The US-Pakistan relationship

Great Debates
1

I was reading the other day in the NYT about how Pakistan helped supply N. Korea with nuclear material in exchange for missile technology. It occured to me that there has rarely ,if ever, been any relationship as complicated as this one.

You have a country which is:

  1. an indispensable partner in the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan and especially in the hunt for Bin Laden.
  2. a leading supporter of Islamic terrorism especially in Kashmir
    3)probably the world’s worst nuclear proliferator which has seriously damaged US interests in the Korean peninsula.

As if this isn’t enough you have the domestic situation where the Islamic groups control the state governments in Baluchistan and NWFP (IIRC) and have made dramatic gains in the national legislature while Musharraf appears to be growing less and less popular.

How does the US handle this relationship? I don’t pretend to have any answers; I wondered if anyone else has any thoughts.

2

Oh boy.

I think the U.S. will continue to back Musharraf and try to ensure that he stays in power as long as possible. He pushed for ammendments to the Pakistani constitution that will allow him to hang on to a good amount of power even after the country is returned to democratic rule, so that offers a little more hope for the “official” relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan. But I understand that Pakistani public opinion is very divided over whether to support the U.S. and it’s not certain, if they went to a straight parliamentary democracy, that they wouldn’t elect a radical Islamist government. The hope is that a friendly relationship with the U.S. will bring enough prosperity to Pakistan to bring the middle on board with Musharraf.

3

It is certainly an interesting relationship although I think you need to look at the whole thing with perspective. Pakistan is interested in only one thing - the well-being of Pakistan.

Nothing wrong with that of course, but it helps to explain a lot when considering them.

Pakistan has no problem with helping to hunt down al-Q, they have no emotional or other ties to them. In Kashmir they are furthering their own ends in fighting India. They aren’t really “supporting Islamic terrorism” as such, they are fighting India.

If the terrorist groups in Kashmir started to do anything other than fight India then they would lose all support from Pakistan. Pakistanis in general don’t give a shit about al-Q, but they may be willing to turn a blind eye to people using unconventional methods to fight India.

Likewise with Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons. They only did this so they could stand up to India. That is the sole reason why they wanted nuclear weapons. If India didn’t have them then Pakistan wouldn’t have them either.

Islamic groups are strong in the north of the country but remember Pakistan has a huge population, most of which are very moderate. There is no danger at all that Pakistan will go the way of extremism.

Baluchistan is a no-mans land, Pakistani law doesn’t even apply there. They still use old tribal councils to decide things.

I think the US should continue to invest in the country but more importantly it should try to take a more active role in solving the Kashmir dispute.

When Musharraf took over, the country was mired in debt and corruption and, even now, there is still a lot of poverty. However there is also a lot of hope. There’s a lot of good things in Pakistan (such as free speech, a free press, good universities etc). The economy is improving (slowly) and corruption is less than it was.

Musharraf’s address to the nation made a few days ago makes interesting reading. The most unintentionally funny part was this bit:

Could you imagine a US president including that sentence in an address to the nation?

4

Jojo,
You are right that India is very important in Pakistani calculations but you are under-estimating the Islamic angle. It has been widely-reported that the army and ISI have become more radical-Islamic in recent years. That was one factor behind their support for the Taliban,( another was to establish “strategic depth” with respect to India by obtaining a friendly regime in Afghanistan).

As for the Islamic parties everyone was saying that they are supported by only a small minority but everyone was surprised by how well they did in recent elections; not a majority of course but way better than expected. Who knows how they well they do next time? There is a lot of anger and suspicion about the US.

“I think the US should continue to invest in the country but more importantly it should try to take a more active role in solving the Kashmir dispute.”
I agree about helping the Pakistani economy but realistically there is not much that that the US can do. It can prevent major disaster by ,for instance, providing BOP assistance, it can open up to Pakistani textiles which will help up a bit but the main problems like with the quality of Pakistani government and in any case economic growth is a long-run process.

About Kashmir what solution do you suggest would be acceptable to both sides? The distance between the two countries is even greater than in the Israel-Palestine dispute. I doubt that Musharraf is domestically strong enough to sell a compromise to his people.

5

Musharef = Saddam or Osama bin Laden II?

Haven’t we seen this pattern of propping up a dictator in order to serve some foriegn policy initiative bite us in the ass before?

6

There’s no doubt that Pakistan would like to have a government in Afghanistan that is friendly to their cause in Kashmir and the Taliban fitted that bill perfectly. The Taliban came from schools in Pakistan.

I’m sure that Pakistan allowed their rise because they thought that, although they were extreme, they would be a government that could be controlled (kinda like the US supporting Saddam in previous years).

The spread of Islamism had nothing to do with the thinking in Pakistani government circles. This is just my opinion but note that when push came to shove, and the Pakistanis were asked to choose between the US and the Taliban, they dropped the Taliban like a hot turd.

In Pakistan (and India and Bangladesh) political protest is a part of their culture. They have big noisy demonstrations all the time, about the slightest things. If one political party happens to do well in one election I wouldn’t really worry about it.

Jean-Marie Le Pen did well in the last French Presidential election but it’s not something I worry overmuch about.

