Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung report in the Washington Post that no one on the American side seems to be able to convince the Pakistanis to help us clear North Waziristan of militants. This is a rather important problem because our own war strategy depends on Pakistan agreeing to do this.
[Gen. Ashfaq] Kayani, who as Pakistan’s army chief has more direct say over the country’s security strategy than its president or prime minister, has resisted personal appeals from President Obama, U.S. military commanders and senior diplomats. Recent U.S. intelligence estimates have concluded that he is unlikely to change his mind anytime soon. Despite the entreaties, officials say, Kayani doesn’t trust U.S. motivations and is hedging his bets in case the American strategy for Afghanistan fails.
Again, a key point here is that (by our own intelligence estimates) Kayani’s lack of action pretty much ensures the failure of our strategy.
Pakistan is not a simple place and our alliance with Pakistan is our most complicated state-to-state relationship in the world. It’s easy to point out seeming hypocrisy or examples of illogical or self-defeating behavior on both sides. I don’t want to engage in lazy sniping. I do find it frustrating though that we have such an adversarial relationship with the Pakistani people. I see USAID really working hard to help the Pakistani people and I feel (sometimes) like the money is just being wasted.
When it comes to military aid, I believe India is correct in their assessment that it is far in excess of what is needed to “fight terror” and that it is being diverted for potential use against them. In truth, the main reason that Gen. Kayani doesn’t want to stamp out militancy in Pakistan is because he finds it to be a useful buffer against India. It’s also not unimportant that the persistence of a terror threat emanating from his territory pushes US officials to pay him ever bigger bribes. If he solved our problem for us, wouldn’t we start bitching about human rights and threatening to cut our assistance package? You bet your ass we would.
What’s ironic, and which proves the byzantine nature of U.S.-Pakistani relations, is that the recent Wikileaks dump showed that Kayani is supposed to be “our man.”
“I am not Benazir, and I know it,” Zardari told US ambassador Anne Patterson after his wife’s death.
The Pakistan President reportedly feared a fresh army coup.
According to the ‘Guardian’ report based on US cables, Pakistan opposition leader Nawaz Sharif had a “notoriously difficult personality” while his family is noted to have “relied primarily on the army and intelligence agencies for political elevation”.
In a May 2008 meeting with a visiting American Congressional delegation, Zardari reportedly said: “We won’t act without consulting with you.”
Sharif repeatedly told the US ambassador that he was “pro-American”, despite his often-critical public stance. He thanked the US for “arranging” to have Kayani appointed as army chief.
“The best thing America has done recently,” he said.
The same Wikileaks dump revealed that Kayani dislikes Sharif intensely and that Zardari fears that Kayani will have him killed. So, I don’t think it’s safe to assume you know who is whose man, or where various alliances are aimed. If Kayani is “our man” then he is balking at doing what we consider necessary.
Kayani reportedly was infuriated by the recent WikiLeaks release of U.S. diplomatic cables, some of which depicted him as far chummier with the Americans and more deeply involved in Pakistani politics than his carefully crafted domestic persona would suggest. In one cable, sent to Washington by the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad last year, he was quoted as discussing with U.S. officials a possible removal of Pakistan’s president and his preferred replacement.
On the eve of the cable’s publication in November, the normally aloof and soft-spoken general ranted for hours on the subject of irreconcilable U.S.-Pakistan differences in a session with a group of Pakistani journalists.
The two countries’ “frames of reference” regarding regional security “can never be the same,” he said, according to news accounts. Calling Pakistan America’s “most bullied ally,” Kayani said that the “real aim of U.S. strategy is to de-nuclearize Pakistan.”
That last sentence may be the most important one, and the most interesting. If there were some way to de-nuclearize Pakistan we would have to consider that a high priority. But I don’t think it is U.S. policy to deal with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons independently of India’s. I think it is more accurate to say that we have contingency plans, worked out with India, for securing and destroying Pakistan’s nuclear program if the country should ever fall into chaos. But our overriding policy is to prevent Pakistan from falling into chaos. The question, then, is if our request for action on the Afghanistan border is a potentially destabilizing request.
Kayani has cultivated the approval of a strongly anti-American public that opinion polls indicate now holds the military in far higher esteem than it does the weak civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. Pakistani officials say the need for public support is a key reason for rebuffing U.S. pleas for an offensive in North Waziristan. In addition to necessitating the transfer of troops from the Indian border, Pakistani military and intelligence officials say such a campaign would incite domestic terrorism and uproot local communities…
…Several U.S. officials described Kayani as straightforward in his explanations of why the time is not right for an offensive in North Waziristan: a combination of too few available troops and too little public support.
From Kayani’s point of view, the U.S. is asking him to take actions which will strengthen domestic opposition to the government and the army, and which could lead to the exact kind of chaos that would justify America and India teaming up to strip Pakistan of their nuclear weapons. He may think we are asking him to dig his (and his country’s) own grave. And this is supposed to “our guy.”
So, faced with this kind of nuclear-tipped house of mirrors, isn’t it tempting to say “screw it, let’s get the hell out of there”? I know I feel that way a lot of the time. I know there is a deeper game going on here that involves both good and bad motivations. But, on balance, I think we need to stop worrying about “terrorist strongholds” in North Waziristan and stop thinking we can prop up a government in Kabul that can govern the countryside. The sooner we stop fighting the unwinnable battles, the sooner we can get back to protecting ourselves in a cost-effective and sane manner.
