May make sense to listen to the words of Gen Anthony Zinni, Karamat, and Armitage here about how important it is for the US to stop asking for more and instead helping out Pakistan and Pakistani Army more.
Very good Q&A. Sorry for the long but very interesting post.
The U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Relationship - Brookings Institution
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
THE U.S.-PAKISTAN STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Moderator:
PHILIP GORDON, Senior Fellow
The Brookings Institution
Panel Presentations:
GENERAL JEHANGIR KARAMAT
Former Pakistan Chief of Army Staff;
Former Ambassador to the U.S.
GENERAL ANTHONY ZINNI
Former Commander, U.S. Central Command
RICHARD ARMITAGE
Former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of State
* * * * *
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P R O C E E D I N G S
MR. GORDON: I am Phil Gordon, a Senior Fellow here at
Brookings. It is a pleasure to welcome you to this event on the U.S.-
Pakistan strategic relationship. I do not think I need to tell this group how
important this issue is and how topical it is given reports of al-Qaeda
forming on the Afghan-Pakistan border, the nuclear issue, the issue of
relations with India, the issue of Pakistan as a test case for democracy.
The important strategic issues go on and on.
It is commonplace on a panel like this to say we could not
have a better panel to address these issues. That happens to be true in
this case. We really could not have a better set of speakers to address
this topic. I think they are already known to you all, so I will be very brief
in my introductions so that we can jump right in. First, to my right, General
Jehangir Karamat I think you all know. He was ambassador of Pakistan to
the United States. Before that he was the Army Chief of Staff in Pakistan
preceding General Musharraf. After General Karamat, General Anthony
Zinni, again known to everybody in this room, a former Marine General
who was our commander of CENTCOM from 1997 to 2000, and after that,
the U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East. Then finally, Richard Armitage
who was Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration from 2001
to 2005. You will notice that the years in which these gentleman all
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706 Duke Street, Suite 100
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served in the posts that I mentioned coincided, so you will also note that
they all know each other extremely well.
In terms of a format, each of the speakers will briefly begin
with 7 to 10 minutes, just some informal remarks on the subject of the
U.S.-Pakistan strategic relationship. I will probably take the liberty to
follow up and ask them a few questions and press them on a couple of
issues. Then we will open it to a discussion and questions and answers
from the room. With that, let me turn it over to General Karamat for the
introductory remarks.
GENERAL KARAMAT: It is a great pleasure to be back at
Brookings and a privilege to be on a panel with so many distinguished
colleagues.
Ladies and gentlemen, the sort of questions that are being
asked in terms of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship right now are what is
really happening in Pakistan's Western border areas, why is it happening,
and what is Pakistan doing about it. In the few minutes that I have, I could
not possibly go into the details, but what I would like to do is tell you and
sort of explain what is happening, why it is happening, and what we are
doing about it.
Of course, the short answer to these questions is that far too
much is happening in the Western border areas, none of it is good, and
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that Pakistan is doing everything that a country would be doing when it is
faced with a potentially existential threat which is that it is doing its utmost
to bring the situation under control and I am glad that it has the support of
the U.S. and that it is part of the U.S.-Pakistan strategic relationship in
what it is trying to do in the Western border areas.
With what has been happening recently, and you have seen
it happening on television, there is no possibility of denying or telling you
something different from what is actually happening. The reality is there
staring us in the face and it has to be understood in terms of the scale, the
dimension, and the danger that it poses not only to Pakistan but to the
region and to the rest of the world.
There are many reasons for why this is happening and why
this militancy has expanded from Southern Afghanistan into Pakistan's
tribal areas. You know there is a land border of 2,500 kilometers,
northwest very high altitudes, southwest lower altitudes. You know there
are routes across this border and it is a porous border. The main routes
which are manned with maybe one in each province, but there are
hundreds of less-frequented routes which are not manned and there is
movement across them. Vehicles average 14,000 a day crossing over,
12,000 of them in Baluchistan. There are 40,000 people crossing every
day with over 30,000 in Baluchistan which is southwest where the altitude
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is lower. There are seven divided villages straddling the border and these
villages are 100 square meters to 3 to 5 square kilometers and they
actually are part on the Afghan side and part on the Pakistan side.
You have 31 refugee camps in the northwest with 1.7 million
refugees and another 17 in the southwest with 230,000 refugees. So
there are 2 million refugees in these camps and these have become over
a period of time centers for drugs, weapons, crime, and some of the
people there have linkages deep inside Pakistan and deep inside
Afghanistan, so they are a problem.
