Is there a thaw developing in India-Pakistan relationship ?

It appears so. The Composite Dialogue (CD) has resumed, deeper normalizing measures such as opening of bank branches in each other's country are on the anvil, multiple-entry longer-duration and multiple-city visas are in the works, more items for trade are being discussed, Track-II meetings are going on at a feverish pace etc.

However, appearances can be deceptive and are always so when it involves Pakistan. I am not a pessimist but I am extremely sceptical when it comes to Pakistan. Things are no doubt happening in the India-Pakistan front lately. India agreed last year to not only resume the Composite Dialogue but also conceded the long-standing Pakistani demand to even make the CD uninterrupted and uninterruptible. The 'uninterrupted & uninterruptible' tag (a common refrain of the 'secular fundamentalist', Mani Shankar Aiyyar) allows Pakistan to mount terrorist attacks on India even on the scale of 26/11 (or even bigger) but expect India to continue talking to it as though nothing really happened. Many Indian analysts have [wrongly] argued the case for such dialogues, terming the 'freeze' as having outlived its utility leading therefore to 'diminishing returns'. I plainly never saw any returns at all in the three years of 'freeze' for one to now talk of 'diminishing returns'. For those who would argue that 'freeze' did not bring us any dividends and therefore a new approach was needed, I have two counter arguments. The 'freeze' was neither strongly enforced nor given sufficient time to bite Pakistan. Besides, we have had talks for several years earlier but we did not realize that Pakistan was only biding its time and preparing for massive terrorist assaults on India in Kabul (twice) and in Mumbai. A cursory look at the extraordinary deception of a trial in the 26/11 case at Adiala anti-terrorism court would prove that Pakistani government, its law-enforcing agencies, its armed forces and its intelligence agencies continue to hoodwink India while continuing to provide support to the same jihadi leaders and organizations. {See The 26/11 Case - How Pakistan and its Judiciary Help the Terrorists - Part V, for example or the earlier parts}

Anyway, more positive things happened. Articles appearing in newspapers speak [incorrectly] of Pakistan having already granted the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) to India {See, for example Pakistan Grants India MFN Trade Status - Reuters, Pakistan Grants India 'MFN' status - CS Monitor, Pakistan Grants India MFN status - The Guardian}. Both the World Trade Organization (WTO) and SAFTA (South Asia Free Trade Agreement) under the aegis of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) demand that Pakistan designate India as an MFN, something that Pakistan has steadfastly refused to do for over 16 years now. Pakistan has been bleeding severely because of its intransigence in this matter but that was of no consequence because Pakistan could not have any trucks (pun intended) with its mortal 'kafir enemy', except to import goats or onions or cotton whenever their scarcity became an existential threat {rather than India, for a change}. Pakistan is now seriously discussing with India of importing petroleum products from India, the prices of which have skyrocketed in Pakistan even as its traditional desert-friends and ummah-brothers have refused to extend any concession to Pakistan anymore {except for Kuwait which is still offering diesel at discounted prices}. Pakistan has in double-quick time given a green signal for import of petroleum products through trucks and has asked India to lay a pipeline to its borders as well. It is quite obvious that when Pakistan badly needs things from India, it is able to clear such proposals rapidly, which in itself is being cited by misguided Indians as an indication of Pakistani willingness to foster a friendlier relationship with India. Another fancied argument of the so-called Peace Lobby in India (anybody who opposes this lobby must be communal, a war-monger and part of the despicable Hindutva brigade) is that Pakistan released an Indian Army helicopter which recently strayed into Pakistani territory by mistake and landed there. Of course, Pakistan released the helicopter and the pilots but not before laying its hands on the codes and GPS coordinates of the Indian positions in Siachen. India would, no doubt, have done the same thing had the case been the reverse, but then the Indian Peace Lobby should not use the release as a proof of Pakistan's friendliness. For Pakistan, it served no purpose holding on to a small helicopter and its crew when it was a clear case of navigational error and especially after Pakistan had laid its hand on vital information. The incident would have snow-balled into a diplomatic row and the situation that it was in, Pakistan did not want it. The Indian Peace Lobby is thus attributing a virtue to a Pakistani necessity.

It is relevant to remember at this stage a few things. A farcical drama is being enacted in the Adiala court over the 26/11 case for the last three years. Very little progress has been made in the case, the voice samples which Pakistan promised to India at one point of time have not been given citing Pakistani laws {we knew even at that time that such a promise was simply to bait to a reluctant India to send its Home Minister P.Chidambaram to Islamabad to thaw the 'freeze'), Pakistan has made very little independent investigation into the conspiracy angle involving JuD/LeT leaders and the Pakistani Army, Navy & the ISI, Pakistan has displayed no urgency or real intention in prosecuting even those who are currently held in jail there. The explosive information revealed by David Coleman Headley alias Daoud Gilani under oath in an American court is being conveniently ignored by Pakistan as it has the potential to unravel the nexus between the Pakistani army (PA) and the jihadi tanzeems. The Judicial Commission drama went on for a year and finally petred out last week when the Commission that came here rubbished their government-agreed process {the members of the commission were more intent on visiting Haji Ali at Mumbai}, and the Pakistani government itself is taking refuge under the guise of 'slow turning of the judicial wheels in the Subcontinent'. As is their usual practice, the Pakistanis point their finger at the whole subcontinent whenever a negative reference to their specific country is made.

