Varun Vira is a Chicago-based writer on international affairs.
Pakistanis often lament that their country is ruled by the three A’s—Allah, Army and America—all symbiotically intertwined. They blame this trio of forces—religious extremism, military rule, and foreign intervention—for leaving their country perched on the precipice, infamous as an extremely dangerous place and condemned by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton as “a mortal threat to the world”. Such labels are not misplaced, even if South Asia’s potential as a site for nuclear conflagration is left aside: the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies calculated that 2008 saw an astonishing 2,148 sectarian, insurgent and terrorist attacks in Pakistan, a 745 per cent increase from 2005.1
The lawless frontier lands sandwiched between the Indus River and the ineffectual borderline separating Pakistan from Afghanistan are the focus of the so-called “Af–Pak” strategy of President Barack Obama of the United States. Determined to wring some measure of success out of the increasing debacle that is the US military campaign in Afghanistan, Obama has ambitiously staked his presidency on denying Taliban militants their sanctuaries in the Hindu Kush mountains in north-western Pakistan, but the task he faces is daunting. Jihadis of all stripes roam freely among the Pakistani provinces of Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Conservative calculations by the BBC showed a remarkable surge in the strength of Taliban militants in the north-west of the country, with government forces controlling a mere 38 per cent of the NWFP and FATA in mid-May 2009.2
Pakistan is far from being a monolithic Islamic entity. It evinces tremendous religious and political diversity, and has remained fractured along class and ethnic lines from its inception. Disparate ethnic minorities—the Baluchs, Sindhis and Pashtuns—have long pitted themselves against the Punjabi ruling elites for power, even as the poor and the dispossessed that represent the real Pakistan battle the “chattering elite” for the nation’s purse. The perfect encapsulation of Pakistan is provided by historian Parag Khanna: a “tribal federation with weak institutions” with a “sophisticated postcolonial elite”, who despite their urbanity, have shown little aptitude in tackling the most crucial of Pakistan’s issues: the fundamental nature of the state.3 Will they fight for the secular and democratic state envisioned by their forefathers, or will they simply watch as Pakistan’s judicial, political and ideological writ is slowly carved up between the mullahs and the military?
Pakistan’s Jihadi Mosaic
Islam has always been sacrosanct in Pakistan, serving as a source of legitimacy, a potent unifying ideology and a central component in strengthening a distinct Pakistani identity. The birth of Pakistan from India implied that Muslims, by virtue of culture and identity, were incompatible with a Hindu-majority India. Post-independence, Pakistan would identify itself through the prism of resistance towards India, whose perceived aggression threatened its very existence as a bastion of Islam. Religion thus became a potent rallying cry, deepening the nexus between the Islamists, custodians of Pakistan’s religious credentials, and the Army, guardian of the state. The relationship was symbiotic, with the Army providing materiel support to entrench Islamist networks in Pakistan while religion provided a societal glue, ensuring ethnic cohesion and supporting the Army’s political primacy as essential against the “Hindu threat”.
However, not until 1978, with the ascension of military dictator Muhammed Zia-ul Haq, would state-sponsored Islamisation truly arrive as a vehicle for social and political empowerment. With the assistance of generous Saudi contributions, madrassas (religious schools) would proliferate in great numbers to preach a radical Wahabbi–Deobandi ideology, an ultra-puritanical interpretation of Islam that rejects any modern religious compromise. Armed with this jihadi ideology, the progeny of these Deobandi madrassas would battle the Soviet military to a standstill in neighbouring Afghanistan, forming a Pakistan-friendly Taliban client-state. Such state-sanctioned embrace of radical Islam to advance regional aspirations would continue after Zia’s death, particularly on the battlefields of Indian Kashmir, where the number of terrorist attacks grew from 7 in 1988 to a staggering 3,920 by 1992.4 President Pervez Musharaff, who took power in a coup in 1999, embraced this strategy, employing the mujahideen to instigate a mini-war with India that year before the 11 September 2024 terror attacks in the United States forced upon him a policy of “enlightened moderation”, as part of which he promised to sever ties with radical Islamists. Despite these intentions, political exigencies and Musharaff’s aversion to mainstream political parties heightened his dependence on a six-party religious alliance, the MMA (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal). The MMA garnered 11 per cent of the vote in the October 2002 general elections, despite its vociferous advocacy of a theocracy in Pakistan and its support for the Taliban.