Northwest, bordering the Afghan border we have seven
FATA, or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, with 3.2 million people
in an area of 27,200 kilometers involved, and you have seven border
districts in Baluchistan, five Pashtun, two Baluch, and this indicates that
there is an ethnic mix in Baluchistan which is important to understand. So
there are 2.4 million in those camps with 91,438 square kilometers along
the border in Baluchistan.
As I said, the main crossings with one in each province are
manned, but the others are not. A biometric system put in place by
Pakistan is dysfunctional after just 3 months of operation because the
Afghans did not agree to it. Afghans have also resisted any attempt to
harden the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and there are
several reasons for that. So if you put together this whole picture which
exists on the ground, with the U.S. and NATO operating in Southern
Afghanistan and the central gravity of the militancy in Southern
Afghanistan, you can understand how it has spread into Pakistan's tribal
areas. All the conditions favor this expansion into Pakistan.
What is surprising is that we have not been able to contain
and neutralize this militancy in the tribal areas and they have been able to
not only consolidate in the tribal areas, but they have been able to now
sally out of the tribal areas and attack targets within Pakistan. The recent
fighting has been in Sawat and -- Kohat and Thal areas, and there are
bombings all over the country linked to the violence in the tribal areas.
The situation on the ground, if I may just take a minute to
explain that, is that a new generation of Taliban leaders from within
Pakistan's tribal areas have gained control of vast areas of territory inside
Pakistan's tribal areas. They actually control that territory. We know their
names. They are well known. One of them, Masood, is in the largest
South Waziristan agency. These Taliban are trying to, and according to
them they have already done it, make a tarik Taliban Pakistan which
roughly translates into a Pakistan Taliban organization in that area. And
not only all the leaders are in that organization with Masood as their
leader, but they also have representatives from the settled areas of
Pakistan, Bannu, Kahad, Diafan, and so on, represented in that. They
have established linkages with elements in Afghanistan with people in
refugee camps, with sympathizers in Pakistan's urban areas, and most of
the recent suicide bombings targeting law-enforcement agencies come
from this. Also there are madrassas in each of the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas dating back to our joint jihad against the Soviet Union. There
are I think about 260 madrassas in that area of which 80 are known to be
active. When I say active, it means that they are actively engaged in
training and doing everything to prepare people for suicide bombings, for
IEDs and whatever you want for terrorist activities. These are also
magnets for would-be terrorists from Pakistan and from other parts of the
world and from Islamist organizations in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan who
apparently have free access to Afghanistan because at least I have not
heard of any interdiction and prosecutions taking place in Afghanistan.
The pattern of activity, raids, attacks, IEDs, suicide attacks,
bombing blasts, kidnappings, hostage-taking, interdiction of logistics,
attacks on law-enforcement agencies, captured personnel, and suspected
collaborators periodically beheaded publicly, and more important, the
traditional tribal leadership more or less systematically eliminated. This is
the leadership we traditionally depended upon to solve problems in the
tribal areas. And recently they have also attacked infrastructure targets
like the Kohat tunnel and other targets on intercity routes apparently to
isolate parts of the country and bring them under their control. This is the
sort of explanation for the geographic expansion that has taken place, the
proximity of the tribal areas, the special status of the tribal areas, the
madrassas, the capacity of law-enforcement agencies to confront this new
threat that is coming.
Add to this mix poor governance, lax administration, and
enormous economic incentives for the militants. These economic
incentives have to be understood. I will not go into the details unless you
want to know about it and during the questions I will be happy to answer
them.
Two other aspects really beyond the scope of this talk - I do
not have the time; one is we need to analyze the 5-year political
government in the frontier provinces in terms of what it has achieved and
what is has not achieved, not to blame, but to learn lessons for the future
because we headed into elections and another political government. The
second is the exact situation on the ground in Afghanistan, going beyond
the random acts of violence into economic reasons for what is happening
there, the war loads, governance, justice, the police, the military, the
political structures, and the actual development which has taken place and
the progress toward democracy that has to be made. I think this analysis
will turn up a picture that may be the real reason for the resurgence of the
militancy and the expansion into Pakistan.
There is of course smuggling from Pakistan into Afghanistan
and the recent food shortages that we have had can be explained from
that point of view. And let me just mention that with 400,000 acres under
poppy cultivation with an implication of something like $40 to $50 billion, at
least $4 billion are going into funding the chaos in which these activities
then can thrive because they need this chaos. Then of course there is the
absence of any central coordinating authority in Afghanistan. So the
logistics of the militancy needs analysis and this is an aspect that needs to
be tackled.
