The most important geostrategic issue for the UK? Pakistan with friends like these.

Transcription

1 RS 57 The most important geostrategic issue for the UK? Pakistan with friends like these. By Professor Shaun Gregory PSRU, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford This paper is taken from an address by Professor Gregory to the UK Defence Forum on Monday 7 th July Introduction My subject today is With Friends Like These Pakistan and the War on Terrorism and in speaking about Pakistan I am referring primarily to the military-political elite which rules Pakistan, dominated by the Army. I want to concentrate my remarks in four areas: (a) Pakistan s relationship with the Taliban; (b) Pakistan s relationship with al-qaeda; (c) the nuclear weapons dimension; and (d) Pakistan s role in the WoT. Before I can do this I think it s important to remind ourselves of some of the constants in Pakistan s defence and security thinking because these give us insight into why Pakistan behaves as it does and the degree to which the interests of Pakistan and the West by which I mean primarily the US and UK are at odds. Four issues I think are fundamental: 1) that faced with an conflictual and powerful India to its east, Pakistan s security demands a friendly Afghanistan to its west both to provide it with strategic space and to ensure that Pakistan is not trapped between two adversaries; 2) that faced with a more power rival India and subject to sanctions through the 1990s following the Soviet-Afghan war, Pakistan created and/or supported numerous extremist and terrorist organisations as instruments of state policy, both in relation to its international security objectives within the region and across the Islamic world as far afield as Algeria; and for internal purposes, particularly in relation to Kashmir, opposition to domestic secular pluralist political forces, and to perceived Shia threats to Pakistan s Sunni majority. Page 1 of 9

2 3) that having been through the trauma of the break up of east and west Pakistan in 1971 with defeat by India and the creation of Bangladesh, Pakistan has become obsessed about further threats to the integrity of what remains of the original Pakistan; 4) that since the Zia ul-haq years [ ], Pakistan has been undergoing a process of Islamization which has moved Pakistan away from the pluralist secular vision of its founding fathers towards an Islamized polity in which sharia asserts an ever stronger role, and in which the centre of gravity in Pakistan s politics and within the Pakistan military and intelligence services - has become ever more Islamic. With these issues in mind I want to move on to the themes I outlined above: Pakistan and the Taliban Firstly, Pakistan s relations with the Taliban. As is well known Pakistan supported and empowered the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan between about 1994 and 1996 as a means of imposing some order and stability on the chaos of post Soviet Afghanistan, and was one of only three states to give diplomatic recognition to the Taliban government. Pakistan did this because the Taliban are a Pashtun group and Pakistan has always sought to assert its control of Afghanistan through the Pashtuns who constitute about 35% of the Afghan population and are dominant in Afghanistan s most important political regions. Following 9/11 Pakistan was put under intense pressure and offered lavish rewards by the US to turn against the Taliban and although Pakistan had little choice but to comply with this, the crucial point is that the underlying fundamentals of Pakistani security policy did not change. The Karzai government which emerged in Afghanistan is antipathetic to Pakistan and is indulgent of Indian influence, much to Pakistan s alarm. Pakistan thus wants an end to the Karzai government and it also wants the US and NATO out of the Afghan theatre. The Taliban remain Pakistan s best instrument for achieving both objectives because they are able to sustain with some Pakistani support a grinding insurgency which Pakistan expects to force eventually both a political accommodation with the Taliban in Afghanistan and a western deal with the Taliban to find a face-saving exit from Afghanistan. Page 2 of 9

