'Magnificent Delusions' of US-Pakistan relations

[Devil Soul]

'Magnificent Delusions' of US-Pakistan relations
REUTERS
Updated 2013-10-31 12:11:13
Even as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani was one of the most eloquent critics of Pakistan's military, the nuclear-armed country's most powerful institution.

Haqqani, once derided at home as Washington's ambassador to Pakistan for his pro-Western views, has taken a step further, accusing the government of directly supporting militant groups in his latest book "Magnificent Delusions".

Now a professor of international relations at Boston University, he was ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011, a turbulent time in US-Pakistan relations that culminated in a raid by US special forces in May 2011 that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Haqqani resigned in November 2011 and left Pakistan after becoming involved in a scandal surrounding a secret memo that accused the army of plotting a coup and sought help from the United States to rein in the military.

Haqqani, who has denied any connection to the memo, spoke to Reuters by telephone from the United States about his book and his views on US-Pakistan relations.

Q: Why do you believe Pakistan supports militant groups?

A: As far as terrorism is concerned, Pakistan was the conduit of weapons and training for the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets. After that, Pakistan switched it to India, especially in Kashmir. And that is the point at which the United States said "You are engaging in terrorism". The Pakistani response was "But we started it together".

The problem is that the pro-jihadi narrative has become so mainstream that it is very difficult for any government to ... put all jihadis out of business. But Pakistan would not find peace without putting all jihadis out of business.

Q: Why is this happening now?

A: The whole idea of building a nation around religious nationalism has backfired. What has happened is that religious nationalism has only produced extremism. If Pakistan were to be an Islamic state, the question arises "What kind of Islamic state?" We are now in a virtual civil war between various sects and militias attached to these sects who don't tolerate each other.

Q: Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif just concluded talks with President Barack Obama during his visit to the United States. What do you think they really talked about behind closed doors?

A: There is a Groundhog Day quality to Pakistan-American discussions, especially since the end of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. Each time there is a change in government in Pakistan or in the United States there is a build-up of hope that maybe this time we will resolve it.

That is why I titled my book "Magnificent Delusions". Everybody is just deluding himself. The big American delusion is that America gets leverage with Pakistan by giving it military and economic aid. It doesn't.

It just improves its access but it does not give it leverage because the Pakistani establishment does what it thinks is in Pakistani interests. They do not allow an honest debate about what is in Pakistan's national interest. They do not allow people like me to argue that our policies are not in our national interest.

On the other hand, the Pakistani delusion is that Pakistan is going to succeed with the kind of policy it pursues. In fact, what America needs to do is prove to Pakistan that its policies will fail instead of buying time with a little bit of aid.

Q: What do you expect to happen now that US forces are leaving Afghanistan and Washington's focus shifts to other parts of the world such as Syria?

A: Pakistan needs to think and plan for the day when America will lose interest in Pakistan and the region. Pakistan's best options ... are to find peace with its neighbors and have ambitions that are realistic, not delusional...

If Pakistan is able to switch this focus from jihad to economic development ... then perhaps even an American abandonment will not be such a big problem for Pakistan.

 

[AnnoyingOrange]

Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States and an Epic History of Misunderstanding

The letter from the US Secretary of State should have struck a chill in the recipient's hearts. Yet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif didn't even open the envelope handed to him by the US Ambassador to Pakistan on behalf of Secy James Baker. The letter, delivered May 14, 1992 contained a direct threat, that if Pakistan didn't take "concrete steps to curtail assistance to militants and not allow their training camps to operate", the US would declare Pakistan a 'State sponsor of terrorism'. Instead, Sharif called a meeting of his army chief Gen Asif Nawaz, ISI Chief Lt Gen Javed Nasir, Foreign secretary Shahryar Khan, and special advisor Husain Haqqani, who describes it in his latest work, "Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, The United States and an Epic History of Misunderstanding". After much discussion on the repercussions of the US threat, Haqqani says, the men came to the conclusion that while shutting down militant operations was not an option, it was necessary for Pakistan to simply "cover [it's] tracks better in the future" and for the government to allocate $2 million to reach out to the American media and US Congress. The meeting, says Haqqani, led him to offer his resignation in disgust, and to his subsequently being sent off to Colombo as Pakistan's ambassador. Within 6 months of that meeting, President Bill Clinton was elected, and all talk of designating Pakistan for its support to Kashmir and Sikh militants ended. According to Haqqani's book, that meeting and the US's unexecuted threat, form the pattern of behavior that has ruled US-Pakistani relations all the way since the creation of Pakistan.