Any successful anti-jihadist struggle in Pakistan will thus necessitate breaking the nefarious nexus between the state and radical Islam. However, Pakistani leaders continue to blame the roots of militancy upon the country’s tribal belt in the north-west. Yet Sunni jihadist syndicates in the populous eastern Punjab province are better financed, organised and entrenched than their tribal Pashtun counterparts. Having existed since the 1980s, these syndicates’ large organisational networks of mosques and madrassas help raise funds and materiel, espouse radical ideologies, and indoctrinate members. Foot soldiers from these organisations may be confronted by the Army if they appear on the battlefield, but the networks continue unmolested by the government, providing the real backbone of the insurgency.
The entrenched and intransigent nature of these syndicates was firmly on display in 2007 during the standoff between Musharaff and the Sunni–Deobandi proponents of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid (Red Mosque). Enjoying state patronage since the Afghan jihad, the mosque was tolerated even after its preachings identified state symbols as legitimate targets and it denied Islamic burials to Pakistani soldiers killed fighting the Taliban. Despite these provocations, the government stood by until followers of radical preachers at the mosque abducted four Chinese masseuses, alleging they were prostitutes. The kidnappings threatened Pakistan–China relations and forced Musharaff to order the storming of the seminary. Since then, Taliban warlords have turned their guns on the state and carried out several high-profile attacks, including the assassination of returning former leader Benazir Bhutto. Yet Pakistan has shown little inclination to tackle these radical syndicates, failing to acknowledge that “Talibanization does not start with a military takeover. It starts when there is a Red Mosque in every city and citizens are afraid to stand up to its edicts”.5
Furthermore, the prevailing consensus that treats the complex jihadi mosaic in Pakistan as monolithic is deeply flawed. Extremist Sunni groups in Pakistan, of which the Taliban are just one of many, are fighting a variety of conflicts. These include internal sectarian jihads pitting Sunnis against Shi’ites, wider regional jihads against India and the Western-backed Karzai regime in Afghanistan, as well as global jihads against the West. Yet despite these divergent aims and tactics, there is a strong measure of interdependence and overlap. Not only do militants share the ideology and intention of propagating their Islamic interpretations by force, they share resources and recruits. Piecemeal efforts to tackle the problem are thus doomed to failure, merely opening vacuums for others to exploit.
Some militant groups in Pakistan have explicitly chosen to coexist with the state in their regional quests. The Quetta Shura, the leadership node of the “neo-Taliban”, is headquartered in Baluchistan. Led by Mullah Omar, Afghanistan’s head of state until 2001, they are singularly focused on fighting US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. Similarly, the Soviet-era Afghan mujahideen commanders, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, operate powerful militias that have spoken against the Pakistani state, but as of yet have not turned their guns on it. The Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Pure, or LeT) is one of the largest militant organisations in South Asia, and is currently based near Lahore. It has publicly called for jihad against India, Israel and the United States, and has been implicated in many high-profile terrorist attacks abroad, including the 2008 Mumbai bombings and the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament. But it has been careful not to attack Pakistani targets, shielding itself from a government crackdown (urged by India and the United States), while its efforts to recast itself as a social-welfare organisation help earn social and political legitimacy. The scale of its network was on ample display in the aftermath of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, when the group often operated more efficiently than the Army. And while anti-Western jihadis gain the most attention, Jundallah, a stridently anti-Shi’ite organisation, maintains bases in Baluchistan to strike across into Iran, where it claims to be fighting for the rights of Sunni Muslims. Jundallah is suspected of bombing the Amir-al-Momenin mosque in the south-eastern Iranian city of Zahedan on 28 May 2009. Twenty-five people died in the blast, and 125 were wounded.
