Pakistan Is Not Worth The Trouble Or Money It Is Costing Us

The government and military of Pakistan is continuing its campaigns of lies and extortion.  That is as self-evident as the size of the US budget deficit.  It is also self-evident that Pakistan will keep on with its dual track approach of prevarication and extortion because it has no alternative.

The Chairman of the JCS, Admiral Mike Mullen, grabbed the stinging nettle the other day when he stated categorically in the Pakistani English language newspaper Dawn as well as the TV service Geo that we knew perfectly well that the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) maintained its ongoing relationship with the Haqqani network, the most deadly American adversary in Afghanistan.  The long-standing and very strong connection between ISI and the Haqqani crew has been the worst kept secret in Washington for years now.  Mullen, bringing it into the open on an official level only hours before meeting mano a mano with his Pakistani counterpart, did the cause of honesty between alleged allies a great and long overdue service.

The response from the government and military of Pakistan was not one of either embarrassed silence or humiliating acknowledgement of the truth of the allegation.  Of course not.  The Army Chief of Staff, Ashfaq Kayani, was quoted as denouncing the Mullen statement as "negative propaganda."  The brazen effrontery of the general would be breath taking had it come from anyone other than a senior Pakistani official.

However, bald face lying is a tried and true approach practiced by Pakistani officials in and out of uniform.  The finance minister, straight face firmly in place, averred that it was "largely a myth" that Pakistan had received billions of US dollars in aid from the Great Cash Cow pastured in Washington, DC.  In the real world, the US has provided twenty or so billion bucks in the years since 9/11.  Of this mountain of money, roughly half has come under the auspices of the program entitled "Coalition Support Funds."  Much of the money shifted to Islamabad under this program has been not been properly documented or accounted for.

Other funds have flowed under other programs such as the civilian development oriented Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill.  Still more money has been expended under assorted military assistance programs including those which have provided Pakistan with big ticket items such as F-16s with little utility in counterinsurgency or counterterrorism efforts.  In short, the money has been authorized, appropriated, and in major part expended all to the benefit of Pakistan.  Still, the finance minister felt obliged to carry on with a lie so humongous as to make Dr Goebbels blush.

On the extortion side of the twin prong offensive, the Pakistanis have reiterated their demands for more intelligence sharing on the part of the US--allegedly so the Paks can get on with the job of acting upon it--and transferring our UAV technology to Pakistan--supposedly so that they and not us can use Predators and Reapers to take out Haqqani network and Taliban figures in the FATA.  Actually these demands are not simply extortionate, they are part of the keep-on-lying tactic.

The Pakistanis want access to our most sensitive intelligence sources, methods, and practices so that Islamabad will know all that we know about the connections between Pakistan and the assorted groups under the protection of ISI.  After all, the highest goal of any intelligence service is finding out in detail what the enemy's spooks know and don't know about your operations.  As KGB bent every effort to penetrate MI6, MI5, OSS, and CIA, so now does Pakistan's ISI want to penetrate our intelligence operations.  There is no desire to act upon American intelligence with any goal in mind other than better protecting and facilitating the operations of the Haqqani network and other like minded groups.  (Sure, the Paks would use our information to neutralize individuals or sub-groups that have wandered too far off the reservation, but that is scarcely a benefit from our point of view.)

The Pakistani military has long drooled after our UAVs.  The generals and the spooks have had a perpetual case of the woodies ever since the first Predator launched its first Hellfire.  From their perspective, the UAVs represent a fine way of countering the Indian doctrine of "Cold Start," even better by being lower signature than their new short range battlefield missiles.  One must never forget that India and only India is the "main enemy" in the estimate of the Pakistani military.

The US has offered to provide Pakistan with eighty-five Ravens.  These small, short range, and non-lethal UAVs are "drones" and thus meet the demand for access.  It is doubtful that the Pakistanis will be satisfied with this sop.  Eighty-five Ravens do not change the calculus of forces as between India and the Muslim Republic.

