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No Exit from Pakistan
Pakistan’s military, General Kayani, shared a secret fourteen-page memo with
President Obama in late 2010. The memo called into question U.S. motives
and methods in Pakistan and Afghanistan, even going so far as to suggest that
Washington was working to maintain a “controlled chaos” inside Pakistan.115
A year after that memo, the United States and Pakistan had reached a com-
plete impasse. American frustration and anger over Pakistan’s inaction against
Afghan Taliban and terrorists in North Waziristan – along with suspicions
about how bin Laden could have escaped Pakistan’s attention in Abbottabad
for so long – had by that point led a number of American policy analysts
and politicians to argue for a purely coercive or “containment” strategy in
Pakistan.116
In different ways, the KLB debacle, Washington’s expanded counterterror-
ism operations on Pakistani soil, and mixed U.S. signals regarding the war
in Afghanistan all set the stage for the calamitous deterioration in relations
between Washington and Islamabad from 2010 to 2012. The Obama admin-
istration made its share of mistakes; there are good reasons to suspect that a
more sure-footed American approach might have done more to snap Pakistan
out of its dangerous, entrenched patterns.
In the end, however, Pakistan’s course was set and maintained by its own
leaders. For their own reasons they refused – in the face of American threats
and inducements – to cut ties with terrorist organizations or to tackle head-on
the broader problem of extremism in their society. Those failures ate at the core
of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. If Washington had believed Pakistan to be a
trustworthy partner, there would have been no need for Raymond Davis to be
spying on LeT in Lahore, no need to fly a stealthy helicopter into Abbottabad
without informing General Kayani, no need for Admiral Mullen’s pointed testi-
mony before Congress. Looking to the future, unless Pakistan takes a different
approach toward terrorism, militancy and extremism, cooperation between
Washington and Islamabad will continue to rest on rickety foundations.
115 For an account of this exchange, see David Ignatius, “Our High-Maintenance Relationship with Pakistan,” Washington Post, July 13, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/
david-ignatius-pakistan-us-have-a-neurotic-relationship/2012/07/13/gJQABEDoiW_story
.html.
116 See, for instance, Bruce Riedel, “A New Pakistan Policy: Containment,” New York Times, October 14, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/opinion/a-new-pakistan-policy-containment.html; Stephen D. Krasner, “Talking Tough to Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2012), http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136696/stephen-d-krasner/
talking-tough-to-pakistan.
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6
From the Outside-In
U.S.-Pakistan Relations in the Regional Context
The city of Peshawar stands at the door to Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal
lands, the famed Khyber Pass, and Afghanistan. For hundreds of years, it has
served as an outpost and garrison, but also as a way station for invading armies,
missionaries, and traders of all stripes.1 Driving along its streets, it is easy to tell Peshawar is close to the Afghan border and the mountains; clusters of women
are hidden behind burkas, and in winter men don traditional brown woolen
shawls to ward off the chill. All around, three-wheeled Chinese Qingqi scooters
mingle with bicycles, donkey carts, cars, and brightly painted trucks and buses.
Peshawar has always felt the reverberations of decisions made in distant
capitals. In that respect, the city is much like Pakistan as a whole: seemingly
distant, and yet still thoroughly connected to the wider world. In the context of
Peshawar’s storied history, connections with the United States are short indeed.
But remote Peshawar, like the nation of which it is a part, has at times played
an outsized role in U.S. policy.
In the early Cold War, American U-2 spy planes took off for missions over
the Soviet Union from nearby Badaber airbase, including the ill-fated flight of
Francis Gary Powers that exposed America’s secret program to the world. In
the 1980s, Peshawar was a meeting point and refuge for many of the Afghan
fighters who formed the core of the CIA- and Saudi-sponsored mujahedeen.
Osama bin Laden cut his teeth recruiting Arab fighters in Peshawar, and the
city’s ties to terrorism and the Taliban have persisted well after 9/11.
Before 2006 much of Peshawar was considered relatively safe. Even terror-
ists, the logic went, needed peace in Peshawar to do business, recuperate from
1 For a short summary of Peshawar’s history, from Persian and Greek to Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and British rule, see Ahmad Salim, ed., Peshawar: City on the Frontier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), especially pp. 160–6. For the classic history of the Pashtuns and the Peshawar region, see Sir Olaf Caroe, The Pathans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
169
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170
No Exit from Pakistan
the fight in Afghanistan, and watch over their families. Yet the local dynamics
shifted, and Peshawar’s fragile balance could not last. Peshawar found itself
at the leading edge of a shocking wave of violence that would soon crest over
Pakistan.
