Pakistan: Now or Never?

Pakistan’s debate on drones, lifting the secrecy

In a rare admission of the effectiveness of drone strikes, a senior Pakistani military officer has said most of those killed are hard-core militants, including foreigners, according to Dawn newspaper.

It quotes Major-General Ghayur Mehmood as telling reporters at a briefing in Miramshah, in North Waziristan, that, “Myths and rumours about US predator strikes and the casualty figures are many, but it’s a reality that many of those being killed in these strikes are hardcore elements, a sizeable number of them foreigners.”

“Yes there are a few civilian casualties in such precision strikes, but a majority of those eliminated are terrorists, including foreign terrorist elements,” he said.

The comments may not have been entirely authorised — the New York Times quoted Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas as playing down the remarks. Abbas called them a “personal assessment”. ”General Abbas emphasised that the army supported the public policy of the government that drone strikes inside Pakistani territory ‘do more harm than good’,” the newspaper said.

And nor were they an unqualified endorsement of the attacks in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.  According to Dawn, “Maj-Gen Ghayur, who is in charge of troops in North Waziristan, admitted that the drone attacks had negative fallout, scaring the local population and causing their migration to other places. Gen Ghayur said the drone attacks also had social and political repercussions and law-enforcement agencies often felt the heat.”

But it is unlikely that such a high-ranking officer would have made such comments if they did not reflect the thinking of the army leadership.  The big question now is on whether they have lifted the lid on what has become a truly poisonous debate within Pakistan on drone attacks.

It has long been an open secret that the drone attacks are carried out with the tacit endorsement of the Pakistani military, with Pakistani intelligence helping to identify targets on the ground.  Yet their covert nature, and a widespread view propagated by some sections of the media that most of those killed are civilians, has fuelled anti-Americanism and stoked conspiracy theories about U.S. intentions in Pakistan.

Bajaur bombing highlights conflicting U.S.-Pakistan interests

Last week’s suicide bombing in Pakistan’s Bajaur region, which killed at least 40 people, had a grim predictability to  it.  The Pakistan Army cleared Pakistani Taliban militants out of their main strongholds in Bajaur, which borders Afghanistan’s Kunar province, after 20 months of intense fighting which ended earlier this year.  But as discussed in this post in October the insurgents’ ability to flee to Kunar — where the U.S. military presence has been thinned out — combined with a failure to provide Bajaur with good governance, suggested the security situation in the region was likely to be deteriorating. The bombing appeared to confirm those fears.

The implications go far beyond Bajaur. The Pakistan Army has resisted U.S. pressure to launch a military offensive against militant strongholds in North Waziristan until it has secured gains made elsewhere.  Pakistani daily The Express Tribune quoted army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas as reiterating that point after the Bajaur bombing and after fighting in the neighbouring Mohmand region. Until areas “cleared” by the military were consolidated, “it is impossible to rush into another campaign,” it quoted him as saying.

The Taliban in Bajaur also had historically close ties with militants who overran the Swat valley and caused worldwide alarm by pushing further into Pakistan’s heartland before they were ousted by the Pakistan Army in 2009.  Any further evidence of the Taliban regaining ground in Bajaur would therefore be a cause for concern that military gains in Swat — itself reeling from this summer’s devastating floods — could also be reversed.

In some aspects — though not all — Pakistan’s problems in tackling militants are a mirror image of those faced by the United States on the other side of the border.  Soldiers can drive militants out of their strongholds, but they can’t stop them melting into the local population or fleeing across the border. And they can’t hold and build on those military gains without civilian back-up to provide people with governance. 

When I visited Bajaur on an army-organised trip in April, the military commander in the main town of Khar — target of last week’s suicide bombing — made two points. First he said the Americans had to “do more” on their side of the border to stop militants fleeing into Afghanistan.  Second he drew a graph showing how security gains made from military operations do not even remain static without governance, but actually dwindle over time – probably rather similar to graphs drawn by U.S. commanders on the other side of the border.

You might think the answer would be to coordinate approaches in both Pakistan and Afghanistan — a much talked about idea that somehow never quite managed to get off the drawing boards in Washington and into the field. If anything military coordination appears to be getting worse. 

