Part II: The Military's Worldview
What do the Pakistani security services want? How does supporting political violence and extremism fit into their agenda?
April 1, 2009
Shaun Gregory: The extent to which the army and ISI support terrorism is contentious. That they have done so in the past is beyond dispute. That they still support certain groups that serve their internal or regional interests is highly likely. That they support groups that threaten Pakistan's territorial integrity is most unlikely. However, there is more than one actor stirring the terrorist/extremist pot here. Pakistan, having been through 1971, views territorial integrity with the utmost seriousness and is acutely sensitive to those countries -- such as Iran and Afghanistan -- that support subnational groups within Pakistan threatening secession. Anyone seeking greater stability in the region, or seeking to wean Pakistan off support for extremists and terrorists, has to address Pakistan's legitimate security needs. This means working with neighboring countries to draw the sting of issues such as Kashmir and Baluchistan. Pakistan, for its part, must move to a fairer federal dispensation and take the opportunity for bilateral progress with India that the present context offers.
Sumit Ganguly: The security services and the military basically wish to preserve their prerogatives at the cost of the rest of Pakistan's society. They have steadily aggrandized power and privilege and have come to construe their principal role as the guardians of the Pakistani state. They see the jihadi groups as their handmaidens and believe that the risks in using them are both controllable and calculable.
Aqil Shah: Any desire to deal firmly with cross-border militancy is trumped by the military's perceived need to retain its ties to this or that militant group in order to counter Indian influence in Afghanistan. The army continues to fear that the United States could simply lose interest in Afghanistan once it captures the senior leadership of al Qaeda (as Washington did after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan), leaving Pakistan exposed to Indian (and Russian) "encirclement" -- evidence of which it sees in New Delhi's alleged support for the insurgency in Pakistan's resource-rich Baluchistan province and Indian funding for a 135-mile road connecting Afghanistan's Nimroz province with the Iranian port of Chabahar. Intelligence officials privately concede their mentoring of militant groups in the past, but say they have now escaped the military's orbit -- an assertion not fully consistent with the facts. There appears to be a pervasive belief in the army, among both mid-level and senior officers, that the United States and India are destabilizing FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] and the rest of the country as a prelude to depriving Pakistan of its nuclear weapons. Officers who have served in FATA have told me that they face a U.S.-Indian combined offensive and that the local Taliban receive their funds from across the border. The army might inculcate such beliefs in order to motivate its soldiers, but they also connect to the military's larger worldview. For the generals, the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal is proof of an evolving Indo-U.S., or even Indo-U.S.-Israeli, strategic alliance -- not to mention American duplicity.
Stephen Cohen: Aqil has captured the essence of the Pakistani security establishment's paranoia, but even paranoids have enemies, and no Pakistani soldier (or intelligence functionary) will soon forget that their country was cut in half by India. Most of them see things through an India-tinted lens, and have always feared that the United States might choose India over Pakistan -- a fear confirmed by the US-Indian nuclear deal. Other Pakistanis have a more nuanced view of the world.
Sumit Ganguly: Aqil's views on the Pakistani army's paranoia about Indian involvement with the CIA in the FATA are fascinating. That said, it would be a marvel if the Indians were that competent with covert operations. Their flat-footedness in these matters simply does not convince me that they constitute a viable threat in the FATA, even if they would want to be one. I disagree with Steve, however, about the Pakistani army's "memories" of the dismemberment of their country in 1971. Surely they have a glimmer of understanding about their own role in precipitating that crisis. India certainly played a major role in bringing about the genesis of Bangladesh. But the Pakistani army resists coming to terms with the flight of close to ten million individuals following the military crackdown there. The 1971 crisis is exploited to good effect for public-relations purposes and India-bashing, but we need not buy into this obfuscatory propaganda.
Aqil Shah: It would be reasonable to speculate that [India's] RAW [Research and Analysis Wing] is settling scores with the ISI in Afghanistan and perhaps Baluchistan. But so far, the Pakistani military establishment has produced little evidence of the "Indian hand," and logically it doesn't make sense for India to back groups that could instantly turn their guns on New Delhi, as many of the Pakistani Taliban promised to do in the wake of the recent Mumbai attacks. The trouble with Pakistan is that the specter of the unremitting "enemy" serves the parochial interests of the military. That is why the question of civil-military relations is critical to Pakistan's external policies and behavior. When the entrenched organizational beliefs, biases, routines, and interests of the military become the primary drivers of a state's decision-making for war and peace, it has trouble written all over it. Sumit is on the mark with the argument that the military believes it can still calibrate and control the "good" jihadis (those who fight in Indian-administered Kashmir or lend a helping hand in Afghanistan) from the "bad" ones (those who have turned on the Pakistani army, ostensibly with Indian prodding). In fact, the generals continue to see the "good" ones as the frontline in the military's strategy of asymmetric warfare against a conventionally superior India. Senior military officials reportedly told a group of journalists in Islamabad after the Mumbai attacks that the militant commanders were "patriotic" Pakistanis, and that they had "no big issues with the militants in FATA," "only some misunderstandings" that "could be removed through dialogue."
Sumit Ganguly: The Pakistani military may well have legitimate concerns and indeed misgivings about India's weapons purchases. That said, two issues immediately stand out. First, Pakistan has to decide on its own -- or better, in conjunction with India -- what constitutes an adequate level of weaponization to address its security needs. Second, we need to acknowledge that India has other threats that it faces, namely, from China. If we in the United States hedge against Russia, then we should concede that the Indians have every right to hedge against an uncertain future with China. But they also need to reassure the Pakistanis that they will not use their growing capabilities to intimidate or coerce Pakistan.
