Between ‘ghairat’ and strategy

[Nitin Goyal]

An extraordinary event has taken place in Islamabad. Over two dozen Pakistani ambassadors and high commissioners, serving in the key capitals of the world, have asked the government to base its foreign policy on strategy and not on emotion. They were commenting on the post-Salala attack reactive measures against the Isaf-Nato forces in Afghanistan, while seeking to reassess Pakistan’s policy towards the US under the spur of an intense national emotion often called ‘ghairat’ by self-seeking politicians.

The envoys sought ‘to calm down the government over its knee-jerk reaction to last month’s Nato air strikes that killed two dozen troops’ and urged the government ‘to immediately reopen supply routes for Nato forces’. They asserted that policy based on emotionalism was no solution, while Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh warned that “complete disassociation with the US would be a blunder and would certainly have a negative impact on the country’s fragile economy”.

The gathering was also addressed by the ISI chief, General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, and he predictably presented Pakistan’s Afghan policy in a tactical framework: “The November 26 attacks on Pakistani checkposts reflected frustration on the part of the US over its lack of success in Afghanistan. The Americans have yet to reconcile with the ground realities of the region which are that the US would have to work with Pakistan if it wished to achieve a sustainable peace in Afghanistan”.

The Pakistan Army was never mandated to think strategically because of its weak state revisionism against a much stronger status quo India. Strategy would have involved an assessment of Pakistan as a geographic reality with a severely constrained economic base, depending on external military assistance which could only be applied in conflict through a breach of contract with the suppliers.

Today, the reality is that Pakistan remains a poor candidate for filling the Afghan vacuum after the US leaves the region. Its claim that it can influence the Afghan Taliban is spurious, which means that it has no leverage over any envisaged peace talks. It has no control over the Pakistani Taliban either. At most, Pakistan’s military can act as a spoiler with no guarantee that it will be able to secure the country against any future Afghan fallout.

Pakistan’s economic profile is precarious. There is a debt-to-GDP ratio that crossed 60 per cent in 2010; there are painful debt service obligations to its creditors; there is a large fiscal deficit and double-digit inflation resulting in a rapidly depreciating rupee, worsening a trade deficit already under pressure from high global commodity prices.

It is no use listening to Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif delivering his latest non-intellectual sermon on ‘kashkol’-breaking. The energy shortage is reaching a critical stage: After Faisalabad, the industrialist heart of the country, Karachi, has declared that it can no longer continue production and meeting its international orders because of lack of electricity. The big cities are gradually succumbing to over three days of CNG stoppage, forcing investors out of billions of rupees on CNG stations and their employees to come out and destroy public property.

People are refusing to pay their electricity bills and have destroyed Wapda offices. Teachers, nurses and railway workers are on the roads and are threatening to jam the cities if they are not given salary increases commensurate with the rate of inflation. The railway workers have vowed to take over the national railway system. The broken down national airline, PIA, is waiting for a big accident to happen. The coming ‘revolution’ in Pakistan promises to be a monumental act of vandalism.

The national consensus, however, is on ghairat drummed up by a ‘guided’ media. It is unfair to the people of Pakistan and it is unfair to the democratic system we are trying to run in Pakistan. Ghairat is a military slogan raised prior to plunging into war and does not suit a civilised nation. We must base our policy on considerations of Pakistan’s economy and not on national honour because there is nothing more dishonourable than being poor.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14th, 2011.

Between

 

[Nitin Goyal]

Murphy’s law and Pakistan-US relations

One of Murphy’s famous laws states that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. This seems to apply to Pakistan-US relations at this stage. The jinx in the relationship set in with the increased drone strikes in Pakistan’s north-western tribal areas this year; the ‘wild card’ Raymond Davis case in March, followed by the unilateral Geronimo Operation carried out by the US in May that killed Osama bin Laden — all of which represent blatant violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty. In September, came the outrageous Mike Mullen diatribe, followed by the memo scandal in October, which still continues to cast a shadow on our bilateral relations. The Nato aerial attack on November 26, that killed at least two dozen Pakistani soldiers on the ‘Volcano’ checkpost, may have been the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back. It seems to have brought Pakistan-US cooperation to a grinding halt.

The recent exchanges between the two sides have increasingly become a dialogue of the deaf, with each side talking at rather than to each other. Pakistan’s response has been clear and categorical: immediate suspension of all Nato supplies passing through Pakistani territory, closing of the Shamsi airbase, reportedly used for drone attacks, and boycott of the Bonn conference on Afghanistan. Pakistan also demanded an apology for the loss of life inflicted on Pakistani forces in Salala. The US and Nato/Isaf have ordered an enquiry into the incident and are likely to respond on the basis of the result of the enquiry.

