This dance should end now

This dirty dance must end now. Every time our security policymakers land the country into the centre of a storm, they hurriedly usher in the politicos to bail themselves out. To give such an event proper context, public opinion is deliberately incensed. Fear is lashed up and morphed into jingoism. People are asked what sacrifices they are willing to make to save their motherland. War anthems are played.
In this backdrop civilian political leaders are marched in and fib-tales fed to them. Questioning the veracity of information being provided by the khaki guardians in such circumstance is heresy if not treachery. The setting and the quorum allows for nothing other than issuance of platitudes. The khakis walk away with a banal resolution comprising broad ideals and wishes, which can mean anything they wish or nothing at all.
At the end of the moot the handout is not a new policy guideline to shepherd national security policy but public support and popular mandate for khaki leaders to be cashed out in negotiating deals with the Americans. We witnessed this sequence during the Kerry-Lugar debate, the Raymond Davis sellout, the Osama bin Laden disaster, and most recently after Mullen’s allegation that the ISI is complicit with the Haqqani network.
Enough already. Are APCs and joint parliamentary sessions merely meant to double-check which side our people would root for, if the US elected to attack Pakistan? How will radicalising Pakistanis and drumming up anti-Americanism create more policy options for our engagement with the US? And if we wish to change our terms of engagement, who will decide how the serious gap between the interests and expectations of the US and Pakistan will be bridged?
Confronted with a crisis of credibility and wishing to diffuse the spectre of international isolation, will the APC proceedings or disclaimers issued by General Pasha signal to anyone beyond our borders that we are a polity finally willing to embrace and disseminate the truth? How many of those within Pakistan, with half a brain working, believe General Pasha when he claims that the Haqqani network has not been afforded refuge in Pakistan?
Will any serious policy analyst within this country accept that our security policymakers are doing nothing at all to protect Pakistan’s interests linked to who controls Afghanistan once the US-led allied forces withdraw, or that Pakistan has no stake in the composition of a future Afghan government? Will not mentioning the elephant in the room really make it disappear?
The crucial question before us is how we are going to protect our internal and external security interests linked to the future of Afghanistan, while simultaneously protecting our interest in maintaining a cordial relationship with the US. There are at least three sets of problems confronting the US-Pakistan relationship in the context of Afghanistan.
The first is a conceptual one. A majority of Pakistani policymakers and ordinary citizens consider the US military in Afghanistan an occupation force. The attack on Afghanistan and the fight against Al-Qaeda was understood in terms of retribution sought by an injured 800-pound gorilla in the aftermath of 9/11. But the US aim of routing the Taliban was never considered legitimate. Thus Afghans fighting against foreign occupation under the banner of the Taliban are not deemed terrorists here.
The second is the history of Pakistan-US transactional relationship. The sceptics in Pakistan kept reminding everyone of the 1990s, US sanctions and the Pressler law to emphasise that the US is not a reliable ally. And the US administration, cognizant of this charge, kept assuring the Pakistani people that this time would be different. That the US wished to develop a long-term relationship based on mutuality and its engagement with Pakistan would not end as its interests in Afghanistan changed.
Come the fist signs of the US leverage being unable to guide Pakistan’s security policy, and we are back to square one. US senators are furious that they are not getting what they paid for. And Pakistanis are angry that the Americans feel they can buy us out (and on the cheap).
And then there are the strategic and tactical differences of today. Our security policymakers are convinced that US presence in Afghanistan adds to Pakistan’s national security challenges and prolonged US presence in our backyard is inimical to our interests.
The US wishes to weaken the Taliban through military action to an extent where they are receptive to a political compromise that cuts them to size as opposed to making them the predominant player in a future Afghan set-up. Pakistani security managers don’t think this can or will happen. They also don’t want it to. The Taliban dominate Afghan territory bordering Pakistan and can stir trouble in our tribal areas (and with the emergence of TTP, probably across Pakistan) if we have no leverage with them.
As the largest organised group representing Pashtuns likely to dominate a majority of Afghanistan if the US-led allied forces were to withdraw today, the Taliban remain Pakistan’s natural ally in a post-American Afghanistan.
The American’s are livid because they realise that despite all the bonhomie between the US administration and the military and civilian leaders running Pakistan and the ‘billions’ they assigned to this ‘most allied-ally’, they are unable to persuade Pakistan to change its strategic policy toward Afghanistan and the Taliban. This in turn is preventing the US from realising the tactical gains they need to (i) devise an honourable exit from Afghanistan, and (ii) leave behind a future set-up that will enter into a favourable status of forces agreement with the US and help secure its future interests in the region.
Given the divergence of Pakistan-US interests in relation to Afghanistan and its future, the rise of acrimony between these two countries was expected and predictable. In this backdrop there is need to understand the timing of the Mullen outburst and the growing disquiet of the US administration with Pakistan. Is it a product of false hopes previously fed to the US by our military leaders that are now being dashed? Were the Americans never advised that Pakistan army would not fight the Afghan Taliban who are not fighting against the state of Pakistan? Has the ISI crossed a red line by allowing or aiding cross-border Haqqani attacks as opposed to merely offering them refuge to stay here peacefully and return once the war in Afghanistan is over?
The debate that we need in Pakistan is not how to act tough with the Americans and whether or not we have the resolve to defend our national interest when it clashes with that of the US. But what constitutes Pakistan’s national interest, whether our existing approach to Afghanistan promotes or undermines it and what kind of national security policy will best protect Pakistani citizens against internal and external security threats.
Will unqualified support for the Taliban secure peace in Afghanistan or intensify another civil war? Will a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan curb or fuel the insurgency within Pakistan? Will TTP garner the kind of ‘moral’ support in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan that the Haqqanis get in Pakistan? Is a replay of the 1990s (with the ISI playing kingmaker in Afghanistan and nurturing jihadis as strategic assets) really in our interest?
We don’t need to drum up public support to rally behind hackneyed claims of sovereignty. We need to develop a consensus around clearly articulated security and foreign policy and the means and tactics that will be employed to secure it. A prerequisite for such discourse is that the khakis quit playing dumb-charades with the rest of us. Pakistan has a genuine stake in how the war in Afghanistan ends and how peace is secured in our neighbourhood. But a policy of duplicity and denial will neither help secure Pakistan’s interests nor enhance our credibility within the comity of nations.

Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu