In the end, everyone lost. On December 27, 2007, terrorists murdered
Benazir Bhutto on the campaign trail at a rally in Rawalpindi.77 Her death
deprived Pakistan of its only politician with a large, relatively progressive, and
truly national following. Musharraf, whose political allies suffered massive
losses at the polls in early 2008, was forced to resign from the presidency in
August 2008. Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower and inheritor of the
dynastic PPP, quickly replaced Musharraf, who then left the country for several
years of self-imposed exile in London.
Nearly every Pakistani blamed the Bush administration for something. Most
felt Washington had propped up a dictator far too long, demonstrating its
self-serving, hypocritical disregard for democracy. Others believed Bush had
betrayed his friend and ally, proving untrustworthy when the chips were down.
Americans drew a variety of lessons from Musharraf’s downfall. It pointed
to the dangers of personalizing a relationship between states, of becoming too
dependent upon an autocrat, no matter how accommodating – or relatively
enlightened – he might appear. It showed that managing democratic transitions
is an exceedingly difficult, perhaps even impossible, business.
Five years later, as Pakistan prepared for its next round of national elections,
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry postponed travel to Pakistan with the hope
of avoiding any impression that Washington would interfere in the democratic
process. As one Obama administration official explained, “Given the kind of
historic nature of where Pakistan is right now, we wanted to be holier than the
Pope on this one on staying away . . . while the electoral process unfolded.”78
The move turned out to be a smart one; at just about the same time Kerry
was considering his visit to Islamabad, Musharraf decided to fly home and
re-launch his own political campaign. Musharraf’s return was ill-considered;
he quickly ran afoul of Pakistan’s courts and spent the 2013 election under
77 Responsibility for the attack is still a matter of some dispute, but at the time officials in Islamabad blamed the Pakistani Taliban. See Waqar Gillani, “Pakistan Indicts 7 in Bhutto Assassination,” New York Times, November 5, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/
world/asia/7-pakistanis-are-indicted-in-benazir-bhuttos-killing.html? r=0.
78 Julian Pecquet, “Kerry Warned Off Trip to Pakistan Ahead of Elections,” The Hill, March 25, 2013, http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/asia-pacific/290141-kerry-warned-off-trip-to-pakistan-ahead-of-elections.
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134
No Exit from Pakistan
house arrest. That Washington managed to avoid further entanglements with
Musharraf was probably the only silver lining of the episode.
But it must be understood that the temptation to get involved in Pakistani
politics in 2007–8 was more of a well-intentioned response to Pakistani over-
tures than a unilateral American interference. Similar temptations, with similar
risks, will undoubtedly surface again. It would hardly be surprising if American
officials choose to back a friendly Pakistani face, whether autocrat or demo-
crat, in order to ride out a threatening political storm. When the stakes are as
high as they are in Pakistan, even temporary stability can be very appealing. It
may even be the least-bad policy option available. Of course, such a doctrine
of convenience always comes at a cost. Over time, America will be better off if
it advocates universal principles and supports stronger democratic institutions
in Pakistan rather than specific individuals.
Unfortunately, the American experience to date suggests that U.S. officials
are likely to be presented with less-than-ideal options when it comes to Pakistani
politics. Winning strategies will be rare, and the more realistic goal may be to
mitigate the downside risks inherent in any choice that Washington makes.
living in limbo
The 9/11 attacks forced an abrupt about-face in U.S. policy toward Pakistan.
A welter of important decisions had to be made quickly, all under the shadow
of an al-Qaeda menace that had already shown itself capable of pure evil.
Laden and his organization to justice. Few would have guessed that the world’s
most notorious terrorist could elude the United States for nearly a decade, or
that the United States would find itself mired in the war in Afghanistan even
longer than that. Few imagined that Iraq would demand the lion’s share of
America’s attention even as al-Qaeda and the Taliban regrouped in Afghanistan
and Pakistan.
After the dramatic changes of 2001 and early 2002, Washington’s policies
in Afghanistan and Pakistan entered what might best be described as a state of
limbo. Iraq was to blame for much of the drift, but not all. The Bush administra-
tion failed to resolve fundamental contradictions in its strategy for Afghanistan
and Pakistan. This was easily pardoned in the shell-shocked months after the
twin towers fell. Yet as months passed, then years, Washington’s initial post-
9/11 deal with Musharraf’s Pakistan became an increasingly rickety foundation
upon which to build America’s regional strategy. The terms of Pakistan’s coun-
terterror cooperation were too narrowly defined. Pakistan’s ambiguous stance
on regional terrorist groups and Musharraf’s clumsy steps along the path to
democratic transition threatened American interests. Lurching from crisis to
crisis, Washington lacked a vision for its relationship with Islamabad broader
than the desire to keep Pakistan and Afghanistan on the rails long enough to
see bin Laden dead and buried.
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U-Turn to Drift
135
By the summer of 2008, however, Musharraf was out, a fresh army chief
installed, and a new civilian government elected. For its part, Washington was
busy rethinking and revising its own strategies and tactics in Pakistan. The
United States was also on the way to electing a very different sort of president,
one who pledged to put Afghanistan and Pakistan at the top of his national
security strategy. Change was very much in the air.
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5
Great Expectations to Greater Frustrations
U.S.-Pakistan Relations after Musharraf
In the mid-afternoon of January 27, 2011, a burly thirty-six-year-old Virginia
native named Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis. The shots from his pistol
rang out on a busy street in the middle of Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s
largest province. Accounts fro
m Pakistani bystanders differ, but Davis may
have pumped as many as five rounds into each of his victims. He then calmly
stepped out of his car to take photos of the corpses with his cell phone camera.
According to a Pakistani report, Davis got back into his car and attempted to
escape, only to be arrested minutes later by Pakistani police officers at a traffic
roundabout.1 When interrogated, Davis claimed that he acted in self-defense,
and that the two men had approached him waving guns. For a man described
by one of his former high school classmates as “friends with everyone, just a
salt of the earth person,” Davis had ended up in an unusually tight spot.
The situation quickly went from bad to worse. Minutes after the shootings,
a Toyota Land Cruiser sped to the scene. In its desperate effort to reach Davis
in the crowded city, the unlicensed American vehicle drove up the wrong side
of a busy street, slammed into an oncoming Pakistani motorcyclist, and left
him dead. By that point, Davis was nowhere in sight, so the Land Cruiser
raced to the U.S. consulate. In its haste, the vehicle somehow dumped an odd
array of incriminating items: 100 bullets, a black mask, and a piece of cloth
with an American flag. As an exasperated senior military officer at the U.S.
embassy in Islamabad once told me, referring not to Davis but to the general
state of affairs in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, “You can’t make this kind of
shit up.”
1 For the best overview of the Raymond Davis episode, see Mark Mazzetti, Ashley Parker, Jane Perlez and Eric Schmitt, “American Held in Pakistan Worked with C.I.A.,” New York Times, February 21, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/world/asia/22pakistan.html?
pagewanted=all.
136
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Great Expectations to Greater Frustrations
137
The Raymond Davis affair made news in the United States, but nothing like
the way it dominated headlines and airwaves in Pakistan. Having been stopped
by Lahore traffic police, Davis was detained, and after a few days of American
fumbling – including a claim by the U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J.
Crowley that the media actually had Davis’s name wrong – Washington clari-
fied that Davis was a member of the “administrative and technical staff of the
U.S. embassy,” and declared that he should be granted diplomatic immunity.
Pakistani officials disputed Davis’s diplomatic status, refused to grant immu-
nity, and charged Davis with two counts of murder. For weeks, Davis sat behind
bars in a Pakistani prison, a dangerous spot for any American. Reports indi-
cated that he had starved himself for fear of being poisoned by his guards.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani media feverishly recounted new details of the case.
At the time of his arrest, Davis was said to be carrying multiple illegal hand-
guns, GPS equipment, a telescope, identity cards with different names, and
theatrical makeup commonly used for disguises. A video of his initial police
interrogation made its way to the Internet, in which Davis claimed to work as
a consultant for the “RAO,” or Regional Affairs Office, at the U.S. consulate
in Lahore.2 To complicate matters further, the anguished wife of one of the
Pakistani victims poisoned herself to death.
The crisis dragged on, and on February 14, Senator John Kerry, chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, flew to Islamabad to seek Davis’s
release. A day later, President Obama took the unusual step of describing
Davis as “our diplomat in Pakistan,” suggesting that Davis was protected from
prosecution by the terms of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Despite American diplomatic escalation, however, hopes for a backroom deal
to get Davis out of the country went nowhere fast. Pakistani politicians quailed
at the prospect of taking the heat that would surely come from bowing to
Washington’s pressure tactics.