The United States, keen to concentrate its forces in areas where they can make a difference, and to protect population centres, has been pulling troops back from remote outposts in Kunar and elsewhere.  Within the context of Afghanistan, that may make sense.  But from Pakistan’s point of view, it leaves its  military exposed. Meanwhile, Pakistan has resisted pressure to launch an operation in North Waziristan, both because it needs to consolidate gains elsewhere, and because it fears a backlash of suicide bombings on its towns and cities. Within the context of Pakistan that may also make sense. But from the U.S. point of view, it leaves its own military exposed. 

Guest contribution-Unifying Pakistan

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 a defence expert and author of two books on the Pakistan Army.

By Brian Cloughley

Many of Pakistan’s problems are of its own making, courtesy of uniformed dictators or ineffective politicians or weird alliances of both. When military rulers took over the country in their bloodless coups they were welcomed by the majority of citizens, which was understandable given that the governments they replaced were feudally authoritarian and grossly incompetent.

The problem was that the generals stayed too long in power. If they had wanted to further democracy they would have encouraged the country to move towards socially aware and proficient civilian governance. But they didn’t; and there’s no point in crying over spilt opportunities. What matters now is unifying the country to meet its many challenges. Unfortunately, about the only bonding factor evident is extensive distrust and hatred of America.

Pakistan has immense internal problems. For example, the education and health systems are a disgrace, mainly because the rich and powerful and the politicians – who are often the same people – don’t have to use them. It is shameful that Pakistan has to endure what is called ‘load-shedding’ – electricity power cuts – for so many hours each day and that prices of basic foodstuffs are so high. The economic effects of power cuts on industry are becoming critically serious. The great flood has made the situation worse, but even before that disaster there were many millions who could not operate a tiny fan to ease the crippling heat of summer, or a one-bar radiator to counter the killing cold of winter. There has been scandalous and even criminal mismanagement of flood relief measures. Corruption is rife and living standards are appallingly low for the majority of the population.

Yet there is massive wealth in Pakistan, albeit concentrated in very few hands. It was recently revealed that “The average worth of assets held by Members of the National Assembly [MNA] increased three-fold” since 2003, and “the current average value of assets held by an MNA stands at Rs80.89 million”, which is about a million US dollars – a staggering amount of money in such an impoverished country.

It doesn’t stop there. As Pakistan’s ‘News’ newspaper reported on 27 September, “Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his 25 ministers, in sworn affidavits submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan at the time of their elections, have admitted that they don’t pay income taxes”, which is, to put it mildly, peculiar. Hillary Clinton twisted the knife next day by declaring that “Pakistan cannot have a tax rate of 9 percent of GDP when land owners and all of the other elites do not pay anything or pay so little it’s laughable.” On 26 October Transparency International (TI) released a report including the observation that there is a global “tide of corruption”, and indicating the sad fact that Pakistan is one of the most horribly corrupt countries in the world.

Giving a voice to Pakistan’s flood victims

If you were to give the flood victims in Pakistan a voice, they would tell you that they need seeds to replant the crops destroyed by the water and enough emergency relief to tide them through the winter. After that the land, newly fertilised by the floods, could yield bumper crops in the years ahead.

The children would tell you that the floods hit so powerfully that the memory of feeling in panic while loudspeakers broadcast warnings from the mosques will be forever etched on their minds. They don’t blame the government for a disaster so big that not even in the tales of their ancestors had they heard stories of such floods. They just want enough help to rebuild their homes so they don’t have to sleep in half-destroyed buildings with sunken floors, worrying about them collapsing on top of them in the night.

In the villages, people would tell you they don’t mind who helps them — whether the army, the government or Islamist charities — as long as they provide food and medicine for their families. They don’t care about politics, or Islamist militants, or the “right” interpretation of Islam. And again and again, they would stress that they don’t want to survive on handouts, but want to rebuild their lives.

It is ordinary, sensible stuff. Travelling in Pakistan, and particularly to flood-hit areas, you are left thinking that if only ordinary people had a bigger say in the running of the country, it might be a considerably better place.

