Pakistan: Now or Never?

India and Pakistan agree to expand trade, rewrite the rules

India and Pakistan have agreed to try to improve trade ties during the first meeting of their commerce secretaries since the November 2008 attack on Mumbai.  The official statement released after the talks in Islamabad suggests the agreement is so far largely aspirational, with working committees set up to look at everything from tariff barriers, to India selling electricity to Pakistan, to visas for businessmen.

But the aspiration in itself represents a dramatic shift in relations between India and Pakistan, who have embarked on what may turn out to be their most organised, if slow, attempt at peace-making in their history.  Pakistan has in the past been wary of a a gradual approach to peace-making, fearing India would try to normalise ties while maintaining the status quo on Kashmir.  The Indian government has said that it is ready to discuss all issues, including Kashmir.

Reflecting that aspirational shift, India’s Business Standard called the trade talks “a game-changer”.  Mint newspaper noted that trade between India and Pakistan now amounts to only $2 billion, compared to India’s global trade of about $600 billion.  It quoted Biswajit Dhar, head of Delhi-based think tank Research and Information System for Developing Countries, as saying that, “if  trade relations improve, there will be movement on the political level because a constituency for peace will be created for better ties.”

It also quoted former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal as dismissing the proposals as “timid and tentative”. “Setting up a joint working group means postponing decisions that they could have taken soon. This is to maintain the appearance of movement that fits into the objectives of both countries,” he said. “Pakistan will never allow itself to become energy dependent on India till there is tangible progress in bilateral relations.”

Yet something quite important is happening here. The commitment to foster better trade tries coincided with a promise of progress on a pipeline which is meant to bring gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India.  The TAPI pipeline was one of the issues raised by Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani at a meeting in March with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.  Pakistan meanwhile is talking about trying to build economic cooperation with Afghanistan through greater regional trade and economic integration which would have big implications for both China and India.

Pakistan’s talks with Afghanistan have raised alarm bells in Washington after the Wall Street Journal suggested Pakistan was trying to convince Afghanistan to give up on the United States in favour of China  The report was presented as evidence of an ever deteriorating strategic relationship between Pakistan and the United States. That however, may be missing the point. Within the region, strategy is an old story. The new one is economic development.

As I noted in my last post, democratically elected governments tend to care a lot about the economy, since that is what helps get them re-elected. The Pakistan government is not far off becoming the longest serving civilian government the country has ever seen.  Its accidental president, Asif Ali Zardari, has been arguing for several years that Pakistan’s economic salvation lies in improving trade with India. 

China-Pakistan-Afghanistan-building economic ties

During a visit to Beijing in late 2009, President Barack Obama asked China to help stabilise Pakistan and Afghanistan. The logic was obvious. China is a long-standing ally of Pakistan with growing investments there and in Afghanistan; it has the money to pay for the economic development and trade both countries need; and with its own worries about its Uighur minority, it is suspicious of militant Islamists.  The challenge was in achieving this without angering India, which fought a border war with China in 1962 and is wary of its alliance with Pakistan.

A year-and-a-half on, efforts to forge that economic cooperation between China, Pakistan and Afghanistan are in full swing – though perhaps not entirely in the way Obama envisaged. The Wall Street quoted Afghan officials as saying that Pakistan was lobbying Afghanistan’s president against building a long-term strategic partnership with the United States, urging him instead to look to Pakistan and China for help.

“The pitch was made at an April 16 meeting in Kabul by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who bluntly told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the Americans had failed them both, according to Afghans familiar with the meeting,” the newspaper said. “Mr. Karzai should forget about allowing a long-term U.S. military presence in his country, Mr. Gilani said, according to the Afghans. Pakistan’s bid to cut the U.S. out of Afghanistan’s future is the clearest sign to date that, as the nearly 10-year war’s endgame begins, tensions between Washington and Islamabad threaten to scuttle America’s prospects of ending the conflict on its own terms.”

The Pakistan government has denied it made this suggestion, as did a spokesman for Karzai quoted by the newspaper.  Neither country is in a position to turn its back on the United States, still the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power. But there is at least a kernel of truth in there, buried under a lot of spin which the Wall Street Journal itself said was probably an attempt by Afghan officials to influence talks on the relationship between the United States and Afghanistan after U.S. combat troops withdraw in 2014.

Indeed a lot of what is included in the Wall Street Journal story has been said in public by Pakistan itself, albeit without the same spin. 

 Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani told a news conference in Kabul that he and Karzai had agreed there was no military solution for Afghanistan. And they had agreed to work together to build economic and trade ties to seek stability through economic development.

“It has become imperative that we join our efforts and take ownership of our affairs so that we can overcome the pressing challenges. We believe that given the enormous resources – both human and natural – of our two countries, our collective economic potential is phenomenal,” he said.

Al Qaeda leader killed in Kunar, Afghanistan’s “safe haven”

For some time, Pakistan has been complaining that it is unfairly criticised for failing to fight al Qaeda-linked insurgents on its side of the border when U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan are also struggling to make headway. This has been particularly the case in Bajaur, where Pakistan said its own military operation against militants were undermined by a decision to pull Western troops back from neighbouring Kunar in Afghanistan. The row over who is to blame for not doing enough to prevent militants moving back and forth across the border between Bajaur and Kunar has been both a reflection of the distrust in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship,  and a persistent source of strain.

The mantra, repeated so often that it is rarely questioned, is that al Qaeda’s safe havens are in Pakistan. That is partially true – the organisation is believed to have secure bases in various parts of Pakistan’s tribal areas.  But Pakistani officials respond by saying that al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents also have safe havens inside Afghanistan. And just as the Pakistan Army is unwilling to fight in every part of the tribal areas at once – it has resisted U.S. pressure to launch a full-scale military operation in North Waziristan – the U.S. Army is also reluctant to spread out its troops too thinly, choosing instead to focus on populated areas.

So it’s interesting to note the language used about the killing in an air strike of senior al Qaeda leader Abu Hafs al-Najdi, a man described as the second-most wanted insurgent in Afghanistan. An International Security Assistance Force statement said Najdi, a Saudi Arabian also known as Abdul Ghani, was killed in  Kunar.

The ISAF statement said that Najdi “operated primarily from Kunar and traveled frequently between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He directed al Qaeda operations in the province, including recruiting; training and employing fighters; obtaining weapons and equipment; organizing al Qaeda finances; and planning attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.” (my italics)

 It added that “Abdul Ghani regularly circulated throughout Kunar, establishing insurgent camps and training sites, teaching insurgents explosive device construction and attack procedures. He was also a key financial conduit between Pakistan-based leaders and insurgent operatives in Afghanistan. ”

“The al Qaeda network and its safe havens remains a top priority for Afghan and coalition forces. In the last month, coalition forces have killed more than 25 al Qaeda leaders and fighters, and the death of Abdul Ghani marks a significant milestone in the disruption of the al Qaeda network.”

I don’t recall seeing that expression “safe havens” used much before in ISAF statements about al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan. Usually the phrase used repeated by Western officials is “safe havens in Pakistan“.

Guest contribution-Will Pakistan go the Middle East way?

(The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The writer is Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK)

WILL PAKISTAN GO THE MIDDLE EAST WAY?

By Wajid Shamsul Hasan

Some of our analysts are drawing a parallel between the ongoing wave for democracy across the Middle East and hoping that Pakistan might follow suit. In fact they are talking of an impending revolution in Pakistan as well.

In doing so, these doomsayers conveniently ignore differences between the political culture of Pakistan and the Middle East. They forget about the long struggle waged by our political forces against military dictators for decades which was missing in the Middle East. Similarly, the unprecedented role of the media and civil society in helping shape political life in Pakistan has not been taken into account.

Without being judgmental in drawing comparisons, we can safely say that today’s Pakistan is way ahead in political development than say during the past one decade or even the political culture which we followed during the nineties.

Solving Afghanistan and Pakistan over a cup of tea

I have never read “Three Cups of Tea”, Greg Mortenson’s book about building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I tried to read the sequel, “Stones into Schools” and gave up not too long after the point where he said that, “the solution to every problem … begins with drinking tea.” Having drunk tea in many parts of South Asia – sweet tea, salt tea, butter tea, tea that comes with the impossible-to-remove-with-dignity thick skin of milk tea – I can confidently say that statement does not reflect reality.

