The Land Of Pinocchio Is At It Again

No one oriented in time and place expects governments to be open, honest, and ever truthful in their public (or most private) statements.  Diplomacy is often a contest of careful mendacity on a par with the sort practiced by lawyers working in an adversarial system.  That is, blatant duplicity of the easily exposed sort is eschewed in favor of the well-crafted framing of a statement, an issue, a position.  The good diplomat like the good advocate in court depends on what is not said even more than that which is said to mask the truth--particularly when the truth is uncomfortable from one's perspective.

The heavyweights of the Pakistani military and intelligence service (ISI) fail to meet the standard of proper diplomatic lying.  This is unfortunate as the armed forces and ISI are the government of Pakistan far eclipsing in both power and public esteem the elected civilian political structure.  As such, they are far more a part of the problem and in no way a contributor to the solution as regards the threat posed to civilized states by the damaged but not yet defeated advocates of violent political Islam which stalk Afghanistan, the FATA, and Pakistan proper.

The power elite of the armed forces and ISI is back at it.  As has so often been the case, they are lying in a fashion which boggles the mind in its breathtaking absurdity.  In the most recent ejaculations of denial and counter accusation, the spokesman for the Pakistani general staff insults the intelligence of all who read or hear his thundering denunciation of a recent spate of articles and editorials linking the ISI and armed forces with groups dedicated to violent political Islam and the recent murder of a well known and respected Pakistani journalist.

The immediate reaction of any half-way intelligent and well-informed person to the preposterous posturing of Major General Athar Abbas' remarks is to quote Ronald Reagan's comment during one of the 1980 debates, "There he goes again."  The line delivered with a slow, sad shake of the head.  The modern major general was announcing that the shoe put upon the collective foot of the Pakistani military and ISI fit tightly--it pinched and he was yelling, "Ouch!"

As unbelievable fables go, the Abbas Denial was on a par with the outpouring of outraged dignity following the Great Abbotabad Raid.  The credibility of the Pakistanis, never high, was stretched far beyond its Young's Modulus with the earnest protestations of innocence with which the Pakistani heavies met the news that the Americans had found and liquidated Osama bin Laden within pistol shot of their very own military academy.

While the US government for reasons of state (the justification of all ill-advised and ultimately less than productive actions) has downplayed the possibility that the senior ranks of our "ally" in the "joint" war with al-Qaeda, the various Talibans, and all similar groups could possibly have known that bin Laden resided close at hand in comfortable isolation, this reticence should not be interpreted as accepting the Pakistanis as being pure and lofty of motives and intentions.  Indeed, it is hard to see how anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of the long standing relationship between ISI and the army on the one hand and the several terror merchant groups on the other could keep a straight face while stating they had seen "no smoking gun."

Back in the Oligocene--the days of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush--one did not have to be a member of the American intelligence community to know that ISI and the Pakistani armed forces were connected hip and shoulder with various Islamist groups, including the one which would come to power in Afghanistan as the Taliban.  Minority opinion in both administrations warned against turning over responsibility for the endgame in the anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan to the Pakistanis as the latter would take advantage of the opportunity to install entities hostile to the interests of the US in the region and globally.  As is usually the case, the minority was shoved to the margins so they could watch their gloomy prognostications come to pass with the fullness of time.

Way back in the regime of Zia it was obvious that the Pakistani military would eagerly embrace the ideas of the dictator which focused on importing Wahhibism so as to promote Islam of the most austere and demanding sort as a mechanism of social and political cohesion.  The implications of this were high profile: The Islamification program would drive a move to the more and more extreme.  The program would facilitate the growth of violent political Islam oriented groups.  And, ultimately it would assure that Pakistan would become an evermore Islamist state.

American decision makers were immune to the negative counsel, seeing instead an easy way to slip out of the continued burden of doing something in a small, inconvenient, and out of the way state with a history of being ungovernable.  Anyway, the boys of Islamabad were big on reassuring Washington's rarefied levels about the pacifistic nature of Islam and the need of the Pakistani people for a stronger national identity in the face of Indian aggression.

