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Saturday, March 4, 2023
A Dangerous Game: Pakistan’s Ruling Class Plays Politics as Terrorism Brews
By Ali Malik
It is time for Pakistan’s political and military establishment to wake up and reconcile with the fact that they can’t negotiate their way to peace.The grandstanding of Pakistani politicians and their inability to negotiate are consistent elements of the nation’s politics. But the elites’ penchant for prioritizing political gain over the welfare of the state threatens to impose more self-inflicted pain on Pakistan’s most significant asset: its provincial security infrastructure. While Pakistan’s municipal and provincial security forces are resilient, no institution can be expected to heal, much less thrive, as it encounters one devastating trauma after another. As if biblical floods, cyclical debt, and an energy crisis weren’t enough, an old enemy has reared its head once more to threaten Pakistan’s precarious security situation: the Pakistani Taliban (TTP). It is time for Pakistan’s political and military establishment to wake up and reconcile with the fact that they can’t negotiate their way to peace. The state must wage war against the Pakistani Taliban and their ideology before they inflict more violence on Pakistan. On January 30, an estimated 100 people, primarily police officers, lost their lives at the hands of a TTP suicide bomber in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, with over 217 injured. On February 17, the TTP targeted the office of the Karachi police chief; four people were killed and 19 were injured. This new wave of bold terrorist activity follows a breakdown in talks between the Pakistani political and security establishment and the TTP last November. The decision to negotiate rather than destroy the Pakistani Taliban was undertaken under the auspices of both the former Prime Minister Imran Khan, and, as new rumors indicate, former Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. Khan and Bajwa’s rationale for engaging with the TTP is excruciatingly simple: They are Pakistani citizens and would like to come back to the country. In a recent address, Khan outlined that “when the Afghan war ended… some 30,000 to 40,000 Pakistani tribal fighters wanted to come back… The PTI government had two options: either kill all of them or reach an agreement with them and allow them to settle in the province.”While this policy holds a veneer of practicality, it was doomed to fail. The TTP, emboldened by their peers’ victory in Afghanistan, would not accept anything less than their own Shariah haven. The group is both fundamentally opposed to and ideologically driven to eradicate the concept of a constitutional Pakistan. Yet the Pakistani military apparatus and the former PTI government under Khan believed that they could overlook this philosophy and attempted to engage the terrorist group in dialogue.Predictably, talks between the government and the TTP broke down as the TTP refused to drop its extreme demands, calling for revoking the merger of Pakistan’s tribal areas (the former FATA) with Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, along with releasing jailed TTP members and enforcing Shariah law within their historical areas of influence along the Afghan border. The Pakistani state refused, and talks were placed on hold as Khan’s government was ousted from office. It is precisely this cycle of pointless negotiations that not only entertains the far-fetched demands of terrorist groups but emboldens and legitimizes them as valid political entities. As the never-ending political power struggle took place in Islamabad, the TTP capitalized on the distraction and leveraged its clout to increase the size of its ranks and, subsequently, its lethality. The TTP found a willing partner in Pakistan’s separatist Baloch insurgency, raising the number of groups that have merged under its ever-growing umbrella to 22. As the old adage goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Last year, the group and its affiliates were responsible for at least 150 attacks in Pakistan, primarily in the northwest of the country. The current coalition government has taken a different approach to the TTP but is burdened with power politics and lacks an electoral mandate. During an interview last month, Pakistan’s Federal Human Rights Minister Riaz Pirzada claimed that the current government and military are divided on continuing negotiations with the TTP. The ruling coalition’s leadership is reluctant to continue to engage the militant group the same way as before, but has no power to command the generals in Rawalpindi to fight them. Islamabad is burdened with myriad challenges and, as of now, has only been capable of laying the blame on the former PTI government for allowing the TTP to resettle in Pakistan in the first place. The TTP’s recent attacks on provincial police forces indicate a dangerous shift in their political strategy. The group has now realized that if it were to attack military institutions, it would face the full might of the Pakistani military as opposed to their preferred approach that prioritizes negotiations. But in an effort to gain leverage and force the government to restart negotiations with the state, the TTP has resolved to target police institutions instead. This not only damages local law enforcement infrastructure but erodes the morale of a desperately underfunded public good. While the military has faced its fair share of terrorist violence, it is municipal and provincial police forces that are bearing the brunt of such attacks. Shortly after the deadly bombing in Peshawar, a rare protest was staged by the Peshawar police force requesting that the state do more to protect them and to fully investigate the lapse in security. Islamabad and Rawalpindi must be united in both mission and resolve to eliminate the Pakistani Taliban. The two disparate entities must send a signal to the terrorists that their efforts are futile. But most importantly, the center must signal to municipal and provincial police forces that they are supported by the state and that those responsible for these attacks will be held accountable. It is only the military that has the capacity to eliminate this threat. But the military will not willingly wage this war nor listen to the politicians in Islamabad unless the political elites unite in calling for eliminating the TTP. A united political front, backed by the will of the people, has the potential to compel the generals in Rawalpindi to act. Pakistan will only have a chance at pursuing prosperity when both the political and military elite realize that serving the interests of the state is in their personal interests.