Other groups have shown less caution, attacking within Pakistan itself. Punjab-based jihadis, notably the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, operate a vast network of mosques, madrassas and training camps, and are prime “conduits for foot soldiers, arms and funds from Punjab to other parts of the country, including the NWFP and FATA”.6 The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is believed to have loosely fused with al-Qaeda operatives fleeing Afghanistan, and its complicity is seen in many internal attacks, including the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on 28 September 2008, in which fifty-four people were killed. The Jaish-e-Mohammed, another notorious militant group, has an extensive mosque and madrassa network in Punjab and Sindh, and has recently begun to deepen its contacts and presence in the tribal regions. Formed with the help of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), after its leader Maulana Azhar was released from an Indian prison in exchange for a hijacked Indian airliner, the Jaish-e-Mohammed has since broken with the state and has been linked to al-Qaeda. Its subsequent terrorist rap-sheet is long and includes failed attempts on Musharaff’s life, the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and alleged complicity in the 2005 bombings on London’s transport system.
It is however the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) or the Pakistani Taliban, a new generation of Pashtun warlords, that have become the face of radical Islam in Pakistan, expanding their control over numerous “agencies” (administrative divisions) of the NWFP and FATA by violently upsetting the old tribal leadership through co-operation with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and its network. Moreover, the flood of Afghan refugees has indelibly altered the demographic balance in Pakistan’s border areas and contributed to a rise in sectarian violence since 2007. In response to Army counter-offensives, Taliban militants have attacked targets deep within the Punjab, audaciously targeting even the ISI’s headquarters in Rawalpindi and Lahore. The Pakistani response has typically been to broker peace treaties with the Taliban, such as the 2004 Shakai Agreement in South Waziristan and the 2007 Malakand/Swat Agreement. Many have seen this as a desperate gambit by the military to redirect militant attention towards Afghanistan, but as yet only the government has observed the ceasefire terms. The Taliban have used these brief interludes to consolidate their spheres of influence before advancing into other agencies, finally resulting in a miscalculated overextension in April 2009 into the province of Buner, sixty miles from the capital, precipitating a surprisingly weighty counter-offensive by the Army.
Given that each agency of FATA and NWFP has its own “special tribal, geographic, socioeconomic, and religious characteristics” that “affect the level and nature of the militancy in each”,7 it is understandable that the Pakistani Taliban are far from uniform, instead being demarcated along tribal and religious lines, even inside the TTP umbrella. Tribes such as the Mehsuds, Wazirs and Mohmands each have their own leaders, and on the whole the militancy remains localised in its outlook. Furthermore, while many groups have expressed their solidarity with al-Qaeda, this is more a matter of ideological sympathy than tangible co-operation. Each group pursues its own local aspirations, refusing to accept the supremacy of any other. Hakimullah Mehsud attacks NATO convoys through the Khyber Pass while Mullah Maulana Fazlullah commands his Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi group in the NWFP’s Swat valley. Maulvi Nazir in South Waziristan has refused incorporation into the TTP, instead mounting only cross-border attacks against NATO and government troops in Afghanistan. These are just some of the plethora of self-professed Taliban leaders operating in the FATA/NWFP region, and it bodes ill for Pakistan that even now the central government is categorising militant groups as “good” or “bad” depending on their hostility to the state. Fazlullah and TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud have been labelled “bad”, so their days may be numbered, but many others remain poised to fill the gap they leave behind.
The Army
Understanding Pakistan without understanding its Army is impossible. Having ruled the country for over half of its existence, the Army has leveraged Pakistan’s syndrome of insecurity to position itself as the sole guardian of the state, thereby precluding any notion of civilian oversight. While defence imperatives have always been near inviolable, it took Zia’s reign to accelerate the “military colonization of other institutions”,8 elevating officers to plush jobs in the civil administration and the corporate world, guaranteeing the Army many of the trappings of a parallel state. Today, even when governance is officially in the hands of civilians, the Army continues to hold the levers of power, controlling key policy areas including defence, foreign and nuclear strategy, and internal security, as well as overseeing a business conglomerate estimated to encompass 4–10 per cent of Pakistan’s GDP.9 And woe to anyone who treads on these interests, as Pakistan’s new civilian leaders found to their humiliation following the Mumbai bombings, when the Army publicly dashed their offers to make the ISI more amenable to Indian sensitivities.
