From The Archives: Hit or Miss in Pakistan (18 September 2008)

First published on our partner website Libertas:

[This] leaves only the Pakistani military, whichever way it chooses to play the hand with the Americans, as the only significant force in the country with a symbolic and real modicum of power. If Zardari protests this, the prospect of his overthrow emerges. If he accepts his emasculation, he is no more than an irrelevant figurehead. Either way, it’s an effective coup.

Last Thursday, I embarked on a new, challenging, and exciting project, working with postgraduate students at the Clinton Institute for American Studies in Dublin . Introducing a course on contemporary US foreign policy, I tried out the idea of dissecting that morning’s Page 1 story, whatever it might be, in The New York Times.

I punched in the URL and upon the large screen is the headline, “Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan”.

The opening paragraph confirmed I had more than enough for discussion, “President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.”

Well, there you go. By chance rather than design I could open the course with perhaps the most significant development in US foreign policy this year. Significant because the US Government was making clear that it was taking the war against the Afghanistan insurgency across the border into Pakistan. Even more so because the US would be fighting not just with bombs from the air but special forces on the ground. Especially so because the US would do so without the overt co-operation of the Pakistani Government.

To be blunt: on Monday, Asif Zardari finally reached his goal of becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan, a country portrayed as a steadfast ally of the US in the “War on Terror”. By Thursday, Washington didn’t give, to use the academic term, “a rat’s ass” about the thoughts of Zardari. On Monday, Pakistan’s military was portrayed as side-by-side with American counterparts; by Thursday, there was the prospect of armed clashes between the two sets of troops.

With allies like these, who needs....? You fill in the blank.

The backdrop to this story is now well-known. On 11 September 2001, the Head of Pakistan’s intelligence services, Mahmood Ahmed, was in Washington discussing co-operation with US officials. Indeed, as the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Ahmed was having breakfast with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Within 24 hours, discussions had become a showdown. Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage set out a seven-point ultimatum to Ahmed. When Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf confirmation to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the American conditions would be met, the essential alliance in the War on Terror had been established.

There were holdover tensions from Pakistan’s years of support for a liaison with the Taliban. In January 2002, Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker blew the whistle on the hundreds, maybe thousands, of Pakistanis who had fought on the wrong side and been captured by the Americans during fighting in Afghanistan . The detainees were shipped to Kunduz, from where Pakistani helicopters took them home. As US attentions turned to Iraq , the inconvenience that Osama bin Laden was also now sheltered in Pakistan ’s autonomous tribal areas as gradually accepted. Months turned into years, and President Musharraf’s attention (and that of his critics) turned to internal political/judicial matters and, eventually, the imposition of martial law.

So what has happened to re-make Pakistan from sturdy if arguably ineffectual partner of the US in regional politics and the War on Terror into obstacle to US operations? No doubt the forced handover from Musharraf to Zardari is a partial explanation; there is no sign of American faith in the reliability of the new President, who is likely to be focused on his battle with the judiciary rather than a showdown with Al Qa’eda.

The catalyst, however, is the Bush Administration’s last roll of the dice in Afghanistan. As I noted Monday, the President’s statement two weeks ago offered both victory without substance and a challenge without an answer. If the small number of US troops being pulled with Iraq belied a long-term occupation that is increasingly out of touch with political developments, the small number of US troops being sent to Afghanistan showed that the Administration has nothing but a small bandage to slap on its new Number One Emergency Case.

An extra 9000 boots on the ground won’t cover much of the problem area in Afghanistan. At most, it will allow the US to carry out well-publicised operations to clear the Taliban from villages which are likely to vulnerable during the next counter-attack of the insurgency. Put very bluntly, in the absence of effective political and economic reconstruction, Washington has to hope that local leaders and their militias are strong enough to keep the Taliban out. It’s notable, for example, that Herat in the western part of the country is relatively stable under a local regime on good terms with Iran, while Mazar-al-Sharif in the north is “secure” because of the local but forceful presence of General Dostum.

This doesn’t add up to long-term influence, however, for the Americans and it far from signals long-term authority for the Kabul Government of Hamid Karzai. So Washington gets the worst of both worlds: potential rivals reap the benefits from the areas that they control or influence while the US carries the can for instability in other regions.

Even if European governments and other allies in NATO and the International Security Assistance Force were willing to shift a token number of soldiers to the conflict zone in the south and centre of the country, that wouldn’t offer any resolution of the underlying problems. And it certainly wouldn’t address the emerging headache for the Americans and Kabul , the insurgent violence in the east along the Pakistan border.

So, if you haven’t got the troop numbers or a meaningful plan of reconstruction to bring villages into a secure nation, what do you do? Well, you resort to those limited but hopefully effectively targeted operations that “decapitate” the opposition. That means air power and that means special operations on the ground, special operations to assist with targeting of the airstrikes and special operations to liquidate the bad guys.

It is no coincidence that the “surge” in Iraq has included recently-hyped “fusion cells”, small units of specially-trained soldiers to capture and kill insurgents. And, given the incomplete if not false impression that this has made a long-term difference in Iraq the Americans will be trying to spread the model to the next battleground.

But even as this strategy covers up the problem of the lack of long-term troop numbers to “stabilise” Afghanistan, it ignores some fundamentals of special warfare. Even the Iraq example should be instructive: the “fusion cells” complement the cultivation of local leaders and their militias to secure a particular area. In Pakistan, where is that cultivation of leaders in the tribal areas going to take place? Well, given that the airstrikes and operations are alienating that leadership, their families, and their communities, the answer would be Nowhere. Tribal leaders have already responded by promising to raise forces to fight the US .

And here’s another lesson that it ignores. You can’t limit the effect of dropped bombs and elite forces trained to kill. Far more important than any ripples of stability you hope to get on the other side of the border are the waves of instability you set off in Pakistan. The warning of the Pakistani military leadership that it will opposed American ground incursions may be a bluff or even the Janus trick of giving a stern face of defending their people and sovereignty while privately giving another face of acceptance to the Americans. But, at a minimum, Zardari is exposed as a political leader with barely a shred of authority.

And, in Pakistan with its recent history, what do you think that means? I’m guessing that it leaves only the Pakistan military, whichever way it chooses to play the hand with the Americans, as the only significant force in the country with a symbolic and real modicum of power. If Zardari protests this, the prospect of his overthrow emerges. If he accepts his emasculation, he is no more than an irrelevant figurehead. Either way, it’s an effective coup.

I’ve only seen one commentator reach back for the historical parallel. In 1969/70 the Nixon Administration, frustrated at the mobility of the Vietnamese insurgency, starts the airborne demolition of Cambodia. Eventually that tearing apart of the Cambodian “sanctuary” took the ground from under the country’s leadership, and Prince Sihanouk was overthrown. The eventual victors who promised to restore sovereignty and dignity? The Khmer Rouge.

It’s not an exact replay of history, and Pakistan may not have to be reset to Year Zero. Neither, however, does the American strategy offer any advance. Seven years after promising that it would pursue the War on Terror to preserve the security and sovereignty of those were “with us”, Washington is now shredding that assurance.