The Pakistan army's Af-Ind strategy

There are two worldviews of Pakistan: as victim and as villain. The first view sees Pakistan as Chaos-istan. A bankrupt failed state torn by sectarian strife, teetering on the precipice and no control over terrorists. Its implosion would mean Islamic fundamentalists would spill across its borders or worse, get control of its nuclear weapons. The other more studied view is of the state as villain. From General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, the Pakistan army holds the country in its grip like a parasite holds its paralysed host. The army controls all aspects of foreign policy even as it executes its vision of grand strategy-parity with India and continuing a state of perpetual animosity that guarantees its survival. Pakistan is the 21st century version of Prussia. An army with a country. It is also the only place on earth where the military has full control over all strategic programmes including the production of nuclear weapons and its delivery systems like cruise and ballistic missiles.

'The risk of an Islamist takeover in Pakistan is a myth invented by the Pakistani military to consolidate its hold on power. In fact, religious political partiesand militant organizations are manipulated by the Pakistani Army to achieve its own objectives, domestically and abroad. The army, not the Islamists, is the real source of insecurity on the subcontinent,' writes Frederic Gare of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in "Pakistan: the myth of Islamist peril".

There are several other utterly misplaced notions of so-called 'rogue elements' within the Pakistan army acting independently in the neighborhood. In fact, Indian policymakers sometimes use the term ISI so loosely as to indicate it is some kind of detached, independent entity. "The Pakistan army is not dysfunctional - it is in fact overfunctional. Where people are undernourished, the army is well fed; where people are illiterate, the army is well educated; where people are crowded in slums, the army has lots of green grass at its disposal," says a paper by Ann Wilkens of the Afghan Analysts Network.

If it is an economic basket case that is increasingly beginning to look like North Korea minus the Kim dynasty. This would not be a problem for the sub-continent if say the army chose to sit within its borders and feed off the fat of its people. But this isn't the case. The Pakistan army has what you could call an Af-Ind plan: dominate Afghanistan and keep India in check. The training and cross-border infiltration of irregular forces form an important part of this twin-thrust plan.

The history of the Pakistan army is replete with instances of its use of irregulars to alter geopolitics, perhaps more than any country in the 20th century. It was first the tribal raiders which invaded the vacillating princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in 1948. The irregulars reappeared in J&K in 1965 as part of Field Marshal Ayub Khan's Operation Gibraltar. Backed by the CIA, the Pakistan army's ISI brought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan to its knees by arming and sheltering the Mujahideen. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1988, the Pakistan army created the Taliban, (literally 'students'), bands of young men from madrassahs which it armed and funded to restore order in a fractious country. The idea was to create a safe route for trade with the emerging Central Asia and to exert leverage on a weak neighbor. Like the eponymous sci-fi monster, the Taliban Frankenstein got a life of its own and decided to shelter a Saudi Arabian fugitive Osama bin Laden with a radical perspective on the clash of civilisations. In 1999, when the nuclear tests by both countries shut the doors on conventional conflict, the 'irregulars' (actually the Pakistan Northern Light Infantry) re-appeared as part of General Pervez Musharaff's ambitious plan to alter the boundaries of J&K.

Terror is now an instrument of Pakistan's state policy. Militants give the ISI a cover of plausible deniability. So how does this fit into the Obama adminstration's Af-Pak plan to swiftly exit US forces from the afghan quagmire? Af-Pak's fundamental precepts was to get the Pakistan army to act against militants operating from safe havens on its soil. The idea was to prevent Al Qaeda from regrouping and planning another 9/11 type attack on the continental United States. A hammer and anvil operation with NATO forces in Afghanistan forming the anvil. The inducement- $ 7 billion Kerry-Lugar- Berman civilian assistance package. And a further $ 2 billion in military assistance.

The trouble is GHQ Rawalpindi finds Af-Pak is at variance with the Pakistan army's Af-Ind strategy particularly since General Kayani openly declared the Pakistan army was India-centric.

So while the army swiftly moved in to oust the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (the so-called Pakistan Taliban which was directly attacking the army) from South Waziristan, they are reluctant to act against the Haqqani network. Pakistan army officials regard the deadliest Taliban outfit headed by anti-Soviet Mujahid Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin as "strategic assets". This network would evidently be useful for Pakistan to exert leverage on Kabul after a drawdown of US forces post 2011. A weak puppet regime in Kabul is in Pakistan's strategic interest.