On an early morning in November 2006, as I stared out the window at
the grayish brown winter landscape punctuated by farms and villages along
the highway midway through a ride from Islamabad to Peshawar, the radio
picked up the chilling news of Peshawar’s first suicide bombing. A terrorist had
strapped explosives to his chest and blown himself to pieces near a city police
van. Two officers were wounded. Peshawar had entered a tragic new era.
Since then, the city has suffered terribly. Between 2006 and 2010, over
400 terrorist attacks struck the city, killing 866 civilians and wounding nearly
2,500 more.2 Many of the city’s wealthier residents have moved away to escape
the violence. Extremists have also made a point of desecrating symbols of
Peshawar’s traditionally tolerant Sufi culture. In one of the most egregious
examples of this trend, in March 2009 they bombed the mausoleum of the
revered seventeenth-century Pashtun poet, Rahman Baba.3
Not surprisingly, Pakistan’s terrorists attacked U.S. facilities in Peshawar
with a special vengeance. In late summer 2008, gunmen opened fire on the
vehicle of the top diplomat at the U.S. consulate as she left the gates of her
home in what had been considered one of Peshawar’s most secure, upscale
neighborhoods. The next year, a massive suicide car bombing rocked the Pearl
Continental hotel, a landmark that had served as a regular meeting spot for
local journalists, international aid officials, and politicians. Washi
ngton had
been in negotiations to purchase the hotel for use as an expanded consulate.4
In April 2010, the U.S. consulate itself – so well fortified that locals offer-
ing directions there said it looked like “Guant ánamo” – was the target of a
car bombing and commando-style assault that killed six but failed to breach
the perimeter. These threats forced many of the U.S. diplomats and devel-
opment officials who would normally live and work in Peshawar to decamp
to Islamabad. But that commute also came with serious security risks. Sev-
eral weeks after the U.S. raid on bin Laden’s compound in May 2011, the
Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide motorbike bomb attack
on an American vehicle headed from Islamabad to Peshawar.5
In spite of its twenty-first-century troubles, Peshawar can still evoke the
spirit of a bygone colonial era. History is strong there. The headquarters of
2 Worldwide Incidents Tracking System, National Counterterrorism Center, http://www
.wits.nctc.gov.
3 Saba Imtiaz, “Revisiting Rahman Baba’s Shrine,” Express Tribune, June 26, 2010, http://tribune
.com.pk/story/23782/revisiting-rahman-babas-shrine/.
4 “11 Killed in Peshawar PC Blast,” Daily Times, June 10, 2009, http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/
default.asp?page=2009610story_10–6–2009_pg1_1.
5 “Pakistan Taliban Bomb US Consulate Convoy in Peshawar,” BBC, May 20, 2011, http://www
.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13465910.
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From the Outside-In
171
the paramilitary frontier forces in the imposing Bala Hisar fortress overlooks
the city with a colonial stare. Sitting in its courtyard under the stars one spring
evening in 2010, a Pakistani army officer recounted tales of daring raids on
militant compounds along the Afghan border. Earlier that day, the provincial
governor shared tea and his views on regional diplomacy in his palatial British-
era residence, surrounded by manicured grounds and strolling peacocks, its
interiors graced by enormous paintings of noble warriors and muskets mounted
above fireplace mantels.
There is indeed a tension in Peshawar between past and present, as there
is throughout Pakistan. But this is not a simple battle pitting the traditional
against the modern, or Islamists versus the “West.” In 2006, a provincial politi-
cian explained his reasons for a new law that would have imposed something
just short of a Taliban-style “vice and virtue” ministry in the province.6 On
arriving at his office, I could see immediately that he was no bearded extremist,
spouting conspiracy theories and dogma. Far from it; the politician was an
articulate U.S. green card holder and former pizza chef from northern Virginia,
whose sons had attended American public high schools and believed that the
same curriculum should be taught to boys and girls in northwest Pakistan.
Pakistan’s multiple identities are at war in Peshawar. In a single politician’s
family, indeed in his own head, different manifestations of modernity and
globalization are often in conflict.
