Abstract
Pakistan’s obsession of searching for a ‘strategic depth’ across the Durand Line in Afghanistan and a ‘Muslim Space’ in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has proved to be a devastating policy for the country in pursuit of which its military-intelligence establishment implanted the seeds of Islamism, extremism and state-sponsored terrorism on both sides of their borders. This strategic overstretch, though driven by a strong military sense of geo-politics among its largely military rulers, is embedded in the country’s unrealistic yearnings, out of place perceptions and false grievances. The army outsourced its ill-conceived strategy to jihadi organisations and religious institutions and allowed local militias, terrorist groups, guerrilla armies and other non-state actors to emerge in different parts of the country who afterwards claim political and religious authority. Rawalpindi (army headquarters) supported these terrorists as a cheap way to keep India and Afghanistan off balance. But over the years, they have metamorphosed into a menace and the more powerful terrorist groups—which are also the more radical ones—have outgrown their handlers; fatally weakening the political institutions, declining the role of the state and creating monsters that threaten to devour Pakistani society. In the process, the failure of the state apparatus is creating a culture of impunity and ultimately leading to the breakdown of the rule of law in the country. Clearly, ongoing fragility appears to be a prelude to a failed state. Thus, the extremists’ growth and power in Pakistani society are a direct result of its policy towards India and Afghanistan. What is required is a four-dimensional approach to promote liberal democracy, to reduce the role of military, to reform madrassah, and to emphasise on economic development through cross-border trade with India and Afghanistan. The Pakistani strategic obsession has large-scale security implications both for its neighbours and the international community at large, and hence, requires closer scrutiny and analysis.
Introduction
Pakistan’s obsession of searching for a ‘strategic depth’ across the Durand Line in Afghanistan and a ‘Muslim space’ in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has proved to be a devastating policy for the country in pursuit of which its military establishment implanted the seeds of Islamism, extremism and state-sponsored terrorism on both sides of their borders. This strategic overstretch, though driven by a strong military sense of geo-politics among its largely military rulers, is embedded in the country’s unrealistic yearnings, out-of-place perceptions and false grievances. Pakistan’s rather infatuated reactions to India’s peace and prosperity in the subcontinent show that the country is disgruntled by the imperatives of the territorial status quo vis-à-vis its eastern neighbour. In the same vein, the weakness and vulnerability of Afghanistan have enticed the Pakistani rulers to impose their will on the landlocked country. Over the years, the Pakistani state has orchestrated several crises in India and Afghanistan, leading to mass casualty where the investigative linkage ends with the country’s military-intelligence establishment or ‘deep state’ as it is called. Thus, the extremists’ growth and power in Pakistani society is the direct result of its policy towards India and Afghanistan in which the state actors have played a critical role. 1 Apparently, many ardent ideologues from Pakistan Army and Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) continue to run with many terrorist organisations which have consequently brought this Muslim country of 180 million people into an edge of implosion from within and so many terrorist attacks outside including 9/11 in New York and Washington DC and 26/11 in Mumbai.
By over-extending itself, the army outsourced its ill-conceived strategy to jihadi organisations and religious institutions. Local militias, terrorist groups, guerrilla armies and other non-state actors were allowed to emerge in different parts of the country who afterwards claim political and religious authority. Rawalpindi (army headquarters) supported these terrorists as a cheap way to keep India and Afghanistan off balance. But over the years, they have metamorphosed into a menace and the more powerful terrorist groups—which are also the more radical ones—have outgrown their handlers; fatally weakening the political institutions, declining the role of the state and creating monsters that threaten to devour Pakistani society. In the process, the failure of the state apparatus is creating a culture of impunity and ultimately leading to the breakdown of the rule of law in the country. Clearly, ongoing fragility appears to be a prelude to a failed state. And if Pakistan fails, ‘the region stretching from Iraq through Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan could become a “belt of terror”, unleashing waves of multipronged attacks in its direction’ (Khanna and Raja Mohan 2006). Such a Pakistani state would have large-scale security implications for its neighbours as well as the international community, and hence, requires closer scrutiny and analysis in proper perspective.
This article aims to elucidate as to why Pakistan is obsessed with ‘strategic depth’ and ‘Muslim space’ in the first place and argues about its futility. Then the study highlights the catastrophic consequences of such an ill-conceived policy. The last part of the essay examines at least four variables—to promote liberal democracy, to reduce the role of military, to reform madrassahs and to encourage cross-border trade with India and Afghanistan—as dynamics of change to underline whether Pakistan retains its capacity to purge the demons that possess it before it is devoured by them.
Strategic Depth
The Pakistan army’s perennial search of strategic depth against India has been a determining factor in the country’s policy towards Afghanistan for most parts of its history since independence, and intrinsically linked to this strategic ambition is its obsession for a ‘right Pashtun-dominated’ government for Afghanistan. What does it mean for the Pakistani state?
