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US, Pakistan appear to have different objectives: report
US, Pakistan appear to have different objectives: report
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
US spends $30bn a year in Afghanistan but stingy in making payments under CSF; there is lack of credibility on both sides
By Sami Abraham
WASHINGTON: If the US and Pakistan cannot work together then the war in Afghanistan may well be lost inside Pakistan, warns the Atlantic Council’s new report: “Pakistan in the Danger Zone — a Tenuous US-Pakistan Relationship” by Shuja Nawaz, Director of the Council’s South Asia Center. Nawaz adds that the “situation in Pakistan remains on edge.”
The report says that the US and Pakistan appear to have different objectives while speaking about common goals. The US is looking for a safe military exit out of a stabilised Afghanistan while ensuring that al-Qaeda does not re-emerge. Pakistan seeks to secure its own territory against an active homegrown insurgency, while keeping a wary eye on India to its east. Increasingly, domestic political imperatives seem to be colouring the rhetoric and pushing policy between these two allies.
The report says Pakistan can begin to turn things around if given the resources and the support it needs from the United States, the international financial institutions, and other friends. But it will also have to take on some major tasks itself, to reorder the political system, rearrange its economic priorities, and truly return power to the people and their representatives.
The report says that President Asif Ali Zardari has an opportunity to show statesmanship as the constitutional head of state but without the extraordinary powers that he inherited from his military predecessor. In order to do this, he will need to build viable longer-term coalitions, reorder its priorities to revive domestic investment and attract foreign investment, complete the transition from the presidential to a parliamentary system and build on the recently concluded concord between the provinces and between the Center and provinces and change the negative perceptions about himself among the general population.
The report says that the nexus between security and governance remains critical. Pakistan’s civilian government must begin to govern and to prosecute the war against militancy on war footing, not as a part-time activity or a purely military venture outsourced to its Army. It must take control of strategy and work with the military to prepare to take over territory that the military wrests back from the insurgency.
The report says Pakistan’s needs are urgent and United States needs to increase economic and military aid, provide support to the textile industry, engage in civil nuclear deal and support the US Special Representative’s efforts to launch massive infrastructure projects to help Pakistan close its energy gap and build infrastructure that will knit the country together. Lack of rapid action on these fronts will further strengthen the view inside Pakistan that the US is not as serious about Pakistan’s role and situation in the region as its leaders state it to be. The skeptics maintain that the United States has ulterior motives and only short-term interests.
The report says that in the 1990s, Pakistan had a Troika the president, the prime minister, and the Army chief. Now it appeared a new Troika seemed to be emerging: the president, the Army chief, and the chief justice. The news media also appeared to become a major fourth-leg of the stool, although the noise from the 60 plus broadcast channels sometimes produced more confusion than clarity.
The report, taking review of the 18-month performance of the Obama administration, says that the US administration announced a new US policy towards the region and a special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan was named, bringing in Ambassador Richard Holbrooke into that challenging role. But some missed opportunities and early missteps marked this appointment and hobbled the envoy’s ability to produce the regional focus and consensus that was necessary to solve the Afghan puzzle.
A separate White House representative was appointed for Iran, removing that key neighbour from the calculus. And, succumbing to pressure from India, another key regional player, that country was removed from the orbit of Ambassador Holbrooke’s activity. Moreover, there was pushback in Pakistan, as Pakistani civil and military leaders resented being put at par with Afghanistan, a country that they regarded as weaker and heavily dependent on Pakistan for access to the world and for its economic and (now) military survival.
The report says the United States did announce Lugar aid package for Pakistan, however, faced with a huge financial crisis at home and fearing the wrath of their constituents, individual Members of Congress from the House and the Senate chose to overload the draft bill with a slew of “principles” and conditions that changed the tenor of the legislation from one of help to one of control, particularly in Pakistani eyes. Moreover, a domestic tussle was developing inside Pakistan, between the civilian government and the military on the execution of the war against the internal insurgency and militancy and the relationship with the United States. The United States, including Ambassador Holbrooke, also had to contend inside Pakistan with a powerful military leadership that was sensitive to any public criticism of its role, past or present. The Kerry-Lugar bill brought the military’s concerns to the fore, seeming to pitch it against the civilian government.
The report says US Congressional staffers maintained that they had briefed senior Pakistani officials, including the Army chief, on the bill at its earlier stages and had not received any negative feedback. However, once the Kerry-Lugar Bill was passed and landed on President Obama’s desk, the Pakistan military publicly released its reservations about the bill but left it to the civilian government to handle the matter with the United States. The Army let it be known privately that it had shared these reservations with the Pakistani government much earlier and expected that they would be shared with the US authorities. Apparently, this was not done. Hence the public reservations and rebuke which gave fodder to numerous anti-US elements in Pakistan’s polity, including the Islamist parties, to criticise the Pak-US alliance with rallies in the major cities and an active media campaign. The well-intentioned Kerry-Lugar Bill, representing a bipartisan coalition of support for Pakistan, suddenly became an anti-Pakistan symbol, akin to the notorious Pressler Amendment of 1985. Despite the sting of Pakistani criticism, the US Congress agreed to authorise, but has not yet appropriated, aid for Pakistan, shifting the onus of aid utilisation on to the Pakistan government.
The report reveals that total US overt security-related aid to Pakistan for the period FY 2002-2011 totaled only $4.4 billion. The CSF transfers, not aid but reimbursements for Pakistani costs related to the war against the militants and in support of the Afghan campaign of the United States, totaled some $7.2 billion. Meanwhile total economic assistance over this period amounted to $6 billion. The overt aid, therefore, was no more than $10.4 billion over nine years, when compared to some $30 billion a year in Afghanistan. Even in the Pakistan military, there were strong reservations about these paltry flows compared with the needs of Pakistan.
On the US side, suspicions about Pakistan’s reluctance to move against the Afghan Taliban remained rampant. Even while the US military leadership worked hard to develop strong personal relations with the Pakistani military higher command, lower down the ranks in Pakistan doubts remained about the US commitment to Pakistan and the region. Rather surprisingly, no one in Pakistan or the United States spoke of replacing the CSF with a military aid programme based on mutually agreed performance targets and milestones. The CSF that General Musharraf had agreed to in a hurry essentially made the Pakistan Army a force “on hire” to meet the US needs in Afghanistan and every year the reimbursement system renewed the resentment of that status on the Pakistani side.
The report says that a key point of dispute between the US and Pakistan was the lack of Pakistani operations against the so-called Afghan Taliban, led by Mulla Omar, Jalalauddin Haqqani, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Pakistan moved comprehensively against the local Taliban alliance but drew the line there. Its military initially stated that it had neither the manpower nor the equipment to go after the Afghan Taliban. (Here, the facts on ground went against one of those positions: the Army had substantial troops in both South and North Waziristan but appeared reluctant to launch a Swat-type operation that would create more IDPs. Instead, cordon and- search operations were possible and began on a small scale in recent weeks. It still lacked the equipment, such as helicopters, advanced jammers, more night vision devices, etc.)
Moreover the Afghan Taliban had studiously avoided getting into a conflict against the Pakistan Army. Meanwhile, the view grew stronger in the United States that the Pakistanis were actively involved with the Afghan Taliban and were providing support for their operations in Afghanistan. Clearly, there was a wide gap between the two “allies”. “Many people here feel Pakistan and the US cannot be strategic partners, that this is only a marriage of convenience. They are in the same bed but they have different dreams,” said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of defence and security studies at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, who was previously posted at the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, DC.
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