So I have always been a bit puzzled that the Americans took Mortenson’s books so much to heart. Yes, I knew he boasted that his books had become required reading for American officers posted to Afghanistan; and yes, there is the glowing praise from Admiral Mike Mullen on the cover of  ”Stones into Schools”, where he wrote that “he’s shaping the very future of a region”. But I had always believed, or wanted to believe, that at the back of everyone’s minds they realised that saccharine sentimentality was no substitute for serious analysis. Just as hope is not a strategy, drinking tea is not a policy.  (To be fair to the Americans, I have also overheard a British officer extolling the virtues of drinking tea in Afghanistan.)

As a result of my scepticism on the miracle powers of tea-drinking, I find I am learning an awful lot more about the thinking of the U.S. administration than I ever did from Mortenson from the fall-out from the allegations of inaccuracies in his books. (Mortenson rejects these allegations in a statement on the website of his Central Asia Institute charity.)

Take for example the detailed account by Jon Krakauer (pdf) charting not only inaccuracies but also alleged irregularities in the finances of the Central Asia Institute. In his opening paragraph, Krakauer notes that President Barack Obama donated $100,000 of the award money from his own Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in 2009, to the Central Asia Institute. I had not known about the Obama connection until I read advance stories on Krakauer’s piece.

During his presidential election campaign, Obama made Afghanistan and Pakistan his foreign policy priority. So you might expect that he would have had foreign policy advisers who would have questioned the wisdom of associating publicly with one man. After all, it was quite clear — whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of Montenson’s philanthropy — that the narrative used to describe his schools in Baltistan as a bulwark against the Taliban and Islamist militants was a bit awry.

I have only been to Baltistan once, on a brief trip organised by the Pakistan Army to visit the Siachen region, the world’s highest battlefield, where Indian and Pakistani troops have faced off against each other since 1984. Yet even under the watchful gaze of my army minder, a group of Balti intellectuals who I met in the regional capital Skardu were able to tell me (over several cups of tea) that they felt neglected by Islamabad and excluded from power in Pakistan. Baltistan is part of the former kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan, and because of its disputed status, the people there have never been integrated into Pakistan and nor have they been given voting rights.

The political and security issues in Baltistan are related to the rivalry between India and Pakistan, to the dispute over Kashmir, and to the electoral dispossession of a people who have been frozen in time since the partition of the subcontinent since 1947. They are nothing to do with the Taliban, militant Islam, or the war in Afghanistan. That should have been easy enough to find out – have U.S. diplomats never been to Baltistan?  Indeed even without going there, the information was available for free on the Internet. Why did nobody ask any questions?

Pakistan vs U.S. Dumbing down the drones debate

If there was one thing the United States might have learned in a decade of war is that military might alone cannot compensate for lack of knowledge about people and conditions on the ground.  That was true in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may also turn out to be the case in Libya.

Yet the heated  debate about using Predator drones to target militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan – triggered by the spy row between the CIA and the ISI – appears to be falling into a familiar pattern – keep bombing versus stop bombing. Not whether, when and how drones might be effective, based on specific conditions and knowledge of the ground, and when they are counter-productive. 

Combined with that is a tendency to discuss the use of drones in isolation without taking account of the historical context (Pakistan and the United States have been rowing about this for several years – it is not new)  or indeed the broader political context (a botched drone attack by the CIA is guaranteed to enrage all the more if it comes at a time when American diplomats are trying to convince Pakistan they want to improve relations.)  

Consider, for example, the case of a tribesman with a performing monkey who gathered an audience of turban-clad, rifle-bearing men around him in a village in 2005. The U.S. controllers of the drone mistook the event for a weapons-training session or military briefing and dropped a missile, killing many in the audience.  That story was recounted by General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, now head of the Pakistan Army, and quoted by Brian Cloughley in his book “War, Coups and Terror”. “This, said the General, was an example of lack of cultural understanding,” wrote Cloughley.

Then there was the botched drone attack on Damadola in Bajaur agency in 2006 – by some accounts it was intended to target al Qaeda deputy Ayman al Zawahiri.  According to the Pakistani version, many women and children were among the victims of the strike, enraging the local population, driving them into the arms of local Taliban militants and fuelling a ferocious insurgency which took the Pakistan military several years to contain.

In language that could have been written today (and it has) the Guardian reported at the time that Pakistan had lodged a strong protest with the Americans over the attack and “the strained relation between Pakistan and the U.S. has been pushed to breaking point.” It blamed the botched attack on faulty intelligence on the ground.