Strategic depth is a term in military literature that refers to the distances between the front lines or battle sectors and the combatants’ heartlands. It conjures up an image of Napoleonic manoeuvres of trading space to fight back. In the context of politico-military exercises, a buffer zone could be a strategic depth if it provides safety and resources to an army or a country (Raghavan 2001). The Pakistani craze of strategic depth could be sensed from this perspective. The military leadership in Pakistan has always considered India to be an existential threat and believes that Pakistan has been handicapped by the lack of territorial depth to absorb an attack by India and then to retaliate because it is narrow at its middle and has very little depth in case of a large-scale war. That is why they view Afghanistan’s territory to be Pakistan’s ‘strategic depth’ territory into which it could retreat from an Indian offensive; thus, Afghanistan is designated to provide safe harbour for Pakistani forces in the event of such a conflict (Weinbaum 2006, 6). 2 A friendly and cooperative Afghan state would also assure the leadership in Islamabad that India or any forces aligned with New Delhi would not pose a threat to Pakistan from across its north-west frontier (see Weinbaum 1991). Islamabad also wanted to put an end to the longstanding Afghan–Pakistan border dispute and Afghanistan’s past support for the creation of an independent Pashtunistan state out of its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the North-west Frontier Province) and Baluchistan provinces.
The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979 provided such an opportunity to Pakistan. General Zia-ul-Haq—the front-line man in the America’s anti-Soviet war in the 1980s—was determined to overthrow the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul and to establish a Pakistan-friendly Islamic government there. 3 In conformity with his policy, Pakistan continued to support the most fundamentalist groups among the Mujahiddin, especially those zealots who would be willing to settle the long-standing border dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan on terms favourable to Islamabad. Pakistan also supported those leaders who seemed committed to ending Afghanistan’s traditional close relationship with India.
In the meanwhile, the term strategic depth found a formal place in Pakistan’s military–strategic lexicon during the Zarb-e-Momin military exercise in 1990 under the leadership of General Mirza Aslam Beg, who used it during his military manoeuvres. He articulated that in the event of a long and difficult war with India, Afghanistan’s friendly territory could serve as a strategic buffer zone, providing secure operating bases for Pakistan’s air force and army (Sethi 2001). General Beg recalled the 1965 Indo-Pak war when Pakistan sought to protect its smaller air force from Indian air attacks by parking some of its American-supplied fighter aircrafts in Iranian airfields near its western border. Both Iran and Pakistan were then pro-US allies.
In 1994, Pakistan orchestrated the Taliban—a religious fundamentalist force indoctrinated from Islamic madrassahs—to establish a satellite state in Afghanistan. ISI provided the Taliban with all kinds of support including logistics and advice in coordination with the Afghan cell in Pakistan’s Foreign Office. Policy-makers in Islamabad envisaged that a Taliban-dominated government in Kabul would be permanently friendly towards Pakistan. So when the Taliban took over Kabul in 1996 and inaugurated the ‘Islamic’ government there followed by the closure of the Indian embassy, it was seen in Rawalpindi as a strategic coup and their masters over there were overjoyed.
In the post-9/11 period, as Pakistan was forced to join the global war on terrorism led by the United States, 4 and the then rebel Northern Alliance 5 backed by the United States started bombing the Taliban targets, Pakistan’s linkages with the Taliban seemed to have come under constraint for some time. But soon it was revived, and under the secured cover of the Pakistan army and ISI, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were regrouped in Pakistan and allied themselves with other terrorist organisations. There is mounting evidence to suggest that the Pakistani army and intelligence personnel were fighting alongside the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda to destabilise the US-backed and India-supported Hamid Karzai Government in Afghanistan. In 2007, The New York Times reported that ‘all Taliban are I.S.I. Taliban and that it is not possible to go to Afghanistan without the help of the ISI’ (see Gall 2007). Many Afghans, interviewed by the present author, are of the opinion that the Taliban would not have killed former President and High Peace Council Chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani or President Karzai’s half brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, a prominent Pashtun leader in Kandahar region, without the prior knowledge and approval of the ISI. 6
General Ashfaq Kayani, who took charge in 2008 as the army chief, appeared to have a stronger agenda than that of his predecessor. During a visit of US Vice-President Joe Biden to Islamabad, the Pakistani General was bold enough to push hard on the American leader demanding that the United States accept a special role for Pakistan in the proposed ‘end-state’ for Afghanistan, install its proxies in power in Kabul and help reduce the Indian role in Afghanistan (Raja Mohan 2011a, 10). More significantly, General Kayani wanted the US to get New Delhi to make concessions on Jammu and Kashmir. This high-handedness, however, had to subside after the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by the American commandos in the garrison city of Abbotabad in May 2011, which exposed the military and ISI and put them on the defensive; but the country’s strategic objective in Afghanistan did not change.
The military leadership also envisaged that Pakistan must promote and help establish a ‘right Pashtun-dominated’ Islamic state in Afghanistan which would promise to neutralise Pashtun irredentism in terms of the controversial Durand Line 7 as well as help train and indoctrinate jihadis for the struggle against India in Kashmir. In the present strategic equations, Rawalpindi probably sees such leadership in the Haqqani network 8 and the Taliban to whom it desires to install in the position of power in the post-American political dispensation in Kabul.
The Folly of Strategic Depth
Let us presume that India declares war against Pakistan. What ‘strategic assets’ would Pakistan like to ‘hide’ in Afghanistan? Would its F16 fighter bombers equipped with nuclear weapons be ‘parked’ in some Afghanistan airfield and its long-range artillery towed down across Khyber Pass into Afghanistan? Would its nuclear tipped missiles be moved to Afghanistan for safety? Would its 5,50,000-strong military just run away into Afghanistan in search of shelter? Significantly, how would the 12 million Pashtuns of Afghanistan, who have never recognised the Durand Line as their border with their 28 million alienated Pashtun brethren who live across the border in Pakistan and who have traditionally fought for a greater Pashtunistan state, support the Pakistan military’s cause and protect them from any perceived Indian attack? It has been reported that four million Pakistani Pashtuns in the country’s unruly seven tribal agencies of Bajaur, Mahmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, and North and South Waziristan and its adjoining areas are living under Taliban rule (Rashid 2010, 24). Significantly, how would the Pakistani Pashtun tribes—who are at war with the state under the nomenclature of the Pakistani Taliban 9 —support the cause of the Pakistani military?
