Pakistan
The terrorist atrocities in Mumbai this week serve as another reminder of two fundamental issues for India:
- India’s future will always be imperiled as long as relations with Pakistan remain on a hair-trigger. The terrorist group that attacked the city may have no official ties to Pakistan, yet still managed to raise tensions between the two states. All India’s hopes could disappear in nuclear fire if each crisis could lead to war.
- The problem of Kashmir — a predominately Muslim area ruled by India, which stations hundreds of thousands of troops there — is also likely to bedevil India’s future. There are signs that the terrorists were motivated by the Kashmir problem, and Kashmir will continue to generate crises until India resolves the issue. It is also the most dangerous flashpoint for Indo-Pakistani relations.
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is straining ties between Pakistan’s ethnic groups, the Washington Post reports.
Comprised of four ethnicity-based provinces, Pakistan’s stability was already threatened by restiveness in Baluchistan and among the Pashtun of the North-West Frontier Province. Now Sindh, Bhutto’s homeland, may be added to the list, as Sindhis turn against the Punjabi-dominated military and the Punjabi elite.
Witte of the Post reports that mourners at Bhutto’s funeral chanted “We don’t need Pakistan!” and crowds of Sindhis have been shouting “Leave Sindh!” at soldiers. Some Sindhis are now threatening succession and war.
Still, Witte writes, “few believe the country is in imminent danger of fracturing,” and more people in Sindh and other provinces believe that substantial autonomy should devolve from the center to the four regions.
Others say that simply giving all groups a say might suffice: “Democracy is the way to keep Pakistan together,” says one NGO leader.
Gareth Evans of the International Crisis Group put summarized the impact of Bhutto’s assassination succinctly: “Prospects for democracy and stability in Pakistan are much dimmer without her.”
As for future directions, new data from Pew offers mixed messages:
- Support for terrorism has plummeted, with only 9% of Pakistanis saying that suicide attacks against civilians are justified.
- On the other hand, while only 15% of Pakistanis have favorable views of the US, more than twice that have some or a lot of confidence in Osama bin Laden to “do the right thing” in world affairs. This is down from 51% in 2005, but still indicates latent potential support for extremist views, despite skepticism that Pakistan is headed in this direction.
Last month The Atlantic examined Pakistan’s direction in light of ongoing political turmoil.
Author Joshua Hammer mentions the “nightmare scenario”–which Pakistan seems to inspire regularly:
an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. A tide of anti-American sentiment, some analysts fear, could bring to power Islamists, who would give free rein to the Taliban, spread nuclear technology to rogue states and terrorist groups, and support the mujahideen in Kashmir.
Hammer sheds light on various drivers of the scenario:
- The Islamist political parties simply aren’t very popular, even in their strongholds.
- Senior military officers are seen as pro-Western, but the views of the ranks who will succeed them in a few years are unknown.
- The Pakistani military is “deeply ambivalent” about fighting the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their Islamist Pakistani allies, not truly seeing them as a threat to the country.
- “While the military aims to do the opposite, it is slowly destabilizing Pakistan.”
Hammer also notes that the military has now deeply entrenched itself in the Pakistani economy, enriching its officers in the process, and this process may make it even less willing to truly relinquish power.
Hammer concludes that
The threat of an outright Islamist revolution—by gun or ballot—is low today, and so too is the threat that nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands. The army is not dominated by jihadists, and its controls on its missiles are strong.
However, he writes, “If the political process remains stunted, the Islamists may continue to gather strength until the country reaches a tipping point.”
The Post reported last week that American intelligence analysts are worried about a “looming strategic failure.”
Intelligence analysts acknowledge the battlefield victories, but they highlight the Taliban’s unchallenged expansion into new territory, an increase in opium poppy cultivation and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai as signs that the war effort is deteriorating.
US and NATO forces are not retaining control of the countryside, where three-fourths of Afghans live, and the Taliban is operating in new areas:
the Taliban’s control has extended beyond the group’s traditional southern territory, with extremists making substantial inroads this year into the western provinces of Farah, Herat and others along the Iranian border even as they regularly challenge eastern-based U.S. forces.
Pakistan’s role is also an issue:
Several experts believe that the United States can no longer afford to leave the Pakistani military to clean up its side of the border. “Unless we resolve the safe-haven issue, this is not going to succeed,” said Henry A. Crumpton, a CIA veteran
According to a recent New York Times article, many in the US intelligence community “believe that Pakistan, not Iraq, is the place Mr. Bush should consider the ‘central front’ in the battle against terrorism,” as it threatens “political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play.”
The article includes these forecasts:
- “If serious divisions emerge in Pakistan’s army, they could also threaten the security of Pakistan’s potent nuclear arsenal.”
- “Some experts … argue that Pakistan’s army is overwhelmingly moderate and will remain so, even without General Musharraf.”
- Instability in Pakistan “could cripple a renewed [US] effort to turn around the war against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.”
Despite Pakistan now constituting one of the chief threats to American security, there may be little the US can do about it: according to “recent intelligence assessments,” “American influence over events in Pakistan may be ebbing fast.”
In a Brookings article, Moeed Yusuf argues that “the possibility of a violent takeover reminiscent of the Taliban in Afghanistan is out of the question.”
The reason, according to Yusuf, is that “for Pakistan to go down this route, Pakistani society at large will have to bite into the radical ideology” and “that trend so far is not evident.”