Contrary to popular belief, widely created by Reuters {the news headlines cited earlier}, Pakistan has not granted MFN status to India. It has simply moved away from a small positive-list trading practice to a large negative-list trading practice. Even this came about with a huge drama. First, it was announced by their trade minister that MFN has been granted. Then, there was a huge hue-and-cry and the Government of Pakistan (GoP) clarified that only a committee had been setup to develop a process towards moving to MFN. It was announced that MFN would come about by April, 2012, a deadline that has been shifted now to end-2012. In the meanwhile, the Diffa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), a conglomerate of jihadi tanzeems, retired Islamist military Generals and various other ranks and closet jihadi Islamists like Imran Khan have taken a strong exception to granting MFN status to India. Various Pakistani ministries objected to various things resulting in a large negative-list for trading. Cowed down by their threat, Pakistan now says that even the move to the negative-list would be phased and gradual. This itself will not be complete until end-2012 and therefore the deadline for the MFN status now becomes a question mark. This treacherous behaviour of Pakistan has been the rule rather than the exception.

Within the last 18 months, Pakistan has achieved several things for itself from a more-than-willing UPA-II government. It has resumed the Composite Dialogue, it has conceded very little in return to India, it has ensured that the India-Pakistan border would be relatively peaceful even as it focusses its attention on the emerging Afganistan denouement (so that it will re-establish its strategic depth in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, for an eventual attack on India later}, it ensured the Indian withdrawal of objections to the accordance of the GSP+ status to Pakistan by the European Union (EU), got support from India for a comfortable entry into the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a rotating member-country, it has effectively blunted the Indian pursuance of the 26/11 case etc. It is also Pakistan's calculation that the US may positively consider a US-Pakistan nuclear deal (similar to the India-US deal) once Pakistan establishes a facade of friendly relationship with its arch-enemy, India. After Abbottabad and the PNS Mehran affairs and a host of other issues (such as the case of Syed Saleem Shehzad or the Congressional enquiry into Balochistan or the Memogate scandal or Adm. Mike Mullen's very scathing parting gift), the PA is on the back foot and it would rather tactically retreat at this stage than do anything foolishly. Let us remember that Gen. Kayani was completely opposed to Pakistan granting MFN status to India before the major incidents listed above overwhelmed him. It was during his Directorship of the ISI that Mumbai 26/11 was planned.

Many analysts incorrectly propagate the idea that there is a vociferous and influential constituency within Pakistan for normalizing relations with India. They are misled by a despondent and desperate group of Pakistanis contributing some articles here and there in the English language media of Pakistan, a media which is simply *not* the opinion-maker in that country. That distinction goes to the Urdu press which is overwhelmingly hostile and inimical to India. There are no signs of easing there and one should not expect that too as the society moves to the hardest-line Deobandi/Wahhabi/Salafi/Takfiri brand of Islam. Not for nothing that GoP has appointed as the new Director General (DG) of the notorious ISI, a person who was intimately associated with the 26/11 and Kabul attacks as the operational head. Gilani could have appointed anybody else, if he really wanted to reform the ISI, but chose to appoint instead Lt. Gen. Zaheerul Islam.

An important issue that is generally overlooked is the interlinking of the Afghanistan situation and India's internal and external security. Since the 80s, and increasingly so since the 90s, certain aspects of India's security have become linked with Afghanistan. Pakistan is playing a hide-and-seek game with the Americans and the Afghans and is hoping to install the pro-Pakistani Taliban regime yet again there. Pakistan's game plan with India is to induce a sense of complacency by appearing to be friendly to it and muting its objections to a Taliban take-over of that nation. The Pakistani society, and consequently its armed forces, are getting increasingly Talibanized and the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan next door to a nuclear and Islamist Pakistan would be like fire and cotton coming together. The emerging thaw has this important aspect to it as well.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Added Later: For those of us who were wondering why the Pakistani Judicial Commission arrived in Mumbai last week, it now transpires that it was a bait to arrange a meeting between Gilani and Man Mohan Singh on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Conference at Seoul next week. This is a usual Pakistani ruse used not only against India but also against the US, and successfully too. Gen. Musharraf used to regularly catch a number three in Al Qaeda just before every Washington visit. The reason for the bait is that Indian Prime Ministers usually concede a lot to Pakistan in one-on-one meetings with their Pakistani counterparts and Pakistan knows that quite well. We will wait and watch what more Mr. Man Mohan Singh would concede at Seoul. Anyway, there is no change to Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, even from the Indian side.

What is cooking between the US and the Pakistani Army ? - Part V

Since the last installment of this series, things have gone down even more steeply between the US and the Pakistani Army. The relationship between the two is reaching new record lows every passing day. While a recovery is still possible, it is now clear that the relationship would never reach the levels before and the damage will linger for quite a long time to come until another disaster happens that might need the US to take Pakistan's support. If the relationship does not recover within the next couple of months, Pakistan will be hit devastatingly hard by the turn of events as it still needs the US for its economic recovery and military preparedness against India. This also brings into sharp focus the acute transactional and tactical nature of the US geopolitical and geostrategic approach. It is now obvious that the strategic dividends for the US have been diminishing rapidly with this myopic approach. Both sides, the US and Pakistan, have behaved in ways that have only brought them more misery and misfortune. While the US can overcome these, though at a cost to its economy, Pakistan has simply no wherewithal to survive this catastrophe, buffetted as it already is by the spectre of floods, poor governace, continuing internal terrorism, political divisions and its over-dependence on aid especially from Western countries.

Be those as they may, let us look at what has happened on the ground within Afghanistan and Pakistan since early August of this year. It is increasingly becoming obvious that the Haqqani jihadis are swelling in numbers and are wreaking havoc throughout Afghanistan, both against the US/NATO/ISAF interests and nationalist Afghan interests. The aim of the Haqqanis is simple as far as its actions against the nationalist Afgahn interests go. Eliminate leaders who could be influential in anti-Taliban efforts and leave the opponents leaderless and rudderless. This was the tactic that they effectively implemented in the Federally administered Tribal Agencies (FATA) of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa where they killed in droves the jirga leaders. The Pakhtunwali code of the tribes, which took precedence over the Islamic Shariat, was then supplanted with the virulent Salafi, Wahhabi and Deobandi interpretation of Shariat.