Times have changed, and the idea of strategic depth has become irrelevant with both countries’ announcements of their nuclear weapons tests in 1998. The deployment of ballistic missiles and long-range fighter bombers also make it outdated. Old Cold War mindsets have to be changed.
Pakistan has a legitimate interest in seeking a friendly government in neighbouring Afghanistan just as India has the same in the case of Pakistan. A friendly, stable and peaceful neighbour, in today’s world, is a strategic asset for one’s own economic development. But over the years, Pakistan’s security predicament has transformed its need for a friendly neighbour into its self-indulgence for a client state which the Afghans will not accept. Pakistan’s strategic depth game-plan has prevented its mutually beneficial economic integration with Afghanistan and India.
Pakistan’s search for a ‘right Pashtun-dominated’ government in Afghanistan has also wrong historical precedents. A Pashtun government leadership, unless it is broad-based, has created more security problems to Pakistan than otherwise. King Zahir Shah, who ruled Afghanistan until 1973, was a Pashtun and during most of his tenure, he was pro-Soviet and friendly with India, and yet never posed a serious threat to a pro-US Pakistan as his government was broad-based and decentralised. But his successors Prince Mohammad Daoud, a Pashtun nationalist, and Nur Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, both die-hard Pashtuns, not only aggressively challenged the legitimacy of the Durand Line but also started fomenting and supporting nationalism and separatism among the Pashtuns of Pakistan. 10 In fact, except for the government led by Burhanuddin Rabbani (a Tajik), all of Afghanistan regimes, including the Taliban’s Mullah Omar and right up to President Hamid Karzai, have been led by Pashtuns. Interestingly, none of these governments—including the Taliban which was created by Pakistan— recognised the Durand Line as the Pakistan–Afghanistan border. In fact, Taliban’s self-esteem never allowed them to accept any subservience to Islamabad. It came as a rude shock to the Pakistani establishment when the radical Islamic regime refused to recognise the Durand Line and also to drop Afghanistan’s claim over a part of Khybar Pakhtunkawa province of Pakistan (Hussain 2010, 30). Thus, the Pakistani search for a ‘right Pashtun-dominated’ government in Afghanistan sounds absurd and out of place.
Similarly, the perception that a possible Indo-Afghan pincer movement might create the biggest security challenge to Pakistan is incongruous. Afghan rulers have proved themselves as nationalists and xenophobic to outside interference in their internal matters. King Zahir Shah declined to budge to Indian pressure to open a front against Pakistan during both the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars despite the fact that his government never recognised the legitimacy of the Durand Line. Still more, the King is said to have assured his neighbour that his country would not take advantage of Pakistan’s increased vulnerability (Burke 1973, 335–356). The same Afghan mindset has not changed till date. After the Indo-Afghan strategic agreement of October 2011, 11 Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai described Pakistan as Afghanistan’s ‘brother’ and that in case any country including India or even the United States attacks Pakistan, Afghanistan will stand with Pakistan (The Indian Express 2011, 16). This is contrary to the Pakistani view that the Afghans might side against Pakistan in case of an Indo-Pakistan war. Thus, 65 years since independence provide enough proof that India and Afghanistan, while having separate disputes with Pakistan—Kashmir and the Durand Line, respectively—never supported each other on any joint effort to attack Pakistan.
The division of Pashtuns across the Pakistan–Afghanistan borders has always been resented by the Afghans, but over the years a resigned attitude set in as tribes on both side of the border accommodated themselves to the status quo. They are somewhat content with their cross-border kin and group ties. Even though the recent Afghanistan rulers showed antipathy towards the Durand Line, they never seriously pursued to change it by force or through diplomacy. For larger interests of peace and stability of the country, Pakistani authorities should respect this Pashtun sentiment and their proximity across the borders which have historically shaped the region.
The present status quo across the Durand Line is likely to continue for a long time to come unless a die-hard Pashtun nationalist (may not be a right Pashtun for Pakistan?) with an obsession for state expansionism comes to power in Kabul. That is unlikely to happen because (a) the Afghan state is economically so weak that it will take generations to maintain its monetary balance and reconstruction and rehabilitation; (b) the country is dependent on Pakistan for most of its trade and commercial ties with the outside world; (c) American troops are not likely to leave the country any time soon despite their departure deadline of 2014 12 ; (d) the anti-Pakistan forces in Afghanistan realise that their Muslim neighbour is militarily much stronger (and a nuclear power) to be challenged and that it would be futile to revive the historical vexed issues in the twenty-first century’s globalised and inter-dependent world; and most significantly, (e) the Afghans understand that their society has been deprived of its moorings and the country is alienated from the world and that they need to mend fence with their neighbours.