Historically, however, it has been the dysfunction of Pakistan’s civilian rulers and their legacy of mismanagement that have allowed the Army to hide behind a “doctrine of necessity” in justifying its interventions. Civilian politicians have traditionally floundered, promising “democratic and participatory norms but when it came to putting these into practice” engaging in a “free-for-all power struggle”.10 Sadly, this continues to be the case. Despite the tremendous problems facing Pakistan today, the two mainstream political parties, the incumbent Pakistan People’s Party and the opposition Pakistan Muslim League, remain locked in a bitter battle for control over Punjab province. Given that a successful democratic transition necessitates co-operation across the board, this bickering not only wastes political energies better expended elsewhere, but also furthers the potential for other less democratic forces to fill the political vacuum.
Traditionally, that vacuum has been filled by the Army. Bouts of military rule have undermined Pakistan’s judiciary and political system. The Army often seeks to deny the existence of or ignore genuine internal grievances in Pakistan. Linking dissident elements with vague “foreign influences” was the favoured tactic in dealing with the Baluchs in the 1970s, as it increasingly is with the Pashtuns today. After the humiliating Indian-assisted secession of East Pakistan in 1971, then–prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto temporarily managed to assert civilian primacy over the Army, but defunct policies and institutions eroded public support, eventually allowing the Army to restore its influence. More recently, Musharaff’s mismanagement and the scale of the jihadist insurrection have once more damaged the Army’s prestige and provided a crucial opening for civilians to take the lead. Yet the civilian government has hardly severed the military–militant nexus. Rather, the government appears to advocate a more careful balancing of the Army’s relationships with the militants until the perceived destabilising problem of US intervention passes. Those militants audacious enough to fight the state actively will be combated, while those that continue to advance the Army’s regional geopolitical interests remain untouched.
The reluctance of the Army to re-evaluate its security paradigm raises the most worry about Pakistan. The Army continues to see practically every matter relating to Pakistan’s national identity or security in the light of the country’s vulnerability vis-à-vis India. As long as suspicion of Indian intentions trumps US reassurances, the Army will retain its belief in the efficacy of using radical jihadi outfits as a cost-effective means of redressing power asymmetries with Pakistan’s much larger neighbour.
Furthermore, Pakistanis believe fickle US policy and Washington’s aversion to lengthy commitments will result in a premature US withdrawal from Afghanistan, thus necessitating planning for the post-American era in the region. An India-friendly Karzai government in Afghanistan is clearly unacceptable to Pakistan as it would heighten its fears of “strategic encirclement”. These fears are exacerbated by alleged Indian intervention in troubled Baluchistan, through which the much-heralded “peace pipeline” sending Iranian gas to Asian markets is expected to transit. As a result, 80 per cent of Pakistan’s seven hundred thousand–strong Army remains deployed along the Indian border and redeployments to the tribal provinces so far amount to a meagre brigade of six thousand soldiers.
It is also unfortunate that the heaviest burden in fighting the Taliban falls upon Pakistan’s ill-trained and ill-equipped paramilitary units, notably the Frontier Corps drawn from the Pashtun belt. Ethnic kinships and vulnerability to reprisals make it an unwilling fighting-force, evidenced by its having lost over 70 per cent of its engagements with the Taliban. Moreover, the ISI continues to face accusations of active collusion with militant groups, notably in the July 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. Such collusion is often blamed on “rogue elements” in the ISI, but the latter is 90 per cent composed of uniformed Army officers, and it is highly unlikely that any ISI assistance to the militants could have occurred without the knowledge and tacit support of the highest echelons of the Army. It is also suspicious that the ISI has been able to capture or kill scores of senior al-Qaeda fighters, while seemingly remaining hapless against Afghan Taliban and anti-Indian militant leaders despite its close historical associations with such radicals.
