Thursday 30 June 2011

Pakistan’s Double Game



In the light of the US assassination of Osama Bin Laden, who it turned out was hiding in plain sight at the supposed heart of the Pakistani military establishment, much has been made of the relationship between Pakistan’s military and islamist movements in the country. David Cameron proclaimed that Pakistan was ‘looking both ways’ in its dealings with the West and its war on terror. Is such behaviour surprising? Is such behaviour confined to our allies in the region? I would argue to both questions; it is not.

From the earliest days of US support for the mujahidin in Afghanistan  Pakistan has been at the buisness end of dealings with the various militant groups in the region. Much of the capital that backed the proliferation of madrasses in Pakistan came from the US allied Saudi regime, support for the mujahidin came from the US via Pakistan, training for the same groups took place in Pakistan and those that would become the Taliban under Mullah Omar were raised, radicalized and mobilized in refugee camps bordering Afghanistan.  Indeed it is argued that the Pashtun dominated areas that straddle both Afghanistan and Pakistan, these provinces -broadly Helmand, Kandahar and Kabul (bordering Balochistan, North and South Waziristan in Pakistan)- are where Nato’s surge has faced most violent resistance.

Pakistan’s ‘double game’ most recently considered, is a series of treaties with newly predominant tribal groupings in North Wiziristan where failed attempts to assert the power of the Pakistani state in the tribal provinces have led to a truce between the ‘Waziristan’ Taliban and the Pakistani state. The treaties essentially guarentee the autonomy of the tribal militants from Pakistani state interference, and guarantee that these militias will report and not support forigen fighters in the area, for our purposes let’s call these ‘foreigners’ Al-Qa’eda (they actually feature Uzbeks, Tajiks and even militants from China) . However these new tribal players are closely linked and supported by Al-Qe’ada, perhaps now more closely than are the Afghan Taliban.

A very similar strategy of negotiation had been pursuded in Iraq during the ‘surge’ (the terminology surge is misleading in Iraq, as actually through the withdrawal of US allies, total troop numbers were going down) . In Anbar province the US struck a deal with Sunni militias, the US would pay fighters a regular salary to turn thier guns from occupation forces to Al-Qa’eda in Iraq. This was regarded as a breakthrough in US involvement in Iraq, by empowering the Sunni militias against a preponderant Shi’a majority and the ALQ-in-Iraq forces that plagued the occupation the US was able to draw down its forces on the ground.

Pakistans adopting of a similar strategy is not particularly new, indeed one wonders whether the Pakistani practice actually inspired the move in Iraq. That Pakistan has had to persistently adopt such tactics to deal with the militants within its borders is directly related to US actions in Afghanistan, both in the 80’s and today.

Firstly the initial offensive in 2001 saw the majority of surviving foreign fighters and Pashtun Taliban cross the border into Pakistan. It is highly likely that Bin Laden and Zwahiri had been in Pakistan ever since. Though ALQ and the various ‘Talibans’ are closely linked they are not one organization. There has been an alleged split or divergence of interests between the Afghan Taliban under Mullah Omar on one side and  Al-Qa’eda and emerging Pakistani militias or ‘Al-Qa’eda in Pakistan’ on the other. The former are concerned with retaking Afghanistan. The latter have wider designs, initially the plan was to bring the US army into the ‘swamp’ of Afghanistan and fight it on their own terms. This is now extended to include bringing the jihad to Pakistan, India –through bombings and destablizing tactics such as the Mumbai massacre- and the wider central asian region.

The Musharraf regime, under US pressure agreed to move forces from the Kashmir border to combat the rising power of these new militants and their foreign allies. This was contrary to the conservative nationalist sentiments of the Pakistani military, which like a majority in Pakistan saw India as the primary enemy. Military feelings were further brusied by the purging of islamist inclined officers from the ranks of the army and subsequent defeats at the hands of the new militants in the border regions.

The radicalization of the Pakistani military has been an issue for years, and the active engadgement with the muhajidin in Afghanistan in the 1980’s saw ties established that would be consolidated in the Kashmiri conflict. The war on terror and US pressure on Musharraf and his successors has seen a continuation of dispersal through removal by the state and defection of numerous officers, firstly into paramilitary groups engaged in Kashmir, then into Afghanistan and now into the Waziristan region. That the US claims to have killed or captured Pakistani soldiers fighting against them in Afghanistan is small surprise

Just as the Pakistani military may have been involved in hiding the presence of Bin Laden from the US, the US has –intentionally or otherwise- behaved in a similar manner, from a Pakistani perspective. A key Pakistani militant Abdullah Meshud was captured by US forces in combat in Afghanistan in 2001, he was transported to Guantanamo where he remained for over two years until he was allowed to return to the border regions, where he quickly returned to engage in war with the Pakistani State.

Consistent US support for Pakistan against the USSR and now its new jihadist replacements has seen brutal dictatorship, war with India, rampant internecine intrigue and corruption, the assassination of US puppet and presidential hopeful Bhutto and the incremental disintegration of what little state power there has ever been in Pakistan.

It is eminently possible that the practices seen in Iraq could be reproduced in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The new tribal players in the border regions have been placated by the Pakistani regime before and at the expense of the ‘foreigners’. However negotiations are likely to fail –as has been the case before- if the US continues to act unilaterally with its special forces in the border regions. This action undermines the Pakistani state itself and potential negotiations; why should those on the ground negotiate at all if the very state that they reside in cannot offer credible guarantees? The issues concerning the efficacy of US action inside Pakistan are numerous enough to fill another post, but suffice to say, as accurate as advocates of drones claim them to be, accuracy is irrelevant if intelligence is inadequate, which it consistently is.

The US can afford to engage in such grand scale overtures. The tribal ‘Talibans’ of Pakistan and Afghanistan cannot be removed from the picture, they will always be there, the foreigners on the other hand are of a much smaller number and if it serves the interests of the tribal players could effectively be routed. This it seems is the only viable option available

Neither the US or Pakistan sees their various wars in black and white, to accuse Pakistan of a double game is only to admit that the US has been playing much the same game for years. As such it seems the only mutually beneficial exit strategy for all concerned is the double game, at the expense of those who are essentially the enemies of all.

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