In the book, Haqqani describes many such "forks in the road" of US-Pakistan ties: From Jinnah's disappointment that the US was unwilling to push Pakistan as its "pivot to the world" and help its cause in Kashmir and subduing "Pushtunistan, or Pakistan's repetitive warnings about India's desire to "liquidate Pakistan". Woven in are references from US archives of correspondence with Pakistani officials as well as US diplomatic cables, now declassified and painstakingly accessed by Haqqani, as well as media archives. Often, Haqqani uses pieces from the Economist and the Time Magazine juxtaposed with the Dawn, Pakistan's leading daily, to show the complete disconnect between how Islamabad (or Karachi) viewed events, and how they played out in Washington.

Another pattern Haqqani details is Pakistan's constant demand for military aid, and the US's failure to fathom why the money doesn't buy them love. In 1947 for example, Pakistan asked the US to provide $300 million for its armed forces, followed by additional requests for 500 planes, 4 cruisers, 16 destroyers, 12 gunboats and 3 submarines, and so on. Each subsequent year brought an updated laundry list from Pakistan, much to the US's chagrin. Finally in 1968, US President Lyndon Johnson writes to President Ayub Khan, who has terminated the American lease on a military intelligence base in Badaber. "The US has a contribution of more than "$3,500,000,000 in Pakistan", he reminds Ayub, with the zeros written prominently for effect. Half a century and $40 billion dollars in aid later, Pakistan is far from feeling its military needs have been addressed and the US is far from feeling the love of the Pakistani people.

Sometimes, the disconnect between the two betrays hilarious ignorance. When the US plans to induct Pakistan into the SEATO (South East Asian Treaty Organisation) in 1954, Secretary of state John Dulles is asked 'why' by legendary columnist Walter Lippman. "The only Asians who can really fight are the Pakistanis." Dulles replies, "That's why we need them in the alliance. We could never get along without the Gurkhas." What makes the faux pas more significant is Dulles was responsible for pushing the US firmly towards Pakistan as opposed India, after several crusty encounters with Indian officials, including Pandit Nehru whom Nixon described as "the least friendly leader" he had met in Asia.

While Haqqani proves an archivist of some skill, his personal experiences of the US-Pakistan relationship are the most revealing. Husain Haqqani has played "every side of the fence" in Pakistan, as they say, from being a "student leader allied to Islamists" in 1979, to a journalist in Zia's era, to Nawaz Sharif's special advisor, to Benazir Bhutto's advisor and Zardari's ambassador to the U.S. He has lived in exile outside Pakistan for much of the time he hasn't been its official representative, and the threat to his safety since the 'Memogate' scandal has only grown. In "Magnificent Delusions", his account of all the conversations he has witnessed, and the picture that emerges of Pakistan as a duplicitous and delusional entity is hardly expected to improve his ratings with the Pakistani establishment.

Throughout the book, Haqqani is sharp, factual, but also humourous when it comes to describing Pakistan's leadership. However, he does fail to point out the 'magnificent delusions' of the US with the same zeal. At the end of his book the unanswered question remains, why does the US continue on this clearly unproductive course of action vis-à-vis Pakistan? If, as Haqqani has so convincingly outlined, the US has been lied to, betrayed, disobeyed and generally disregarded, why has it continued to let billions of dollars flow down the Jhelum, and failed to make good on that "terror state" threat of 1992, even when it found its most wanted terrorist living in easy comfort in Abbottabad?