In the event, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of the cold war put the problem of Pakistan and its operations in Afghanistan very much on the far back burner.  The Clinton administration was so disinterested in Pakistan that its Deep Thinkers would have had a hard time finding the place on a map--until the Pakistanis demonstrated their nuclear capacity.  By then, of course, it was too late.  Too late to stop the nuclear arms race between Pakistan and India.  Far too late to undo the damage done by the Pakistani backed installation of Taliban in Kabul.

Of course, the ending of the cold war reduced Pakistan's importance in American eyes.  For decades Islamabad had depended upon the Left-leaning policies of India to turn on the spigot of US military aid along with the occasional civilian project.

The best thing that happened to Pakistan was the attack on 9/11.  After a nearly proforma demonstration of reluctance, Islamabad signed on to the Global War on Terror in exchange for massive amounts of American money.  It was interesting to say the least that the goodies demanded by the armed forces of Pakistan were those useful for high intensity conventional war with India rather than the more pedestrian items having utility in counterinsurgent or counter terrorist operations.

To keep the goodies flowing, the Pakistanis had to rely on their capacity to lie convincingly and in a well-timed manner.  They played a transparently double game from the very outset of the so called "joint" effort.  Given that the US already knew that the only reason Osama bin Laden had escaped a cruise missile strike years before 9/11 was a phone call from Islamabad, yet we went on catering to the Pinocchio of the Sub-continent. There was no intention of even closing the borders to Taliban and al-Qaeda personnel escaping the American invasion and its aftermath let alone actually fighting the Mighty Men of the Koran.

But the Pakistanis talked a good game.  And, because they had a nuclear arsenal, we had to pretend they were telling us the truth.  All we could do was hope that the bribes we paid bought us sufficient influence on their decision making that the armed forces and ISI might stop their training, supporting, harboring, and strategic planning efforts.

The hope was illusory at best.  However, the US had compounded its errors by invading Iraq and so mishandling the day after "victory" that it became the main event and Afghanistan a mere sideshow.  As a result, we had to continue believing the palpably false assurances of cooperation issuing from Islamabad on a daily basis.  The reality was far different.  The Pakistanis provided sanctuary in the FATA in return for a promise, since broken, that the Great Warriors of the One True Faith would limit themselves to killing Americans and apostate Afghans.

During the long interim from 2004-2010 the Taliban(s) and the Haqqani network as well as al-Qaeda rested, retrained, refitted, and grew safe from harm in the cities and hillsides of Pakistan and the FATA.  As a result, the Americans were losing more and more in country and the Pakistani military and ISI felt more and more confident in their ability to lead Uncle Sam around by the nose using a string of lies.

The pity of it all was the lies worked.  They worked because there seemed no viable alternative available to American decision makers.  We became co-conspirators in our own defeat.  Our role was limited to a continued refusal to blow the whistle on the easily demonstrated prevarications of the Pakistanis.  One of the services provided by Private Bradley Manning and his publicists at WikiLeaks has been to expose many (but not all) of the lies peddled by Islamabad as well as the reality that American diplomats knew them to be untruths.  In short we were not stupid, merely adrift at the policy level.

The Pakistani string of successful lying came to an end dramatically in May.  There was no way the lies of the Pakistanis could be accepted, even as a pretense, after the raid.  It is regrettable that the Obama administration has not taken advantage of the sea change initiated by Boat Six to force the Pakistanis to choose sides finally and definitely.

The biggest advantage which will accrue to the US from the decision to draw down our forces in Afghanistan and adopt more of a counter terrorist posture is our logistics dependence upon Pakistan will be decreased.  This means we will be in a much better position to link any continued assistance to Islamabad on demonstrated performance rather than nice sounding words.  It is much harder to lie by actions than it is with mere words.  So, Pakistan will be deprived of its advantage, an advantage it has used against us for a decade now.

While it may not be approved diplomatic form, it would be good politics both domestic and international to call the liars of Islamabad to account.  Diplomacy is usually conducted by vague words and ambiguous phrases so everyone walks away claiming success, but the Pakistanis need to be handled with a direct and blunt approach.

The time is now to say to Islamabad, to the armed forces, to ISI, to Major General Abbas, "Cut the crap!  You're busted!"