Pakistan’s strategic obsession in Afghanistan has taken such a turn that today instead of Pakistan using Afghanistan territory as its strategic depth, it is the other way round. Pakistani territory is being used for the same purpose by the Taliban, al-Qaeda and so many other terrorist organisations in their war against Afghanistan. Their influence is spreading inside Pakistan to such an extent that there are rising fears of the Talibanisation of the country and reducing it to a degenerated radical society. An American scholar on the subject writes:
In creating the Taliban, Islamabad had enhanced bin Laden’s legions, not Pakistan’s national security. (Ziring 2003, 339) The Taliban endeavored to make Pakistan part of a greater Afghanistan, a messianic state that eventually would encompass the whole of Central Asia. The tide of history had turned in another direction, however, but the belief of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and Mullah Omar’s jihadis, that the age of Pax Islamica had arrived, and that it could be achieved with the Talibanization of Pakistan persisted. (Ziring 2003, 318)
Pakistanis fail to understand that the Taliban is a double-edged weapon and that it is destined to bleed Pakistan either way. It will have a negative impact on Pakistan irrespective of the fundamentalist militia being in or out of power in Afghanistan. If it comes to power with some kind of negotiations or political arrangements with the Americans or the Karzai regime, it will be Pakistan’s burden to bear and certainly energise the Taliban forces that seek to achieve a similar sharia state in Pakistan. And if the Taliban fails to do so, it will prove itself as a cancer to be spread out to the entire body-politic of Pakistan when the ongoing instability and violence goes out of control.
Thus, the rationale of the search for strategic depth or a ‘right-Pashtun’ controlled Afghanistan regime for a secured Pakistan is ill-conceived and baseless, and on the contrary, a Taliban controlled Afghanistan—for which Pakistan is so desperately fighting—would be a bigger threat to the very survival of the Pakistani state.
Muslim Space
For the Pakistani military establishment, Kashmir remains the raison d’être for Pakistan’s existence: to accept Kashmir as part of India is to deny the rationale for the creation of Pakistan; as the country itself was created as a self-professed homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims on the basis of the two-nation theory. 13 This perception was strengthened within the military with the increasing weakness of the country’s founding political institutions and the early death of its founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah who had a secular credential; and gifted the Army with an open door to political power. The long road to military rule with Kashmir as an open agenda had begun with General Ayub Khan grabbing power through a military coup in 1958. The 1971 Indo-Pak war though mostly fought in the eastern front culminating in the birth of Bangladesh, enflamed the borders across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir as Pakistan accused India of fomenting separatism in the erstwhile East Pakistan. For the Pakistan Army, the Simla Agreement of 1972 was unacceptable, as they saw it as an imposition by India which won the war and created Bangladesh.
It was during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s that Pakistani General Zia-ul-Haq changed the dynamics of his country’s Kashmir policy by outsourcing jihad to ideologically motivated religious groups. It intensified the struggle at two altitudes. First, from now onwards the non-state actors—religious fanatics and terrorists—would be playing a bigger role; thus keeping the Kashmir valley boiling before the Indian army through an organised system of killing, violence and intimidations. And second, Zia introduced a new element in the struggle by elevating it ‘from liberation of Kashmir from Hindu India’ to conversing it into an ‘Islamic Space’ which meant cleansing Kashmir of Hindu ‘perfidy’ and presence. Zia was killed in 1988, but his obstinate ghosts came to haunt in the 1990s leading to large-scale bloodshed and the driving out of Hindus from the Kashmir valley. Zia was convinced that the Americans would be engrossed by their Afghanistan war and turn a blind eye to Pakistani moves in the region. 14 Pakistan’s strategy was simplified by General Zia: the Pakistani army would not start a war to liberate Kashmir, but the ISI would pay the bills for an armed uprising.
After Zia, the Pakistan army saw its own corporate interest in standing behind the surrogate armies of the terrorist leaders ‘keeping the Kashmir dispute alive’. As the army and the jihadist emerged as the two dominant ‘weaponised’ forces in Pakistan, the institutions of the state gradually surrendered to their extra-constitutional power. Terrorist organisations were allowed to flourish and some of them like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad, and Hizbul Mujahiddin were set up by the ISI specifically to wage intifada to wrest ‘Muslim lands’ of Jammu and Kashmir. 15 A kind of paranoia developed within the military which contended that by engaging around half a million Indian troops in Kashmir, the ‘Kashmiri freedom fighters’ had ensured Pakistan’s security (Hussain 2010, 27).
The October 1999 military coup brought to power the military officers who had authored the status quo ante bellum Kargil operation in May that year. As the architect of the Kargil intrusion, and now a military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf pursued a more aggressive policy on Kashmir and stepped up support for the Kashmiri militants and ‘equated support for their cause with support for the mujahidin (holy warriors) against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan’ (Hussain 2010, 9). Musharraf surreptitiously rehabilitated the Taliban after it was devastated in the post-9/11 US attacks because ‘this force would remain important for maintaining Pakistani influence in Afghanistan—and keep the low-intensity war in Kashmir going’. Jihad for liberating Kashmir was subsequently declared as Pakistan’s highest priority. 16 Musharraf’s successor General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani has ostensibly maintained a hands-off approach: the Army still calls the shots on Pakistan’s Kashmir policy and continues its search of a ‘Muslim Space’.
Ingrained to this long history of dissonance, Pakistani military rulers are infatuated with two more reasons to sponsor terrorism in Kashmir. First, they are determined to ‘pay India back’ for allegedly fomenting separatism in East Pakistan that became Bangladesh in 1971, and second, in their view, ‘India dwarfs Pakistan in population, economic strength, and military might’ (Stern 2000, 115). Thus, a great deal of strategic stakes and obsessions play the political dynamics from out of Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir.