3 Thus Pakistan flew many senior Taliban figures out of Afghanistan as Kabul fell in 2001 to the Northern Alliance, and Pakistan has since provided a safe haven for the Taliban as well as logistics, training and recruitment for the Taliban not least in Pakistan s South Western province of Balochistan. The added bonus of having the Taliban in Balochistan where throughout the Musharraf years they were hosted by the Islamist MMA which, with Musharraf s support, dominated the Balochistan provincial assembly is that the Taliban and MMA have played an important role in suppressing Balochi nationalism which, as one senior Pakistani military figure remarked, threatens Pakistan s territorial integrity in a way that the Taliban at the time did not. This explains why the Taliban were and still are - free to operate from Balochistan, in particular from around Quetta, despite the presence of huge numbers of Pakistan military in the province and much to the anger of NATO and UK commanders, particularly after the UK deployed to Southern Afghanistan in 2005 and found itself taking casualties from the Taliban who then simply retreated to safety across the Pakistan border. The picture of the Taliban in Pakistan s northern NWFP and FATA is similar but even more complex. These areas have always been beyond the direct control of Pakistan but have been managed successfully through the exploitation of tribal power structures, which Pakistan understands well. In the aftermath of 9/11 the Taliban has been tolerated in the NWFP and has been de facto allowed through a series of peace deals - to attack Afghan and NATO forces across the border provided they did not threaten Pakistan itself. This situation has become complicated because the relations between Pakistan and the Taliban have mutated to some degree because of the impact of tribal militants, the emergence of the Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan [TTP], and because of the presence of al-qaeda. To understand something of this we have to turn to Pakistan s relations with al-qaeda. Pakistan and al-qaeda Pakistan, and in particular Pakistan s lead intelligence agency the ISI has had a close relationship with Osama Bin Laden and thus with al-qaeda - since the Soviet Afghan war. At the end of that war in 1989 and 1990 the ISI tried to use Bin Laden for its jihad in Kashmir in which Pakistan transited thousands of Afghan veterans to Kashmir to try to finally wrest control of the region from India. To do this Pakistan Page 3 of 9

4 created or took over terrorist groups like Lashkar-I-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed as the means to control and direct the jihadis and in the process the ISI built the infrastructure of terrorist training camps in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, where at a future date at least two of the London 7/7 bombers were to receive some of their training. The ISI also tried to co-opt Bin Laden for an attempt to remove Benazir Bhutto who was Prime Minister for the first time between 1988 and 1990, and this was the ground of Benazir s claim that ISI veterans still influential in Pakistan were complicit in the first attempt on her life in Karachi in October 2007, just a few months before she was so tragically assassinated. It was the ISI which introduced Bin Laden to the Taliban in 1996 when he returned to Afghanistan, thereby gifting al-qaeda a secure base from which to emerge as a genuinely global threat, and it was the ISI which tipped off Bin Laden about a series of attempts on his life in the late 1990s by the US in retaliation for al-qaeda attacks in East Africa. In case anyone is interested I understand a copy of a paper I wrote about the ISI which was published in Washington in December 2007, and which provides much greater detail about the ISI-al-Qaeda relationship, has been posted on the UKDF website. The long and complex relationship between the ISI and al-qaeda must I think inform any analysis of Pakistan s response to al-qaeda post 9/11. There is come evidence, though it is disputed, that Pakistan allowed the al-qaeda leadership to escape Tora- Bora in late 2001, but there is little dispute that Pakistan s wild tribal areas of the NWFP and FATA have since 9/11 been the most likely safe haven of al-qaeda leadership, or that Pakistan, as John Negroponte said last year, is now the hub of al- Qaeda from where he said it is cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships which radiate throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Before I go on to discuss the resultant contradictions of Pakistan s position in the war on terrorism I want to put one final element in place and that is the nexus between terrorism and nuclear weapons which is nowhere more significant that in Pakistan. Page 4 of 9