The current spate of events started on Aug. 06, 2011, when a US Army Chinook crashed in the Afghanistan province of Wardak on the Af-Pak border killing 30 US service personeel including 22 Navy SEALs, from the same unit that had taken part in the Abbottabad operation (SEAL Team 6 or DEVGRU). This was the single biggest loss in an incident for the US since the start of the Afghan operations. The Washington Post reported that the Chinook was brought down by a Taliban fired RPG. For all intents and purposes, this appears to be a revenge by the ISI for the Abbottabad operation by the USN SEALs. However, the US has so far not accused the ISI of being complicit in this.

Now, it is a no-brainer that the detection of the presence of America's most wanted enemy ever, Osama bin Laden, at Abbotabad angered the Americans. It was later revealed by one of the widows of Osama bin Laden that they had been living there for at least five years and were living at Haripur before that. This strained the relationship between the US and Pakistan. No amount of injured innocence by the Pakistanis can hide the fact that Osama bin Laden could have lived in Abbottabad for five long years without the help of the top echelons of the ISI and the Pakistani Army. As is usual with Pakistan, it tried to punch far above its weight when it threatened to allow the Chinese a close inspection of the downed US Navy (USN) chopper. Visiting Pakistan on May 27 for barely half-a-day and that too only after Pakistan acceded to certain demands like returning the parts of the downed USN chopper and allowing American access to the villa and the widows of Osama bin Laden in Pakistani custody, Ms. Hillary Clinton demanded that Pakistan share intelligence on other five terrorists namely, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, Ilyas Kashmiri, Sirajuddin Haqqani, and Atiyah Abdur Rehman (Libyan Al Qaeda leader). Ms. Clinton called on Pakistan to support the nascent reconciliation talks with the Afghan Taliban launched several months ago by the United States and Afghanistan. The goal, she said, was “to split the Taliban from al-Qaeda,” a possibility the administration believes has become more likely to succeed now with bin Laden’s demise. She also said that Pakistan had "a responsibility to help" the US. The New York Times described the meeting as grim and tense. It had an immediate effect. Ilyas Kashmiri was killed in a drone attack on June 3 near Wana in South Waziristan, possibly with inputs from the ISI. Being a 'bad Taliban', Ilyas Kashmiri could be sacrificed by Pakistan. Atiyah Abdur Rehman was killed in early August. It also highlighted the Pakistani tactic of not acting against even the 'bad Taliban' or Al Qaeda until after the push came to a shove and possibly some quid-pro-quo was extracted from the Americans.

On June 22, 2011, US President Barack Obama announced explicit plans for withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan. The plan was to withdraw 10,000 troops by end-2011, 33,000 by mid-2012 and the bulk of the remaining 70,000 troops at a steady pace through 2013-14. Though a 170,000 strong Afghan National Army is being formed with equipped with Western arsenal, the ANA will be of a doubtful quality.

All these have emboldened the Taliban to attempt to wrest Kandahar once again from the control of Kabul. On July 12, 2011, Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, one of the most powerful individuals in southern Afghanistan, was killed at Kandahar by an assassin, one of his own security bodyguards. A week later, Jan Mohammad Khan, a member of Mr. Karzai's inner circle and a former Governor of the Uruzgan province was killed. Two weeks later, on July 27, 2011, the Taliban eliminated the Mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, in a suicide bombing in which a suicide bomber detonated explosives carried under his turban. Eight weeks later, and using the same turban-suicide-bombing technique, Burhanuddin Rabbani, former President of Afghanistan and Chairman of the High Peace Council (HPC) was killed on Sep. 21, 2011. Exactly a week earlier, on Sep. 13, 2011, the Taliban laid siege to the US embassy in Kabul and the nearby ISAF Headquarters raining rockets on both for 20 hours. Two days before the assassination of Rabbani, and on the same day as the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a US base at Wardak was attacked by a suicide truck bomber that wounded 80 American soldiers. Simultaneously, there was a rocket attack on the well-fortified Bagram airbase, just north of Kabul. In April, they had killed the Police Chief of Kandahar and in May, they eliminated the Governor of Takhar province, a Tajik.

The US immediately blamed the Haqqani network and the complicity of the ISI for these two incidents. The Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's sudden cancellation of his US visit on September 16 citing flood situation was a harbinger of the subsequent events. Though Gilani cited floods as the reason, the real reason appeared to be the refusal of the US President to meet him. The latest round of the war of words started on September 18 when the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, said, “There is evidence linking the Haqqani network to the Pakistan government. This is something that must stop.” This was a very serious allegation to make about Pakistan on the Pakistani soil itself. The very next day, the US Secreatry of State, Ms. Hillary Clinton met the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Ms. Hina Rabbani Khar for nearly 4 hours eventhough the meeting was scheduled originally to last just 30 minutes. It was reported that the discussion started and ended with Haqqani. Simultaneously, the ISI Chief flew secretly into Washington for discussion with the CIA Chief, Gen. Petraeus. Speaking the very next day at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “The ISI has been doing this —— working for —— supporting proxies for an extended period of time. It is a strategy in the country and I think that strategic approach has to shift in the future”. There was naturally a great uoroar in Pakistan and the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Ms. Hina Rabbani Khar, still in the US, said that the “US would lose Pakistan as an ally”. The COAS Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, on whom Spain had bestowed its highest military honour, 'The Grand Cross of Military Merit' only a few days earlier on September 16, termed the US accusations as “very unfortunate and not based on facts”. COAS Kayani had met Adm. Mullen for almost two hours of a one-on-one meeting in Spain after the award ceremony. One can only surmise therefore that Adm. Mullen and Gen. Kayani would have had an unsuccessful and possibly stormy meeting. Adm. Mike Mullen then told the US Senate Armed Services Committee panel on September 22, upon his return from Spain, that the “Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted a truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy. We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the 28 June attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations.” There was naturally a great uproar in Pakistan and the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Ms. Hina Rabbani Khar, said that the “US would lose Pakistan as an ally”. The COAS Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, termed the US accusations as “very unfortunate and not based on facts”. The Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, said that “these wrong messages would affct the US-Pakistan bilateral ties”. However, Spokesman for Adm.Mike Mullen, Capt. John Kirby, confirmed that Mullen and Kayani had indeed spoken about Haqqani in Spain and further inflamed the Pakistanis by saying, "All I can tell you is that we are confident that the ISI continues to support and even encourages the Haqqanis to launch these attacks." He went on to give an ominous warning to the Pakistani Army by saying, "We still want to pursue a working, productive partnership with the Pakistani military, and that in large measure depends on their willingness and their ability to disconnect themselves from extremist groups like the Haqqani network".