He writes that forecasts of a radical takeover misperceive a key driver:
Predictions of doom usually conflate religious conservatism with militant extremism. While in the case of the tribal belt we find the two strands linked up, they are distinct and different in the rest of Pakistani society. … Religious conservatism—as perceived by mainstream Pakistani society—has a lot to do with cultural attitudes and pietism, but little to do with militant extremism which has stark political overtones.
Yusuf identifies several indicators that Pakistan will not turn radical:
- Militants target the security forces, indicating that they do not view them as allies.
- Islamic political parties are electorally weak, and could not win a fair election.
- The “young urban elite” tend to receive secular educations that leave them more Western than traditional in their outlooks.
Instead, Yusuf suggest that “socio-economic polarization within the Pakistani society presents the only real threat to the state’s future,” as there are 30 million children in families surviving on less than $2 a day. Abandoned by the elite, the dysfunctional school system exposes these youth to virulently anti-Western attitudes.
He finds danger in this situation:
If this situation persists, Pakistan could in due course have a large population of underprivileged youth who could, potentially, begin to support a narrow radical vision of the state as an alternative to the failed experiment with secular regimes. If this segment of the population turns to extremism, then there will be a structural shift in Pakistan polity, for at the end of the day the military and civil service cadres are reflective of the society at large. This is a much larger threat than that posed by the extreme minority of madrassah cadres that can perpetrate violence, but have no potential to permeate the society.
Yusuf offers prescriptions for American policy:
The US current policy goal to focus on and reform madrassah education in Pakistan is myopic. It needs to emphasize mainstream public-education much more proactively to prevent radicalization among students in public-sector schools. This means more, not less engagement with Islamabad. Washington should continue to support Pakistan financially to ensure sustained economic growth and bring relief to these vulnerable young men and women.
Despite Yusuf’s blanket dismissal of a radical takeover, he seems in the end to provide a scenario by which it might come about. It might be “out of the question” now, but not, it appears, in a decade.
Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress polled 108 foreign affairs experts across the political spectrum about terrorism and related issues.
Asked what country is likely to be the next al Qaeda stronghold, the experts said:
- Pakistan — 35%
- Iraq — 22%
- Somalia — 11%
- Sudan — 8%
- Afghanistan — 7%
The experts also put Pakistan at the head of the list most likely to transfer nuclear technology to terrorists by 2012:
- Pakistan — 74%
- North Korea — 42%
- Russia — 38%
- Iran — 31%
- United States — 5%
The experts were divided about how to change US policy toward Pakistan: about a third favored sanctions against the country, and a similar number advocated increasing US aid.
Pakistan likely tops both lists both because of ideological forces at work within the country, and because it is regularly cited as one of the states most likely to fall apart.
Ralph Peters recently offered a map of how the Middle East might look if borders were redrawn to better reflect sectarian and ethnic divides. (Click on “Next” under the map, then click on the map to enlarge.)
Among the changes that would unfold in this scenario:
- Kurdistan becomes a large, independent state, at the expense of Turkey, Iraq, and other countries. Says Peters, “A free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.”
- The remainder of Iraq divides into Sunni and Shia states, and the Shia portion unites with Shia areas of Saudi Arabia.
- Saudi Arabia also loses Mecca and Medina to an “Islamic sacred state.”
- Iran loses territory to the Kurds and Arab Shia, and to Baluchistan to the southeast.
- Pakistan is much-diminished, transferring lands to Baluchistan and Afghanistan.
- Afghanistan gains from Pakistan but loses to Baluchistan and Iran.
- “For Israel to have any hope of living in reasonable peace with its neighbors, it will have to return to its pre-1967 borders.”
Peters concludes:
Correcting borders to reflect the will of the people may be impossible. For now. But given time — and the inevitable attendant bloodshed — new and natural borders will emerge.
Der Spiegel examines Pakistan’s aspirations, saying that Musharraf
wants to fundamentally reposition Pakistan in South Asia and turn his country into a dominant regional power — a political and economic hub strategically positioned amongst India, China, Iran and the central Asian countries. To achieve his goals, Musharraf is looking for new allies. American priorities have essentially dominated Pakistan’s policies since the attacks of September 11, 2001. But instead of limiting himself to his current alliance with the United States and its “war on terror,” Musharraf is also reaching out to China, the superpower of the future.
But troubles in Baluchistan are potential obstacles:
Pakistan’s internal conflicts could soon attain international significance, if a plan to run South Asia’s two most important gas pipelines through Baluchistan in a few years comes to fruition. The agreement for the construction of the pipeline from Turkmenistan to the Arabian Sea, which would take it through both strife-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan, has already been signed. Negotiations are currently underway for a network linking Iran, India and Pakistan.
The Baluchi troubles directly interfere with the Gwadar port project:
The new Gwadar is already seen as strategically important today. At the site 80 kilometers (50 miles) east if the Iranian border, the Pakistanis are building a giant port which, unlike Karachi, would hardly be vulnerable to a naval blockade by archenemy India. The Chinese, for their part, want to use Gwadar as a base from which to keep an eye on the Americans in the Persian Gulf and the Indians in the Arabian Sea and, of course, to monitor both countries’ movements in the Indian Ocean. That’s why Washington and New Delhi view the cooperative venture between China and Pakistan as a serious provocation.