What to Do About Pakistan = There are no good answers.

May 06, 2009, 4:00 p.m.

What to Do About Pakistan
There are no good answers.

An NRO Symposium

As things heat up in Pakistan, National Review Online asked our team of experts: Should Pakistan now replace Afghanistan as America’s top priority? What should our policy be? How would you advise the president?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Dealing with Pakistan involves separating the proverbial worst choices from the many bad ones. It is a country whose dozens of poorly supervised nuclear weapons are located a few hours’ drive from al-Qaeda enclaves. Pakistan has no real stable government. It shares a border with Iran. Jihadists are embedded in its intelligence services and army. Corruption has been institutionalized. Large swaths of the country are veritable badlands. Pakistani terrorists are constantly provoking democratic India. This list could easily be doubled.

We put up with all this because we’ve tried just about everything with Pakistan. In the decades past, helping Pashtun fighters repel the Soviets gave us Osama bin Laden operating in the Pakistani border regions. Taking a hands-off approach allowed Pakistan to obtain an arsenal of nuclear missiles. Cutting off of aid stirred up nationalist fervor that empowered demagogues and terrorists. Playing India off against Pakistan led to accusations that we were either too naïve or too cynical. Today, entering Pakistani airspace to blow up suspected terrorists kills more extended family members than actual jihadists — and makes us wonder why Americans are fretting over the waterboarding of three known terrorists in Guantánamo, when we execute suspected terrorists in Waziristan every week without broadcasting to them rights of habeas corpus or dropping leaflets explaining their Miranda rights.

Given all that, I think the conventional wisdom about Afghanistan — that “the problem is really in Pakistan” — means little. Of course Pakistan is the problem; it always will be. But the best U.S. strategy is not to enter Pakistan, bully it, or try to adjudicate between Warlord A, General B, Corrupt President C, and Mullah D, who in the end will hate us more than they do each other. Until Pakistan’s much-ballyhooed responsible professionals stand up against the extremists (don’t hold your breath), the country can only be contained by fostering strong ties with democratic India and hoping Afghanistan proves to be a similar buffer. Extremists in Pakistan grasp that, which is why they are so keen on killing on both sides of their border.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution.

JONATHAN FOREMAN
The most important thing for the Obama administration to bear in mind when dealing with Pakistan is that anyone they are likely deal with in Islamabad or Rawalpindi is likely to be delusional about the state of their own country.

The top brass of the Pakistan army does not really believe in the existence of any threat to the state except that of an Indian invasion. (Never mind that Pakistan started all four of its wars with India, driven partly by the ludicrous belief that “one Pakistani is worth ten Indians.”) Pakistani military officials will not take the Taliban threat seriously unless black-turbaned gunmen are actually assaulting army HQ in Islamabad — or until the U.S. finally turns the money tap off and threatens to intervene. All the chaos the ISI and Pakistani special forces have created in Afghanistan is justified in their eyes by the need for “strategic depth” against India. America’s involvement in the region is assumed to be temporary; everyone knows how Americans tend to get bored and disappear.

Those elements within the military and the ISI who created and sponsored the Taliban, as well as a host of other proxy armies and terrorist groups, have an unshakeable belief, despite all the evidence, that they will always be able to control their creation. This will remain true until the Taliban are on the verge of sacking the Pakistani capital.

Everyone within Pakistan’s social, economic, and political elites blames the U.S. for everything that is wrong in their country, from Shia-Sunni violence, to corruption, to the triumph of the Taliban in the Swat region. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to a left-wing student from a fancy family or a senior army officer: The current crisis is entirely a function of George Bush’s War on Terror and America’s forcing of Pakistan to take sides against al-Qaeda and its Taliban friends in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration should understand that there is likely to be a military coup in Pakistan no matter what policy the U.S. adopts towards Pakistan. In any case, the Obama administration has already learned that Asif Zardari is not a reliable ally — and it is learning, to its consternation, that his rival Nawaz Sharif is unlikely to be any more effective, given the rise of armed Pashtun-Taliban power in parts of Pakistan.