Pakistan’s decision to suspend its ‘business-as-usual’ interaction with the United States is a laudable assertion of its independence and sovereignty and the nation has taken a united position in reaction to the crisis. The question, however, is: how will we deal with a rupture of our relationship with the US? If the enquiry fails to place the blame of the attack on Nato/Isaf forces, Pakistan would have to maintain its hard position with the US in keeping with its honour and dignity. That would hurt Pakistan badly, as it would affect both the civilian and the military assistance we receive from the US, which we can ill afford at this time of great economic difficulty. We must be mindful of the fact that it is not only direct American assistance that could stop but the US could also influence multilateral financial institutions, as well as other donor countries, to review and possibly suspend their dealings with Pakistan.

These dire implications necessitate a Plan B, in case the rupture with the US is not repaired soon. In our thinking, the governing presumption is that the US needs us badly for its successful extrication from Afghanistan. However, what if the US manages to exit from Afghanistan without Pakistan’s help and cooperation? In fact, having opted for a hardball game, we should be prepared for even rougher treatment than we have received so far. The US Congress can slap sanctions on Pakistan that can be debilitating and injurious. There is vague talk in Washington of declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism, which would place us in the category of Iran, North Korea and Cuba. On the other hand, if we buckle down after having staked out our principled position so firmly, we would be forced to accept even more unpalatable terms. For our own sake, we have to take Murphy’s Law seriously and prepare ourselves for the worse.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14th, 2011.

Murphy

 

[Nitin Goyal]

Kudos to Mr. khan

In the end it will all be about the economy.

Without US Dollars filling the gap in our deficit it likely our economy will go from extremely bad to terribly worse. Expect inflation to go up, food, petrol and electricity prices to take a steep hike. Poverty will unfortunately dramatically increase even further and as a consequence so will crime and social disorder.

Kayani said ‘honour before prosperity’, but, unlike the affluent, the desperately poor, who may face near starvation in the future, will pay a big price. It is a case of “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing), in other words Pakistan (ie. our GHQ and the ghairatmund lobby) has once again told the US: “If you don’t behave yourself, for the sake of my honour I’ll shoot myself”.

The problem is that the elite lot will be okay, the rest of Pakistan is sure to head towards becoming an economic wasteland for the next few years. Unfortunately the poor cannot eat nuclear bombs.

 

[Splurgenxs]

GHairat means self respect?

Over two dozen Pakistani ambassadors and high commissioners, serving in the key capitals of the world, have asked the government to base its foreign policy on strategy and not on emotion

wow what a break through...

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

I'll post my comments on the editorial (on the Tribune site) here as well:


The authors argument essentially boils down to continue ‘pleasing the US’ in order to keep the ‘aid flowing’. All of the economic, development and infrastructure ills outlined by the author are accurate, and need to be resolved, but they are not going to be ‘miraculously resolved’ by ‘opening the NATO supply lines’ any more than they are going to be resolved by speeches calling for the ‘Kashkol to be broken’. Nor were these issues caused or exacerbated by the 'ghairatmand foreign policy'.

The actions taken by Pakistan in the aftermath of the US attack on its soldiers are not responsible for the current situation that Pakistan finds itself in on the economic and energy front – these conditions have existed for a while, and have exacerbated during the last few years of PPP rule. ‘Ghairat’ has nothing to do with this, a government incapable of governing and incapable of enacting institutional and economic reforms has everything to do with it.

The ‘liberal’ media would do all of Pakistan a huge favor by stopping this ‘flogging of a dead horse of the establishment’ and focusing on the necessary institutional and economic reforms that need to be implemented by the government.

It is rather disappointing to see how many people actually agree with the patently flawed 'choice/argument' made inn this article.

'Ghairat' and 'economic prosperity and development' are not mutually exclusive objectives. In fact, one could argue that a government and leadership that has no 'ghairat' when it comes to protecting Pakistan's interests on the international scene, will also have no 'ghairat' when it comes to governing Pakistan properly and enacting the necessary reforms.

If Pakistan's leadership is 'bayghairat' when it comes to 'foreigners', then why would the same leadership have any 'ghairat' when it comes to domestic issues in Pakistan?

Our so called 'analysts and commentators' would do well to realize that improvements in domestic governance and domestic reforms have little to nothing to do with Pakistan's foreign policy. The current government, and to some extent the military leadership, is reviled precisely because it is perceived to have NOT followed a foreign policy based on 'ghairat', so a 'ghairatmand foreign policy' can certainly not be blamed for the issues Pakistan faces today - a 'ghairatmand foreign policy', for once, may in fact be a good start towards resolving those issues.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

GHairat means self respect?

wow what a break through...

Not necessarily - the DT and ET editorials are based on an alleged report on the opinion of one/some diplomats calling for 'strategy not emotion', but that does not in itself imply that the majority of the diplomats oppose the measures taken after the NATO attack, or that they oppose the proposed 'ghairatmand redefinition of the PAK-US relationship'.