How does the Indian nation look at the problem? And how is the Pakistani obsession out of place?
The Madness of a Muslim Space
First, India does not seem to have territorial ambition vis-à-vis Pakistan. Both in the 1965 and 1971 wars, India imposed defeat, but in neither case, did it seek to ‘assimilate, occupy or otherwise destroy Pakistan’ (see Shaun 2010, 12). In case of 1971 war, when the generals refused to accept a popularly elected Prime Minister from the erstwhile East Pakistan on the ground of ethnicity and their arrogance and declared martial law annulling the results of a free and fair election, it went up in flames. Then the unspeakable atrocities committed by ‘the army of Punjabis’ and the unfolding genocide in East Pakistan that led to an unparalleled refugee crisis in India forced New Delhi to intervene. Moreover, in the opinion of a western scholar: ‘The creation of Bangladesh was Bengali-led and an inevitable working through of the inherent contradictions of East and West Pakistan’ (Shaun 2010). The 1999 Pakistani Kargil intrusion and India’s determination to restore the occupied territory and New Delhi’s restraint to attack Pakistan despite mounting pressure from the people show that India does not allow a nuisance on its borders, but at the same time is not interested in any territorial ambition.
Second, without Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attacks in India, there has never been an Indian orchestrated strategy to create a threat scenario for Pakistan. Since 1971, there has been a state of ‘bitter peace’ in the two countries’ bilateral relationship, except when there is a Pakistani intrusion inside Indian territory (Kargil, 1999) or a major terrorist attack in India that originates from the Pakistani soil (including Indian Parliament attack in December 2001, attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008 and the Mumbai terror outrage in November 2008). That is when India retorted with amassing of troops on the Indo-Pak border as in early 2002 or retaliated with long-range artillery and used Air Force to liberate Kargil from the Pakistani army intruders.
Third, the main Indian contention regarding the status of Jammu and Kashmir is the fact that India has the second-largest Muslim population in the world, more even than Pakistan; and most significantly, Indian Muslims are integrated into India’s democracy because it is a democracy. Pakistan’s military rulers are well aware that India respected the sanctity of the Line of Control (including in Jammu and Kashmir) and that in every war since 1948 New Delhi has resisted the temptation of crossing the de facto borders. No responsible Indian decision-maker has ever stated overrunning Pakistan as an objective either in war or peacetime. In fact, that India is the status quo power in the bilateral dispute with Pakistan is well known to the Pakistani rulers.
Fourth, from the geo-political perspective, a good number of Indian strategic analysts and defence experts are of the view that Pakistan provides a buffer zone to India from the fulcrum strategic hot-spots of Afghanistan and Iran from where, historically, many invaders have marched through the ‘bad lands’ causing considerable human and economic damage to India. 17 If those invaders were to try to invade India today, they would have to first defeat the legions of General Kayani before they confront the Indian army. This school of experts also argue that in the event of the disintegration of Pakistan, suddenly Iran and Afghanistan would be on the Indian borders, and that New Delhi would have to directly face up to the Ayatollahs on the one side and Mullah Omar, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Haqqanis, etc., on the other. In that case, India would also have to deal with Baluchi, Waziri and Pashtun insurgencies in addition to its already basketful Naxals, Nagas, etc. It means that the Pakistan army is confronting all evils which otherwise India would have to do (See Rao 2007, 8, and Merchant 2011, 16). That is why, as per this view, there is a need for the Indians to support the continuance of a strong Pakistani state with an effective, cohesive and disciplined Pakistani army. The Indian strategic community knows that a failing Pakistan has the capacity to damage India considerably.
Fifth, Prime Ministers and prominent politicians from across the political spectrum in India have been harping on phrases like ‘stop “map-making” in South Asia’, ‘creating soft borders’, ‘open borders and a single currency’, ‘institutionalizing trans-border cooperation’, etc., which are obviously premised on legitimising the broad territorial status quo between the two countries. 18 India’s affirmation that ‘there would be no further territorial changes’ suggests, at least in a formal sense, its readiness to forego claims to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK). Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s declaration during his visit to Minar-e-Pakistan, Lahore, in 1999 reaffirmed that India has accepted Pakistan’s sovereign existence and would not pose any threat to it. This has been further confirmed by a Wikileak—US embassy cable—revelation, according to which prior to February 2007, both countries had ‘reached an understanding in back channels’ on a non-territorial solution to Kashmir in keeping with the four-point template of ‘demilitarization, maximum autonomy, making border irrelevant and joint management of the area’. The same exposure also reveals that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had told the US delegation in April 2009 that India makes no claim on ‘even an inch’ of Pakistani territory. 19 The Prime Minister’s wistful visualisation about having ‘breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul, while retaining our respective national identities’, 20 is certainly not out of context, and it reflects the voice of a new and emergent India.
Sixth, one would ask: in spite of being a bigger and powerful country, why is India so subservient to Pakistan, a country from where state-sponsored terrorists have attacked India several times not in the distant past? One reason is perhaps its rapid economic growth and dreams of getting into the big power status through peaceful means in which the Indian middle class does not want to be disrupted. Indians believe that a failed Pakistan could be a major disruptive force in the sub-continent, ruining India’s peaceful rise and its aspiration to achieve a big power status. This could also be the reason why even major terrorist attacks on its territory do not feed backlash in the form of riots against the Muslim population.