Today, Islamabad faces an India losing interest in the traditional rivalry with Pakistan; New Delhi is more concerned with its great-power ambitions. Certainly, there is glee at Pakistani vulnerability and a wish to push home the advantage, particularly in relieving pressure on Kashmir. But India’s poor and haphazard record in covert operations makes allegations of its meddling in Pakistan implausible. Similarly, Indian–Afghan ties, while substantial and growing, are hardly game-changing. The United States remains the prime power-broker in Afghanistan and should its influence falter, India can hardly dream of propping up the Karzai regime against a resurgent Taliban. Moreover, Indian ambitions necessitate a stable and unitary Pakistan, and India understands that any overt aggression would be the perfect pretext for all Pakistani forces, conventional and irregular, to unite against the traditional enemy, destroying any possibility of peace. These considerations (and operational deficiencies) were probably the primary reasons why India demonstrated its “remarkable restraint” after the December 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Yet having demonised Indian capabilities and intentions well beyond their true potential, Pakistan shows little inclination to divest itself of its “strategic jihadi assets”.
As a result, some of the best-organised militant groups have the power to hijack Pakistan’s external policies and inflame South Asian tensions. The nightmare scenario remains the prospect that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal might fall into the hands of radicals. Many argue that if the Taliban insurgency is sufficiently advanced to take over entire provinces and attack Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistani Army, then the potential for assaults on Pakistani nuclear complexes or on nuclear weapons in transit may not be as far-fetched as previously thought. Some analysts point to the August 2008 attack on an ordnance factory in the city of Wah near Islamabad, where nuclear materials are believed to be stored, as an example of the vulnerabilities of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
Yet while the concern over Pakistan’s nuclear security is understandable, it may be overstated. Nuclear weapons occupy pride of place in Pakistan’s armory and serve as the ultimate deterrent against Indian attack. Indeed, Sumit Ganguly of Indiana University regards the nuclear-weapons programme as one area of Pakistan’s troubled bureaucracy that has been an “oasis of efficiency, competence and success”, an indication of the importance attached to the weapons.11 The Army might regard jihadi proxies as essential to Pakistan’s regional aspirations, but it is extremely unlikely to trust such unreliable elements with the nation’s most vital of deterrents. Consequently, unless the Army begins to fragment, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons will remain secure, and the only real chance of proliferation to extremists comes from disaffected scientists or military personnel. Current screening processes are probably stricter following the A. Q. Khan fiasco,12 but it is the unchecked Islamisation of society that is the most likely long-term trigger for nuclear proliferation.
US Intervention
More than anything else, it has been the US invasion of Afghanistan that has metastasised a dormant insurgency into one that threatens the foundations of Pakistan. The failure to decapitate definitively al-Qaeda or the Taliban allowed their escape into Pakistan, where they found sanctuary among their Pashtun kinsmen and mounted an increasing wave of cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. Consequently, the Obama administration has sought to treat both sides of the Durand border-line as a single theatre under an Af–Pak strategy that closely connects success in Afghanistan to Pakistan. The heart of this policy has been a focus on the Pashtun tribal belt extending through FATA and NWFP, where Osama bin Laden and his top cohorts are believed to be hiding, and where the United States has urged aggressive Pakistani action against the Taliban, both local and Afghani. Key to success in this context is halting the uncontrolled cross-border movement of people, weapons and narcotics that has severely undermined Pakistani sovereignty. The magnitude of this task is staggering, with 390,000 Afghans passing through just one Af–Pak border-crossing during a single two-week period in 2005.13
President Obama has maintained and escalated the policy initiated by his predecessor, George W. Bush, of launching bombardments by unmanned aerial drones of targets in the border-lands. These attacks have ignited tremendous anger in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan, have allowed insurgents to portray themselves as Pashtun nationalists, and have served as a powerful recruiting tool for the Taliban. TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud himself testified to an interviewer, “I traveled three months to recruit and only got 10–15 persons. One bombing by the Americans that killed innocents, and I got hundreds of recruits!”14 Although the drone strikes have grown to become the scourge of mid-level al-Qaeda commanders, they have been deemed counter-productive by many, including US counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen, who in May 2009 said: “they have a negative strategic effect in that they incite Punjabi militancy, which is the biggest problem in Pakistan right now.” Kilcullen also noted that the drone strikes had killed only fourteen al-Qaeda leaders since 2006 as opposed to seven hundred civilians. “That’s a hit rate of two per cent on 98 per cent collateral. It’s not moral.”15
Moreover, the single-minded focus on al-Qaeda, as opposed to addressing the reasons for militancy in the region, is inherently short-term in its outlook, and sends the wrong message to Pakistani planners, who see it as preparatory to a US withdrawal. Should bin Laden be captured or killed, for example, Washington would be able to declare “mission accomplished” and end its involvement in Afghanistan. In essence, Pakistani planners forecast a US failure in South Asia. They see little chance that the United States will be able to change the “jihadi dynamic”, believing rather that it will withdraw after satisfying the American public’s desire for “justice” post-9/11. This assumption of US failure and withdrawal has led Islamabad to resist full commitment to the anti-jihadist struggle, instead preserving its resources and links to militants (through the ISI) so as to be able to resume using them in a post-American period. Demonstrating American will and staying power is the best way to get Pakistan to commit itself to the “winning side”. As yet it believes the jihadists will outlast the Americans.