There were reports that Prime minister Gilani had asked the Foreign Minister Ms. Hina Rabbani Khar to cut short her visit and return to Pakistan immediately, even foregoing the speech at the UN General Assembly (UNGA). These reports were later denied and Ms. Hina Khar continued with her sojourn in the US. Probably the new tactic was to give a tongue-lashing to the US on the US soil itself. In an interview to Al-Jazeera News channel, Ms. Khar described the Haqqani network as the "blue-eyed boy" of the CIA. She went on to say, "If we talk about links, I am sure the Central Intelligence Agency also has links with many terrorist organisations around the world, by which we mean intelligence links."

In the meanwhile, Prime Minister Gilani called for an all-party meeting to take a united stand against the American pressure. Simultaneously, Gen. Kayani called for an extraordinary meeting of the Corps Commanders just before he was about to leave for London to address the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Royal College of Defence Studies. The meeting reiterated that Pakistani armed forces were committed to achieving enduring peace in the region. Then, inexplicably, Gen. Kayani cancelled his UK trip. However, the ISI Chief, Lt. Gen. Shuja Ahmed Pasha was secretely sent to Saudi Arabia probably to explain the extraordinary situation to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud and possibly seek his intervention. President Zardari, who has been keeping an inexplicably low profile in the last few months, attended a function in the Saudi embassy in Islamabad and spoke of how the two countries had "stood together in difficult moments of history". This was the first in a series of consultations that Pakistan opened with some of its closest allies. The seriousness of the situation was not lost worldwide. At the same time, the US CENTCOM commander, Gen. James N. Mattis, landed in Islamabad in an unannounced visit. There was also a visit of Meng Jianzhu, the Chinese minister for public security to Islamabad. He met the Pakistani Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Khalid Shameem Wynne and discussed with him the 'emerging geostrategic situation'. The Pakistani Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, assured the visiting Chinese counterpart that "We will strike very hard against them [the Uyghur separatists]. Anybody who is the enemy of China is the enemy of Pakistan." This assurance for action, coming in the wake of the stubborn refusal to act against the Haqqanis, sent a strong message to everyone as to where Pakistani interests lay. The Pakistani Permanent Representative for the UN, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, gave an interview to an Indian news channel where he said that the US was an unreliable ally and asked India to be careful in its relationship with that country as the same fate (as that of Pakistan) might befall her too if she became too close.

However, the deaths of Wali Ahmed Karzai and Burhanuddin Rabbani were clearly meant by the Taliban and Pakistan to sabotage the peace process, eliminate non-Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, and reduce the involvement of those who may not toe the Pakistani line of thinking in the resolution of the Afghan crisis.

Why does Pakistan not want to attack the Haqqanis operating out of North Waziristan ? Some history is in order. Though he is a Ghilzai and a legendary mujahideen commander during the 1979-89 Afghan jihad, Jalaluddin Haqqani is not a Kandahari. The emergence of the Kandahar-based Mullah Omar shifted the power decisively there and though Jalaluddin shares the same worldview as the Taliban, he is not powerful enough within the Talibani hierarchy. He certainly is not a Taliban because he did not come from the madrassah. He should be described more accurately as a successful warlord who is on the side of AQAM. His contacts with the ISI, on the other hand, have been very deep and he comes from the Paktia province and shares affinity with the Pashtuns on either side of the Durand line. During the Afghan jihad, the ISI heavily favoured the non-Durrani groups and Yunus Khalis (of the Hezb-e-Islami) was a favourite, under whom Jalaluddin Haqqani served. None of the seven Afghan jihadi groups to which the ISI distributed money and material during the jihad days was a Durrani-led group. The Karzais (Durranis) were thus discarded by Pakistan and it is very evident from the time Hamid Karzai took over power. The Pakistani aversion to the Durranis is because of the latter's irredentism over Greater Pashtunistan encompassing NWFP within it and their close ties with India. Besides, the ISI has been a reliable supporter of the Haqqanis with funds and arms for three decades now. Certainly, the Haqqanis would abide by any ISI request. Therefore, the adamant refusal to act against the Haqqani network even as the latter continues to kill and maim US, NATO and ISAF soldiers is because Pakistan still believes in the concept of an Afghan 'Strategic Depth' to conquer India and views the Taliban and associated warlords like Haqqani as friends.

Twitter: @SSridharRaptor

What is cooking between the US and the Pakistani Army ? - Part II

Why is it important to analyze the relationship between the US and the Pakistani Army (PA) ? The reason is simple on two counts: one, it is the PA that generally runs the Pakistani government (at the current juncture, from backseat) and handles directly such sensitive issues as nuclear weapons, foreign policies vis-a-vis the US, India, Afghanistan and China; two, the US has always recognized this fact and by-passed the civilian government on most occasions and dealt directly with the PA, its client since the early 1950s. However, that cosiness is visibly changing now.