Yet for all its latest experiment in democracy which began in 2008, Pakistan has yet to find a way of devolving power properly down to the people. Politics is dominated by feudal elites and family dynasties — from the Zardari-Bhutto family which runs the ruling Pakistan People’s Party to the Sharif brothers in the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).

The civilian government has been severely criticised over its slow response to the floods. Corruption is so endemic that even the government has been forced to admit that it might be better if international aid were channelled through other hands than its own.

It is hardly surprising then that given the devastation of the floods, people are looking for answers on the most efficient way to rebuild Pakistan.

Helping Pakistan; not if, but how

Outside President Asif Ali Zardari’s political rally in Birmingham last weekend, I chatted to a middle-aged woman passing by about the floods in Pakistan. “I have every sympathy for Pakistan and the Pakistanis, but he is not helping them much, is he?” she said. Another woman asked me to explain why it was that the  protesters were not focused on the floods but demonstrating “about all sorts”.  Inside the rally, a young British Pakistani who had recently returned from a visit to his family home in Kashmir complained about negative stereotyping in the media of Pakistan that had reduced a country of some 170 million people to “a terrorist threat”.

If there is a common thread to the relatively slow western response to one of the worst catastrophes in Pakistan’s history, it is a sense of confusion, not about whether to help, but how to help. That, and the dehumanising impact of stereotypes - corrupt politicians, angry bearded protesters, suicide bombers to name but a few – that obscure the impact of the floods on the very real people – 14 million of them - affected by the disaster.

In the short term, the weak civilian government has been slammed for failing to come up with a clear plan to address the immediate needs of those hit by the floods. Nor has it provided the leadership that might rally all institutions and people behind it. The result has been that the Pakistan Army, long the country’s most efficient and effective national institution, has stepped in to fill the void, leading efforts to rescue flood victims.  Meanwhile, as Pakistani politicians squabbled amongst themselves and flew into disaster-hit areas with an eye for photo-ops, and as Zardari travelled abroad to France and Britain, the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa – the humanitarian wing of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group - quietly moved in to help, as it did in the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. 

The United States, along with other countries, has been ratcheting up its aid efforts, offering financial assistance totallling $76 million and sending military helicopters for relief and rescue operations. However, I can’t help but feel a bit uneasy when this is presented in terms of vying for influence with Islamist charities like the Jamaat ud-Dawa. This may be partially true, but it is also part of the same dehumanising process, as though the flood victims are no more than “hearts and minds” to be won over, rather than people facing death from hunger and disease.  International and Pakistani NGOs are doing what they can – although for those who want to help, it can be hard for outsiders to work out which charity best deserves donations (inside Pakistan, the Edhi Foundation is widely respected.)

But if understanding how to alleviate the short-term crisis is hard enough, the question of how to help Pakistan in the long term is even more perplexing.  The damage to its fragile economy is likely to be felt not just this year – the World Bank says $1 billion in crops have been lost - but in grain sowings for food supplies in the future.  The impact on society in a country already struggling to find its feet in a battle against Islamist militancy is yet to be fully understood, although popular anger against the government over its response to the floods does not bode well. Add to that  the disorientating impact of climate change – and scientists are still arguing about how much the floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia are due to global warming – and the need to bolster Pakistan’s defences in the future against water crises (both shortage and excess) and you have a reconstruction challenge which would defy even the strongest of governments.

At a crude level, Pakistan needs better water management, better irrigation and a reversal of the deforestation which has been widely blamed for exacerbating the flooding.  Deforestation has a double impact. Firstly there is nothing to slow flood waters and mudslides. Secondly,  it contributes to soil erosion, silting up river waters so that dams and levees downstream are even less able to contain the impact of unusually heavy monsoon rains. Pakistan’s forests have been ravaged by an illegal timber mafia, often working in league with corrupt local politicians. Reversing that process is both an obvious need and - as with so many obvious needs in Pakistan - a political nightmare.

The economy itself might actually tick up slightly. Natural disasters are often followed by a reconstruction boom. But reconstruction which does not take account of the need for sustainable development would leave Pakistan exposed to more natural disasters in the future, particularly if uneven monsoons combine with faster melting of the Himalayan glaciers which feed its rivers. Reconstruction which exacerbates income disparities and feeds corruption will tug even harder at the country’s fragile social fabric.

