Pakistan
Polling by the Pew Global Attitudes Project show that Pakistani attitudes are shifting. They are far more worried about extremism, and feel less positive about al Qaeda and the Taliban.
- Seventy percent have an unfavorable view of the Taliban, vs. 33% in 2008. On al Qaeda, 61% now hold unfavorable views, compared to 34% last year.
- Nearly two-thirds of Pakistanis — 64% — see the US as an “enemy,” though 53% think improved relations between the two countries are important.
- India is viewed as a very serious threat by 69% of those polled, while 57% see the Taliban this way, and 41% label al Qaeda a serious threat.
- China is viewed positively by 84% of Pakistanis.
- Pakistanis have strong authoritarian impulses: “78% favor death for those who leave Islam; 80% favor whippings and cutting off hands for crimes like theft and robbery; and 83% favor stoning adulterers.”
- Pakistan may have some resistance to fragmentation: “89% say they think of themselves first as Pakistani, rather than as a member of their ethnic group.”
- Pakistanis are not deeply unhappy with their lives, despite poverty, instability, corruption, etc.: “74% say they are very or somewhat satisfied with their overall lives.”
- Only 5% now support suicide bombings targeting civilians “in defense of Islam;” 41% did so in 2004.
Public hostility to the US suggests that it would not take an outright extremist takeover to create a hostile regime in Pakistan. Politicians might find it a rewarding stance in an election, and in office, though economic and diplomatic costs might make this a risky strategy.
(Image courtesy openDemocracy)
A Sunni extremist takeover of Pakistan would be an immense threat to the US and hard to counter, Bruce Reidel writes in The National Interest.
Such a takeover
would create the greatest threat the United States has yet to face in its war on terror. Pakistan as an Islamic-extremist safe haven would bolster al-Qaeda’s capabilities tenfold. The jihadist threat bred in Afghanistan would be a cakewalk in comparison. The old Afghan sanctuary was remote, landlocked and weak; a new one in Pakistan would be in the Islamic mainstream with a modern communications and transportation infrastructure linking it to the world.
“A jihadist victory is neither imminent nor inevitable, but it is now a real possibility in the foreseeable future,” he writes. It would require the Taliban expanding eastward, and teaming up with the radical group Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Punjab, assisted by harnessing the grievances of Pakistan’s vast impoverished classes.
A jihadist Suni emirate would face significant internal resistance, Reidel writes, including from Shia, who make up a fifth of the population. To counter potential opposition within the army, the new regime would likely create a parallel military force, like the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
“In the end, we would be left with an extremist-controlled Pakistan, infested with violence, an almost completely dysfunctional economy, harsh laws and even-harsher methods for imposing them, and above all a nuclear-armed nation controlled by terrorist sympathizers,” Reidel suggests.
External effects would be severe:
- Pakistan would increase its influence in Afghanistan, with some of the Pashtun areas all but incorporated into Pakistan.
- Afghanistan would be split between Pakistan-backed Pashtun and their Tajik, Uzbek, and Shia opponents backed by Russia, Iran, and the Central Asian countries.
- Iran and Pakistan would face off in Afghanistan, and support separatists movements. Iran would accelerate its nuclear program in the face of the Pakistani threat.
- India and Pakistan might easily come to blows, with anti-Indian extremists in power in Islamabad.
- Israel and Pakistan would be active adversaries, but Israel would have few options for countering the distant Asian state.
- All Muslim countries would face the prospect of a newly energized radical movement using Pakistan as a support and training base.
- The United States would lack military options, and a blockade would be difficult to carry out and hard to sustain.
(Image courtesy openDemocracy)
Al Qaeda has been unusually clear about its interest in nuclear weapons, and in particular those held by Pakistan, recently.
On June 21st, al Qaeda’s leader in Afghanistan said this about Pakistan’s arsenal: “God willing, the nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Americans and the mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans.”
And within the last month Osama bin Laden “said the jihadists must gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of America, India and Israel,” analyst Bruce Riedel noted. Writes Riedel, “Al Qaeda has told us clearly what the consequences of defeat are – nuclear Armageddon.”
(Image courtesy Nevada Division of Environmental Protection)
The New York Times reported this week on another potential driver of instability in Pakistan: the Taliban are harnessing the country’s severe social inequities to advance their Islamist cause.
Given that Pakistan is “largely feudal,” the authors write, this “carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militants’ main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province.”
Pakistan has the classic conditions for social revolution. After independence, notes the article, Pakistan maintained a narrow landed upper class that kept its vast holdings while its workers remained subservient…. Successive Pakistani governments have since failed to provide land reform and even the most basic forms of education and health care. Avenues to advancement for the vast majority of rural poor do not exist.
Poor government and corruption are key aspects of this; Pakistan is rated highly corrupt in Transparency International’s surveys — in 2008, it was 134th out of 180 countries, scoring only a 2.5 out of 10.
Such a revolution could be a disaster for anti-Taliban forces. Instead of chipping away at the state’s control piece by piece, the whole society could shift at once, and everything, including the armed forces and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, would fall into the hands of the radicals.
This would greatly tempt both India and the US to intervene in some fashion, if only to destroy or seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
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.”