Pakistan Is Not America’s ‘War Theater’

There is no doubt left that we are fast approaching a point where some form of military intervention will become a necessity, in a way that is diametrically different from the past. We, the civilians, will need to borrow the organizational capabilities of the Pakistani military to help civilians in power reshape the Pakistani state domestically and in terms of foreign policy.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—There is not a single Pakistani political party with an organized strategic research and analysis activity that could tell the new U.S. government in an intelligent way what Pakistan wants from the United States.

Outside powers come in, blackmail our dictators and democrats, and disturb our stability in the name of democracy and freedom and there is no one to stop them. Today we have a government in power thanks to an arrangement brokered by a third-tier Washington bureaucrat, Richard Boucher.

And now, the United States is determined to bring the Afghan and the Iraq mess to Pakistan and we have a bunch of our own who are more excited about this than Uncle Sam himself. There is not a single Pakistani visionary institution that can articulate and project a bright future for Pakistan. The task of deciding Pakistan's future has been left to self-styled 'Pakistan experts' in U.S. think tanks who sit thousands of kilometers away and pretend to know our country better than we do.

The military remains the only institution with systemized policy analysis capabilities. But it won't intervene in the current Pakistani mess and rightfully so. Let the present political elite, a closed club of vested interest and elitism, be exposed for their true skill. The only downside to this experiment is that the Pakistani state may not have the luxury of experimentation this time, considering the pressing internal flaws in the system and the foreign-inspired destabilization and military threat on multiple levels.

Yet there is no doubt left that we are fast approaching a point where some form of military intervention will become a necessity, in a way that is diametrically different from the past. We, the civilians, will need to borrow the organizational capabilities of the Pakistani military to help civilians in power reshape the Pakistani state domestically and in terms of foreign policy. A good sign is that this state of crisis and the glaring absence of accomplished political leadership have spurred scores of educated Pakistanis to step in to fill the void. One such activity is a paper that a group of concerned middle class technocrats from different parts of the country are voluntarily coauthoring, laying out an actionable roadmap for a 'smart coup' that seeks to harness the capabilities of all Pakistanis, civilian and military, to reorganize the state and renew the trust of its citizens.

But our biggest challenge is external. The domestic mess is something we can handle. But we can't stabilize Pakistan without extricating our country from other people's wars and intrigues.

It is not the Taliban but the Pakistani sustenance for the American occupation of Afghanistan that will result in irreparable damage to the structure of the Pakistani state. The multiple insurgencies inside Pakistan are not entirely local and have a fair element of foreign inspiration and organization. We didn't have well trained and well financed insurgencies when the Taliban were in the region since 1996. These insurgencies – from Gwadar to Swat –are a product of events taking place in 2005 and onwards, and precisely since the Americans landed in Afghanistan and let that country become a meeting point of anti-Pakistan forces in the region. Unfortunately, some Pakistani officials continue to absolve Washington of any blame and argue that this had happened by accident and not by design. The evidence shows otherwise. The American missile and drone attacks in our tribal belt will result in a massive Pashtun rebellion against Pakistan eventually. The Americans know this. The Americans are also aware of how an entire Pakistani province, Balochistan, is being destroyed from the outside. The pressures of sustaining America's political and military failures in Afghanistan are fast pushing Pakistan into a Yugoslavia-like situation. Pakistan's economic losses far exceed any amount of American aid we have received so far. But the most worrying part is that influential elements in the United States are alone responsible for the biggest demonization campaign against Pakistan in recent times.

We need a political leadership in Islamabad that can convincingly tell President Obama that his country does not get to designate our country a 'war theater' at will. We also need to tell U.S. officials to stop making exaggerated claims about new sophisticated threats to American emanating from the caves and mountains of western Pakistan.

The new U.S. policymakers need to know that Pakistan has legitimate interest in seeing a friendly government in Kabul, and in clearing the Afghan soil of anti-Pakistan elements. Washington should be told that Pakistan will not accept empowering India in Afghanistan to protect American interests at the expense Islamabad's legitimate security and strategic concerns.

Ahmed Quraishi | January 27th 2009