Compare that, though, to the killing of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in a drone strike in 2009.  His death was welcomed by Pakistani authorities, and indeed by many ordinary Pakistanis who blamed him for bomb attacks in Pakistan. Good intelligence. Specific target. And probably the high point of cooperation between the United States and Pakistan over the use of drones.

Twist in the tale : Pakistan seeks reopening of Bhutto’s hanging case

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has written a letter to the Supreme Court to review the hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — the country’s first popularly-elected prime minister — over three decades ago.

The reopening of Bhutto’s case was one of the long-running demands of the supporters of the charismatic leader but critics say the timing of Zardari’s move was intriguing.

Opponents say Zardari’s move seems to be a political stunt to divert people’s attention from more pressing problems like  inflation, the growing energy crisis and deteriorating security situation. Zardari, who is accused of corruption by his opponents, has seen his popularity waning in recent years. 

“At a more practical level, people ask why the president has suddenly acquired so keen interest in the case, especially since far more pressing matters remain unresolved,” the daily The News wrote in its editorial.”The suspicion that this is the first step in  a political game of some kind makes the whole thing seem especially sinister. Who knows what is being planned, what plots are being hatched, and why.”

 Ehtesham Siddiqui, a resident of Islamabad, suggested Zardari  give more attention toward resolving the mystery surrounding the murder of his wife and Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, a more recent event  than Bhutto’s hanging that took place in 1979. Benazir was assassinated in a suicide bombing in Rawalpindi in 2007.

 ”The assassin (s), collaborators and perpetrators of the crime and all other elements linked with the ghastly murder (of Benazir) are believed to be very much alive and they are around,” Siddiqui said in a letter published in the Dawn newspaper. “It is beyond comprehension of the common man as to why the PPP is not serious in pursuing Benazir’s murder case and is trying to whip a dead horse instead.”

India and Pakistan: practising peace

Given the history of India and Pakistan, it is easy to be sceptical about the chances of their latest peace initiative. So let’s start with the positives.

Unlike past peace efforts which have veered between ill-prepared personal initiatives by political leaders and technical talks between bureaucrats which foundered for lack of direction from the top, the current phase combines the two.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s impromptu  invitation to his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani to watch last week’s India-Pakistan cricket semi-final coincided with the resumption of the first structured dialogue between the two countries since the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai.  The foreign secretaries, or top diplomats, of India and Pakistan met in Thimphu, Bhutan in February.  In talks last week, the home secretaries of the two countries made progress in coordinating their investigations into the Mumbai attacks; the trade secretaries are expected to meet soon, as are the defence secretaries.

Moreover, the Indian prime minister is personally committed to pursuing peace in the time he has left before a national election due by 2014.  And while last year he was isolated even within his own party in his enthusiasm for peace - an idea that still lingers in some quarters - his  initiative  appears to enjoy the support of powerful Congress party president Sonia Gandhi. Outlook magazine, writing about his cricket diplomacy, noted that Singh was flanked by Gandhi and her son and prime-minister- in-waiting, Rahul Gandhi, when he welcomed Gilani on his first official visit to India.

The Pakistan Army, which dominates foreign and security policy in Pakistan, has also been slowly reassessing its approach to Islamist militants it once nurtured for use against India as they slip increasingly out of its control. How far that reassessment goes is open to debate;  but few doubt that Gilani would have accepted Singh’s invitation to India to explore peace talks had this not been endorsed by the army.

All that said, sceptics have history on their side when they argue that the latest attempt at peace-making will fail.  Militants, including those allied with al Qaeda, have an interest in disrupting peace talks, using an attack on India to stir up fears of war on Pakistan’s eastern border and take pressure off them on its western border with Afghanistan.  If talks are not to be sabotaged – particularly at a time when militant groups in Pakistan are fragmenting and some of their cadres  sucked into the orbit of al Qaeda – both countries would need to overcome distrust enough to share intelligence to prevent another big attack.

Singh’s peace initiative also has powerful opponents within the Indian establishment, who are well placed to whip up an already jingoistic media if they think he is going too far.  Bharat Karnad, from the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, wrote that the Pakistan Army appeared to have decided to favour talks with India for now. ”The question is can India capitalise on what seems to be rethinking underway in the Pakistan Army?  Alas, there is surprisingly less give here than is generally assumed,” he wrote. “This is because India’s Pakistan policy is hostage to the petty calculations of the political class in the country and powerful ministries within the Indian government with vested interest in portraying Pakistan as menace.”