International terrorism and the role of Pakistan - a beginner's guide
NOTE: This article is a work in progress. It is a brief introduction to a complex issue, and therefore of necessity is somewhat reductionist, without rendering the overall argument invalid.
The recent attempted bombing of Times Square by Faisal Shahzad has given new life to the debate about Islamic terrorism and the role of Pakistan in this phenomenon. It is difficult not to notice that so many recent attacks or attempted attacks made by terrorists in the name of Islam have been traced back in one form or another to Pakistan - terrorists have either been Pakistanis, had Pakistani origins, or have received training, indoctrination, and support from Pakistan-based terrorist outfits.
The debate about Pakistan and terrorism often seems to break down to polar extremes. On the one hand is the simplistic view that 'all terror attacks come from Pakistan; therefore all Pakistanis are terrorists'. Needless to say, racist and xenophobic strains can often be heard in conjunction with this view, which is plainly erroneous. The other extreme is the equally simplistic, politically correct and utterly naive view that 'Pakistanis are peace-loving people no more or less likely to be terrorists than any other nationality'. Both these viewpoints are oversimplifications that ignore reality.
First, let us put to rest the idea that there is no link between Pakistan and terrorism. A brief glance at the list of terror attacks in recent history dispels that notion:
1993: Mir Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani immigrant to the USA, attacked CIA headquarters in Langley, killing two and wounding three before fleeing.
1993: a car bomb was detonated at the WTC in New York. Among the conspirators was Ramzi Yousef, a Pakistani, and Ahmad Ajaj, who traveled to Pakistan to train prior to the attack.
2005: Three of the four perpetrators of the 7/7 bombings in London were of Pakistani descent.
2008: The lone survivor of the Mumbai attacks, Ajmal Kasab, is from Pakistan.
2010: The would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, is from Pakistan.
Let us acknowledge that there is a pattern here.
While it is obviously true that not all Pakistanis are terrorists, it is also not a coincidence that so many recent terror attacks emanate from Pakistan. There are systemic reasons why this is so - the explanation can be found in the policies and strategies implemented by the Pakistani establishment (especially the Pakistani Army) that have over time increasingly radicalized the entire country, priming it with an infrastructure that produces vast number of potential recruits for terrorist organizations.
The world needs a better understanding of the link between Pakistan and international terrorism. In this article, I attempt to lay out some detail behind this. The reasons that Pakistan is today the epicenter of 'Islamic' terrorism (it is more appropriate to speak of Saudi/Pakistani terrorism, but more on that later) go back to the country's independence in 1947. We will discuss the reasons why the Pakistani Army chose to invest in setting up a massive infrastructure to recruit and train terrorists to use in their never-ending battle with India, and how that infrastructure has increasingly slipped out of the control of the Pakistan Army and has now become a toxic breeding ground for an assortment of terrorists inspired by extremist interpretations of Islam and bent on inflicting damage on any country viewed as enemies of 'Islam', especially the United States.
Pakistan's fight with India
First, it is important to note that Pakistan is a far smaller country than India. At independence, Pakistan had a population estimated at 30 million; India had about 350 million. Today those numbers are 170 million to 1.1 billion. In terms of economy, land area, armed forces, industrial output, India is many times larger than Pakistan. Yet Pakistan has always sought 'parity' with its giant Eastern neighbor. There are complex reasons for this that we will not go into here, but it is important to appreciate that Pakistan was seeking to match a giant neighbor pound for pound.
Another key factor is to understand that seizing control of Kashmir has been a priority for the Pakistani state throughout its history. Both India and Pakistan claim the territory of Kashmir, which is currently split with India controlling about two-thirds and Pakistan and China the remaining third. This dispute has led to three declared wars in 1948, 1965 and 1971, and one undeclared war in 1999.
Thus the conundrum for Pakistan has always been - how to wrest control of Kashmir from an India that was far stronger in conventional military terms?