Despite these realities on positive Indian perceptions, Rawalpindi finds India behind every threat, imagined or real and encourages every force (media, political parties or terrorist outfits) that opposes all efforts to normalise relations with India. The country is still there tied down in 1947–1948, obsessed with the scar of ferocious bloodshed of partition of the sub-continent and ruining its people and society on a path of violence and annihilation. A Harvard scholar writes:
By facilitating the activities of the irregulars in Kashmir, the Pakistani government is inadvertently promoting internal sectarianism, supporting international terrorists, weakening the prospect for peace in Kashmir, damaging Pakistan’s international image, spreading a narrow and violent version of Islam throughout the region, and increasing tensions with India – all against the interests of Pakistan as a whole. (Stern 2000, 116)
Thus, the Pakistan Army’s contention of India as a threat to their security is baseless; on the contrary, Pakistani Army sponsored terrorist attacks in India have in fact created insecurity for the Indian nation. The Pakistani apprehension of threat scenario is based on false grievances and groundless fears of India.
Whither Pakistan?
The war in Afghanistan and conflict in Kashmir produce men with arms who consider themselves as soldiers of Islam. They behave like the country’s armed forces, swaggering about with automatic weapons in public. They openly raise funds, recruit cadres, operate hundreds of terrorist training centres across the country and some of them like LeT and expand their footprints worldwide. Their radical ideas attract the sympathy of millions of Pakistanis to such an extent that in the ultra-conservative rural Pakistan, even parents do not hesitate to sacrifice their sons for the cause of jihad as they consider it as a spiritual duty. Many terrorist outfits maintain ‘charitable organizations’ that provide financial support to ‘martyr’s’ families (Stern 2000, 122). 21 Yet they are financed, trained and supported by the ‘deep state’. For them, nurturing Islamists has become a sine qua non for governing Pakistan.
But whenever there is a clash between their Islamic jihadi goal and that of the Pakistan government, these terrorists have not hesitated to go their own way even if that meant a violent confrontation with their patrons. And that follows frequent blasts and suicide attacks targeting innocent civilians, political leaders, religious shrines and high profile military and intelligence assets. The Lal Masjid incident in 2007 in the heart of Islamabad is one such example, where about 200 people were killed in the army operation in an attempt to rescue the Chinese hostages held by militants in the country’s premier shrine. Then the militants openly declared war against the army. Within months, Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister and the country’s most talented politician, was killed at an election campaign rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Then the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was destroyed by a suicide bomber in 2008 which killed or wounded more than 300 people. Organised violence and suicide attacks have been lethal with one report suggesting that there have been 335 suicide bombings since 2001 (Brulliard 2011).
Today, nobody in Pakistan dares to propose an amendment to the country’s blasphemy laws that has been used to prosecute religious minorities and in some cases, even Muslims who promote tolerance. The liberal minded Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and the only Christian minister in the Cabinet, Shahbaz Bhatti, who had urged to reform the law, were killed in January and March 2011, respectively (see Gall 2011; Perlez 2011). What is more deplorable is the public reaction, especially the showering of rose petals by lawyers on Taseer’s killer. The unforeseen wave of support for the assassin from Islamic extremists underscored how close to the abyss the world’s second-largest Muslim country has come.
Another horrifying dimension of Pakistan’s jihad culture is that the country is slowly down-sliding from one of ‘democratic openness to a closed state held hostage by radical Islam’ (Rashid 2010, 25–26). The mass media is increasingly coming under threat and information control and the muzzling of journalists by the military continue. Extremist literature, newspapers, etc., are flooding the market with no attempts by the state to stop them. Journalists who do not report the statements of the jihadis are targeted. As a result, mysterious murders intrigue and conspiracies are the order of the day and country is descending into ‘killing fields’ where, if threats do not work to silence a whistleblower, abductions and killings do the job. One such victim writes: ‘journalists are shot like stray dogs in Pakistan—easily killed because their assassins sit at the pinnacle of power’. 22 As per one estimate, some 80 journalists have been killed in Pakistan since 2000 (Rehmat 2012). Moreover, the military’s tactics of illegal detentions, forced disappearances and extra-judicial killings are not uncommon in the country today.
Militancy-infested military is another brutal aspect of the country’s jihad culture. It is not possible to measure the extent of ideological penetration of jihadis in the military, but one could safely argue that the military filters in every aspect of the country’s polity and society through the lens of Pakistan’s India and Afghanistan policy. To advance their strategic designs, the military rulers have frequently co-opted with the Islamists and terrorists. They view the terrorist organisations backed by the Islamists as useful tools in perpetuating their control over foreign and domestic policies. In turn, the Islamists and terrorists get their hands on to mobilise support for anti-India elements in Kashmir and the Taliban in Afghanistan even though they operate outside the framework of the rule of law. When Governor Taseer and Minister Bhatti were killed, the Pakistan army could not bring itself to even condemn these murders or even failed to convey condolences to their families, because there were too many soldiers and officers who sympathised with the killers and hailed them as heroes. Similarly, the attack on the General Headquarters of the Pakistan army in 2009; the May 2011 terrorist attack on PNS Mehran, a naval base near Karachi, with apparent insider collaboration and the subsequent arrest of a serving army brigadier for connection with the terrorists; and the attack on the Kamra air force base on 16 August 2012 have underlined the widespread fears about jihadist penetration of the Pakistani armed forces (Haider 2012, 10; also, see Siddiqa 2012, 10). These acts sound intriguing and the mindset of the army appears frightening as such discernment might ultimately lead to the end of the Pakistani army.