What does this change in relationship entail to Pakistan ? Pakistan's internal dynamics has been dangerously unstable for a long time now, beset with terrorism, sectarianism, increasing influence of the intolerant Wahhabi/Deobandi/Salafi mindset, poor governance, a moribund economy, an inchoate democracy that is utterly non-performing, unbridled violence among sub-nationalists as in Karachi and a host of other issues. Added to these is this increasing tension between the US and Pakistan which has the potential of destabilizing Pakistan and then impacting the region severely. The sweep of rebellions that one has witnessed from Tunisia to the UAE can easily extend to Pakistan because it has the most incendiary ingredients, among all these countries, awaiting an ignition. Such a rebellion would make the others child's play. Among the 3½ Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP), it is the US whose support is the most crucial for the stability of Pakistan. The Saudi-Pakistan relationship has gone a lot colder. The Chinese have always supported specific projects only such as nuclear power projects or nuclear weaponization or missile technology transfer etc. They do not give hard cash. The Japanese are going through a stressful period and are unlikely to be as benevolent as before. The British are a spent force and have been so for quite sometime now. They have also been facing a severe backlash of Pakistan-based Islamist jihadi terrorism, a gift of their myopic Pakistani policies for over a century now stretching back to the British Raj days. So, if the US support unravels at this critical juncture, Pakistan has everything to lose. One is unsure if the arrogant and haughty Pakistani Army which is driving these sensitive foreign policies of the civilian government, understand the magnitude of their follies. They did not realize it in 1971 and lost more than half their land and population. This time, the situation is fraught with extreme danger as the centrifugal jihadi forces may cause a civil war in a nuclear-weapon possessing Pakistan that is rapidly increasing its arsenal too. The rest of the world, especially the US, India and China cannot allow this spiralling down of Pakistan to go out of control as it poses a mortal danger to all of them.

That the US-Pakistan relationship has been rapidly on the decline has been well known for some time now. This time, it is not like the normal up-and-down seasonal variation between the US and Pakistan. The strategic dialogue between the two countries has been indefinitely postponed. American Congressmen have repeatedly talked of stopping aid. American newspapers have been widely critical, some of them very critical, of Pakistan's duplicity. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, openly accused the "Government of Pakistan" of silencing the journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad. In an editorial on July 8, New York Times accused the ISI of complicity in hiding Osama bin Laden and in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks of 2008. The editorial demanded the dismissal of Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the Director General of the notorious ISID. The PA reacted immediately by saying, "This is a direct attack on our security organisation and intelligence agencies". Strong words indeed, coming from an embattled PA which turns to the US for funds, arms, ammunitions. This downturn in relations started well before the Abbottabad incident of eliminating Osama bin Laden. But, the May 2 incident accentuated the process. In its aftermath, an incensed Pakistani Army did several things. The usually laconic Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) released an unusually long (1032 words) statement on June 9, 2011 that did not disguise the PA's anger. It even had highlighted text to drive home its point and determination. A combative PA said that it would no longer accept military aid from the US and said that such aid be diverted to the economy instead. The statement also said that since circa 2001, the US had given only USD 15 Billion to Pakistan out of which PA had received only USD 8.6 Billion. It also claimed that these figures had been reconciled with the Ministry of Finance, thereby hinting the Finance Ministry that it should not try to contradict these numbers. The US, on the other hand, claims it had given Pakistan USD 20 Billion most of which was reimbursement to the PA. The statement also said that a large number of US Army trainers were being asked to leave. In fact, it expelled all the 120 American Special Operations personnel who were training the soldiers of Frontier Corps (FC) since c. 2009. This made the US angry and it decided to 'chasten' the PA as the New York Times reported on July 9, 2011. The Obama administration decided to suspend USD 800 million worth of aid and questionable reimbursement. Pakistan has also expelled the British trainers of the FC at Quetta. The rejection of 'future' aid as well as the expulsion of the US trainers were weak attempts to hit two birds in one shot - warning to the US that its leverage with the PA will be reduced and two to redeem its shattered image with an overly critical Pakistani masses angry with the incompetence of the PA whom they regard with high esteem in spite of repeated and massive failures in battle fields. It may be that the PA used this opportunity to stop the US training of the FC, a training that was probably agreed to under American duress in the first instance. Since its inception, the training has been going at a slow pace, with the PA not releasing more than 250 soldiers for training at a time when the facilities were expected to host 2000 simultaneously for a 12-week programme. Concerned with the loss of its sheen among the Pakistanis, a source of great support for the PA's exalted position within the country, from criticisms by newspaper editors, analysts and anchors of TV talk shows, the PA warned of its determination to "put an end" to domestic criticism of its actions. It said, "This is an effort to drive a wedge between the army, different organs of the state and more seriously, the people of Pakistan. Any effort to create divisions between important institutions of the country is not in our national interest. The participants {at the Corps Commanders' Meeting} agreed that all of us should take cognizance of this unfortunate trend and put an end to it."