Like the rest of Pakistan, Peshawar also has its progressives, liberals, and
leftists, although in dwindling numbers. In 2010, a group of Peshawar univer-
sity students proudly recounted to me how their peers had chased away Zaid
Hamid, one of Pakistan’s most rabid anti-Western and hyper-nationalist tele-
vision pundits, when he tried to give a lecture on campus.7 Hamid, who sports
a trademark bright red hat and spins the most fantastical conspiracy theories
with conviction and fervor, rose from obscurity in 2008. For several years he
appealed to thousands of young Pakistanis with his strident nationalism based,
in part, on an unorthodox reading of Islamic scriptures.8
The Peshawar university students went on to complain that outspoken crit-
ics of the United States like Hamid tend to be Pakistanis with no firsthand
experience of the present insurgency along the Afghan border, and no sense
of how dangerous the Taliban have become. Some even said they supported
America’s drone campaign, because without it they would suffer from either
Taliban oppression or destructive Pakistani army operations.
6 “Frontier Cabinet Okays Hasbah Bill,” Daily Times, July 5, 2005, http://www.dailytimes.com
.pk/default.asp?page=story_5–7–2005_pg7_5.
7 For an overview of Zaid Hamid’s rapid ascent in 2008, see Manan Ahmed, “Pakistan’s New Paranoia,” The National, March 11, 2010, http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/pakistans-new-paranoia.
8 For a profile of Zaid Hamid, including his references to the controversial hadith on Ghazva-eHind, see Amber Rahim Shamsi, “Will the Real Zaid Hamid Please Stand Up?” Express Tribune, May 9, 2010, http://tribune.com.pk/story/11701/will-the-real-zaid-hamid-please-stand-up/.
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172
No Exit from Pakistan
These students and their professors are potential American allies, but they
also threw darts. However bitter they were about their own government and
military, they found U.S. policies in the region even more confusing and
decades of history, they concluded that whatever America’s professed motive
or agenda, the superpower had supported Pakistani dictators and abused
Pakistani sovereignty. In their eyes, U.S. policy has left behind a trail of extrem-
ism, militancy, and political repression.
What they most wanted to know from me, standing before them as a vis-
iting American lecturer, was what the future might hold. The long history
of Peshawar, that quintessential frontier city, had taught them that decisions
made in distant capitals like Washington could change their lives. What did
the United States have in mind for Peshawar – and Pakistan – now?
I responded by retracing the steps in their historical narrative, observing that
in the past Washington’s interest in Pakistan has been heavily influenced by
the broader regional and international context. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship
has never existed in a vacuum. Formative American decisions to engage or
distance from Pakistan were made in the context of Cold War developments,
from Washington’s early fear of Soviet advances into the Persian Gulf, to the
subsequent reality of Moscow’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Later, it was
the attacks of 9/11, rather than any particular concern about internal Pakistani
dynamics, which rekindled U.S.-Pakistani ties.
Judging from that history, one way to think about the future course of U.S.-
Pakistan relations is to think from the “outside-in”; in other words, to ask
how the United States is likely to interact with Pakistan’s neighbors and then
consider how those relationships will influence ties between Washington and
Islamabad. How
will Washington assess its geopolitical interests in the wider
region five or ten years from now? How will the United States balance those
concerns with Pakistan-specific issues, like terrorism and nuclear weapons?
Peering just over the horizon, it is clear that no matter what happens in the
endgame of the Afghan war or how present disagreements between Washington
and Islamabad are resolved, Pakistan’s enormous neighbors to the east – India
and China – will occupy an increasing share of U.S. attention. Rather than
reprising the “AfPak” framework of the early Obama administration, in which
Pakistan and Afghanistan were lumped together, the future should require
Washington to think in the “quadrilateral” terms of connections between
China, India, Pakistan, and the United States. Together, these will be four
of the world’s largest countries by population, all nuclear powers, and all with
established – at times conflicting – interests in the heart of Asia.
global power shift: china’s rise
With the benefit of hindsight, historians will frame the early twenty-first century
as the beginning of a new era defined not by Iraq, Afghanistan, or al-Qaeda,
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From the Outside-In
173
but by the reemergence of the Asia-Pacific region. Its central protagonist will
be China, a state that – after hundreds of years in the shadow of the West – is
re-emerging to assume a role of power and leadership.
A visit to Pudong, the urban district across the river from Old Shanghai,
gives a visceral sense for China’s rapid ascent. Built on farmlands starting
in the early 1990s, Pudong alone now boasts a population of 5 million, a
gross domestic product (GDP) larger than that of Croatia, and one of the
world’s most dramatic skylines, especially at night when the bulbous forms
of the soaring Oriental Pearl television tower are illuminated in garish hues.9
Bankers know it as the home of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, where the