With the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenal and home to more terrorist groups than any other country, Pakistan faces a growing civil war with parts of the jihadist Frankenstein it helped create. It is for the first time in history that this explosive combination of nuclear weapons and a toxic mess of home-grown terrorists and ideological jihadists are seen in the Pakistani state. The Pakistani Taliban’s spectacular incursions into the country’s north-western Buner district (just 65 miles from the capital) in 2009 and four times attacks on Kamra’s Aeronautical Complex which houses air weapons and stores a part of the country’s nuclear arsenal raised the spectre of the terrorists getting control of Pakistan’s atomic weapons.
Thus, the military’s security predicaments vis-à-vis Afghanistan never made Pakistan more secure, or giving self-determination for the Kashmiris a democratic context never made Pakistan more democratic. Instead, while pursuing their mindless strategic objectives, the military ignored the erosion of the country’s vital state structures by promoting a jihad culture with its own intelligence agency’s close connivance with the terrorists. The military know that it is not possible to promote jihad in Kashmir and the Taliban in Afghanistan without inadvertently promoting jihad and sectarianism in Pakistan. And yet, Rawalpindi cannot drop its support to so many terrorist organisations it has promoted for decades, inexorably leading the state to an ominous destination. Is there any way out?
Dynamics of Change in Pakistan
There is no quick-fix solution to the ongoing problems in Pakistan and a paradigm shift can only be made if the country attempts to transform itself from within. Clearly, the nation is in a state of flux, a historical transition indeed! And a testing time for the Pakistani people. It is a testing time because now that the people would have to decide whether they want to build their future in a secular and a liberal democratic society in the twenty-first century in line with its founding father’s dream or they want to enslave themselves in the version of the seventh-century Caliphate that the al-Qaeda, Taliban and the radical Islamist terrorists want to hold them back. If they are destined for the later, they are already on the corridor to catastrophe; but if they are willing to embrace the former, they have to fight and earn it. Such a course correction must be whole-heartedly led by democratic forces: secular political parties and intellectuals who still constitute an influential core of the country’s changing political dynamics. They must redefine the country’s politics and institutions with a new orientation aimed at changing its strategic behaviour with neighbours and focus on economic prosperity and popular participation in governance. A four-dimensional approach is required to check the inward-looking Pakistani state: (a) to promote liberal democracy; (b) to marginalise the role of military; (c) to reform madrassahs; and (d) to emphasise on economic development through cross-border trade with India and Afghanistan.
Promote Liberal Democracy
Within the current domestic political milieu, the prime requirement is to promote liberal democracy. One particular dimension of the current political dynamics demands special consideration. Despite radicalisation of the Pakistani society, as stated above, the election performances of the Islamist parties are very poor: they never garner more than 10–12 per cent vote. On the other hand, the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the main opposition, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), claim about 60 per cent of the popular vote. The recent popularity of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party cannot be underrated either. Interestingly, all these political parties have espoused a moderate approach towards India and Afghanistan completely deviated from that of the military’s who have always upbraided the civilian initiatives in the name of compromising national security. These parties deserve more room to pursue their ‘policy of cooperation’ with the neighbouring countries. A Pakistani expert on the subject argues that ‘the country requires a sustained period of democracy under civilian governance—even if it is bad, poorly functioning democracy’. He observes that if the present government is ‘unpopular or ineffective, then he should be removed in the next election, not through a judicial or military coup’ (Rashid 2010, 28). Only a democratically elected government will be able to mobilise the necessary public opinion to clinch a lasting peace with India and abstain from exploiting the Pashtun sentiment across the Durand Line to advance the undesirable strategic depth in Afghanistan. One would agree with Harvard political scientist Joseph S. Nye who argues that terror is best fought by spreading and strengthening the ideals of liberal democracy (Nye 2011, 15). The path of liberal democracy could only save the Pakistani state from anarchy and civil war, and help promote harmonious relationship with India and Afghanistan, which in turn would position it as a moderate liberal Islamic state in line with Jinnah’s dream of a secular and liberal Pakistan.
Marginalise the Military
Promoting democracy in Pakistan means, in a sense, marginalising the role of military and making it habituated to democratic norms. A very fundamental internal reorientation of Pakistani military is perhaps the prime requirement to contemplate such a change which is possible through a two-track approach. First, the country’s political parties have to redefine the role of military in their party manifestoes as well as mobilise public opinion about the role it has played so far. They must bring to light that (a) the military’s ‘repeated interventions have weakened Pakistan’s civilian institutional capacity, undermined the growth of representative institutions, and fomented deep divisions in the country’ (Shah 2011, 70); (b) by keeping the intelligentsia and the civil society away from their decision-making process, the military leadership lacked intellectual inputs and the breadth of vision and expertise to formulate broad strategies on any but military issues—a dangerous policy vacuum exists in Pakistan—and hence, they acted condescendingly; (c) using militants to try to counter the Indian influence in Kashmir and Afghanistan is self-destructive and that home-grown extremism—not India or Afghanistan—is the real threat to Pakistan’s survival; (d) Pakistan’s rivalry with India and its mischievous role in Afghanistan has facilitated US intervention in Pakistan and that the gains (if any)—namely, mastery over the execution of covert war on both sides of its borders or US aid—outweigh the suffering inflicted on Pakistan’s people; and (e) today, Islamabad’s coffers are empty largely because of a ruinously high defence budget inflated by ingrained Indo-phobia. 23 Once the army changes its destructive course, Pakistan could reduce its spending on defence and security in the short term so that it can grow in the long term. The army must remain apolitical and its leadership must resolve to support the democratic system without giving preference to any particular political party.