Many observers now wonder if General Kayani is pursuing a politique du pire — that is, doing his best to allow the country’s internal security situation to get much worse, so that when the long-predicted coup takes place, both the Americans and other outsiders will breathe a sigh of relief.

But regardless of who holds power in Pakistan, now or in three months’ time, it is more important than ever for the U.S. to stop rewarding bad behavior. The Obama administration seems poised to repeat the mistake of all its predecessors by believing Pakistan’s promises that it will get serious about everything from counterinsurgency, to Afghanistan, to replacing madrassas with normal schools, in return for yet more U.S. aid. The Pakistanis never actually do get serious about any of these things because America is like a parent indulging a junkie child: It always pays up, regardless of the behavior it gets in return. The one thing that Pakistani officials are really good at — besides raising jihadists to fight proxy wars — is suckering their American counterparts. Maybe if Islamabad can be persuaded that America really means it — that we are willing to cut off Pakistan if it doesn’t take our demands seriously, that we are planning for a future without a Pakistani state between India and Afghanistan — it will then start to behave responsibly in Afghanistan and at home. If it doesn’t do so, then the Pakistani state is doomed, no matter how much aid we give it.

— Jonathan Foreman is an editor-at-large for Standpoint in London. He writes frequently about South
Asian affairs for publications including National Review, Commentary and the Daily Telegraph magazine.

SUMIT GANGULY
As President Zardari visits the United States, the political situation in Pakistan appears dire. The Taliban have now instituted sharia in those parts of Pakistan under its control, the military has shown no willingness to confront the Taliban’s growing power and reach, and neither the civilian government nor the opposition appears especially concerned about the country’s seemingly inexorable plunge into anarchy. The Taliban have also been exploiting the porous and largely unrestricted border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, to wreak havoc on the International Security Assistance Forces. Meanwhile, the able and adroit Pakistani diplomatic corps in Washington is keeping up a steady propaganda barrage about the need for Congress to swiftly pass legislation that would provide funds and weaponry to the Pakistani military. Faced with this particular conundrum, what should the Obama administration do?

At one level, the administration has already recognized that the war against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan cannot be effectively prosecuted without getting Pakistan to exert systematic military and political pressure on the Pakistani Taliban. However, at least based upon the public record, the administration has been strangely unwilling to confront the chicanery of the Pakistani military establishment. If President Obama wishes to make any serious progress toward the restoration of some semblance of political order in Afghanistan, it needs to unequivocally inform the Pakistani military establishment that the days of hunting with the hounds and running with the hares has come to a close. If they wish to continue receiving U.S. assistance for counterinsurgency operations, the Pakistan military must end its ambiguous stance toward the Taliban. The Pakistanis need to act — now.

— Sumit Ganguly is the director of research of the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University, Bloomington.

DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS
Pakistan is, at this point, undoubtedly more important to U.S. strategic interests than either Afghanistan or Iraq. A plethora of negative trends are converging there, including the reconstitution of al-Qaeda’s leadership in the Pakistani tribal areas, the Taliban’s territorial gains, and support for religious militancy in Pakistan’s intelligence services and other key institutions. We are at a critical point, and nobody really knows how things will turn out: We could see a military coup, the Taliban’s continued advance, or even the state’s fragmentation. The situation is made even more urgent by the fact that Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, saying that Pakistan should be America’s top priority does not bring the U.S. any closer to a solution. There are no “good” options; the best we can do is choose the “least bad” route. It didn’t have to be this way. Fellow symposium participant Bill Roggio and I have warned about the dangers of Pakistani concessions to the Taliban since late 2006. It would have been easier for the U.S. to formulate a coherent Pakistan strategy then. But current decisions must be made in light of past mistakes. Wishing we had done something differently three years ago is not a policy.

America’s two top goals should be to halt the Taliban’s advance and prevent Pakistan’s government from being destabilized. Though the current fighting in Buner district is Pakistan’s way of trying to contain the Taliban, we’ve read this script before. If Pakistan remains true to form, this round of fighting will be followed by “peace deals” with the Taliban or local government officials that kick the problem down the road rather than actually deal with it. There was an outcry among Pakistan’s political class, even from those who normally deny that Islamic militancy is a real threat, after the Taliban moved into Buner. We’ll soon see if Pakistan can change the script; but I wouldn’t bet on it.

So the U.S. is left without great options for addressing a situation that has grown worse for several years. The Taliban have been able to field battalion and brigade-sized units in Swat and Buner. Their gains will not be reversed overnight. I suspect that U.S. strategy, for now, will amount to muddling through and seeing if a mix of policies can create new opportunities. Much as I dislike such a course, I’m not certain that there’s anything clearly superior to it.

— Daveed Gartenstein-Ross directs the Center for Terrorism Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and is a Ph.D. candidate in world politics at the Catholic University of America.

WALID PHARES
Should Pakistan be on the list of top U.S. priorities? The answer is yes, but only with a clear identification of the threat, very precise goals in mind, and specific tactics integrated into our broader strategy in Afghanistan and beyond.

If we select Pakistan as a top priority, we should not seek to create a new political future for that country or attempt to transform its economy. The gravest danger we face is the possibility that the Taliban and other jihadists will seize one, more, or all nuclear weapons in Pakistan. Preventing this from happening must be the chief U.S. objective. For this danger to materialize, the Taliban will have to expand their advances inside Pakistan, seize power, and put their hands on the doomsday devices. Or, if the Taliban are advancing, a rogue faction inside Pakistan’s military or intelligence services may try to acquire some nuclear devices before joining the Taliban.

Pakistan’s armed forces must confront the Taliban directly and strategically. If they don’t, the danger of nuclear seizure by the Taliban is almost certain.

I would recommend that the Obama administration take the following steps:

First, ask U.S. officials to prepare a contingency plan for the protection of Pakistan’s nukes.

Second, demand that Pakistan’s government wage a full-fledged campaign to push back the Taliban to their mountain redoubts while hastening a U.S.-Afghan campaign to press the Taliban inside Afghanistan.

Third, be sure to involve — at the diplomatic and strategic level — China and Russia in the counter-Taliban strategy.

Fourth, coordinate all strategic steps with India, to avoid a misunderstanding.

— Walid Phares is director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

JAMES S. ROBBINS
President Obama seems intent on making the U.S. relationship with Pakistan needlessly complicated and contentious. The press in Pakistan is alive with discussion over whether the Obama administration is sending signals that it would prefer military government to civilian rule, based on comments from Obama’s April 29 press conference. Whether sending such signals or not, elements inside Pakistan may see this as a green light to put the military back in power.

Obama is not as beloved in Pakistan as he apparently is elsewhere in the world. During the campaign, Obama stated that he would support military intervention in Pakistan against the terror threat. To his credit, he has continued the expanded use of drone attacks begun last summer by President Bush. This has tarnished his dove status in Pakistan; there seems little (if any) difference between Obama and Bush on Pakistan, except that Obama is more willing to meddle in Pakistan’s internal affairs.

The new meme in Washington is the Diem analogy. South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, an effective, independent ruler who was very unpopular with U.S. diplomats and the press, was removed by coup in November 1963 and immediately killed. The United States was complicit in the coup, if not the murder. As a result, it assumed moral responsibility for the war in South Vietnam. This was a needless consequence of excessive micromanagement in a country we clearly did not understand. President Obama needs to publicly clarify his support for the Zardari government, preferably with President Zardari by his side, so that people don’t get the wrong impression. To quote Lyndon Johnson, we “don’t want to hear any more about this coup [expletive].”