https://thediplomat.com/2023/03/a-dangerous-game-pakistans-ruling-class-plays-politics-as-terrorism-brews/
#Pakistan - The Biden administration’s two-track Pakistan policy misses the mark
Madiha Afzal
The U.S.-Pakistan relationship has weathered several bumps in the road over the past two years, including, most prominently, the fallout from the Afghanistan withdrawal and the Taliban takeover. The Biden administration has now settled on a bureaucratic division of labor in its policy toward Pakistan: a lack of engagement from the White House; robust, well-defined engagement from the State Department; and a continuation of long-standing military and defense ties. The new equilibrium is different from the past: President Joe Biden is the only U.S. president in recent memory not to have engaged with a Pakistani prime minister (neither Imran Khan nor his successor, Shehbaz Sharif). The bilateral relationship is also notably no longer centered solely around America’s interests in Afghanistan, as it was prior to August 2021: there is an effort by both sides to broaden its base.
Unfortunately, the overall relationship is weak at best. Here are the factors that have shaped the relationship over the last two years:
THE AFGHANISTAN FACTOR
At the beginning of the Biden administration, Pakistan recognized the need to redefine the bilateral relationship, until then focused on Afghanistan, as the U.S. withdrawal from that country drew close. Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government pitched the need for a comprehensive relationship with the United States, one based on “geo-economics” — Pakistan’s catch-all for trade, investment, and connectivity — as opposed to a relationship focused on security concerns. The Biden administration wasn’t responsive, and the relationship got off to a cold start. At the time, the United States was focused on Afghanistan and the need for Pakistan to exercise pressure on the Taliban to push it toward an intra-Afghan peace. Then, as the Taliban undertook a systematic military takeover of Afghanistan while the United States withdrew, the relationship cooled further. In the months afterward, although Pakistan helped in evacuations from Kabul and in taking in Afghan refugees, the ignominy of the withdrawal — that the war ended with a clear Taliban victory and in view of Pakistan’s close relationship with the Taliban — pushed relations to a relative low point.
NO PHONE CALL
Biden has not called a Pakistani prime minister in his more than two years in office. Biden neither mentioned Pakistan during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, nor showed any interest in engaging with the country at that point. The lack of a phone call drew considerable attention in Pakistan during Biden’s first year in office, and was ostensibly one of the reasons Khan declined the administration’s invitation to attend the first Summit for Democracy in December 2021. Even Pakistan’s catastrophic summer flooding in 2022, which elicited a robust U.S. government response, did not prompt a Biden call. Yet in October 2022, seemingly out of the blue, Biden mentioned Pakistan in strongly negative terms at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reception, describing it as “what I think is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world: Pakistan. Nuclear weapons without any cohesion.” This statement did not go over well in Pakistan, prompting a bit of a walk back from the administration, though Biden may have really meant what he said.
Initially, the complete lack of White House engagement with Pakistan was somewhat of a puzzle. Now though, it seems it’s White House policy — reflecting the fact that Pakistan is not a priority. For Biden, it might draw from a desire to put Afghanistan behind him — and with it, its neighbor. Throughout Biden’s many years of watching the Afghanistan war from the Senate and then as vice president, Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban had always been a source of tension.
PAKISTANI POLITICS
In the spring of 2022, America was drawn into Pakistan’s domestic politics in a sudden, unfavorable manner: Khan blamed his ouster via a vote of no confidence on a U.S. “regime change” conspiracy, without evidence — a narrative that stuck among his supporters. In recent months, Khan has stepped back from the U.S. conspiracy narrative and has more directly blamed the Pakistani military for the fall of his government — the actual story. Still, the narrative complicated the U.S. relationship with Pakistan for months in 2022, as Khan’s supporters considered any engagement between the United States and the new government in Islamabad to be confirmation of the conspiracy.