Shaun Gregory: It is increasingly clear to everyone except Pakistanis that Pakistan is no longer a regional equal of India, and nobody behaves any longer as though it is. Sumit is right: if Pakistan wants sensitivity to its legitimate interests, then it must acknowledge those of others, and that means recognizing India's emergence as a great power and its legitimate concerns about China. Pakistan's insistence on a bilateral calculus vis-Ã -vis India makes no sense anymore and is a patent obstacle to progress.
Christine Fair: I think it would be a mistake to completely disregard Pakistan's regional perceptions due to doubts about Indian competence in executing covert operations. That misses the point entirely. And I think it is unfair to dismiss the notion that Pakistan's apprehensions about Afghanistan stem in part from its security competition with India. Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar--across from Bajaur. Kabul's motivations for encouraging these activities are as obvious as India's interest in engaging in them. Even if by some act of miraculous diplomacy the territorial issues were to be resolved, Pakistan would remain an insecure state. Given the realities of the subcontinent (e.g., India's rise and its more effective foreign relations with all of Pakistan's near and far neighbors), these fears are bound to grow, not lessen. This suggests that without some means of compelling Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon militancy, it will become ever more interested in using it -- and the militants will likely continue to proliferate beyond Pakistan's control.(This was the her lie last yera which was repeated several times became truth now and then resulted in S-e-S.Amazing thing is that same year she backtracked from it saying pakistanis are congenial liars and she never said that india is involved in Baluchistan.same year 2099 oct her visa to india was rejected by GOI{need citation})
Aqil Shah: Christine's observations provide damning evidence of the games states play. The Indians seem to be saying, "The Pakistanis did it to us in Kashmir, so we will pay them back in Baluchistan and elsewhere." So it should not be surprising that the Pakistani military continues to patronize groups it sees as useful in the regional race for influence, even if the costs to Pakistan's political stability outweigh the benefits.
Sumit Ganguly: I never suggested that the Indians have purely humanitarian objectives in Afghanistan. That said, their vigorous attempts to limit Pakistan's reach and influence there stem largely from being systematically bled in Kashmir. Their role in Afghanistan is a pincer movement designed to relieve pressure in Kashmir. Whether it will work remains an open question. Meanwhile, I know that the Indians have mucked around in Sind in retaliation for Pakistani involvement in the Punjab crisis. But as much as the Indians may boast about their putative pumping of funds into Baluchistan, why is the evidence for that so thin?
Ashley Tellis: What do key Pakistani actors want, especially the military? Obviously, they want security for Pakistan, along with the ability to protect their own interests inside it. Both objectives become problematic, unfortunately, when pursued in certain ways. The army is pursuing security for Pakistan in the east by combating India through a war of a thousand cuts and a rapidly expanding nuclear program, and in the west by a little imperial project in Afghanistan. There is a temptation to see the latter entirely through the lens of India-Pakistan competition. But Pakistan has interests in Afghanistan that transcend its problems with India. In fact, one of the crucial problems in both theaters is the exaggerated Pakistani fears of what it believes the Indians are up to. Aqil captures that paranoia quite well. I am not sure I buy Christine's analysis of Indian activities in Pakistan's west: this is a subject I followed very closely when I was in government, and suffice it to say, there is less there than meets the eye. That was certainly true for Afghanistan. Convincing Pakistanis of this, however, is a different story. I think Sumit and Shaun get the bottom line exactly right: Pakistan has to recognize that it simply cannot match India through whatever stratagem it chooses -- it is bound to fail. The sensible thing, then, is for Pakistan to reach the best possible accommodation with India now, while it still can, and shift gears toward a grand strategy centered on economic integration in South Asia -- one that would help Pakistan climb out of its morass and allow the army to maintain some modicum of privileges, at least for a while. The alternative is to preside over an increasingly hollow state.
Christine Fair: I am not trying to blow Indian activities in the region out of proportion, rather stressing the need to not dismiss the importance of Pakistani perceptions of those activities simply because one thinks they are exaggerated. These activities matter to some in the Pakistani elite and to a broader public that is fed a steady stream of information about them. Countless surveys demonstrate the Pakistani public's peculiar view of the region and their country's activities in it. Public opinion matters to the army, and it will not cooperate with the West's desires unless such cooperation enjoys support among Pakistanis at large. Coercive measures against the army -- which I tend to support to some extent -- are at odds with attempts to persuade Pakistanis of the real nature of the threats their government has brought upon them and the need for immediate action in response. Regarding the formation of perceptions, Pakistan's educational system is, of course, the font of these problems. Alas, Washington has focused entirely too many (wasted) resources on the so-called madrassah problem while failing to acknowledge the much larger problem of Pakistan's public schools, which educate some 70 percent of the student population. (Private schools of varying quality educate another 30 percent of full-time students, with madrassah enrollments largely a rounding error.) Attitudinal surveys of older children in religious, private, and public schools show very different views on militancy, violence, minority rights, and the conflict with India. Private-school students have the most reassuring worldviews, suggesting that those schools, the vast majority of which are not elite, are doing something right. Surely, market incentives could be bolstered to encourage private-school expansion and utilization.