A U-Turn for the US
By Ahmad Faruqui, PhD
Dansville, CA

President Bush observed recently that the single most important issue on the agenda of the next American president will be Pakistan, ahead of Afghanistan and Iraq.  The presumptive nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties agree with this assessment.  
Seven years on, the top leaders of Al-Qaeda are still at large, the Taliban are resurgent and radicalism is on the rise.  Both presidential candidates have concluded that the war on terror is not going well.  Both are entertaining proposals for sending more troops into Afghanistan and, yes, possibly into Waziristan. 
While there may be some merit in raising troop levels in Afghanistan, interjecting them into Waziristan would be tantamount to invading Pakistan.  It is difficult to imagine how it would be anything other than an unmitigated disaster.
In the days following 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan and deposed a widely disliked regime.  However, as the evidence of collateral damage surfaced, there was an upsurge in anti-American sentiment among radical Pakistanis.  However, anti-Americanism did not stay confined to the radicals.    
In the years to come, continued US support for an increasingly unpopular general-turned-president led to a rise of anti-American sentiment even among moderate Pakistanis.  Today, 83 percent of Pakistanis would like to see Musharraf removed from office but US support for Musharraf remains firm.  Increasingly critical voices are being raised against US policies even by senior military officials in Pakistan ever since a US attack killed several Pakistani soldiers.
How did we arrive at this juncture?  To understand the answer, we have to view US-Pakistani ties through the long lens of history.  Whenever the White House has been occupied by a Republican president, it has often been the case that the President’s House in Islamabad has been occupied by the army chief.
This happened first during the Eisenhower administration, was echoed in the Nixon administration, happened again in the Reagan administration and is happening now under the Bush administration. 
Massive arms supplies to the Pakistani military in the mid-1950s were the primary reason that General Ayub was able to declare martial law in 1958.  Sure, the political leaders had been playing musical chairs since the early deaths of Jinnah and Liaquat.  But had the democratic process not been disrupted, it would eventually have yielded a robust polity. 
Ayub violated his own constitution in 1969 when he handed over power to his army chief, Yahya.  Two years later, Yahya refused to hand over power to the party that won an absolute majority in parliament.  This was no surprise since he had earlier declared his intention to rule for 14 years.  The ensuing civil war, which pitted 45,000 troops against 75 million disenchanted citizens, was – to quote Henry Kissinger — “worse than a crime, it was a blunder.” 
After the Soviet’s invaded Afghanistan, Zia became a hero in the West, no longer an evil hangman in uniform.  The US provided F-16s to the Pakistani air force and the CIA funneled billions of dollars to the Mujahideen through the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). 
Mauled badly by Stingers, the Red Army withdrew in 1989.  But this was a pyrrhic victory for Pakistan, to whom it bequeathed a guns-and-drugs culture.   
During his visit to South Asia in 2000, President Clinton snubbed Pakistan’s fourth coup-maker, Pervez Musharraf, when he made a five-hour stopover in Islamabad on the heels of a five-day visit to India .  After 9/11, by pledging “unstinted cooperation” in the war on terror and making a U-Turn on the Taliban, Musharraf became Bush’s best friend. 
He moved 80,000 troops into the border with Afghanistan and the ISI turned over hundreds of suspects to the US.  But things cratered badly last year when a lawyer’s movement forced him to suspend the constitution and fire the full bench of the Supreme Court.  In the following elections, Musharraf’s party was defeated decisively but he did not step down. 
The opposition parties formed a coalition government but failed to honor their electoral pledge to restore the judges.  Asif Zardari, un-elected to any seat and holding no government posts, took on the mantle of Politician-in-Chief. 
 Earlier he had accused the military government of murdering his wife and talked of presidential impeachment.  Now he spoke of the need to move on. 
The US brought tremendous pressure on the coalition government through Zardari to not pursue the restoration of judges or the impeachment of the president. Senior US diplomats and flag officers paid frequent visits to their Pakistani counterparts with the same message: Don’t rock the boat.
Buttressing these sentiments, Henry Kissinger wrote that it was never a good idea to hold elections in unstable polities such as Pakistan’s.  Ironically, at the same time, US Secretary of State Condi Rice wrote in Foreign Affairs that every good thing that had happened in Pakistan since 9/11 was because of the US commitment to democracy.
To the contrary, the Taliban have opened a new franchise in Pakistan.  During the past 12 months, they have mounted a series of increasingly well-coordinated and lethal attacks on both civil and military targets, taken over the Red Mosque in Islamabad and almost seized Peshawar.  In a single firefight on July 13th in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, they killed nine American soldiers. 
The increased militancy of the Taliban comes at a time when most Pakistanis see hypocrisy in US policies toward the country.  It is time for the US to make a U-Turn. 
What Rory Stewart says in the current issue of TIME magazine about Afghanistan is valid even more so for Pakistan.  More troops are not the answer, since bombs and missiles have only exacerbated the problem.  For every person who is killed, ten rise in his or her place.
For decades, the US has focused its energies on developing one institution and on propping up one man in Pakistan.  Only failure unrelenting has flowed from this policy.  But should the US invade Pakistan, that will compound the failure!
The next US president should emphasize human development and focus on the building of schools and hospitals, the digging of wells and the building of roads, the creation of jobs and the provision of food. 
This will enable the US to reinvent its image with the 164 million Pakistanis who are not in uniform.  The ensuing goodwill may help turn around the war on terror.  
(Ahmad Faruqui is an associate of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford.  Faruqui@pacbell.net)

 

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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