No wonder Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan Bureau Chief of Asia Times Online, was brutally murdered within a few days after his sensational revelation on the reasons for the attack on the PNS Mehran naval base. The PA's justification for this murder is the ISPR statement. The ISPR statement also stated that from then on, intelligence will be shared with the US only on strictly reciprocal basis and with complete transparency. This is another opportunistic move by the PA perhaps in view of the imminent operations in North Waziristan (NW). In earlier operations, the Americans had given intelligence to the PAF F-16 pilots about targets and the same was expected this time too. In June last year, upgraded F-16s, that can target both in day and night, have been delivered to the PAF. In the changed circumstances, the PA decided to scuttle these inputs so that they can avoid targetting the Haqqani and allied groups still holed up in North Waziristan. For three years now, the US has been demanding operation to flush out the Haqqani Shura from NW without much success. Last year, the Pakistanis agreed but chose to launch it according to their convenience. Now, probably they want another excuse to delay the operation. The problem for the PA is that two of their major assets, the Haqqanis of Afghanistan and Gul Bahadur of NW are located here. In September, 2006, the PA entered into a 'peace treaty' with Gul Bahadur and this has generally stood the test of time eventhough in February 2009, Gul Bahadur (along with South Waziristan's Maulvi Nazeer Ahmed)joined hands temporarily with his (and PA's) arch enemy Baitullah Mehsud and said that they had overcome the ‘divide and rule’ policy of the Pakistani government which they blamed for “more losses to mujahideen than the US. It handed over 700 Arab mujahideen to the US and jailed our people”. They also pledged their support to Mullah Omar whom they accepted as the Emir of Shura Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen. They proclaimed that the Shura had been formed at the express wish of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. As confirmation of the working of the Shura, Hafiz Gul Bahadur formally revoked on June 29, 2009, the peace treaty he had signed on Feb. 17, 2008 with the Pakistani Army. Just a day before, June 28, 2009, Gul Bahadur attacked a Pakistani Army convoy killing 40 soldiers and immediately thereafter Maulvi Nazeer Ahmed rocket-attacked the Frontier Corps’ camp in Wana. Gul Bahadur justified the scrapping of the peace deal because of the US drone attacks in North Waziristan as well as Pakistani Army action in Bannu which is under the control of Gul Bahadur. It later turned out that a more ominous reason for the united efforts of these three warlords was because of the US push in Helmand . The US wanted the Pakistan Army to prevent the Taliban from crossing the porous Waziristan borders and move into Helmand. The Pakistan Army tried to prevent it by activating rebel groups in Waziristan and trying to move the Army there. The TTP pre-empted that through its action. Thus, the Helmand offence by the US had inadvertently united the factions in TTP. Soon thereafter, Baitullah Mehsud died and the new Shura became defunct. The PA learnt its lessons. That is why it is unwilling to move on NW.

In the previous installment, we saw how the Abbottabad incident triggered various reactions and brought to fore the rifts in the US-PA relationship. But, Abbottabad was not a single straw that made the camel collapse. There have been a series of incidents. Indeed, Pakistani perfidy goes a long, long way back but for the present discussion, we may just look at some recent events.

One of the most serious incidents that occurred recently was the arrest in January, 2011 by the Lahore Police of Raymond Davis, a CIA agent, for killing in broad daylight two motor-bike borne Lahoris. Now we know that Raymond Davis was in Lahore monitoring the activities of the Lashkar-e-Tayba and the two who were shot dead by him were indeed ISI agents who were shadowing him and who possibly provoked him advertantly or inadvertantly. The PA laid its hands on Raymond Davis ttying to extract from him the various aspects of CIA operation within Pakistan. The PA forced the Government of Pakistan to handle the issue rather than itself getting involved even as it went about interrogating Raymond Davis. Anyway, this soured the relationship between the US and Pakistan until the PA was engaged by the US administration and a way out was found in the form of diyat (blood money) and other sops such as US visas for some family members of the two killed.

(To Be Continued . . .)

What is cooking between the US and the Pakistani Army ?

The uncovering of the residency of Osama bin Laden close to the Pakistani Military Academy in the garrison town of Abbottabad and his subsequent elimination by the US Navy SEALs in a stealth operation have created many ripples, some within Pakistan and some between Pakistan and the US.

The close bonding between the US and Pakistan had existed at multiple levels, the most important of which had been the ties between the US and Pakistani armed forces. This relationship started in the early 1950s and bloomed quite rapidly. The US made it a consistent policy to support Pakistani military dictators, whether it was FM Ayub Khan or Gen. Yahya Khan or Gen. Zia-ul-Haq or more recently Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The US Presidents and the State Department stood solidly behind these usurpers of power even as the US preached virtues of democracy to the rest of the world. In the 1970s, another important relationship also developed between the US and its client state Pakistan. The turmoil in the region meant that the US sought close partners. The bitterness after the 1962 arms-supply to India and the arms embargo of 1965 had already been overcome by 1971 when Pakistan helped the US normalize relationship with an isolated China and in return, the US condoned Pakistani genocide in East Pakistan and later sent a carrier task force of the US Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal threatening India as an act of solidarity with Pakistan. As the trusted US ally, the Shah of Iran was deposed by Shi'a fundamentalists who also held Americans as hostage in Teheran, as the Communists assumed power in Afghanistan who later invited the armed forces of the USSR into the country and as an insurgency developed in Yemen in the late 1970s, a worried US forged close intelligence tie-up between the CIA of the US and the notorious ISID of Pakistan. The relationship reached its pinnacle during the decade of the 80s when the CIA worked in extremely close proximity with the ISID in avenging the American defeat in Vietnam a decade earlier and pave the way for the unravelling of the Soviet Union in particular and Communism in general.

As the general usefulness of Pakistan waned upon the termination of the Afghan jihad, the US-Pakistan transactional relationship cooled off. That was probably also what the Pakistanis themselves wanted. A US that was so far helping the Pakistani nuclear programme both actively and passively, was suddenly becoming apoplectic with Pakistan's frenzied activities on the nuclear front. Since their clandestine nuclear and missile dealings with China, North Korea, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iran were on an upswing, the Pakistanis would have been rather uncomfortable with the presence of the born-again Americans. The terrorism and violence against India from ISI and PA-sponsored terrorist groups were also growing exponentially and it was prudent to keep it away from the prying eyes of the USA which probably was not so amenable as it was during the decade of the 80s when it even helped the Khalistani terrorism. Things were going smooth for Pakistan in the 90s, until fate intervened in the form of Osama bin Laden and 9/11 as the US and its Army got entrenched in Af-Pak once again.