BILL ROGGIO
The Pakistani military is currently battling the Taliban in a region just 60 miles from Islamabad. The government and the military are touting success, and they want us to believe the defeat of the Taliban is at hand. But the statements from Pakistan remind me of the story of the Japanese soldier who realized that his country was on the verge of defeat at the close of World War II. He told his friend the news, and his friend’s response was: “Impossible. The radio continues to report crushing defeats against the Americans.” The soldier replied: “Yes, but I noticed these glorious victories keep taking place closer and closer to the Japanese mainland.”

Back in 2002–2003, the Pakistani government had an opportunity to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda as the groups metastasized in the far-flung tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan and Bajaur. But the opportunity was squandered in a series of halfhearted offensives followed by craven peace deals. By 2009, the government had signed over nearly 11 percent of its country in ill-advised peace deals, and the Taliban had reached the outskirts of Islamabad and expanded the insurgency into the provinces of Punjab and Baluchistan.

The question is whether Pakistan is more important to U.S. national security than Afghanistan. Without a doubt it is. While Afghanistan served as the launching pad of the September 11 attacks and the base for al-Qaeda, the country is largely isolated and possesses little infrastructure after 30-plus years of brutal wars. Pakistan, on the other hand, is a nuclear power with the world’s sixth largest army and a robust intelligence service, and it has a population of more than 175 million who are fertile recruits for Islamist terrorist movements.

That is not to say Afghanistan should be abandoned; we must make every effort to secure the country and prevent it from again becoming a terrorist safe haven. But we must understand that, in reality, Afghanistan is a sideshow compared to Pakistan, which is the engine of jihad. If Pakistan falls, the situation in Afghanistan will become untenable. The Taliban will have unfettered access to safe havens, recruits, advanced weapons, supplies, and other resources across the border in Pakistan. Resupplying our forces will become infinitely more difficult and put us at the mercy of Russia and China.

The Obama administration’s answer to the Pakistan problem was to pump more money into the government and military and patiently train Pakistani forces to fight a counterinsurgency. Yet, just a month after the release of that strategy, it lies in shambles, as government officials scramble to prop up the government and military.

Congress is seeking to triple U.S. aid to Pakistan from $500 million a year to $1.5 billion. But we must ask: Is the money we send to Pakistan being well spent? The nearly $10 billion given to Pakistan since 2001 has led to a near-takeover by the Taliban. How will tripling aid reverse that, particularly if Pakistan insists on having no accountability for how it spends the money? If I paid a repairman $500 to fix my heater and he wouldn’t, couldn’t, or both, why should I expect $1,500 will incentivize him to fix it? If Pakistan’s actual survival isn’t a sufficient inducement to battle the Taliban, I don’t know what is.

What is the U.S. to do? The best hope is to forestall a Taliban takeover long enough for the military and government grow a spine and realize that the Taliban — not India — pose a mortal threat to their nation. This is easier said than done, and how it should be done is anyone’s guess. Significant elements of the military and the notorious Inter Service Intelligence agency are either sympathetic to or openly supportive of the Taliban. The military fears that forcing the rank and file to fight will splinter the army. The government exercises no control over the military and fears a coup — which may be in the making over the next several months, regardless of what we do.

Other possible outcomes are the balkanization of Pakistan, somewhat along provincial lines, or the perpetuation of a rump Pakistani government in Islamabad as the Taliban consolidate control in the surrounding regions. In any event, the security of Pakistan’s nukes will be on everyone’s mind, and there had better be a solid plan to secure — that is, take ownership of — the weapons and nuclear material. And someone should consider what to do with Pakistani’s nuclear scientists — the knowledge is as dangerous as the nukes.

There are no good options. Pakistan presents the U.S. with its greatest national-security challenge imaginable. Those offering quick and easy solutions do not understand the complexity of the problem and the real limitations the U.S. faces in the region.

— Bill Roggio is the editor of The Long War Journal and president of Public Multimedia Inc.