After his carefully titrated dose of honesty, Admiral Mullen went back onto the standard message.  Our relationship with Pakistan is strong.  They are our close and important allies in the war on terror.  Pakistan's cooperation is critical for success in Afghanistan.  Stopping terror in the FATA is the key to universal and permanent peace.  Yadda-yadda, dabba-dabba-do and harrumph!

Let's get down, dirty, and honest here.  The US could get out of Afghanistan right now without any real decrement in its security.  It could leave that sorry piece of real estate without any meaningful increase in the risk of terror acts directed at the American homeland.  True, it would be better if we were to engage in one hellacious crescendo of lethal violence directed at each and every important al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Haqqani network figure we could pinpoint.  It would be preferable if, so to speak, we leave doing what we should have done when we first went in--launch a destructively punitive blow at the bad guys of violent political Islam.

This means admitting reality.  Afghanistan will become what it both wants to be and will be forced by the Pakistanis to be--an Islamic nation living in a hollow state.  The FATA will remain what Islamabad wants it to be--the safe haven of violent political Islam.  Both are acceptable outcomes provided the government and military of Pakistan understand that should any jihadist with any connection to either the FATA or Pakistan dominated Afghanistan harm a hair on Uncle Sam's head, we will be back.  Back not as an occupation force or a nation-building crew but as a destructive force of such a punishing nature as to make the floods and cyclones of the past appear to be gentle love pats from a benign mother nature.

It would not harm our interests either short- or long-term interests if the lying extortionists of Islamabad were made to understand and appreciate that our interests and those of India were far more closely coincident than were ours and those of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.  In truth we have been cozying up too close for too long with the loser on the sub-continent.  India and the US have far more shared norms and values, far more coinciding interests.  Tilting ever more in the direction of India is in our interests--and against those of Pakistan.

Consider that last sentence for a moment.  It suggests a viable alternative should the Obama administration demonstrate its ongoing inability to play hard ball.  We too can play the extortion game.  Give Pakistan an option:  Islamabad can either both sit down and shut up, get serious in the FATA and squash the Haqqanis and the others, or we will well and truly tilt more in the direction of India.  A closer alliance between India and the US would give the army and government of Pakistan something very, very important to think about.  At the very least, it would make their dream of another rematch with India a suicidal folly.  At most, it would empower India in Afghanistan thus further cutting back on Pakistan's goal of strategic depth and a sphere of influence in the Islamic nations of the Central Asian Republics.

This tilt-to-India threat is a hard ball option but one which does not run the political risks of simply getting the hell out of Afghanistan.  As such it is a rational and realistic way to overcome the Pakistani's game of lie and extort.  But, its realism alone means the Obama administration would never consider it.  More's the pity.

David Cameron Pulls An Obama

The British Prime Minister has not only emulated the American president but his predecessor at Number 10 Downing Street.  Specifically, the man who once appeared to be a model of informed, deliberative, rational conservatism metaphorically fell on his knees apologizing for the presumed sins committed by Great Britain decades ago.  He did this while visiting Pakistan and promising the ever-needy Pakistani government beaucoup bucks to support its failing education system.

It might be noted that whatever exists in Pakistan in the area of secular public instruction is a legacy of the years of British colonial rule.  The same applies to other, worthy features of the country including the (semi-abandoned) principles of parliamentary government, rule of law, separation of state and faith as well as the continued use of the English language.

The British Raj left the sub-continent with a set of very real political, social, and economic treasures.  In India the residuals of the Raj were appreciated and built upon with results that are evident in all areas of life there.  The situation in Pakistan was divergent.  In Pakistan, parliamentary rule was compromised by a series of military coups, threats from advocates of political Islam, and flat-out brutal dictatorships.  During one of the periodic excursions into dictatorship, that of General Zia, deliberate decisions of state policy undercut both the rule of law and the supremacy of parliamentary rule.

Zia believed that a further reinforcement of the Islamic identity of the Pakistani people would provide a social and political coherence which would assure ultimate Pakistani victory over India.  To this end he invited Saudi Arabia to fund an expansive set of religious instruction centers covering all of the country.  This resulted in the effective introduction of militant Wahhibism and all that implies.