The US Army on the ground in Afghanistan as part of NATO forces had never been comfortable with the Pakistani Army (PA). The CIA has been wary of ISI's double cross. The Pentagon voiced its consternation frequently. American Presidents have been forthright at times regarding their mistrust of Pakistan. Secretaries of State of US administration of various dispensations have been frustrated by the games played by the PA. There are very sound reasons why they all felt so. New York Times of June 15, 2011 reports that the CIA Deputy Director rates ISI's co-operation at 3 on a scale of 1 to 10.

For those who watch Pakistan closely, this perfidious behaviour is not surprising at all. Let's go back to the start of operations on the Pakistani side after Operation Enduring Freedom was launched by the US and allied forces. The Pakistani approach can be slotted into two different time periods, one BD or Before Democracy and the other AD, After Democracy. Initially, during BD, the PA refused to commit its forces in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Agencies) area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. Instead, it entered into a series of 'Peace Treaties' with the Taliban and various warlords in order to avoid fighting them. No Peace Treaty lasted more than a few weeks. From the very beginning, the PA was not interested in COIN (Counter Insurgency) operations in FATA and was leaving that to the local Frontier Corps (FC), Levies and Khasadar forces that are both ill-equipped and ill-trained as well as reluctant to fight their own tribes.

The first time, the PA decided to take on the Al Qaeda and Allied Movements (AQAM) was in c. 2004 when it proudly announced that PA will complete the operation in a few weeks. But, the drubbing the PA received from the AQAM was such that Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, Corps Commander, Peshawar, had to personally meet Taliban commander Nek Mohammed to sign the peace deal (at Shakai in South Waziristan in April 2004) and even give him USD 540,000 {a fact he admitted in the press meet}. Thus, PA's casualties were not only its men but also its prestige. Again, in February 2005, another deal was signed and this time with with Baitullah Mehsud after he took over power following Nek Mohammed’s assassination in a US drone attack near Wana. The six-point deal, mediated by Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI-F, while specifically forbidding him from sheltering foreign terrorists or attacking Pakistani government installations, did not stop him from attacking the US forces. Even as he signed the deal, he openly declared that under Mullah Omar, Islam will spread all over the world even as he derived satisfaction from the jihad. Similarly, in February 2008, the Pakistani Army struck another peace deal with Baitullah Mehsud after another unsuccessful army operation in late 2007. The operations by the Pakistani military in Waziristan were dubbed as “Operation Enduring Failure’ following a severe mauling of the Pakistani Army. All three Army operations - 2004, 2005 and 2007 – resulted ultimately in the Army suing for peace after suffering heavy casualties.

In the AD period, reports appeared that Gen. Kiyani had told the US that the PA would have the focus only on the Eastern borders with India. After his meeting with Pakistan, in a series of back-to-back trips to that country, Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed in June, 2008 with the Pakistani request to train the FC in COIN operations. Three months earlier, in March, 2008, when the contours of the peace deals were not yet clear and when the new government had not yet taken over power, New York Times reported the Pakistan Army’s strategy of concentrating on the India border leaving the Afghanistan border to ill-equipped and ill-trained local forces. It spoke of the kind of equipment in Pakistani shopping list with the US that could possibly not have been used against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This approach of focussing on India had multiple benefits for Pakistan. For one, the Army’s withdrawal gave a free hand to the Taliban and the NATO-ISAF forces could not hold the Pakistani Army responsible anymore. This also met the Taliban request of non-interference from Pakistan in their activities. Secondly, it took enormous resources and time to train the undisciplined local forces and that gave sufficient lead time for the Taliban to consolidate their hold in these areas. Thirdly, Pakistan demanded and got sophisticated equipment from the US under the guise of providing support and equipping the FC. Moreover, the Pakistani Army which had earned a lot of ill-will from the tribesmen because under “operation Tri-star and Earthquake”, (Op. Zalzala, meaning Earthquake, in the Mehsud area between January and April 2008) it had razed down villages as part of ‘collective punishment’. The Army’s use of artillery and Cobra gunship and even tanks, rather than effective COIN operations, had added to the resentment of the people. In the August, 2008 operations in Bajaur (Op. Sherdil or Lionheart), around Khar, in the area that the Inspector General of Frontier Corps, Maj Gen Tariq Khan called as the ‘centre of the battle’, the gunship helicopters targetted mosques and flattened houses turning people against the Government. The Pakistani masses also saw this as "Muslim Vs. Muslim" in which the PA could not be involved. With fatwas on the non-martyrdom of the Pakistani soldiers in a fight with the Taliban, the Pakistani Army was surrendering rather than fighting. The refusal to engage the PA in the COIN operation was a ploy therefore making a virtue out of necessity and was a fourth reason for the decision to pull out. Fifthly, and most significantly, what appeared to be a decision to increase infiltration across the Indian border in c. 2008 after relative lull for sometime, demanded a concentration of troops in the eastern border especially in view of the ‘Cold Start’ doctrine of India. In hindsight, the Pakistani COAS, Gen. Kayani's insistence on keeping the PA focussed on the Indian border in c. 2008 was because he was aware of the imminent terrorist attacks on Indian interests on the anvil. The July 7, 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the urban warfare in Mumbai on November 26, 2008 were jointly organized by the ISI, the PA, the Pakistani Navy and the LeT and so one can safely conclude that Gen. Kayani, under whose watch these terror events had been planned when he was the ISI Chief, wanted to be able to meet any fall-out arising from these events. Gen. Kayani called the Taliban his 'strategic assets', a communication that was intercepted by the Americans in May 2008, a few months before the Indian embassy attack in Kabul, and which confirmed the long-held suspicion that the PA was running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. Later, the newly-elected Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, used exactly the same idiom to own up Pakistani duplicity.