5 Pakistan and Nuclear Weapons The story of the development of Pakistan nuclear weapons programme is well known and Pakistan today probably has at least nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Equally well-known is the story of A Q Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistan bomb, who was at the centre of a clandestine proliferation network which spread nuclear know-how and technology to a number of rogue states through the 1980s and 1990s, including Iran, North Korea and Libya. AQ Khan was arrested by the Pakistan government in 2003, following disclosures to the UK by Iran and Libya, he was then pushed into a public confession on Pakistani TV and subsequently pardoned by Musharraf in 2004 since when he has been held under semi-formal house arrest, resolutely out of reach of western intelligence. My own view, having researched Pakistani nuclear issues for more than a decade, is that AQ Khan was not working without the knowledge and support of the ISI and Pakistan military, that some of the latter were complicit in his activities, and that indeed Pakistan may very well still be involved in nuclear proliferation activities. Certainly this is the thrust of two excellent and recent studies by Levy and Scott- Clarke in the UK and by Frantz and Collins in the US. The critical issues here though are the links between Pakistan s relations with al- Qaeda, Pakistan s use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy, and what has been termed a porous nuclear weapons context in Pakistan. Many analysts believe that if there is a nuclear 9/11 carried out in the West, it will have its origins in Pakistan. I think there are at least two sets of issues here: one is that unscrupulous technocrats such as Khan - from within Pakistan s nuclear weapons programme could provide assistance to terrorists enabling them to cross the nuclear threshold. In this connection we already have the well documented case of two recently retired Pakistani nuclear weapons scientists Sultan Mahmood and Chaudiri Majeed, who met Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan in August Pakistan has tried to dismiss this event as of marginal importance and Mahmood and Majeed as minor figures, but in fact these were quite senior and privately radical figures who, although not weapons designers themselves, were certainly knowledgeable about networks of nuclear contacts within Pakistan and beyond, and as the AQ Khan story had illustrated, it is these networks which are of pivotal importance in terms of nuclear transfer. Page 5 of 9

6 The second set of issues arise around the possibility of direct collusion between terrorists, and Islamists within the Pakistan military and intelligence services who have access to nuclear weapons and/or nuclear components. Having myself worked closely with Pakistan s SPD on nuclear safety and security issues I take the view that these are serious concerns. Indeed I have published an analysis of these issues in a report for my research unit and again I understand a copy of this has been posted on the UKDF website. Pakistan and the WoT. With the nuclear issue now in our minds, and with some background elements in place, I want to say something about Pakistan s role in the War on Terrorism. Two sets of tensions those between Pakistan s need to be responsive to the US in particular and the need to be responsive to the generally anti-western sentiment at all levels in Pakistan, and those between differing Western and Pakistan interests in the region have led to what may be called the double narrative of Pakistan s role in the WoT. The first of these the story Pakistan wants to West to hear is that Pakistan is an indispensable ally in the WoT. Certainly in the early years after 9/11 Pakistan did provide a great deal of support for the WoT, assisting the West in hunting down many al-qaeda members, arresting or killing many senior figures such as Al-Libbi, Ghailiani, Farooqi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and so forth, and closing down many indigenous terrorist organisations. Pakistan has also taken heavy casualties in the tribal areas battling tribal militants. The second narrative, however, is that Pakistan has released many terrorist suspects, allowed many indigenous terrorist organisations to reform, some under different names, has redeployed some of these groups to its northern areas and even to Bangladesh to escape international attention, that the Taliban are back in force along virtually the entire length of the Pakistan-Afghan border and that its leaders, including Mullah Omar himself, are still at large and almost certainly under the protection of the ISI. Yes Pakistan has found itself - under intense US pressure - fighting tribal militants, al-qaeda, and the TTP in the tribal areas, and in the aftermath of the storming of the Lal Masjid in July 2007 has found itself subject to escalating violence in its cities, including Islamabad and Rawalpindi, but there are few signs that Pakistan has given up support for terrorism as an instrument of state policy, that it is prepared to move Page 6 of 9