See for example the following editorial in The News:

Envoys’ conference​

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The two-day envoys’ conference where sixteen representatives from Pakistan’s missions in the US, Europe, Afghanistan and India put their heads together to evaluate important aspects of Pakistan’s foreign policy challenges has reached its conclusion. The participants have come up with joint recommendations that have been presented to Prime Minister Gilani. The recommendations will now go to the Parliamentary Committee on National Security for deliberation. The committee has been mandated to undertake a detailed study of the 26/11 Nato attacks and to make recommendations on the terms of Pakistan’s future cooperation with US/Nato/Isaf. The final recommendations will be considered by a joint sitting of parliament. Although official word on the envoys’ recommendations is not out yet, the PM did address the concluding session of the envoys’ conference and, if that address is any indication, it seems that the envoys support the major decisions taken by the government in the aftermath of the Nato air strikes. The prime minister said in his address that the cooperation with the US/Nato/Isaf was based on respect and that under no circumstance flagrant transgression of our territorial frontiers would be accepted.

In essence, it seems the envoys have supported the move to close the Nato logistic supply lines, vacate the Shamsi Airbase and boycott the Bonn Conference. However, while Pakistan has also boycotted participation in the US-Nato-Isaf inquiry into the air strikes, the prime minister also expressed hope that the probe would “come out clearly with the facts and provide answers to the disturbing questions that our own investigations have raised.” On the Pakistani side, the view seems to be that the attack was intentional and proactive - even ISI chief General Shuja Pasha said so during his presentation on the first day of the envoys’ conference. A US-led investigation will report its initial findings by December 23. If the version presented is radically different from Pakistan’s we can expect more trouble ahead. The ball is now in the US court. Indeed, while Pakistan moves to review the contours of its relationship with the US, the Americans — now on the exit ramp of their surge-and-exit Afghan strategy — also need to figure out what they really want. A country unclear about what end state it is looking at will only end up isolating potential and real allies because of an inability to clarify goals and wake up to the interests of others in a conflict. Right now, a confusion of aims seems to be America’s main problem, compounded by the fact that political domestic imperatives in the US - upcoming general elections - are now driving strategy in Afghanistan, and by extension Pakistan. This has to change. The US can ill-afford to postpone figuring out and articulating the acceptable end state, because only once that happens can the real groundwork necessary for reaching an acceptable negotiated end state begin.

Envoys

 

[Nitin Goyal]

More on the dependence of Pakistan on US

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

More on the dependence of Pakistan on US

... which can be compensated for through improved governance, tax reforms, PSE restructuring/privatization and government downsizing.

 

[Nitin Goyal]

... which can be compensated for through improved governance, tax reforms, PSE restructuring/privatization and government downsizing.

this will take atleast 5-10 years and your gov donot look sincere. so dependence will carry on.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

this will take atleast 5-10 years and your gov donot look sincere. so dependence will carry on.

My point is that Pakistan's 'dependency' is not caused by 'ghairat based policies', it is caused by poor domestic political leadership (including military leadership during times of military rule).

When you look beyond the 'fluff' in the tribune article (and others like it) what these authors are basically saying is that Pakistan should continue to try and get 'handouts' from the international community, and in the process appease the international community even if it goes against Pakistan's national interests.

How exactly is the above a long term solution for the problems Pakistan is facing?

As I said earlier, the Pakistani 'liberal media/commentators' need to stop trying to justify 'aid and handouts' from the international community by criticizing nationalistic (ghairat) based policies, and instead focus on criticizing the domestic leadership and domestic failures to reform for putting Pakistan in the position where it needs international handouts and aid.

 

[VCheng]

An interesting article in Dawn.

Growing isolation | Opinion | DAWN.COM

Growing isolation
Cyril Almeida

Now that we’ve taught the Americans a lesson and they know we mean business, a question: what next?

Our security mavens think they know the answer: to engineer a face-saving exit from Afghanistan the US needs Pakistan, and while the US is still loath to accept that reality, domestic political and fiscal imperatives in the US will force that realisation sooner than later.

It’s like Tom Cruise in that silly movie Knight and Day using hand gestures to explain to a blonde Cameron Diaz her chances of survival. With us, the chances of a face-saving exit from Afghanistan for the US are shoulder-high; without us, they are knee-high.

The Pakistani security apparatus’s calculation could well be right. But it could also be wrong. The US isn’t exactly known for doing what others think it will do or want it to do.

The problem for Pakistan is that the national-security folks have bet the house that they are right. Conditioning its support for the US project in Afghanistan on an acceptance of Pakistan’s view of what needs to be done in Afghanistan is a high-stakes bet:what if the US chooses otherwise?