The above malicious behaviour of Pakistan brings out two Pakistani traits. One, Pakistan's obsession with India and two, its ability to turn that obsession into an advantage vis-a-vis the gullible Americans.

Back to the Af-Pak badlands in c. 2008. The US State Department’s annual “Country Reports on Terrorism” released in May 2008, spoke of Al Qaeda having regrouped effectively within Pakistan and posing the gravest threat to Western interests. The loss of control of its own territory by Pakistan prompted the ex-National Security Advisor of India, Brajesh Mishra, to propose a multinational force to tackle terrorism in Pakistan. NATO expressed concern in mid-May, 2008 that the so called peace pacts “struck by the Pakistan government and extremist groups in the Tribal Areas may be allowing them to have a safe haven”. It also said in April 2008, after the peace talks gained momentum, that the incidents of cross-border attacks had increased by 52% from the same period the previous year. NATO also expressed its annoyance that Pakistan was entering into pacts without taking it into confidence, an oblique reference to the MNNA (Major Non-NATO Ally) status of Pakistan. NATO correctly interpreted the peace deals as ‘transfer of troubles from one side of the border to the other’. On the same day NATO issued this warning, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South Asia said that “Insurgents in Pakistan’s frontier region continue to pose a serious threat to the regional stability of the United States and the rest of the world”. In another testimony to the US Congress at the same time, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, said that the next attack on US in near-term would come from Al Qaeda regrouping in the FATA regions of Pakistan. Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta called “such [Pakistani] appeasement [of the Taliban] dangerous for Afghanistan” and it was "extremely and infinitely concerned" about Islamabad's moves. Then, on June 11, 2008, the US Air Force attacked inside Pakistani border in Mohmand agency in which several Pakistani Frontier Corps (FC) men were killed. What gave the game away was that several Taliban terrorists were also killed in the attack, as accepted by TTP spokesperson Maulvi Umar, thereby suggesting some nexus between Pakistan’s FC and the Taliban. A few days later, the outgoing US Commander in Afghanistan, Gen Dan K McNeill, questioned the loyalty of the Pakistani forces, especially the FC. The Guardian newspaper later reported, citing classified US reports, that the FC had been heavily infiltrated into by the Taliban and was influenced by it. The displeasure with which the US looked at the peace deals with the Taliban was evident when an hour-long ‘candid, frank, realistic and honest’ discussion between Condoleeza Rice and the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, ended on June 11, 2008 without any positive developments for Pakistan. Admiral Mullen had repeatedly said that the Pakistani Army was not fighting the Taliban in a sustained fashion. For his part, President Obama made it clear on more than one occasion that the Pakistanis were barking a wrong tree by considering the Indians as the most major threat and that there was no need to station so many troops on the eastern borders with India.

For his part, Afghan President Karzai said that most fighters in Helmand province had come from Pakistan, a concern also echoed by NATO forces. He then followed it up with the threat of attacking the Taliban terrorists inside Pakistan. In anger, it announced pulling out of bilateral talks. India also pulled out of scheduled anti terrorism talks between its CBI and the FIA of Pakistan, after the attack on its Kabul embassy. The Pakistani Defence Minister Mukhtar said that the US President George Bush admitted to him that the US was reluctant to share intelligence information with Pakistan because elements within ISI were leaking them to the Taliban and thwarting US actions. He was even reported to have asked Prime Minister Gilani when he visited the White House in late August, 2008 as to who was in charge of the ISI. On Sep. 16, 2008. US Asst. Secretary Richard Boucher said that the reform of the ISI was a must and it was not happening yet. This led to the removal of Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj as the Head of the ISI on Sep. 29, 2008. Even the Deputy Chief of ISI was replaced. Finally, with mounting losses of US & other NATO forces approaching the levels of Iraq at its peak, about two dozen US Navy SEALs raided inside Pakistan on Sep. 3, 2008, for the first time and killed 20 people in Angoor Adda, South Waziristan. The US Navy Seals were dropped on ground within FATA and they remained there for a couple of hours destroying targets. There has been speculation that Gen. Kiyani, along with his DGMO (Director General of Military Operations), were told of American intentions of more serious ground operations in a meeting they had with Adm. Mullen held on Aug. 27, 2008 unusually on board an an aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Persian Gulf. The very next day, Pakistani COAS Gen. Kayani strongly lashed out at the US proposal to mount cross-border attacks inside Pakistan. The New York Times reported the same day that Bush had authorized in July cross-border attacks into Pakistan with ‘boots on the ground’ within Pakistani territory. It followed the American assessment of Pakistani Army ‘lacking will and ability’. American officials concluded, as per the report in New York Times article dated Sep. 24, 2009, that the ISID was helping the Taliban. The US Ambassador to Pakistan, Ms. Anne Patterson, voiced the disappointment that Pakistan was “certainly reluctant to take action” against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency. Simultaneously, there was a talk of extending the drone attacks to Quetta where the Taliban Shura was supposed to be holed up. Western intelligence sources (Times, Sep. 27, 2009) also reported that the Pakistani intelligence agencies, fearing such an attack, had shifted some members of the Quetta Shura to the much safer Karachi. Pakistan strongly denied the existence of anything called a Quetta Shura at all. However, On Dec. 14, 2009, the Pakistani Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, said that the Quetta Shura has been significantly damaged by the armed forces and was no longer a threat, thus conceding that the Quetta Shura after all existed.

(To be continued . . .)