which the Americans and Pakistanis know that they are both together for long term. That is desirable but not feasible at the moment. A lot of damage has been done since the beginning of 2011. The fallout from the Raymond Davis case and the aftereffects of the bin Laden raid have left the army feeling embarrassed and the Americans feel betrayed. This is not a good recipe for both the sides embracing each other. What we need now is to have some smaller, more specific successes, and build on those. Perhaps the recent arrest of Al-Mauritani will be a good beginning.
Malik Siraj Akbar is based in Washington DC as a Hubert Humphrey Fellow at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ),

9/11: Ten years later

“I was afraid of the dark. It never happened before 9/11. It was a sense of security having that light on,” says Artie Van Why, a witness to the September 11 attacks in an article on bbc.co.uk. The story talks about the trauma that Van Why went through and how the harrowing memories of 9/11 made it too painful for him to continue working at his office which was located close to the towers. Before long he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

George W. Bush made a highly debatable decision when he responded to the attacks by attacking Afghanistan, and later Iraq. For the 3,000 civilian deaths of 9/11, the United States butchered thousands of civilians in Afghanistan (women and children amongst them). Under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, Iraq was invaded and massacred, and what was once a flourishing Baghdad was reduced to rubble. According to WikiLeaks, the civilian death toll in Iraq was over 92,000 deaths.

The ‘War on Terror’ continued with Pakistan being forced to become a coalition partner with the United States and a never-ending stream of drones still continues to annihilate the tribal areas. Noam Chomsky in his column on 9/11 titled ‘Was war the only answer’ explains that the attack on Pakistan has only radicalised the nation further, and that America has in fact helped Bin Laden on his mission. “That Washington seemed bent on fulfilling bin Laden’s wishes was evident immediately after the 9/11 attacks,” says Chomsky.

Simon Jenkins of the Guardian agrees to that and insists that waging war was not in America’s best interests. Anti-American sentiments were fuelled when America attacked a hapless Afghanistan, and later Iraq and then carried out drone attacks in Pakistan. Daniel Byman from the Brookings Institution (an American think-tank) suggests that drone strikes may kill “10 or so civilians” for every militant killed. In contrast, the CIA believes that since 2010, no civilians have been killed in the attacks — only militants were killed. Civilian deaths are seldom reported and when we hear of the casualties, they are given that seemingly benign terminology: collateral damage’. Whilst we have thousands of 9/11 survivor stories like the one mentioned in the beginning, somehow, Western media has failed to produce similar news stories that talk about the suffering of a little girl in Iraq, or someone in Afghanistan, or someone in Pakistan whose school was blown up in the fighting instigated by a nation once highly esteemed in the world.

“Pakistanis are too poor to go and seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. They also realise that the trauma is far from over,” writes Mohammed Hanif in the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ section. Indeed, poverty-stricken individuals in Pakistan have more pressing concerns such as proper meals and potable water.

That is most certainly not to belittle the crime that was 9/11 or the sufferings of those who went through that horrific incident. I only wish to present a simple question — why is it that when Muslims kill it is called ‘terrorism’ or ‘crime against humanity’ and when the United States massacres anyone in broad daylight, with the aid of men such as Tony Blair, we dismiss it as though the blood of those being killed is of lesser value? Is it fair to clothe the butchery of innocent civilians, who get killed alongside so called ‘militants’ under the garb of ‘collateral damage’? Moreover, why isn’t the Western media powerful enough to expose the true situation in Palestine, where the most horrific injustices take place under the approving eye of the United States?

War has been detrimental for the United States economically too. The economy collapsed after billions of dollars were deployed to fund the wars which many noted thinkers and writers have termed a mistake. The spillway effect has been the worst recession the world has seen in recent times.

There is no doubt about the fact that the attacks on the twin towers were truly terrible and every such action or intention by the militants has been condemned by Muslims all around the world, as it should be. However, America has achieved little in terms controlling terrorism – for every civilian murdered by American troops, a new Bin Laden is born. The word ‘jihad’ is in rampant misuse and young people are brainwashed as they happily blow themselves up in the name of Islam. Radicalism has placed its feet on firmer ground than before as militants use America’s crimes to fuel sentiment against America.

Amidst all this, Islam and Muslims have taken the most serious bashing. Anyone with a beard and a cap is automatically a ‘fundamentalist’, women with hijab are looked at sceptically as though they are oppressed and opting for ‘madressa’ for your child is a definite no-no — even if all they do there is teach the Arabic language.

Ten years down the line, we as a global community are worse off. Life on this planet becomes increasingly more dangerous as a doomed war continues, and we wander farther away from peace and stability. One wonders though, how Artie Van Why would have taken it if something like 9/11 happened on a daily basis, and that too for years. Someone in Iraq would know.

Ten Years After 9/11, Sadness, Triumphs, And A War Without End

U.S. forces have killed Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein and his regime are history. The Arab Spring has delivered an eloquent rejection of the forces of jihadist violence. The appeal of holy war against the West has faded.