7 hard against the Taliban within Pakistan, or that it has given up the support of the Taliban for its objectives in Afghanistan. In relation to al-qaeda, Pakistani perhaps no longer support and protects al-qaeda in the way it once did though some ISI operatives may still do so but the tribal areas do provide a safe haven, al-qaeda is resurgent, its leadership is still at large, and Pakistan s co-operation in the WoT has declined since the high point of /4. Critics on both sides of the Atlantic provide a pretty consistent critique of the ISI s role, in particular that: the ISI tends to act on US and/or UK intelligence but not to be proactive in bringing its own intelligence to the West, and that there are huge gaps in the intelligence the ISI does provide to the West which Western agencies believe they are able to fill should they wish; the ISI is unhelpful in relation to specific investigations most notably of 7/7 and 21/7 where the trail has gone cold, particularly where these investigated abut against Pakistani sensitivities such as ISI terrorist training camps; the ISI has restricted or denied the US/UK access to many alleged terrorists as well as to many of its own operatives and assets [key individuals here include Omar Saeed Sheik implicated in the murder of Daniel Pearl; Dawood Ibrahim, Pakistan s no 1 gangster/fixer with known connections to the ISI and al-qaeda; Rashid Rauf allegedly involved in the summer 2006 Heathrow bomb plots]; the ISI manipulates intelligence for its own internal and geopolitical reasons, and misdirects US and UK intelligence services. The real point here of course is not whether Pakistan and its ISI are for us or against us, but rather whether the benefits the UK and US derive from the support of the Pakistan military and ISI are worth the costs and present and future risks. I take the view that the answer to that question has changed markedly for the negative over the past few years and that we can no longer afford a business as usual relationship with the Pakistan military. Not at least while Pakistan itself is in crisis, while NATO falters in Afghanistan, while the number of UK casualties in Afghanistan rises, while the number of UK terrorist plots with links to Pakistan continues to rise, or while the risks of a nuclear terrorist attack with its origins in Pakistan remains. Page 7 of 9

8 Policy Constraints I am under no illusions however about the difficulties of adjusting policy towards Pakistan in relation to the War on Terrorism. Any policy revisions must face up to at least five substantial obstacles: 1) that despite the nominal transition to democracy in Pakistan post February 2008, the Pakistan military remains in control of defence policy, foreign policy, nuclear policy, internal security, and will defend their expanded interests in the Pakistan economy which mushroomed under Musharraf. Iin the context of the WoT, and in the context of vast direct US aid to the Pakistan military this leaves the divided elected government a pretty small portfolio of issues to squabble about; 2) that Pakistan has proven extremely resistant to external sanctions and pressure. Indeed the lessons of the decade or so of the Pressler sanctions through the 1990s, and the post-test sanctions in 1998, is that Pakistan will not budge an inch in the face of such pressure and that the solutions it seeks to circumvent those pressures have had, if anything, even more negative consequences for the West; 3) that we should never lose sight of Pakistan s capacity for coercive options, by which I mean its capacity to deny the West what support it presently offers and/or to step up support for the Taliban, for terrorists, for proliferation, and so on. I have myself heard several senior Pakistani diplomats and military figures make precisely this threat, albeit veiled in polite language; 4) that the narrow focus of the Bush administration and Cheney s office in particular over the past six years on Musharraf and the Pakistan Army has greatly limited the policy options and denied the West a broader front of engagement with Pakistan. Over Musharraf s term democracy has declined in Pakistan and Islamic extremism and terrorism have flourished. It will not be easy to find that broader front or to reverse the consequences of Bush s policy myopia; 5) that direct US military intervention in Pakistan is a hugely risky policy option with the potential to inflame the situation, undermine what western support still exists in Pakistan, trigger precisely the coercive options Pakistan has warned of, and perhaps even threaten the existence of Pakistan itself. I am reminded of Zbigniew Brezinski s recent entreaty that the US could soon find Page 8 of 9

9 itself at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and, in his words, if it were that would spell the end of US hegemony. Nevertheless I believe the West must change policy towards Pakistan, and I believe the UK has a window of opportunity to work for that change once a new administration comes into office in the United States. Disclaimer The views of authors are their own. The UK Defence Forum holds no corporate view on the opinions expressed in papers or at meetings. The Forum exists to enable politicians, industrialists, members of the armed forces, academics and others with an interest in defence and security issues to exchange information and views on the future needs of Britain s defence. It is operated by a non-partisan, not for profit company. UK Defence Forum papers are archived at - the last three years being accessible only to members and subscribers. Prior to that they are in the public domain subject to usual conventions. Members wishing to comment on papers can access a noticeboard via the members area of the website July 2008 Page 9 of 9