The roots of Pashtun discontent lie much deeper than anger over Western interventions. As the recipient of the worst of Pakistan’s political and judicial failures, the FATA region is inhabited by some of the poorest and most disenfranchised of all Pakistanis. All socio-economic indicators lie well below the national average, with civil administration and opportunities for social advancement virtually non-existent. Political parties are banned, and the Frontier Crimes Regulation Act stipulates that parliamentary rules do not apply to the tribal belt. Unjust judicial practices such as collective punishment are commonplace.
Compounding Pashtun frustration has been the collapse of the NWFP economy in recent years. Of the 2,254 industries functional in NWFP before 11 September 2001, only 594 operate today, resulting in a contraction of employment from one hundred thousand to eighteen thousand jobs, according to figures provided by Sharafat Mubarak, president of the local chamber of commerce and industry.16 This abject failure of government administration has seen the writ of the state erode steadily, only to be replaced by Islamist ideology and sharia courts that are admired for their decisiveness by a large and alienated pool of youths.
Hence, the unambiguous US support for Pakistan’s heavy-handed counter-offensive against Taliban insurgents in the tribal borderlands—launched late in April 2009 after intense US pressure on Islamabad—is perturbing and reopens the debate over the utility of counter-insurgency as opposed to counter-terrorism. Counter-insurgency is as much a political operation as a military one, and encourages a longer-term perspective. Its adoption in Pakistan would aim at creating a stable, democratic state across the whole country, including its neglected tribal regions. The United States, perhaps, can afford a debate over the extent to which it should expend blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Pakistan can afford no such debate over its own Taliban insurgency, which it must overcome if it is to survive as a unified state. Protecting the population and the provision of basic services, as counter-insurgency envisions, are too fundamental a prerequisite of state sovereignty to be neglected.
The United States can help. Civilian and humanitarian development must take precedence over military goals, and American aid must reflect this shift in priority. Hitherto, there has been a clear bias towards Pakistan’s military in US funding. USAID figures detail how of $12.6 billion in aid between 1954 and 2002, only $3.4 billion came during periods of civilian governance, highlighting Washington’s clear preference for military rule in Pakistan.17 Furthermore, of Washington’s $6-billion expenditure on FATA, 96 per cent has been on military activity and only 1 per cent on development.18 Strengthening civilian law-enforcement will be particularly important as previous Army operations have been wasted by an inability to prevent militants from reclaiming territory, as after the 2008 offensive in NWFP’s Bajaur agency. It will also do much to entrench civilian rule in the tribal areas, reducing the writ there of the military.
