The Anarchic Republic of Pakistan
by Scott Horton
The current issue of
The National Interest contains
Ahmed Rashid’s exhaustive and provocative essay
on the current state of affairs in Pakistan. It’s a must-read for
anyone trying to come to grips with American foreign policy in the
“Af-Pak theater.”
Rashid starts with Pakistan’s basket-case military,
long viewed by Washington’s foreign policy elite as the glue that holds
the country together:
"There is perhaps no other political-military elite in the world
whose aspirations for great-power regional status, whose desire to
overextend and outmatch itself with meager resources, so outstrips
reality as that of Pakistan. If it did not have such dire consequences
for 170 million Pakistanis and nearly 2 billion people living in South
Asia, this magical thinking would be amusing. This is a country that
sadly appears on every failing-state list and still wants to increase
its arsenal from around 60 atomic weapons to well over 100 by buying two
new nuclear reactors from China. This is a country isolated and
friendless in its own region, facing unprecedented homegrown terrorism
from extremists its army once trained, yet it pursues a “forward policy”
in Afghanistan to ensure a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul as soon as
the Americans leave.
"For a state whose economy is on the skids and dependent on the IMF
for massive bailouts, whose elite refuse to pay taxes, whose army drains
an estimated 20 percent of the country’s annual budget, Pakistan
continues to insist that peace with India is impossible for decades to
come. For a country that was founded as a modern democracy for Muslims
and non-Muslims alike and claims to be the bastion of moderate Islam, it
has the worst discriminatory laws against minorities in the Muslim
world and is being ripped apart through sectarian and extremist violence
by radical groups who want to establish a new Islamic emirate in South
Asia. Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment, or “deep state” as
it is called, has lost over 2,300 soldiers battling these
terrorists—the majority in the last 15 months after much U.S. cajoling
to go after at least the Pakistani (if not the Afghan) Taliban. Despite
these losses and considerable low morale in the armed forces, it still
follows a pick-and-choose policy toward extremists, refusing to fight
those who will confront India on its behalf as well as those Taliban who
kill Western and Afghan soldiers in the war next-door. An army that has
received nearly $12 billion in direct military aid from the United
States since 2001, and has favored-nation status from NATO, still keeps
the leaders of the Afghan Taliban in safe refuge. Pakistan’s civilians,
politicians and intellectuals are helpless; they cannot make the deep
state see sense as long as the West continues its duplicitous policies
of propping up the military-intelligence establishment in opposition to
popular society while demanding that the Pakistani civilian government
wrest back control of the country."
While Rashid’s cataloging of the country’s problems is
enough to depress any observer, he tells us that hope is not lost for
Pakistan’s democracy:
Despite the incompetence of the government, the groundwork is now
being laid for a genuine democratic dispensation through provincial
autonomy, decentralization and the rebuilding of democratic
institutions—theoretically making it more difficult for the army to
seize power again. If these steps are matched with equivalent advances
in restoring economic stability, reviving local and foreign investment,
combating terrorism and Islamic extremism on a nationwide basis, and
modernizing the judicial and police systems, Pakistan has a far brighter
future than is currently portrayed.
He goes on to note that Pakistan’s substantial,
well-educated middle class provides a stable foundation upon which
democratic institutions can be developed. Moreover, tactical errors
made by the Taliban and other radical Islamist groups have caused a
shift in the center of Pakistani society—the threat that these groups
present to the nation’s safety and prosperity is now much more clearly
understood.
Rashid’s manipulation of the pieces of this vast puzzle is
consummately skillful, and his identification of potential threats is
quickly followed by ideas about alleviating them. His writings remain a
unique resource for those trying to understand Pakistan.
This article was penned before the recent floods which have ravaged roughly a third of the country, perhaps constituting
Pakistan’s most serious natural disaster since its founding.
The Pakistani military’s floundering response could have been readily
predicted by any reader of Rashid’s essay—it marks a confluence of
corruption, incompetence and stubborn concentration on an imaginary
threat from India just when Pakistan is consumed by far more acute
dangers.
But it leaves me wondering about the American response and how
Pakistanis will react to it.
At first they will surely be thankful for
whatever help is shown. But over time, some Pakistanis will wonder
why, while their country struggles with a massive catastrophe, Americans
seem more concerned about the construction of a mosque on the site of a
former discount clothing store in downtown Manhattan, generating
enormous anti-Muslim rhetoric in the process.
Whereas Americans opened
their hearts and pockets for Haiti, no similar generosity has been
directed towards the Pakistanis. The American government can muster
tens of billions to support a war effort that rains death down on
villagers in Pakistan’s northwest, but when the relief of their
flood-ravaged compatriots is a question, the American effort amounts to a
piddling fraction of that sum.
These facts demonstrate America’s dark
view of Pakistan–as a theater of war, and not a sister democracy or
ally.
