Caught In A Morass Of Delusions

Over the weekend Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari told the Guardian that the American war in Afghanistan was destabilizing his country.  Presumably with a straight face he averred that absent the war being waged by the US, Pakistan would be a fountainhead of democracy, free enterprise, and tranquility with nary a problem of the social, economic, political, or religious sort.

Continuing the exercise in monumental dementia, the head of the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which is the  organization that not only cranked up Taliban in the first place but has done everything in its considerable power to prop up, assist, hide, and facilitate in all respects not only Taliban but other, to use the Pakistani term, "anti-Indian assets," was in Washington today.  The ISI chief, LtGen Ahmad Sujah Pasha, was passing on an ultimatum which was decreed by the most powerful man in Pakistan today.

No.  Not the president.  Rather the armed forces chief of staff, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.  General Kayani no doubt with the complete support and approval of LtGen Sujah Pasha has demanded an end to most Predator strikes, a reduction in force of both CIA and Special Operations personnel, and an abandonment of the Agency's attempts to penetrate the assorted "anti-Indian assets" established and to some extent controlled by ISI.

The purported basis for the virtual ending of the effective use of CIA personnel as well as the training program being operated by Special Forces troopers for the Pakistani Frontier Force was the arrest of CIA contract employee Raymond Davis.  Davis, you will certainly recall was busted on a murder rap after having blown away two Pakistanis usually characterized as "muggers."  Davis executed a good shoot on two men who were almost certainly assets of ISI who were assigned to harass Davis if not do more.

Davis, a former Green Beret fluent in Pushtu had been working out of the consulate in Kandahar tasked with penetrating Lashkar-e-Taiba.  LeT is another of those "anti-Indian assets" such as the Haqqani network both established and protected/facilitated by ISI.  CIA attempts to penetrate these groups without authorization from ISI, which is the only possible way to play the game given that ISI is not given to cooperation against its own goons.

ISI along with the Pakistani armed forces lives in a delusional universe where the most important consideration, the prime directive, is to defeat India in the next war.  These men are all of the view that another war with India is not only inevitable, it is desirable and will be won by the Mighty Warriors of the Koran if only the Pakistanis have sufficient strategic depth, a large nuclear arsenal, and the means of waging war on all levels from local terrorism to nuclear Armageddon.

To this end, the Pakistani military and its supporters in the country's elite have bent every effort toward the blessed day when war again breaks out.  The mere fact that this orientation has distorted the country's economy, suppressed domestic political freedoms, truncated education, imported Wahhibism and all that implies, fostered social divisions, and fractured the political structure is of no consequence.  Nor is it worthy of considering all available evidence indicating India has no desire for war, no plans of initiating war, and well understands that war would be very bloody, extremely destructive, and might take decades for recovery--and that is for the winner.

The Pakistani military is so consumed by its delusions that it sincerely believes that the US has two goals in mind currently: (1) Suppressing totally Pakistani influence in Afghanistan while allowing Indian influence to increase without limit, (2) Suppress Pakistan's nuclear capability while allowing that of India to cruise along unimpeded.  Therefore, the Agency and Special Forces operations in Pakistan are actually oriented toward one or the other of these two goals.

The military is supreme in Pakistan and President Zardari knows this.  His civilian government like all those which have gone before stays in office at the let and sufferance of the military.  Of course, it helps that Mr Zardiri like his predecessors lacks moral courage, lacks the capacity to take on the military, to enlist the citizenry of the long suffering nation in a hard trek back to some sort of political sanity.

The position of the US is of no aid in this matter.  While different administrations may from time to time weakly chastise the Pakistani government as the Obama administration did last week, the various extortion efforts made by Islamabad always result in more cash flowing to Pakistan's coffers.

When the end of the Cold War opened the door for the US to reappraise its long standing hostility to India and friendship with Pakistan, it took the chance.  There was a definite tilt to India during the years of Bill Clinton.  The Pakistanis were left comparatively speaking high and dry.  They were given a fresh start and a brand new chance following 9/11.

The W. Bush administration made the horrid decision that we could do nothing in Afghanistan without the cooperation of Pakistan.  This choice was made despite the definite knowledge extant inside the Beltway of the relationship between ISI and both Taliban and al-Qaeda.  The choice was made despite the awareness of history, awareness that the decision made by Reagan to hand off the endgame in Afghanistan to the Pakistanis had resulted in the creation of Taliban.  (The junior partnership of CIA in this creation should not be seen as mitigation of primary ISI culpability.)

The fateful decisions made by Bush/Cheney--not only the involvement of Pakistan, the paying of bribes to Pakistan, but also and more importantly, the changing of the mission from one which was primarily punitive to one of "nation-building"--cast our policy in a way which could do nothing but impair our interests in the region and block our goal of defeating violent political Islam in both Afghanistan and across the border in the FATA and adjacent regions of Pakistan such as Kandahar and Quetta.

Even now with the Pakistani president and chief of staff undertaking efforts of both rhetorical and practical nature to impair further the American efforts and policies, the US, at least publicly, continues to dance to the tune called in Islamabad.  The US ambassador has called for a "renewal."  Cameron Munter is of the view, if his public pronouncements are to be taken at face value (admittedly a dangerous activity when assessing the words of a diplomat) the US and Pakistan are on the same side facing the same enemy: violent political Islam.

Of course we are, provided one is willing to define the intelligence service of our "ally" here as something other than the founder, protector, and aid of nearly every Islamist group the US is fighting.  That can be done, but only if the US is willing to join Pakistan in the deadly morass of delusions.  Unfortunately, it appears that the Obama administration is willing to do so.