Written evidence on Pakistan from Professor
Shaun Gregory, Pakistan Security Research Unit, University of
Bradford
INTRODUCTION
Pakistan is perhaps the most dangerous place on earth,
where key security issues of concern to the UK and its western
allies - regional and global terrorism, proliferation of nuclear
weapons, and state instability - arguably intersect more consequentially
than anywhere else. Getting Pakistan right is critical to our
security going forward.
THREE WARS
Somewhat simplified, the UK and its NATO allies are
fighting three wars in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region: the
war against al-Qaeda, the war against Pakistan Taliban, and the
war against the Afghan Taliban. With the first two of these our
interests and those of Pakistan intersect [though are not the
same] and we have been able to co-operate to some degree; with
respect to the Afghan Taliban our interests and our objectives
in Afghanistan are at odds with Pakistan's and co-operation has
been meagre. At best Pakistan has not significantly retarded the
Afghan Taliban's return to dominance in the Afghan Pashtun belt
from safe havens in Pakistan; at worst - and more plausibly in
my view - it has aided that process.
AQ AND REFOCUSING
THE WAR
It has been clear for some years, particularly since
the Reidel review, that the centre of gravity of the US/western
struggle with al-Qaeda has shifted to Pakistan and the drawdown
in Afghanistan is being accompanied by a scaling up of US/western
counter-terror and counter-insurgency capacity in Pakistan. The
escalation of drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal
Areas (FATA) has succeeded in killing significant numbers of AQ
figures operating from Pakistan, but this has come at a significant
price in civilian casualties, and in terms of possible pathways
of radicalisation in Pakistan [the evidence is not entirely consistent].
Drone strikes are likely to continue to escalate in number as
US intel reach on the ground in Pakistan continues to improve.
The US would like to expand its drone operations into northern
Balochistan - and perhaps elsewhere in Pakistan - but this is
likely to be resisted by the Pakistan Army/Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) and Government.
PAKISTAN TALIBAN
Drone strikes have also been successful in killing
important leaders of the Pakistan Taliban - such as Baitullah
Mehsud - and these have helped the Pakistan Army/ISI to turn the
tide (at least temporarily) against the groups - Tehrik-i-Taliban
Pakistan (TTP) and Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM)
- which most directly threatened the Pakistan state and which
caused havoc in many of Pakistan's cities in 2007 and 2008 before
major Pakistan military operations in the North-West Frontier
Province (NWFP) [as was] and the eastern part of South Waziristan
in April/May and October 2009.
AFGHAN TALIBAN
By contrast there has been almost no attrition of
Afghan Taliban leaderships or foot-soldiers on the Pakistan side
of the border. Indeed there is much evidence that Pakistan has
supported the return of the Afghan Taliban from Pakistan in order
to have a strong hand in Afghanistan post-NATO, to seek to avoid
the kind of chaos into which Afghanistan was plunged when the
Soviets withdrew in 1989 and the US abandoned the region [which
had appalling consequences for Pakistan], and to keep Indian influence
in Afghanistan to a minimum and away from the Af-Pak border.
PAKISTAN LEVERAGE
OVER US/NATO/UK
Over the past nine years - despite billions of dollars
of military and civilian aid and much diplomatic attention - the
US/UK and NATO have been unable to pressure Pakistan into serious
downward pressure on the Afghan Taliban, something General Petraeus
has said would be critical to NATO success in Afghanistan. Aside
from Pakistani stubbornness to resist diplomatic pressure [witness
the Pressler sanctions] and the pernicious way in which Pakistan
has resisted sanctions [witness the use of Islamic militancy 1989-2001],
the main reason we cannot force Pakistan to act in our interests
is because of the counter-leverage they hold over us. These are
four-fold:
- Up to 80% of NATO's main logistics lines [materiel
and fuel] flow through Pakistan and we are dependent on these
routes. Their disruption or interdiction poses a strategic threat
to NATO objectives in Pakistan. The recent 10-day closure of Torkham
and the express linkage of that closure to the NATO cross-border
incursions into Pakistan illustrate the point.
- We rely on Pakistan for base infrastructure and
over-flights to prosecute the war in Afghanistan.
- We rely on Pakistan for intelligence in Pakistan
particularly on al-Qaeda. Without this our counter-terrorism efforts
would be seriously degraded.
- Finally we rely on Pakistan's Army and ISI to
keep Pakistan's estimated 60-100 nuclear weapons out of terrorist
hands. This is arguably the ultimate threat the Pakistan Army/ISI
can make.
In other words we are too dependent on Pakistan in
too many grave security areas to seriously question their Army/ISI.
We know Pakistan are - from our point of view - duplicitous with
respect to the Afghan Taliban, but there is little or nothing
we can do about that and we should not expect Pakistan to work
against what it perceives to be its own interests. Moreover Pakistan
has coercive options which are truly frightening.