In this vein, the bill introduced in May 2009 by senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar promising $7.5 billion over five years to Pakistan to improve its social infrastructure and judicial and educational systems is heartening, although its conditionality threatens to dilute its potency. The myriad of issues that the United States wants addressed include some of Islamabad’s most sensitive concerns, including relations with India and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Better, and less antagonising, would be for Washington to recognise that ending Pakistan’s ties to certain jihadi groups is the most pressing issue and would have knock-on effects in other areas. Understandably, corruption and the possibility that aid might be diverted to the conventional military weigh on American minds, but it should be remembered that legislation to force Pakistani behaviour has historically been counter-productive. The 1990 Pressler Amendment cut off US aid in an attempt to dissuade Pakistan from pursuing its nuclear-weapons ambitions. Pakistan did of course eventually acquire the bomb, and it could be argued that the chief effect of the Pressler Amendment was to increase Pakistan’s mistrust and suspicion of the United States, to the disadvantage of the latter when attempting to combat the Taliban.
The heavy-handed nature of Pakistan’s offensive is also cause for concern, as a villager recently testified to Time magazine: “Whole villages are being destroyed to find one Taliban.” These slash-and-burn tactics strain public support and exacerbate anti-government sentiment, particularly if the displaced return to destroyed livelihoods. In February 2009, the NWFP provincial government agreed a ceasefire with the Taliban, allowing the latter to impose a strict form of sharia law in the Swat valley. Polls shortly afterwards showed that this controversial deal enjoyed 80 per cent support among Pakistanis.19 The harshness of the ensuing Taliban regime in the Swat valley initially prompted many Pakistanis to back the current military campaign, but heavy civilian casualties might see a renewal of public support for a truce with the militants.
Similarly, if Pakistan fails to cope with the worst internal displacement since Partition, it will face a tremendous source of instability. Over three million people are estimated to have joined the refugee exodus, adding to over five hundred thousand displaced from previous operations. Because of the squalid conditions in the official relief camps, only about 30 per cent of the displaced have sought refuge there. Governmental shortcomings, as in previous disasters, are being made up in part by militant groups, which are busily transporting, feeding and sheltering refugees. Naturally, this provides fertile conditions for militant recruiters. However, this catastrophe also provides a tremendous opportunity for the United States to restart its “Chinook diplomacy”, using sizeable and visible humanitarian transfers to roll back anti-American sentiment.
What Pakistan Must Do
But there is a limit to American preponderance, and Islamabad would do well to take the advice of veteran Pakistani analyst Shuja Nawaz: “Let Pakistan do its own job, for its own sake, not because the United States pays it to do so.”20 Dismantling the radical Deobandi networks of madrassas and mosques that preach exhortations to jihad and anti-government sermons will require a proactive approach. Cutting off these principal arteries of extremist funding and recruitment could have a major effect but will necessitate a seismic shift in attitude, whereby the state promotes secularism and democracy at the expense of radical Islam. Just as the horror of Taliban atrocities in Swat—once in control of the valley the group blew up scores of girls’ schools, imposed harsh sharia punishments of executions and floggings, and confined women to their homes—swung public opinion behind the government, so explicitly linking militant doctrine with underdevelopment, impoverishment and violence can help promote zero-tolerance for religious extremism.
Next, the revolving-door of arrests and releases that characterises the state’s detention of militants must end. Abdul Aziz, head of the radical Red Mosque, is a good example. Released in mid-April 2009, within hours he was preaching fiery sermons against the state. Similarly, Hafeez Saeed, leader of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, has been released—to Indian fury because of his group’s suspected involvement in the 2008 Mumbai bombings and other anti-Indian attacks. Cracking down on these more powerful militant groups will undoubtedly unleash a wave of terrorist reprisals in the short term, but that is a necessary price to pay if Pakistan truly desires to be a country free of the scourge of religiously justified barbarism.
Another necessary step is integrating FATA into NWFP, thereby ensuring it comes under the executive control of the regular judicial and legislative system. This would be the most efficient means of enforcing real governance in the region. This essential political reform must go together with the repeal of the Frontier Crimes Regulation Act and of the ban on political campaigning in FATA. The exclusion of party-political activity has been exploited by religious groups, which can spread their message and influence through their mosques. And while utilising pro-government tribal lashkars (militias), as the United States did the “Sunni Awakening” movement in Iraq, is becoming the vogue in Pakistan, the use of such auxiliary forces is symptomatic of the Army’s insufficient troop commitments and is an inherently short-term measure. The troubled border regions need disarmament, not more state-sanctioned private militias. Weapons buy-back programmes, better border policing, and the restoration of law-and-order are steps that would diminish the need for an armed citizenry and help the Army move from internal policing to its true mandate—defending Pakistan against external foes.