Perhaps, like Pakistan, the US too finds comfort in the patterns of behavior it has followed since the British left India, and believes in the words Jinnah used to explain to Mountbatten's chief of staff Gen Hastings Ismay why Pakistan would always need a superpower ally. "Apart from everything else," Jinnah reportedly said, "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't".

Suhasini Haidar's Blog : Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States and an Epic History of Misunderstanding

 

[Capt.Popeye]

'Magnificent Delusions' of US-Pakistan relations
REUTERS
Updated 2013-10-31 12:11:13
Even as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani was one of the most eloquent critics of Pakistan's military, the nuclear-armed country's most powerful institution.

Haqqani, once derided at home as Washington's ambassador to Pakistan for his pro-Western views, has taken a step further, accusing the government of directly supporting militant groups in his latest book "Magnificent Delusions".

Now a professor of international relations at Boston University, he was ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011, a turbulent time in US-Pakistan relations that culminated in a raid by US special forces in May 2011 that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Haqqani resigned in November 2011 and left Pakistan after becoming involved in a scandal surrounding a secret memo that accused the army of plotting a coup and sought help from the United States to rein in the military.

Haqqani, who has denied any connection to the memo, spoke to Reuters by telephone from the United States about his book and his views on US-Pakistan relations.

Q: Why do you believe Pakistan supports militant groups?

A: As far as terrorism is concerned, Pakistan was the conduit of weapons and training for the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets. After that, Pakistan switched it to India, especially in Kashmir. And that is the point at which the United States said "You are engaging in terrorism". The Pakistani response was "But we started it together".

The problem is that the pro-jihadi narrative has become so mainstream that it is very difficult for any government to ... put all jihadis out of business. But Pakistan would not find peace without putting all jihadis out of business.

Q: Why is this happening now?

A: The whole idea of building a nation around religious nationalism has backfired. What has happened is that religious nationalism has only produced extremism. If Pakistan were to be an Islamic state, the question arises "What kind of Islamic state?" We are now in a virtual civil war between various sects and militias attached to these sects who don't tolerate each other.

Q: Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif just concluded talks with President Barack Obama during his visit to the United States. What do you think they really talked about behind closed doors?

A: There is a Groundhog Day quality to Pakistan-American discussions, especially since the end of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. Each time there is a change in government in Pakistan or in the United States there is a build-up of hope that maybe this time we will resolve it.

That is why I titled my book "Magnificent Delusions". Everybody is just deluding himself. The big American delusion is that America gets leverage with Pakistan by giving it military and economic aid. It doesn't.

It just improves its access but it does not give it leverage because the Pakistani establishment does what it thinks is in Pakistani interests. They do not allow an honest debate about what is in Pakistan's national interest. They do not allow people like me to argue that our policies are not in our national interest.

On the other hand, the Pakistani delusion is that Pakistan is going to succeed with the kind of policy it pursues. In fact, what America needs to do is prove to Pakistan that its policies will fail instead of buying time with a little bit of aid.

Q: What do you expect to happen now that US forces are leaving Afghanistan and Washington's focus shifts to other parts of the world such as Syria?

A: Pakistan needs to think and plan for the day when America will lose interest in Pakistan and the region. Pakistan's best options ... are to find peace with its neighbors and have ambitions that are realistic, not delusional...

If Pakistan is able to switch this focus from jihad to economic development ... then perhaps even an American abandonment will not be such a big problem for Pakistan.

"Reality Bites" can be seen there. Haqqani seems to have understood the real-politik that really matters in Foreign Policies.

The last part is really important. Recent developments are clearly indicative of which way the winds are blowing.
This times's denouement will be far more damaging than the last one; in the 19990s.