US Redefines Relationship with Pakistan
HAS Admiral Mike Mullen, who retires next month after two terms as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, become a tad “demob happy”—or is America engaged in a serious, some would say overdue, attempt to redefine its relationship with Pakistan? Nobody has put more effort than Admiral Mullen (pictured above left) into nurturing the fractious but vital military-to-military relationship between the two countries. When I saw him in Washington, DC late last year, America’s most senior military officer told me that he had travelled to Pakistan more than 20 times since 2008 for meetings with General Assfaq Kayani (pictured above right), Pakistan’s top soldier. Despite the many frustrations he had encountered on the way, Admiral Mullen remained determined to see General Kayani not only as a man whom he could do business with but also as someone with whom he had established warm personal ties. Admiral Mullen acknowledged that dealing with the Pakistanis was extremely tricky, but he praised the army’s efforts against the Pakistan Taliban in South Waziristan in early 2010 and said that America had no option other than to keep working at a relationship which had been characterised by fault on both sides.
But during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on September 22nd, Admiral Mullen castigated the role of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency in sponsoring the Haqqani Network, close allies of the Afghan Taliban, which, he said, had been behind a spate of recent attacks. In written testimony, he alleged:
The fact remains that the Quetta Shura [Taliban] and the Haqqani Network operate from Pakistan with impunity. Extremist organizations serving as proxies of the government of Pakistan are attacking Afghan troops and civilians as well as US soldiers... For example, we believe the Haqqani Network – which has long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani government and is, in many ways, a strategic arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency – is responsible for the September 13th attacks against the U.S. Embassy in Kabul... There is ample evidence confirming that the Haqqanis were behind the June 28th attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and the September 10th truck bomb attack that killed five Afghans and injured another 96 individuals, 77 of whom were US soldiers.
Admiral Mullen was not revealing anything that most people who follow these things did not already know. Ever since the wars against the Soviets, Jalaluddin Haqqani and his clan along the Afghan border with Pakistani Waziristan have maintained close ties with the Pakistan military and an unbroken succession of Pakistani governments. As Anatol Lieven argues in his recent book, “Pakistan: A Hard Country”, the Pakistan security establishment’s support for the formidable Haqqanis has nothing to do with Islamist ideology and everything to do with the old (exaggerated) fear of India using Afghanistan as a base from which to support ethnic revolt in Pakistan. From that point of view, nothing has changed.
What has changed is that since the further souring of relations between America and Pakistan following the humiliating (for the latter) raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout, both sides have been using increasingly blunt language about each other. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is intense, while American officials are no longer able to button up over what they see as Pakistani double-dealing. Admiral Mullen was right to say that in supporting groups such as the Haqqanis “the government of Pakistan, particularly the Pakistani Army, continues to jeopardize Pakistan's opportunity to be a respected and prosperous nation with genuine regional and international influence”. But on the other hand, he knows that there can be no successful (or even partially successful) conclusion to the mission in Afghanistan unless Pakistan can be somehow persuaded to see its strategic interests differently. Admiral Mullen says that America must “reframe” its relationship with Pakistan, but resist the temptation to “disengage” from it. That is easier said than done. But despite everything, Admiral Mullen’s successor, General Martin Dempsey, will soon be racking up the air miles on the long flight to Islamabad.
:pkf