Imagine an alternative scenario in which the US decides to do things its own way in Afghanistan and determines that Pakistan is the problem, not just in Afghanistan but generally when it comes to dealing with the terrorism threat regionally and globally.

You don’t even have to try very hard to imagine this alternative scenario: tune in to the commentary on Pakistan emanating from the US and you’d think we’ve already been declared the enemy.

Bill Keller’s piece in The New York Times this week is extraordinary precisely because his relatively sympathetic view of Pakistan is so unusual; patience and tolerance for Pakistan in world capitals is otherwise perilously low.

Scarier than the increasing international isolation of Pakistan, though, is the nonchalance and dismissiveness with which it is being treated out here.

Policymakers here appear so sure the US doesn’t have any choice but to work with Pakistan that they have been blinded to signs that various power centres in the US are increasingly opposed to working with Pakistan.

Maybe some American generals get that they need to work with Pakistan but many influential senators and congressmen do not. And maybe many in the State Department and the White House understand the indispensability of Pakistan but there are powerful voices which believe otherwise.

More often that not, what emerges as policy from the US is a compromise between its various power centres. When, according to the national-security folks here, the US hasn’t done the right thing in 10 years, why are we so sure the same US policymaking apparatus will now converge on the outcome that we desire?

And it’s not just the US which is tiring of us. The whispers from Europe too are increasingly worrying. Before we could rely on the Europeans privately acknowledging that the US had made many mistakes in Afghanistan and that Pakistan was protecting some legitimate national interests. But patience with Pakistan in Europe is increasingly thin. It’s not just a recalcitrant army that is the problem: the perception that Pakistan is being run on the civilian side by a ‘ruinous kleptocracy’, to use Bill Keller’s phrase, that doesn’t have the capacity or interest to govern a state teetering on the edge has exasperated anyone who does want to help Pakistan.

Even Canada — Canada! — is tiring of us. This from a Dec 1 op-ed titled ‘Why is CIDA sending aid to a de facto enemy?’ in the National Post, a conservative newspaper:

“This week, in response to a deadly border incident that involved Nato troops, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani declared that there will be no more ‘business as usual’ with the United States. Canada should make precisely the same declaration in regard to its own bilateral relationship with Pakistan….

“Every dollar that we spend on civil projects in Pakistan is another dollar that the country’s security establishment has available to it for providing material support to the Taliban and the Haqqani network in the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands. In replacing Pakistan on its country-of-focus list, [the Canadian International Development Agency] can pick from plenty of other poor countries that aren’t supporting the terrorists who are planting the roadside bombs that kill our troops.”

Pakistan may fulminate against the outside world’s unfair attitude towards and betrayal of us but the outside world is just as tired of Pakistan. Right or wrong as the outside world’s thinking may be can Pakistan afford to ignore it?

A state on the verge of bankruptcy, blamed by the world’s military superpower for nudging it towards defeat in its longest war, viewed by the world at large as a hub of terrorism, and critically dependent on exports to and remittances from the very countries that are tiring of it — what about that configuration suggests Pakistan is on a path to anywhere good internationally?

And yet policymakers here are clutching at straws. Hope is seen in the Arab Spring, the situation with Iran and fresh US-Russia tensions.

The thinking is that the Arab Spring has deprived the US of a major ally in Egypt while relations with Turkey are complicated.

Meanwhile, with the West and Iran on a collision course, a second massive crisis in the region will be avoided. And with Putin coming back to power and US-Russia relations slipping backwards, Pakistan’s position on Afghanistan may be listened to more sympathetically.

Because of these other international exigencies, Pakistan will not face serious international punishment, the thinking here goes.

Of such fallacies are great defeats made.

The writer is a member of staff.

cyril.a@gmail.com

 

[Safriz]

more of a lousy scare mongering...
The ground reality is that since ISI and security forces started stalking CIA in Pakistan including the US embassy staff..The incidents of terrorist bombings have literally stopped..
Now we can all decide who was supporting terrorism.
So will Pakistan benefit from breaking relations with US...I think yes.

 

[VCheng]

................
So will Pakistan benefit from breaking relations with US...I think yes.

But the point made by the article that it is not just USA, but many more important countries that Pakistan is isolating itself from, to its detriment.

 

[Donatello]

But the point made by the article that it is not just USA, but many more important countries that Pakistan is isolating itself from, to its detriment.

Name them.

Don't mention the EU, because they are too busy fighting for their own survival and want a way out of wars too at the same time and they have very different views on Pakistan compared to what Americans have.

 

[Rafi]

Those people advocating and supporting our slavery to the west, are the biggest enemies of Pakistan. We should follow our own national interest and to hell with what anybody thinks, the problem with the American establishment (and I differentiating between them and the American people) is that they only look for their benefit.

Well I have news for Uncle Obama - we have grown up as a nation and as a people, no more blank checks for the Yanks or anyone else.