June 08 ,2012
Mending US-Pakistan Relations
The alliance between America and Pakistan continues on a downward spiral. The latest events include Pakistan’s Parliament unanimously voting for a halt to drone attacks on Pakistani soil, and the 33-year sentence for Shakeel Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who aided the CIA in its attempt to make it certain that Bin Laden was hiding in the Abbottabad compound. A Senate panel was so upset about Afridi’s conviction that it voted to sharply cut aid to Pakistan. Meanwhile, the US continues to refuse to apologize for the killing of 24 Pakistani army personnel last winter in a cross-border strike that was ostensibly targeting Taliban fighters. At the same time the US has refused to increase the transit fee payments for each truckload of supplies that pass from Karachi to the US military in Afghanistan. Pakistan has therefore kept the supply lines shuttered, forcing the US to rely on more lengthy and difficult land routes through Central Asia.
If Pakistan and America are friends, it would seem it should be easy for them to sort out their differences and get along. That’s true for friends, but not so much for nations. To paraphrase Lord Palmerston, nations have no permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests. The only way to set the US-Pakistan relationship back on track is to recognize that basic truth and to realize what that means for both sides.
What are the main interest of the US with regards to Pakistan? There are certainly many interests, from terrorism to textiles to drug trafficking, but there are really three main things that have the highest priority and trump all else. First, ensuring that Pakistan’s nuclear capability remains under the control of the central government, and neither the bombs themselves nor the technology to make them are transferred to other nations or parties. Second, to ensure that Pakistan is neither the source nor the conduit for transnational terrorism against the US or its interests. Finally, to ensure that the Taliban never take power in Afghanistan, and therefore convince Pakistan to do all it can to keep its soil from being a safe haven for Afghan Taliban.
What are Pakistan’s interests in terms of the US and its actions? Pakistan too has a laundry list of items that are on its agenda, but there are several that are key. First, that Pakistan maintains an adequate conventional and nuclear deterrence against India and keeps its independence. Second, that the US provides trade and aid that promotes Pakistan’s economic development. Third, that Afghanistan after the US leaves is not a hostile power allied to India.
On several points one can see that there should be overlap between the US and Pakistan. Both sides want Pakistan to be a strong and effective state. They both share an interest in defeating Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. And they both want the US to leave Afghanistan. The key reason for friction is precisely because there is misunderstanding about the Afghan endgame.
Pakistan fears Indian attempts to influence Afghanistan, and the Northern Alliance forces that won after 9/11 were allied with India. The Taliban are perceived as “our guys” even though they didn’t really take orders from Islamabad when they were in power. In addition, the US does not understand how almost all Pathans, and much of the rest of Pakistan, sees the US presence in Afghanistan as another foreign invasion, and sympathizes with the Taliban who fight them. For the Pakistani government to go after them in a military campaign would be deeply unpopular in Pakistan, and public opinion would be strongly against such a move. The US needs to understand that it cannot base its Afghan exit on the idea that Pakistan would engage in a civil war in FATA to help out the US.
So what should happen? The US needs to back off on its attempt to get Pakistan to attack the Taliban militarily. But it should instead get Pakistan to weaken the Taliban through non-lethal action. Limit its supply lines, cut off its flow of money, and deny it assistance. Conversely, the US needs to give Pakistan certain ironclad guarantees. The Kabul government should formally recognize the Durand Line that marks the international border, something no Afghan government has ever done, raising Pakistani suspicions that Afghanistan has covetous thoughts toward Pathan regions of Pakistan. America needs to tell India to back away from involvement in Afghanistan, nothing good comes from India trying to deepen its influence there. Finally, the US needs to stop the drone strikes in Pakistan. They inflame public opinion and rally more support for the Taliban. In very limited circumstances, there may be an exception that both sides can tolerate, but the weekly attacks need to end. They do more harm than good for both Pakistan and the US. In exchange, Pakistan needs to reorient its Afghan policy. For reasons of geography, shared ethnicities, and religion, Afghanistan will naturally be a partner for Pakistan. A strategy based on creating strong economic, trade, and transport links will tie Afghanistan to Pakistan in mutually beneficial ways that will be far better than another 10 years of civil war between Kabul and the Taliban.
Pakistan just came to agreement with Afghanistan and India on some key terms for the TAPI gas pipeline that will bring energy from Turkmenistan to South Asia. How can either Pakistan or India hitch their energy future to a vulnerable pipeline that passes through a war zone? It is absurd to be discussing this while continuing to see another 10 years of strife. Pakistan needs to make a clear choice too.