Pakistan’s General Kayani given three-year extension

Pakistan army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez  Kayani, is to be given a a three-year extension to his term of office to maintain continuity in the country’s battle against Islamist militants. 

Kayani, arguably Pakistan’s most powerful man, had been due to retire in November. His future had been the subject of intense speculation for months, with opinion divided between the those who argued he should be given an extension for the sake of continuity, and those who said that Pakistan needed to build its institutions rather than rely on individuals – as it had done with powerful army rulers in the past.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, who announced the extension, said the decision to extend Kayani’s term reflected “his effective role in the war against terrorism and in the enforcement of rule of law in the country.”

Kayani is considered to have built a good working relationship with the United States - which needs the Pakistan Army’s help in fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan – prompting speculation, denied by the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, that Washington had pressed for his term of office to be extended.

He has also been the subject of intense speculation in India, where the views of the army – which controls foreign and security policy even under a civilian government – are seen as crucial to determining the fate of the faltering India-Pakistan peace process.

A former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Kayani has been credited with keeping the army out of politics on the whole.  Military analysts also say he has redefined “strategic depth” – an old policy under which Pakistan aimed to use Afghanistan as a rear base in the event of war with India – to suggest instead that the country’s strength should come from a strong economy at home. Yet under his tenure – both as the head of the ISI until 2007 and then as army chief – Pakistan has also been criticised for failing to take strong enough action against Islamist and Taliban militants.

Otherwise, relatively little is known about the thinking of the inscrutable general, who never gives public interviews. Pakistan, its neighbours and the United States and its allies fighting in Afghanistan, will now have another three years to find out.

Between golf and war, Pakistan’s General Kayani’s future is debated

The Pakistan Army prides itself on being an institution which rises above politics and personal ambition, committed to defend the interests of the nation. That this has not always been the case is demonstrated by its history of military coups, and a tendency of past military rulers, from General Zia ul-Haq to former president Pervez Musharraf, to impose a very personal brand of leadership.  Where Zia pushed Pakistan towards hardline Islam, Musharraf aimed at “enlightened moderation” in a country he wanted modelled more on Turkey than on Saudi Arabia.

While no one expects the military to launch another coup, some of that historical memory is feeding into increasingly intense speculation about the future of Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who is due to retire in November.

The general who is arguably Pakistan’s most powerful man has given few clues as to whether he might seek an extension in office beyond November.  But earlier this week Pakistani paper The News reported that the army’s corps commanders wanted him to stay on to see through the battle against Islamist militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. One theory doing the rounds is that Kayani could be appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, with oversight over the air force and navy as well as the army,  and with the role given enhanced powers to ensure he remains in command.

Kayani has been credited with restoring the army’s image in Pakistan - it had suffered from the popular resentment against Musharraf, who stepped down in 2008 . He has also made it clear the military had no intention of taking over the country, although it continues to call the shots on foreign and security policy.  He has overseen some successful operations in the tribal areas and built a reasonable working relationship with the Americans.

A former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Kayani never gives public interviews and therefore remains somewhat inscrutable for those trying to gauge his attitude to the United States or Pakistan’s traditional enemy India.  That said, he has always made his views clear when it seemed that either the United States or the civilian government were about to over-step the boundary into what the Pakistan Army considers its own domain.  A suggestion floated by President Asif Ali Zardari in 2008 that Pakistan adopt a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons was quickly dropped after raising hackles in the army which determinedly guards its control of the nuclear arsenal. 

Kayani spoke out fiercely against a reported incursion by U.S. ground troops in 2008 and in 2009 condemned provisions in the Kerry-Lugar U.S. aid package which called for greater civilian oversight of military appointments and promotions.

The civilian government has given mixed messages about whether it wants Kayani to stay on, but is seen as unlikely to challenge the military or the United States if either or both of them decide they need to keep him in command. In any case, after a rocky start, the civilian government and the military appear to have found – for now at least – an accommodation with each other in which the government relies on the army to fight the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas and knows better than to cross its red lines when it comes to foreign and security policy.