TRANSITION AND
PAKISTAN
The first tragedy of our failure to find alternative
ways to engage with Pakistan over the past nine years is that
the Afghan Taliban are back in force and the main groups - Omar
(Quetta Shura); Zakir (Gergi Jangal Shura); Mansoor (Peshawar
Shura), and Haqqani (Miran Shah Shura) - together with Hekmatyar's
HI, are to varying degrees being lined up by Pakistan to assert
Pakistani interests in a transition Afghanistan. My view is that
Pakistan will not be restrained in asserting its dominant hand
in the country and that this is already beginning to lay the foundations
for a renewed civil war in Afghanistan. The window for building
a plural, stable, regionally inclusive dispensation in Afghanistan
during transition is closing. [Prime Minister Cameron's recent
remarks in India about Pakistan's Janus-faced attitude to terrorism
was an important marker for Pakistan not to overplay its hand
in Afghanistan.]
RISKS OF
FURTHER INSTABILITY
IN PAKISTAN
The second tragedy is that the Afghan War 2001-201X
and the escalating war against AQ in Pakistan have fuelled the
very dynamics of regional instability, radicalisation, and terrorism
we have sought to address. Terrorism has risen sharply in Pakistan
over the past decade; terrorist groups appear to be linking up,
regional terrorist groups with some Pakistan state-backing (such
as the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT)) appear to be developing global
Jihad horizons, there are some significant trends in political
Islamism as a number of Pakistan terrorist groups like the LeT
and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) evolve into wider social/political
actors (much as Hamas has), and - even without the floods - the
situation of tens of millions of Pakistanis remains dire. Even
the Pakistan Army/ISI has shown itself vulnerable to terrorist
attacks and to forms of terrorist/insurgent penetration which
could threaten the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
POLITICAL REALITIES
Before we can even think about reframing debates
in ways which might help us find alternative policy approaches
to Pakistan - which keep the best of what we have and change the
worst - we have to keep in mind some important political realities:
- The US is in the driving seat with respect to
Pakistan, its civilian and military aid dwarfs ours, its security
objectives override ours, and we matter only marginally to Pakistan;
- The UK policy-making process (as well as our
"establishment") with respect to Pakistan is strongly
influenced by a skilful and far-reaching Pakistani lobby;
- The UK is home to more than 900,000 UK citizens
of Pakistani origin many of whom are wealthy and some of whom
constitute an important - perhaps even decisive - political constituency
in some marginals;
- The UK Foreign Office has operated a reasonably
consistent Pakistan policy for decades and, like all bureaucracies,
prefers minor and reversible adjustments of policy to more substantive,
risky, and perhaps irrevocable changes.
FUTURE OPTIONS
The idea that a few lines in a brief of this kind
can offer some serious policy suggestions is unrealistic. To the
extent that the UK matters and has been influential in terms of
what happens in Pakistan successive UK Governments need to accept
their portion of the responsibility for the present state in which
Pakistan finds itself. Pakistan has spent billions to become a
nuclear weapons state, it has proliferated nuclear weapons technology
to the most unsavoury regimes on earth; it has created, sustained,
and empowered some of the worst terrorist and insurgent organisations
in the world, and it has stumbled from crisis to coup d'état
to corrupt kleptocracy and back again for much of its 60-year
history. The price for all this has been paid by ordinary Pakistanis
who return some of the worst statistics for security, wealth,
health and social well-being in the world.
If there is a single thread to our role in this history
it is the UK's consistent preference for Pakistan's ruling kleptocratic
politico-military elite and our secondary concern for ordinary
Pakistanis. What more disabling political signal could there be
than the "crowning" of Bilawal Bhutto here in the UK?
Every person struggling at the grassroots for meaningful political
evolution in Pakistan cannot but read in that event the UK's commitment
to another fifty years of engagement in Pakistan through the ruling
neo-feudal elite. We might say the same of hosting (at the tax-payers
expense) the former Pakistani dictator General Musharraf who launched
his political "comeback" in London a few weeks ago,
or the sheltering of Altaf Hussein, the Pakistani Muttahida Qaumi
Movement (MQM) leader, since 1992.
In the wake of the floods Pakistanis, despite some
honourable exceptions, have seen their incompetent and indifferent
civilian government and their self-serving and equally indifferent
military. That the floods have not uncorked revolutionary change
in Pakistan is down largely to the heterogeneity of the populous,
the absence of a unifying idea or ideology, and the absence of
a political actor or group which could harness the immense anger
of ordinary Pakistanis. The most likely candidate for that role
is political Islamism.
In looking for ways forward these have to be searched
for in the needs and aspirations of ordinary Pakistanis, in the
empowerment of ordinary Pakistanis and the expansion of a meritocratic
middle-class (not least through English, the language through
which the ruling elite monopolise power), in more just political
dispensations [including federal], in connecting publics to political
leaderships through the building of political legitimacy and through
forms of neo-Westphalian state-making, and in regional processes
which recognise the importance of Pakistan's neighbours. Our means
to be effective in these areas, alone or with others, is limited.
18 October 2010
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