The Alternative Reality Called Pakistan

One collateral benefit from the WikiLeaks diplomatic traffic data dump has been the "real time" confirmation of deep Pakistani involvement with the Taliban in Afghanistan.  While no sentient person well oriented in time and place has ever doubted the umbilical connection between the jihadists and the government, army, and intelligence service of Pakistan, there is something quite comforting in reading the assessments of qualified diplomatic observers.

The Paks were caught with their hands very deep in the cookie jar.  Rather than acting the part of the career criminal caught red handed and acknowledging that the pinch was a fair one, the Pakistani ruling elite in and out of uniform has behaved rather like a first time crook issuing denials that make Richard Nixon's famed "I am not a crook" declaration appear honest in comparison.  Indeed, the movers and shakers of military Pakistan have followed the old, disreputable approach of making counter-accusations.

To be effective, the counter-accusation gambit must be plausible.  It has to have some semblance of believability. The Pakistani effort fails this basic test.  The Paks have taken the road leading to an alternative universe by stating categorically the documents leaked are pure "disinformation" meant to discredit the government and military of Pakistan.  In the alternative reality of Pakistan, these products of the US Foreign Service are a "conspiracy" mounted by hostile forces within the US government.

The Obama administration might be wishing it too could join with Pakistan in the alternative universe given that the players of mood music inside the Beltway have been making reassuring noises about Pakistan's commitment to the joint effort against "extremism," which now seem more off key than ever in the context of the diplomatic cables.  How anybody, even one of those denizens whose brains have been damaged by too much rarefied Washington air, can really, really believe that Pakistan is and has done anything other than support Taliban in Afghanistan while doing the minimum necessary for national survival against the Pakistani equivalent boggles the mind.

Pakistan has defined its national interest in terms of a Forever War with India in which Afghanistan has represented the chimera of strategic depth.  That is why Pakistan created Taliban twenty years ago.  That is why Pakistan not only supported Taliban but gave timely warning to Osama bin Laden regarding incoming cruise missiles.  It is why Pakistan, again acting through the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), linked with the Haqqani network.  It is why to this day ISI and the army assist, support, and protect both Taliban and the Haqqani network.

The notion that Afghanistan represents strategic depth is as false as the driving imperative of the Forever War against India.  Both hallucinations are,  however, central to assuring the army's pride of place in Pakistan.  Both are the sole reason the army and ISI can continue to glom onto the sizable share of Pakistan's national resources, which has been the standard for generations now.  Without the fictions of Indian hostility and the centrality of Afghanistan to Pakistan's need for strategic depth, the army and ISI would not have the perceived moral authority to take so much of the public pie that the country as a whole is endangered by the resulting paucity of capacities to deal with very real, very pressing problems.

A key, perhaps the key, source of revenue for the army and ISI is the money paid by the US to ensure cooperation in the "joint" struggle against violent political Islam.  The extortion racket practiced by Islamabad requires keeping the war in Afghanistan perking along while somehow convincing the US that the army is doing all it can do against the areas of the FATA which provide necessary bases and support for Taliban and the Haqqani network as well as the remnants of al-Qaeda.

The release of the cables will (hopefully) make the duplicity so necessary for the extortion to continue a bit more difficult to maintain.  In this context the US government is facing a challenge of corruption far more serious than the attention grabbing graft in Afghanistan.

There is no doubt that the continued existence of cross border sanctuaries in Pakistan's FATA along with the aid and comfort provided by ISI have been and will remain crucial to both Taliban and the Haqqani network. If the FATA were to be closed or interdicted with greater efficiency than is the case presently, the pressure placed upon the trigger pullers of Islam by the US/ISAF forces would prove effective in undercutting both the ability and will of the jihadi to carry on the war.  It would lay the pavement on a genuine road to conflict resolution as well as the more limited goal of hostilities termination.

Since the documents have come out, the Obama administration can do the same.  There is ample basis for the administration to tell Islamabad in essence, "They've got the goods on us now.  Time for you to get damn serious or those highly moral Republicans in Congress will pull the plug on the money machine."

This approach, of course, requires some cooperation from the Republicans.  As the war in Afghanistan not only started under a Republican president but, far more importantly, was fought ineptly with too few resources and too grandiose a set of goals by that president, the GOP has a stake in seeing the war brought to a successful conclusion before 2012.  Doing this is impossible unless the FATA is shut down--with or without the cooperation of the Pakistanis.

Pakistan's genuine national interest including the survival of the government as currently constituted demands both the suppression of their domestic jihadis and the ending of the war in Afghanistan.  The same considerations apply to the continuation of the American money flow.  Unless and until the lads in Islamabad come to realize that here in the real world the cash cow will stop spouting as long as the army sits on its collective butt regarding the FATA, there is no chance of the US achieving even the minimal necessary strategic goal of not losing in Afghanistan.  The same ground truth apples to the domestic violence brought by the Mighty Warriors of the Koran in Pakistan.

The appeals of the alternative universe of disinformation and conspiracy may have some sort of emotional appeal to the Pakistan government, army, and ISI, but are so transparently false that they should be dismissed by the Obama administration with the contempt it merits.  Beyond dismissal, the Obama crew must insist the Pakistanis live in the same world as the rest of us--or face the inevitable and inevitably bad consequences of their tergiversation.

Perhaps as a warm-up exercise, the Obama administration can take on Turkey given that the Islamist leaning AKP regime in Ankara has done the Pakistanis one better alleging that the Israelis are behind the entire WikiLeaks episode.  Surely scotching that ploy and requiring the Turks to choose sides with greater accuracy should not be beyond the capacity of the administration and Secretary of State Clinton.

Rather than just seeing the leak as an embarrassment or a major disaster, the administration should see it as an opportunity to use a bit of honest, coercive diplomacy with respect to two troublesome "allies."  By doing so, the Obama "Team" cannot only retrieve some success from a defeat, but exploit the consequences to suit our policy needs.

Try it, people, you have nothing to lose except defeat.