The 'death of a thousand cuts'
After 1979, a solution seemed to present itself: unconventional warfare. The Pakistani Army learned from its experience fighting America's war in Afghanistan. The American-Pakistani strategy to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan was simple: set up camps to train the vast numbers of Afghans, Pakistani civilians and volunteers from across the Muslim world in unconventional warfare against the Soviets; arm them; indoctrinate them with the ideals of jihad against the non-Muslim Soviets; and insert Pakistani Army officers and personnel to provide crucial support at key points in the conflict. This economically cheap strategy eventually forced the withdrawal of the conventionally superior Soviet forces, and therefore seemed perfect for Pakistan to use against India in Kashmir. Best of all, it gave the Pakistani Army plausible deniability - they could deploy terrorists to inflict damage on India while officially denying any connection to the terrorists.
Thus, the vast infrastructure of jihadi training camps that had been set up for the Afghan War, the massive numbers of small arms floating around Pakistan, and the large pool of fighters willing to fight and die in the cause of jihad against an enemy occupier, began to be redirected by Pakistan against India. Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), sponsored many new militant outfits, provided training, money and arms, and helped infiltrate them across the border into Indian Kashmir, where they would go on to inflict bloody casualties on an Indian Army caught off guard.
At first the strategy was a great success. India was unprepared for the unconventional attacks used by the Pakistani jihadis in Kashmir. However, casualties were never enough to dislodge India from Kashmir, and eventually the Indian Army initiated counter-terrorist practices that made it harder and harder for the terrorists to inflict damage on the armed forces.
There were several consequences of this that would lead to the entire situation spiraling out of control.
First, the extremist propaganda used by the many Islamic militant outfits in Pakistan began to permeate into broader Pakistani society, alongside an overall conscious shift to a more intolerant Islamic society initiated by Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan's dictator in the 70s. Thus, while the ISI might have initially used the language of jihad and Islamic war in a cynical fashion, as a tool to inspire the terrorists, increasingly the rank and file of the Pakistani Army and Pakistani society have begun to take those messages to heart, and truly believe in them.
Second, some of the terrorist outfits began to operate independently of the Pakistani Army. They gained access to independent sources of funds (from Islamic charities, wealthy patrons in the Arab world, and setting up their own businesses) and derived their inspiration and ideology from global Islamic terrorist organizations rather than the Pakistani Army. While some groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the Mumbai attacks of 2008, remain largely under the control of the Pakistani Army, others have begun to follow their own mission, and in some cases have even begun to fight against the Pakistani Army itself.
Finally, the scope of the jihadi groups ambitions began to grow and take on global dimensions. Thus, there was a gradual evolution from calling for jihad against the Indian Army in Kashmir, to jihad against civilians anywhere in India, to jihad against the enemies of the Muslims anywhere in the world... especially America.
Why Pakistan is now a perfect breeding ground for international terrorists
The preceding discussion should, I hope, make it clear why Pakistan has become a source of so much recent international terrorism.
First, government sponsorship of terrorist groups for decades has allowed them to flourish in Pakistan, so that they now have a vast infrastructure and access to thousands of recruits across the country, and any would-be terrorist in the world today knows that he can go to Pakistan and find militant groups willing to train him, arm him, and infiltrate him into his chosen target country to carry out a terrorist attack.
Second, Pakistani society is increasingly radicalized. The percentage of those willing to engage in true terrorism is tiny, but consider that even if that number is 1% of the entire population, it translates into 1.7 million potential terrorists. And those terrorists are no longer just the sons of poor, illiterate peasants; because the message of jihad is so widespread, and increasingly penetrates even the upper classes, terrorists now come from elite backgrounds, and are the sons of engineers, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats and army personnel. These are people who can find their way into the Western world and attack it from within.
Third, the jihadis now have global ambitions. They increasingly identify America as the number one target, not India, and increasingly accept the Al-Qaeda world view of a massive civilizational conflict between Islam and the rest of the world. Thus, they seek not merely to remove India from Kashmir; they seek the destruction of India, Europe, and the United States and the restoration of an idealized Islamic caliphate.
This is the context in which one should see episodes such as the attempted bombing by Faisal Shahzad, the son of an Air Vice Marshal in the Pakistani Air Force. These are the reasons why Pakistanis seem to be behind so much international terrorism today; and unless the country radically changes its direction, there seems little hope that it will not continue to be the global center of international terrorism.