TIES WITH STATE, AND BROADENING THE RELATIONSHIP
Although the White House remained silent, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Khan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, spoke several times and met in New York in September 2021. Spring 2022 began a period of robust engagement from the State Department, a mini reset of sorts that has focused on expanding the relationship. In March 2022, the United States and Pakistan launched a year-long campaign marking 75 years of relations. In April, the new U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Donald Blome, was sworn in. In May, Pakistan’s new foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, met Blinken in New York. The U.S. special representative for Commercial and Business Affairs, Dilawar Syed, visited Pakistan in July to “strengthen the economic partnership and bilateral trade” between both countries. Also in July, the two governments launched a health dialogue. Soon after Pakistan’s flooding disaster hit in August, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power visited the country, documenting both the catastrophe as well as U.S. relief assistance; the United States has announced more than $200 million in flood assistance. Bhutto Zardari and Blinken met again in September when the 75th anniversary of U.S.-Pakistan relations was officially celebrated at the State Department. The relationship between the two counterparts appears constructive; it has focused on relief and recovery after Pakistan’s calamitous summer of flooding and increasing cooperation on economic matters.
Engagement and diplomacy continue apace on other fronts: State Department Counselor Derek Chollet and a delegation of senior U.S. government officials visited Pakistan in February 2023 in support of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. The Pakistani commerce minister visited Washington the same month to hold a meeting under the U.S.-Pakistan Trade and Investment Framework — held after seven years — with United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai. Also in February, a U.S. congressional delegation led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer visited Pakistan to discuss the “broad-based partnership that includes trade, investment, regional security, and flood recovery efforts.” Pakistan has also been the single largest recipient of COVID vaccines from the United States since 2021.
DEFENSE AND MILITARY TIES
The military leadership in Pakistan had a major transition last fall, with the chief of army staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, leaving his post after six years (following an extension). He visited Washington in October before his term ended and met Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. And the commander of United States Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, traveled to Pakistan to reaffirm security ties after the new chief of army staff, General Asim Munir, was sworn in.
The long-standing defense and security relationship continues (though it is no longer the entirety of the bilateral relationship). In September, the U.S. government notified Congress of a proposed $450 million foreign military sale to maintain Pakistan’s fleet of F-16 fighter jets. The security relationship also includes a key focus on counterterrorism and intelligence that presumably encompasses an over-the-horizon arrangement on Afghanistan — but that specific aspect remains shrouded in secrecy. CIA Director Bill Burns visited Pakistan twice in 2021: once in an unannounced visit in April and then again after the withdrawal in September.
WHAT LIMITS THE RELATIONSHIP
Pakistan is in a very different place than when its government pitched a geo-economic reset in early 2021. It is now mired in a political and economic crisis, veering perilously close to default. For the time being, its spiraling economic situation and domestic problems limit its attractiveness as a U.S. partner.
Distrust born out of the last four decades of the U.S.-Pakistan-Afghanistan triangle will take time to overcome, despite both sides’ attempts in the last year at broadening the relationship. And while Afghanistan no longer defines the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, the Biden administration’s approach to its other neighbors, China and India, does restrict it. The administration’s intense competition with China, Pakistan’s long-standing ally; its growing partnership with India, Pakistan’s foe; and its focus on the Indo-Pacific (which excludes Pakistan) has led to a priority shift away from Pakistan. Pakistan has long said it doesn’t want its relationships with the United States and China to be seen as zero-sum, and the United States has acknowledged that it doesn’t see its relationships with India and Pakistan as zero-sum. Yet, the American approach to these two Pakistani neighbors does seem to, at this point, impose constraints on the bounds of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.
This need not be the case: As I have long argued, Pakistan, the fifth-largest country in the world and a nuclear-armed nation, ought to be seen by the United States on its own terms and not through the prism of its neighbors. A cold shoulder risks pushing Pakistan further toward China — which is neither an inevitable nor desirable outcome for the United States. What’s more, Pakistan’s multiple crises — political instability, economic malaise, and rising insecurity — warrant greater American engagement, not less, and certainly more than the current administration’s policy of fractured engagement from the United States.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2023/03/02/the-biden-administrations-two-track-pakistan-policy-misses-the-mark/