Guest contribution-The United States and Pakistan

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 a defence expert and author of two books on the Pakistan Army.

By Brian Cloughley

On 11 May several Frontier Corps soldiers were killed by insurgents in Pakistan’s Orakzai Tribal Agency. Concurrently there was a report that US Secretary of State Clinton had once again been indignantly critical of Pakistan’s supposed lack of effort to rid itself of murderous fanatics seeking to destroy Pakistan and create a so-called ‘Islamic caliphate’ in the region.

Clinton declared her belief that “somewhere in the government [of Pakistan] are people who know where Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda is [sic], where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is [sic], and we expect more cooperation to help us bring to justice, capture or kill those who attacked us on 9/11.”

The psychotic Mullah Omar hates America, to be sure; but for the US Secretary of State to assert that Omar and his adherents were responsible for the atrocities of 9/11 is absurd.

Pakistan’s dead soldiers included Lieutenants Murad and Hakimullah, Hawaldar Imran and Sepoys Gohar, Rehman Gul, Amjad Ali, Arif, Zahid, Munir, Wasti Khan and Nauman, and they died while fighting America’s war. You can’t carry support much further.

But in spite of such sacrifices Mrs Clinton demands “more cooperation” from Pakistan.

from Afghan Journal:

Challenging the myths of Pakistan’s turbulent northwest

Reuters' journalist Myra Macdonald travelled to Pakistan's northwest on the border with Afghanistan  to find that some of the Kiplingesque images of  xenophobic Pasthuns and ungovernable lands may be a bit off the mark especially now when the Pakistani army has taken the battle to the Islamist militants.  Here's her account :

                               By Myra MacDonald

KHAR, Pakistan - I had not expected Pakistan's tribal areas to be so neat and so prosperous.

These are meant to be the badlands, mythologised as no-go areas by Kiplingesque images of xenophobic Pashtuns, jezail musket in hand, defying British troops from rugged clifftops.

They are the "ungovernable" lands where al Qaeda took sanctuary after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan; the bastion of Islamist militants said to threaten the entire world.

Yet to fly by helicopter for the first time into Bajaur tribal agency is to challenge the more wildly imagined cliches about this little-visited region on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

Pakistan’s constitutional democracy and the Pakistan Army

“The safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next. Your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time.” – Field Marshall Sir Philip Chetwode at the inauguration of the Indian Military Academy in 1932

For the first time in the history of Pakistan a civilian government is pushing a comprehensive constitutional reform package through parliament to undo provisions introduced by dictators to tighten their grip on power.  President Asif Ali Zardari urged parliament this week to approve constitutional amendments which will turn him into a titular head of state – and, crucially, remove his right to sack prime ministers which had been used by previous military dictators.

The move is potentially good news for Pakistan, restoring a system of parliamentary democracy that was overturned by the late military ruler President Zia ul-Haq. The amendments also include a change of name for the North West Frontier Province to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, meant to recognise the aspirations of the Pashtun people who live there to have their ethnic identities acknowledged in the same way as those in Punjab, Sind and Baluchistan.

 Juan Cole at Informed Comment describes the constitutional reform package as “an enormous advance toward democratization in the country”.

“During the past 3 years, the Pakistani public has demonstrated repeatedly and on a large scale in favor of the rule of law and the reinstatement of the Supreme Court justices dismissed by dictator Gen. (Pervez) Musharraf,” he writes. ”Mind you, they are making a case for civil law and the civil supreme court, not for sharia or Islamic law. They voted in the center-left Pakistan People’s Party in February 2008, and the return to parliamentary rule ultimately, in August 2008, allowed the political parties to unite to toss out of office Gen. Musharraf, who had had himself declared a civilian ‘president’ and was in danger of being impeached for alleged corruption.”

“That is, the Pakistani public has conducted a ‘color revolution’ of its own, in the teeth of opposition or skittishness in Washington, and managed to overturn a military dictatorship that had been backed to the hilt by Bush-Cheney, restoring parliamentary governance,” he says.

The problem, however, is that this great surge in democracy has been accompanied by the growing role of the Pakistan Army, whose chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, was feted in Washington last month as the real wielder of power in Pakistan.