Pakistan should heed Husain Haqqani's urgent message of reform

By: Stephen Kinzer

Cutting military spending and focusing on domestic issues could keep Pakistan from becoming a 'nuclear-armed Somalia'

Just four months after taking power, new leaders in Iran have begun a highly promising effort to pull their country out of its isolation and, perhaps, transform it into a stabilizing rather than a destabilizing force. There is little prospect that Saudi Arabia or Israel, which also feed regional tensions, will follow suit. Yet some dare to hope that Pakistan might.

The Middle East and surrounding regions are in a period of historic flux. Iran's new policies, upheaval in Egypt, horrific warfare in Syria, state collapse in Libya, and intensifying terror in Iraq reflect the collapse of old structures. One of those structures, in place for more than half a century, has been a Pakistan that falls steadily deeper into poverty while spending huge amounts on weaponry, fomenting terror in neighboring countries, and deepening its self-destructive obsession with imagined security threats.

Pakistan stands at an intriguing crossroads. A new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, took office in June. General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani, the army chief of staff who nourished Pakistan's ties with Islamic militants, has just retired. The mercurial chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, will retire this week. Meanwhile, Pakistanis are expressing increasing disgust with their political system. In several parts of the country they have taken to the streets to protest murderous attacks by militants who count on clandestine support from within the government.

Pakistan is not about to crack down on terror groups or cut its military budget in order to build roads, schools and hospitals. Yet one prominent Pakistani, in a new book and a series of speeches, is urging it to do just that. He is offering a stark alternative to policies that threaten to turn Pakistan into what he calls "a nuclear-armed Somalia".

Most Pakistani politics is conducted within a narrow spectrum. Politicians spend much time debating the best ways to fight India, or take Kashmir, or dominate Afghanistan, or punish the United States for its real and imagined sins. Now comes a voice arguing that these debates are meaningless in a country that cannot care for its own citizens and is fast becoming a pariah state.

It is the voice of Husain Haqqani, a wily veteran of Pakistani politics who served as his country's ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011. During those years, Pakistani-American relations were fraught with tension and mistrust. Haqqani had to deal with fallout from the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and with the arrest of a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, for the murder of two Pakistanis. His diplomatic skill and dense web of contacts in Washington helped contain these crises and maintain a semblance of partnership in the increasingly poisoned US-Pakistan relationship.

Now Haqqani has published a book exploring the roots of this relationship and explaining how it became so toxic. Its arresting title is Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding. As a trenchant and unsparing account of how these two countries came to mistrust each other so deeply, despite pretending to be friends, this book is unmatched. Its implicit message – the need to remake Pakistan – is even more provocative.

Haqqani has been travelling around the United States, where he now lives, preaching this message. Officially he is on a book tour, but it feels like something more. Haqqani is laying out a radically different path for his homeland. His campaign is important not only to Pakistanis, but to all who are terrified by threats to global security posed by what Liam Fox, a former United Kingdom defense secretary, recently called "the most dangerous country in the world". In his speeches, Haqqani begins by rattling off statistics – 43% of Pakistani children do not attend school – and recounting episodes that reflect the barbarism into which his country has fallen, like the murder of health workers giving polio vaccines. Then he describes Pakistan's role in training Islamic militants who have wreaked havoc in Afghanistan, India, and within Pakistan itself. His critique of obtuse and delusional American policies toward Pakistan – he blames the US for helping to undermine Pakistani democracy – is devastating. He told students at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies on Tuesday: The United States has to find some other way to deal with Muslims besides either killing them or taking them out to lunch.

Haqqani concludes with his prescription for Pakistan: it sounds like common sense to many outsiders, but in Pakistan it is nothing short of revolutionary. To begin with, Haqqani wants his country to stop supporting militant armies and terror groups. He urges a reversal of attitudes toward India, which he sees not as a threatening enemy but as a potential partner. Domestically, he wants the government to redefine the meaning of security away from military prowess and toward the development of a modern society.

He said in his Watson Institute speech:

We are a warrior state, and we need to become a trading state.

This message finds applause in the United States, and "Magnificent Delusions" has been well received in India. Remarkably, reviews in Pakistan have also been favorable. Haqqani has succeeded in widening the bounds of political discourse in his homeland. No Pakistani politician, however, is yet ready to campaign for high office on such a radical platform. In his book and speeches, Haqqani does not mention the possibility that he might do so himself. He is well known in Pakistan; may have as many friends there as enemies; is a Sunni married to a Shia woman from a prominent family; and has both a communal and regional base. Whether such an erudite cosmopolitan would be comfortable crisscrossing his country in an armored car, or campaigning while wearing a bulletproof vest, is far from clear. Even if Haqqani is not ready to return and preach his urgent message in Pakistan, however, Pakistanis need to hear it. If they do not, worse times lie ahead for them and their neighbors.