The ISI also wields considerable influence over the Quetta Shura, the conglomerate of Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Omar. A senior Taliban leader interviewed by a British researcher confirmed that the links between the Taliban and the Pakistan army's ISI were "as clear as the sun in the sky." This has led to the Janus-faced situation of Pakistan running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. "Our friend is also our enemy," says an exasperated Afghan security official of this paradoxical war.

A former senior Afghan security official observed: 'For fighters, when they move to fight it's essential that they have logistical support. They need vehicles, fuel and food. They need ammunition. They need money and guns. They need a hospital to take their casualties to for treatment. So who is providing these things to the Taliban if it's not Pakistan?' These are statements that could well have come from a member of India's security establishment over the past two decades.

The Taliban proxies are also useful for the Pakistan army to keep India's economic clout in Afghanistan in check. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, India has pumped in $ 1.2 billion into Afghanistan's reconstruction. The Pakistan army sees an India-friendly regime like Hamid Karzai's as the opening up of a second front in its rear which it can ill-afford. There have been three major attacks against Indian interests. A July 2008 vehicle borne suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul killed 60 persons including the defence attachÃ© Brigadier RD Mehta and an IFS officer Venkateshwara Rao. A February 26, 2010 suicide attack that killed 10 Indians including two army doctors was the third attempt at forcing India to shrink its footprint in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan army has turned itself into a kind of single-window clearance for the world to deal with the Taliban in a post US withdrawal scenario. This comes even as Pakistan lives off dole.

"Pakistan has become a rentier state using its strategic significance to extort aid from the international community on the basis that it is "too dangerous and too important to fail" " says C Christine Fair.

Since it stoked the embers of Sikh separatism in the Punjab in the 1980s, Pakistan has used terror as an instrument of state policy against India. General Mirza Aslam Beg's strategy of 'Offensive-Defence' posited the army waging covert warfare against India and using its covert nuclear capability to shield itself from any conventional retaliation by its larger neighbor. This strategy continues Under General Kayani, who was DG-ISI between 2004 and 2007. Under Kayani, the Pakistan army never has to overthrow the civilian administration. It is already in control and free to pursue its Af-Ind strategy.

In February 2010, Admiral Dennis Blair the US Director of National Intelligence confirmed: 'Islamabad's conviction that militant groups are an important part of its strategic arsenal to counter India's military and economic advantages'. There is plenty of evidence for this. Statements made by 26/11 attack scout David Coleman Headley revealed that not only were officers of the Pakistan army and its nefarious Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) fully aware of the plot to attack Mumbai, they even actively participated in it. Raised to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Lashkar-e-Toiba was re-directed by the ISI to wage war against India in Jammu and Kashmir. In later years, it was used to expand the scope of the conflict into the Indian heartland as part of its 'war of a thousand cuts'.

India's dilemma is that of security person who cannot shoot at a terrorist holding a gun to a victim's head. Not talking with the democratically elected civilian administration risks alienating the peaceniks and strengthen the hands of the Pakistan army. On the other hand, talking to the civilian administration has no guaranteed outcome because the real power emanates from GHQ Rawalpindi. The only other option is to negotiate in the hope that shots are never fired. "Once Pakistan moves away from this terror-induced coercion, we will be happy to engage with them," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at a joint press conference with US president Barrack Obama in New Delhi. India has also reiterated its commitment to a strong and stable Pakistan is in India's interests. The trouble is, with General Kayani and the Pakistan army firmly in the saddle, there seems to be little chance of an end to terror-induced coercion.

(This piece was written for the annual issue of the Border Security Force's Borderman in November 2010)

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/45.grare.final.pdf

Pakistan: The Myth of an Islamist Peril

Must read for folks who believe that Pakistan is at risk of falling to ragheads at any moment

He should be very careful with his comparison of Pakistan to Prussia, considering what eventually happened to Prussia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia#The_Free_State_of_Prussia_in_the_Weimar_Republic

After World War I, and the abdication of the German King, Prussia became a free state, took on a democratic constitution, and was a largely peaceful and liberal nation.

After the Nazis took power in Germany, they then used stealth and treachery to annex Prussia, crushing its democracy. And then, after the war, Prussia became the only formerly liberal democratic nation that the US ever abandoned completely, allowing its breakup, and its people to either be killed or driven out by Russia.

Those people who are descended from Prussians now live in a quiet diaspora around the world, but they will never forgive America for abandoning them. For its part, US schools don’t talk about Prussia very much.

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