Pakistanis, to their credit, have never opted for the barbarity that has descended upon them. They have mobilised in their hundreds of thousands to plead for the democracy and peace that have eluded them and have consistently voted against the preachers of intolerance and hate. Yet the battle for Pakistan’s soul requires more than protests, demonstrations and fine speeches. Repairing the country will demand not just stoicism in the face of barbarity, but a whole-hearted commitment to renewing its institutions and to dispensing with radical Islam in its entirety. Previous generations have shown themselves ill-suited to elevate Pakistan to the ideals and identity that it aspires to, but today Pakistan finds itself at a crossroads, as the journalist Bilal Qureshi recognises in the following stark warning to his countrymen: “Jinnah’s Pakistan versus Ziaul [sic] Haq’s Pakistan—having never quite figured out what we want to be, we now face the very possibility that the Taliban may decide for us.”21
Endnotes
1. Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, “Pakistan Security Report 2008”, Islamabad, PIPS, 2009, p. 3.
2. BBC News, “Pakistan Conflict Map”, 13 May 2024 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8046577.stm].
3. Parag Khanna, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (New York: Random House, 2008), p. 109.
4. See Praveen Swami, India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad (New York: Routledge, 2006).
5. Aryn Baker, “How Pakistan Failed Itself”, Time, 14 May 2009.
6. International Crisis Group, “Pakistan: The Militant Jihadi Challenge”, Asia Report no. 164, Islamabad/Brussels, 13 March 2009, p. 7.
7. Shuja Nawaz, “FATA—A Most Dangerous Place”, Washington, D.C., Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 2009, p. 13.
8. Samuel Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics (Edison, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1978), p. 84.
9. Estimates vary, but for more in-depth examination see Ayesha Sidiqqa, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2007).
10. Hasan Askari Rizvi, “Pakistan: Civil–Military Relations in a Praetorian State”, in The Military and Democracy in Asia and the Pacific, ed. R. J. May and Viberto Selochan (Bathurst, Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 1998), p. 93.
11. Sumit Ganguly, “Nuclear Nonstarter”, Newsweek, 6 May 2009.
12. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist, for many years operated a smuggling ring that sold nuclear-weapons technology and know-how to countries including Libya and North Korea. His network was detected and broken up in 2004. Widely regarded as the father of the Pakistani bomb, he is seen as a national hero in Pakistan and was pardoned by Musharaff in 2004.
13. Daniel A. Kronenfeld, “Afghan Refugees in Pakistan: Not All Refugees, Not Always in Pakistan, Not Necessarily Afghan?”, Journal of Refugee Studies 21, no. 1 (March 2008), p. 54.
14. Shuja Nawaz, “How to Catch Osama”, Foreign Policy, September/October 2008.
15. James Blitz, “Swat Outlook ‘Pretty Bleak’ for Pakistan”, Financial Times (London), 13 May 2009.
16. Hasan Mansoor, “Militancy Cripples Economy in Pakistan’s Northwest”, AFP, 23 May 2009.
17. Hussein Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), p. 324.
18. See Shaun Gregory’s contribution to the roundtable discussion, “What’s the Problem with Pakistan?”, Foreign Affairs, 31 March 2024 [http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/roundtables/whats-the-problem-with-pakistan].
19. International Republican Institute, “IRI Index: Pakistan Public Opinion Survey March 7–30 2009”, Washington, D.C., 11 May 2024 [http://www.iri.org/newsreleases/pdfs/2009%20May%2011%20Survey%20of%20Pakistan%20Public%20Opinion,%20March%207-30,%202009.pdf].
20. Shuja Nawaz, “What Pakistan Doesn’t Need from America”, 17 February 2025 [http://www.shujanawaz.com/index.php?mod=blog&id=94].
21. Bilal Qureshi, “Cowering Before the Taliban”, Dawn (Pakistan), 18 April 2009.