The Pakistanis have no history or tradition of extremism (in recent decades anyway). Why would they start now? There’s a lot of suspicion about the US all over the muslim world not just Pakistan.

Completely different situation to Palestine. The solution to this problem is actually not hard at all, it’s easy - they should be independent.

When the British partioned India and Pakistan the Kashmiris wanted to be independent then and they still want to be independent now. They don’t really care whether they end up part of India or part of Pakistan, they don’t really want either.

They are obviously a completely different country to India and Pakistan in every possible way.

They are cut off geographically by the Himalayas, they follow a different style of Islam (to the Pakistanis), they have a different cuisine, they have different clothes, they have a different culture, they have a different business ethos, they have their own language.

They are a completely different country to India or Pakistan and the vast majority of them want independence and want the war to stop.

So, what’s the problem?

7

“So, what’s the problem?”
Well your “solution” is a non-starter with both India and Pakistan so I don’t think the US will get very far with it.

“The Pakistanis have no history or tradition of extremism (in recent decades anyway).”
That is rather debatable. You could argue that the very movement to create Pakistan was partly driven by Islamic extremism (though Jinnah himself wasn’t very religious). In any case under Zia, the last miltary dictator there was a steady policy of Islamization, both in the military and society. So the trend does appear to be towards greater Islamic radicalism and there is no telling where it will stop.

“The spread of Islamism had nothing to do with the thinking in Pakistani government circles.”
Pakistani government circles aren’t homogenous and ,like I said,I have read several reports about growing Islamic radicalism in the army.

8

Not likely. Musharef’s hold on power is too tenuous and he doesn’t have the popular support.

More likely Musharef = Shah.

9

Well there’s an alternative I can feel good about :wink:

10

Au contraire, I think it’s the only solution that would be acceptable to both India and Pakistan.

India won’t give up control because they don’t want Pakistan to have it and Pakistan won’t give up control because they don’t want India to have it.

It’s a vicious circle and the only exit from this circle is independence so that neither of them controls Kashmir. This is, after all, what the people who live there, the Kashmiris, want.

India and Pakistan were separated along religious lines because the two sides were fighting, it’s true. But you say it’s Islamic extremism that was the cause. Who knows the cause of two religions fighting each other? Who knows who started it? Who cares?

In any case, I don’t think Musharraf has particularly pushed Pakistan along an “Islamization” path. Nor any of the governments prior to Musharraf.

As regards Islamization, it’s always the last resort of a failing government to appeal to God for help (witness Zia). I don’t think anybody is really fooled by that tactic.

11

I concur with ** Jojo ** in that Islamic extremism isn’t a very serious problem. Middle pakistan is moderate but there is indeed a vocal virulently anti-West and anti-India group that defines Pakistan’s identity through misguided radical Islam and Kashmir. One needs to look no further than the slew of * madrasas * that operate in certain parts of the country and the strong showing by the Islamist parties in the elections. Yet, it is my feeling that the rise of the radical Islamists is to fill a power vacuum that gives the jaded people of Pakistan a hope. We should never under-estimate how people can delude themselves and forget history when things are going wrong. See the rise of the BJP in India.

In the final analysis, I think there is very little the US can do. US likes to keep Musharraf in power to avoid any uncertainty in their war efforts in Afghanistan. And, Musharraf uses Kashmir as a tool to placate the Islamist groups. The US turn their backs to what Musharraf is doing internally to keep himself in power, which includes turning their back to what can only be called sponsoring of terrorism.(Jojo - One can call it “fighting” only if armies are involved). But then when the world is focused on Kashmir, US urges Musharraf to crack down, he arrests key militants, terrorist activity drops below the radar, people are unhappy, time elapses, he releases them, everything is back to normal, US is again looking the other way!

And so it goes… I would personally like the US to have a plan where they can wean away from this dependence as their support is principally flawed. May be in a few years time if Afghanistan stabilizes, they can make moves with more degrees of freedom.

As for the solution to the Kashmir dispute, it will have to be through independence.

12

Actually I think India’s resistance to losing Kashmir (either to Pakistan or to an independent state) is more about concern for India’s territorial integrity in the face of assorted separatist movements and for India’s identity as a secular, poly-confessional state.

13

Yes as MEBuckner notes Kashmir is much more important than just keeping it out of the other country’s hands; it goes to the very idenitity of the two countries: India’s as a multi-religious state and to Pakistan’s as a Muslim state for the Mulims of the sub-continent. So independence is a non-starter.

It’s also important to note that while mainstream Pakistanis don’t support Al-quaeda they very much support the insurgency in Kashmir with the hope that Kashmir eventually become part of Pakistan. I believe that the “k” in Pakistan stands for Kashmir.

As for Islamic influence in Pakistani history in addition to ZIa’s Islamicization policies, Nawaz Sharif also proposed the introductin of Sharia law. It’s always been important and it will likely become more important now that the Islamic coaltion has made big electoral gains.

In any case I don’t want to argue about the obvious. What I am more interested in is how the US handles points 2 and 3 in my OP. In other words if Pakistan refuses to control its support of terrorism in Kashmir does it just turn a blind eye or does it put serious pressure on Pakistan. How much leverage does it really have? Similiarly if Pakistan continues to supply nuclear technology to other states what does the US do? How far can it afford to push Musharraf?