In time, the Obama administration confirmed the rumors that Davis was
a former U.S. Special Forces officer working as a contractor for the CIA. His
duties are likely to have included helping a larger U.S. intelligence team track
the movements of various militant groups, in particular Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Because LeT is widely believed to enjoy close ties to Pakistan’s military and
intelligence services, Washington had to operate without Islamabad’s consent.
Contractors like Davis provided a way to expand Washington’s presence in
Pakistan without tipping its hand to the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate
(ISI).
For Pakistani intelligence officials, Davis’s clandestine activities – and what
they said about a wider network of American spies operating on Pakistani soil –
were a lot more important than whether he had acted in self-defense or what his
legal diplomatic status might be. Pakistani officials used Davis as a bargaining
chip and insisted that Washington must end its spy games. Several hundred
2 The video can be accessed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJN9fpylrkA.
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No Exit from Pakistan
Americans, including contractors, CIA officers, and U.S. military, were told to
leave the country.3
The ISI must have believed it was making progress, because on March 16,
Davis’s release was brokered and the U.S. embassy immediately flew him home
to America. In line with Islamic practice, the families of the victims accepted
“blood money” payments of over $2 million in return for pardoning Davis.
The details of that deal remain murky. Months later, in a final bit of absurdity,
Davis made news again. Home in Colorado, he allegedly assaulted a fellow
shopper in an Einstein Bros. Bagels parking lot for stealing his spot.4
Davis may have been freed from Pakistani captivity, but U.S.-Pakistan rela-
tions did not rebound. The day after his brokered release, a U.S. unmanned
drone shot four missiles into a gathering of tribal leaders in North Waziris-
tan agency – the hotbed of terrorist activity along the Afghan border. The
Pakistani army chief screamed bloody murder, saying that “peaceful citizens”
were “carelessly and callously targeted with complete disregard for human
life.”5 Pakistani officials and local villagers claim that while there were a hand-
ful of Afghan Taliban at the gathering, thirty-eight civilians were killed. U.S.
officials dispute the claim and argue that the group was heavily armed and
“acted in a manner consistent with al-Qaeda-linked militants.”6
Either way, the fact that the strike came immediately on the heels of the
Davis deal infuriated Islamabad. It looked like a blunt reminder that the CIA
would have its way in Pakistan with or without Islamabad’s permission. In
all, the affair demonstrated the enormous chasm that had o
pened between
Washington and Islamabad. Nominal allies since 2001, nearly a decade later
they could not even agree on who the terrorists were.
the end of the affair
What made the Raymond Davis affair especially tragic was that it heralded
the end of an era of great expectations for the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. That
era, from 2008 to early 2011, was filled with extreme highs and lows, often
over the course of the same week. Hardly a day passed when Pakistan fell
from the pages of American newspapers. In Washington, Pakistan received
more attention from more senior policymakers than ever before. Big plans
were hatched, big money spent, big egos clashed.
3 Jane Perlez and Ismail Khan, “Pakistan Tells U.S. It Must Sharply Cut C.I.A. Activities,” New York Times, April 11, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/asia/12pakistan.html?
pagewanted=all.
4 Sara Burnett, “Former CIA Contractor Charged with Felony in Parking Fight,” Denver Post, October 3, 2011, http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci 19029853.
5 Salman Masood and Pir Zubair Shah, “C.I.A. Drones Kill Civilians in Pakistan,” New York Times, March 17, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18pakistan.html.
6 Sebastian Abbot, “New Light on Drone War’s Death Toll,” Associated Press, February 26, 2012.
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Great Expectations to Greater Frustrations
139
Out of it all, Obama achieved a huge counterterror victory by killing Osama
bin Laden and decimating al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The victory came at a cost
in America’s relations with Pakistan, but there were other reasons for the
downward slide as well.
First and foremost, abiding differences of interest and perception continued
to drive a wedge between decision makers in Islamabad and their U.S. counter-
parts. The discovery of bin Laden in Abbottabad crystallized these differences.
For the world’s most notorious terrorist to live practically under the Pakistani
military’s nose revealed complete incompetence, gross negligence, or outright
complicity. U.S. officials tended to harbor dark suspicions, based in part on