Our response to US war machinery in Afghanistan

For Pakistan, the concluding assessment of Afghanistan has been: one, to leave Afghanistan to its own devices

The War on Terror descended on Pakistan after July 2007, when the incident of Lal Masjid occurred. The suicide attacks became a routine matter after that. The advent of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) hereafter, challenged the writ of Pakistan’s state across the country. The most vulnerable targets of TTP’s attacks were the state’s security apparatus, especially the armed forces and other law enforcement agencies. Whatever the reasons for the Lal Masjid episode (this is not the space to delve upon it), the incident made terrorism Pakistan’s most complicated and intractable internal problem. This is where the argument of “whose war is this any way” surfaced and haunted the country for years to come.

The advent of home-grown terrorism in Pakistan added fuel to the anti-American sentiments, already rife in the country. In a Pew research study released in May 2013, about 64% Pakistanis were found having anti-American sentiments. As far as the war on terrorism was concerned, nine out of 10 Pakistanis considered Pakistan on the wrong track. Drone attacks were considered as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty that had killed more civilians than the actual targets: the Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists.

It is now common knowledge that military dictator Pervez Musharraf had given the United States the go-ahead signal to use predator strikes in Pakistan. In April 2013, Musharraf told CNN that he had authorised drone strikes in Pakistan while he was in power. Similarly, a diplomatic cable from the then US ambassador Anne Patterson, dated August 2008, and released by WikiLeaks, disclosed that then PM Yousaf Raza Gillani had agreed to the strikes in private. “I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We will protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.”

According to a report published in The Washington Post in 2008, the US and Pakistan had a deal whereby the US would throw drones at erstwhile FATA while Pakistan would put up a sham protest against the strikes. Even president Zardari is said to have given a green signal on the continuation of the strikes by saying during his meeting with former CIA director Mike Hayden, in New York, “Kill the seniors, collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.”

On the other hand, the presence of CIA operatives in Pakistan complicated matters between the two countries in January 2011 when Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in broad daylight. The incident embarrassed the Pakistan government and its military as their denial to CIA’s operatives working in the country got exposed. According to a Foreign Ministry statement, some 414 non-diplomats referred to as “special Americans” were living in Pakistan at that time. Most of them were living in Islamabad while some in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar. An intelligence report suspected these “special Americans as operatives of US intelligence agencies who were on covert missions in Pakistan”. The Raymond Davis incident was badly handled by both governments. At one stage when the then ISI chief, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, talked to the CIA chief, Leon Panetta, to extract the truth about Raymond Davis being on a covert mission in the country, Panetta refused to acknowledge it. Eventually, the American ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, had to convince the State Department and the CIA to open up, and own Davis as its contractor.

Pakistan was more than convinced that the US would eventually leave Afghanistan, returning the country back to Pakistan to install its favourites in Kabul. Pakistan was not happy with Karzai. He was found aligning too close to India by providing a wide space to the India-backed Northern Alliance in its government. In fact this prompted Islamabad to indulge in a two-track policy whereby the Pashtun Taliban were protected while the Al Qaeda Arab and non-Afghan fighters were handed over to the US.

Though relations between Pakistan and the US have improved to an extent that there is little firework aimed at one another for using or misusing the other to achieve one’s special interests. There is also an assurance to alleviate Pakistan’s fear that the US would not leave Afghanistan unattended, as it did after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in 1989. Pakistan’s involvement is also assured in the peace talks held between the Taliban and the US. Pakistan could be rightly worried about Afghanistan entering into another civil war in the wake of US and US-led NATO forces’ drawdown in 2014, affecting its regional interests.

For Pakistan, the concluding assessment of Afghanistan and other related issues has been: one, to leave Afghanistan to its own devices without buying the headache as to who will rule that country; Pashtun or non-Pashtun. Two, there was a dire need to abandon the Jihadi extremist programme. Three, an urgent assessment was required of the key word “dysfunctional state” as was reported in the Abbottabad Commission reports that explained the flaws and weaknesses of the political institutions of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2020.

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