Among the implications were the degrading of the secular public instruction system, the introduction of Islamic law, Shariah, in place of the "King's Peace" derived British legal code, and the fatal merging of mosque and state.  Arguably, this was all the result of Pakistan's deep and quite irrational fear and loathing of its larger neighbor, which focused on the issue of who-owns-the-Kashmir.

While the unresolved status of Kashmir was a consequence of the hasty ending of the Raj in the months following World War II, there is no way the British government of that day can be held responsible.  This means, quite simply, that not only was Cameron's apology unnecessary, it was unjustified by the historical record.  It is mind boggling that the very highly educated Mr Cameron should be so ignorant of his own country's recent history.  Even more mind boggling is the proposition that Mr Cameron was aware of the historical reality but decided to toss it aside in the interests of some sort of truckling for Pakistani approval.

In his apology, Mr Cameron, like President Obama and former prime minister Tony Blair, did his country a massive disservice.  Worse, his effort at truckling will have no future benefit for either British interests of the betterment of the political/social situation in either Pakistan or upon the sub-continent.  It was a blunder of the sort Talleyrand famously condemned when committed by the Emperor Napoleon.

History is a complex subject.  It is not sufficient that a person have a superficial knowledge of the topic.  Rather, it requires a high degree of expertise painfully acquired over years of dreary effort reading dull books and turgid documents in dust filled archives.  Beyond that, it requires a mindset which relishes complexity, delights in finding the often faint and blurry lines of cause and effect, takes pleasure in seeing the typically dim but critical linkages between a specific event and the context in which the event occurs.  In short, despite the widespread belief that anyone--even the high school wrestling coach--can both understand and teach history, the reality is quite antipodal.

Mr Cameron in his apology, again like Obama and Blair in theirs, stepped boldly into swampy terrain where even the most erudite expert treads both lightly and hesitantly.  More importantly, it is not a part of the job description for either prime minister or president to offer apologies for the word and deeds of those who have occupied the same seats of power in long gone times.  Yes, history, the record of causes and effects, does serve to condition the options available to a contemporary incumbent.  That is a reality.  But this fact does not provide the basis for an apology.  Nor does it establish the need for one.

Prime ministers and presidents are presumed to be forward looking in their words and deeds.  The policies they espouse are for the future, not supposed to address either the sins or the brilliance of the past.  Arguably mea culpas are recipes for future failure as they encourage those to whom the apologies are directed to assume that today's policies will be the subject of tomorrow's apologies should that be desired.

It would have been far more appropriate for PM Cameron to have reminded his Pakistani auditors of all the benefits left to them by the Raj.  In that context he could have chided the Pakistanis for having sold out the splendid heritage left them for a something far less valuable than the Biblical mess of pottage.  He could have pointed out the vast difference between the current state of affairs in Pakistan and India with comments to the effect that one had held fast to the legacy while the other had abandoned it to pursue a mirage far more appropriate to the hot wastes of Saudi Arabia than the far more fertile and productive soil of Pakistan.

The UK and the West have very little about which to apologize when considering their record of interaction with and colonization of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Mideast.  The positive effects have far outweighed the negative.  Sure, that appreciation runs counter to currently popular narratives regarding all the evils perpetrated by colonial exploitation.  Simply running against the popular view does not undercut the historical record's power.  Or accuracy.

A master of the English language put it perfectly: "The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."  So it has been with the former colonies of the assorted Western states.  The combination of domestic political agendas in the one-time colonies and the great desire of left leaning intellectuals in the West to kick their native region and lands in the crotch have assured this.  It is commonplace and has been so for generations now to underline all the evils done by Western states throughout the world.  It has been and remains exceptional to note with pride the many benefits conferred by both intention and accident during the long decades of colonial rule.

Western political leaders would do themselves, their countries, their audiences, the world--and the historical truth--a great service if they would eschew the bended knee of the penitent.  If they would instead stand tall and proud while reciting all that the West has provided  over centuries for the benefit of all human beings.

Doing such would knock a lot of wind out of those who profitably practice the politics of victimization.  And, that, the Geek rather fancies, would be a very fine development.