And yet, a full decade after the fateful day of September 11, 2001, all-out victory in the so-called "war on terror" remains as elusive as ever. The United States and its allies have scored some important wins. But the chain of events set in train that fateful day has yet to find a satisfying end.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban movement, stripped of power by a combined U.S.-Afghan onslaught in November 2001, is once again resurgent. The government of President Hamid Karzai, installed with U.S. help in early 2002, is pursuing power-sharing talks with Mullah Mohammad Omar's guerillas.
 
In Iraq, where the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein from power, the civil war that threatened to tear the country apart has ebbed. But stable government and security for all of the country's citizens remain distant goals.

And in the United States itself, a sense of relief that the country has lived through 10 years without another mass-casualty terrorist attack mingles with chagrin about the costs -- economic, political, and individual -- of a global war against a shadowy enemy.

Michael Mandelbaum, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University and one of America's leading foreign-policy thinkers, says that one of the most serious consequences of the 9/11 attacks was that they diverted the attention of U.S. leaders from urgent domestic priorities.
The United States could have responded to the attacks in ways that would have allowed it to devote its resources to reforming health care and education, modernizing infrastructure, and otherwise preparing itself to respond to the rise of global economic competition.

"One of the major challenges is the deficits that the federal government is running, and they have been aggravated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for which the country has not paid," Mandelbaum says. "We have borrowed to finance these wars, and this is really the first time in American history that the country has not raised taxes in order to pay for wars, and that is extremely unfortunate."

A War Without End?

Many Americans, fatigued by a decade of grim headlines, have since tuned out coverage of events in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the growing apathy has not stanched the casualties. More than 6,000 members of the U.S. military have died in the two wars, while some 43,000 others have suffered often incapacitating wounds.

But no one can say when the fighting will end -- particularly in Afghanistan, where the United States is still in the process of handing over responsibility for the country's security to the increasingly beleaguered Karzai government.

Meanwhile, say analysts, Al-Qaeda -- or what's left of it -- is already relocating to new havens in Yemen or Somalia.

So has it all been worth it? We are probably still too close to events to know for sure. Some analysts argue that the United States has not served its own interests by devoting such a large share of resources to the pursuit of Al-Qaeda. Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins says that the rise of China and other Asian economies over the past decade poses far greater challenges to the United States' place in the world than anything happening in the Middle East.

"After September 11 we devoted ourselves to chasing the losers from globalization when the real challenge internationally in the future will come from the winners," Mandelbaum says. "The Middle East is important for a variety of reasons but not because it's a center of economic growth and potential military power. That, however, is true of East Asia."

A lot has happened over the past 10 years. But the story of the post-9/11 era is still far from over.

An orange line of fear in South Asia seen from space

The distrust and fear that divide India and Pakistan can also be seen from the space — a bright orange line snaking through hundreds of miles across the earth’s surface.

The line occupies a centre space in an image of the Indo-Gangetic plain the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) released this week.

The crew of Nasa’s International Space Station Expedition 28 took the picture on Aug 21.

Expedition 28 is the current, long-duration expedition to the International Space Station, launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on May 23 and is expected to return to the earth later this month.

One of the images the crew sent to the earth station shows a line of lights, with a distinctly orange hue, snaking across the centre of the picture.

It appears to be more continuous and brighter than most highways in the view. This is the fenced and floodlit border zone between India and Pakistan.

The ISS crew took the image with a Nikon D3S digital camera, using a 16 mm lens, which provides the wide field of view, as the International Space Station was tracking towards the southeast across India.

This space picture of northern India and Pakistan also shows numerous cities, large and small.

Of the hundreds of clusters, the largest are those of Islamabad and New Delhi, separated by 700 kilometres, and Lahore. The lines of major highways connecting the cities also stand out.

The Himalayas, nature’s indelible mark on the Indo-Gangetic plain, is also visible, even at night, showing its subtle but definite presence from the clouds.

Allama Iqbal aptly described this towering presence on the subcontinent’s horizon as the “rampart of the realm of Hindustan”, noting that “the sky bows down to kiss your forehead.”

Deprived of “the turban of honour” that, in Iqbal’s words, crowns the snow-covered Himalayas, the humans decorated their boundary wall with thousands of electric lights that hurt eyes.

Gracefully, Pakistan has no contribution to erecting these hideous floodlights across the border.

They were put by the Indian government.

In 2003, the Indian government sanctioned a proposal to fence and illuminate the border to prevent smuggling and arms trafficking.

In total, the Indians plan to cover 2009 km of the 2900 km India-Pakistan border with floodlights.

Officials have so far erected floodlights along 460 km of border in Punjab.

The extensive floodlighting continues for 1,022 km across Rajasthan, 176 km across Jammu, and 202 km through Gujarat. So far 1,861 km of the border have been floodlit.

Plans are in place to erect a total 2,043 km of fencing along the border. The Indian government hopes to complete the floodlight operation by March 2012.

A similar fenced border zone operates along India’s eastern border with Bangladesh.