The second approach is about institutional reform, that is, how to limit the army’s role in national security. With the changing political dynamics of the country, the country’s National Assembly would have to enact legislation (a) to make the ISI answerable to civilian authority; (b) to appoint a cabinet committee to approve top military appointments and promotions; and (c) to subject military expenditure to parliamentary debates. Then over a period of time, the military would be back to its rightful place devoid of its ongoing destructive security perspectives against India and Afghanistan. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid writes: ‘…no real change is possible without a change taking place in the army’s obsessive mind-set regarding India, its determination to define and control national security, and its pursuit of an aggressive forward policy in the region rather than first fixing things at home’ (Rashid 2010, 30).
Reform Madrassahs
The Pakistani religious schools, commonly known as madrassahs, have been called ‘factories of jihad’ in recent years because most of these estimated 13,000 Islamic Seminaries have the reputation for implanting seeds of terrorism in fertile minds. Their products have played an active role in jihadi terrorism directed against India and Afghanistan as well as against the Pakistani state itself (Hussain 2010, 76–88). Hence a comprehensive reform plan for madrassahs is crucial to check the Talibanisation of Pakistan as well as terrorism against neighbours. Such a plan would require (a) the state to bring all madrassahs under its administrative control; (b) a drastic change in their syllabus and curricula to make it job-oriented; (c) a ban on sending students to terrorist training camps; and (d) most significantly, regulating their financial resources. It is not that such initiatives have not been made by the Pakistan government in the past. 24 But it is the lack of determination and strong political will of the Pakistani rulers that hold them back. Appeasement of hard-line clerics by successive weak governments was also the stumbling block on the way to implementing such policies. Radicalisation of madrassahs was curbed to a great extent in Jordan and Egypt when the state took over their administration. A methodical, all-inclusive and secular educational programme at the grass-root level would certainly be of great help to thwart radicalisation of Pakistani society. A noteworthy legislation before the US House of Representatives in April 2009 called for the United States to ‘strengthen Pakistan’s public education system, increase literacy, expand opportunities for vocational training, and help create an appropriate national curriculum for all schools in Pakistan’ (US House of Representatives 2009). 25 Pakistan must make education the most priority area and promote secular trends and traditions in primary schools so that in the long-run the society is transformed slowly and the country finds itself at home with its neighbours.
Cross-border Trade
‘The best way to avoid state failure is to prevent it, and the best way to prevent it is to support broad-based economic growth’ (Eizenstat et al. 2005, 140). Expanding trade among India, Pakistan and Afghanistan is one way to invigorate their economies. In this regard, the proposal of reviving the old Silk Route between Central and South Asia to promote trans-border economic cooperation is an excellent one. Significantly, Pakistan—which is located at the crossroads of Asia—has begun to recognise the benefits of becoming an economic bridge between India, China, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf (Raja Mohan 2011b). But the fear of militancy remains a great deterrent to investment and commerce in Pakistan. If Islamabad can rid itself of the jihadi incubus, it is possible for it to transform into an economically vibrant hub that might leave Pakistan less dependent on American aid. Strong trade benefits by India to Pakistan will also shore up its business community and help enhance people to people contacts. Even New Delhi could strive to push Pakistan through Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to open its territory for Central Asian connectivity with India and explore an early agreement to build the TAPI (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) natural gas pipeline. For the success of such an initiative, Pakistan would have to revisit its much touted strategic depth game plan and restore the historic connectivity in the region. It is also equally important to realise that Afghanistan is not a zero-sum game between India and Pakistan and that both countries can contribute equally to Afghanistan’s development through trade. Similarly, India would have to make and sustain a trade and business constituency across the middle class and poor of Pakistan for a durable peace in its neighbourhood. Pakistan’s November 2011 announcement of granting the Most Favoured Nation (MNF) status to India to reciprocate the same that New Delhi has bestowed on Islamabad since 1996, and the September 2012 agreement between the two countries to liberalise a four-decade-old restrictive visa regime aimed at boosting commercial relations are the welcome moves.
Conclusion
It is important to understand that hitting the head of the snake in Pakistan is more important than fighting the tail in Afghanistan, India or elsewhere which should resonate louder to everybody now. But the most pertinent question is: who will hit the head of the snake? The only answer is: the people of Pakistan; it has to come from within. When the autocrats of the Arab world could be overthrown by people’s power, why not the corrupt and egotistical generals in Pakistan who are leading the country on a road to catastrophe?
If the Pakistani rulers or people attempt to change the ongoing destructive course in favour of a stable, democratic, liberal and secular country renouncing its present obsession of searching a strategic depth in Afghanistan and a Muslim space in Kashmir, and also walk out on its policy on state-sponsored terrorism, they deserve all support from India, Afghanistan and the international community. Such a policy would only emanate from a deep sense of pragmatism and strong economic interests which would transform South Asia and put the subcontinent on a different track from the sorry twentieth-century history.