Finally, when we come down to the last question, what are
we going to do about this, there is a whole raft of ideas that are floating
around. There are ideas like overt intervention by the U.S. or covert
intervention by the U.S. and about taking care of Pakistan's nuclear assets
and so on. I am sure they are good ideas for debate, but they are not
going to address the threats that are outlined. In fact, al-Qaeda and the
Taliban may welcome that kind of an action but nobody else will. And of
course, it will also strengthen the Islamist connection which the militants
are very keen on, and weaken the secular liberal Pashtun element which
we hope to harness to confront this militancy eventually.
Military operations, yes, we need them and we have a
pattern of how we have undertaken these military operations from 2001
through 2006, and I will be happy to share the results with. From 2006
through 2007, we had the peace agreement situation and we have to see
how those peace agreements helped, whether they shored up this military
situation or they undermined this military situation. I am not saying it was
bad because we may eventually have to resort to jirgas and the political
element again. It just has to be a strategy which has many prongs, the
military, the political, and the development strategy, and development I
must say has been far too little and far too late. If you want to undertake
that, then it has to be in tandem with the military and the political strategy.
So I will stop here and just say that it is perhaps time to look
at this whole situation within the U.S.-Pakistan strategic relationship, not to
go into areas which will not help us combat this threat and which will
undermine the institutions which we are going to rely on to tackle this
threat. We need to go into a very comprehensive strategy, a multipronged
strategy, which we can discuss later, to tackle this threat over the longterm
because it is going to be there for several years. It is not going to go
away in a hurry.
Everybody is saying that Pakistan is a crucial ally of the
United States. I also think so. And I also think that for Pakistan the U.S.
is a very important ally. So with that kind of a situation, the U.S.-Pakistan
strategic relationship has a great future and we must do everything to
make sure that it keeps progressing in the direction that we want to move
us toward the end state that we want in Afghanistan and in our tribal
areas. Thank you.
MR. GORDON: Thank you, General. Thank you very much
for those opening remarks. We will in due course have lots of questions
for you, but I think what we ought to do now is give our other speakers a
chance to give their opening comments.
GENERAL ZINNI: I would like to talk briefly about the
military-to-military relationship, obviously the area that I am most familiar
with. My first experience with the Pakistani military came in Somalia. As
director of operations for the Combined Task Force that the U.S. led in
Somalia in the early 1990s, I was impressed with the fact that we had a
battalion of Pakistani military there on the ground when we arrived in an
unfortunate situation with the U.N. mandate that was insufficient for the
problems that were there with the Pakistanis very ably trying to
accomplish the mission to get humanitarian aid and support to the needy.
When our mission expanded and the U.N. mission that followed us, the
Pakistanis were willing to expand their presence. They upped their
commitment to one of the largest contingents for that mission even though
it was very difficult, and they took on the most difficult area of
responsibility. The Pakistanis were willing to take on the city of
Mogadishu itself. Those of you who are familiar with events in Somalia
know what happened. Pakistani forces very bravely and very competently
tried to manage a city that was in complete chaos and as a result of the
events that occurred on October 19 that we are all well-familiar with here
as the Blackhawk Down day, the Pakistanis in the fighting that ensued that
day and immediately afterward suffered far more casualties than we did,
the Americans, or anybody else in the coalition. Of course, we left and
they stayed. I came back to Mogadishu and to Somali as the commander
of the task force to cover the withdrawal of U.N. forces and I can tell you
the last off the beaches were the Pakistani brigade. As a matter of fact,
what was impressive is we had given the Pakistani brigade equipment,
kind of old equipment we had in stocks in Italy, cold war equipment, that
were generations beyond our most modern equipment. I was told that as
we recovered that equipment after the years in Somalia would probably be
in bad shape, probably really not very useful. The logisticians who
recovered the equipment told me it was in pristine condition. It was turned
over with full kit, completely operational, and in amazingly good shape.
And in my experience there, that was an indication or hallmark of the
forces that I know there and the leadership there. I knew General
Karamat's predecessor as chief of the military and worked closely with him
for the Somali operations. Today the Pakistanis have the second most
number of troops on U.N. peacekeeping missions. Up until the end of last
year, they had the most with over 10,000, which says something about
their international commitment, the quality of their forces, and the
demands places on those kinds of forces.
In my time at CENTCOM, the military-to-military relationship
hung on the thread of the personal relationship between myself and
General Karamat, myself and General Musharraf, his successor. We had
agreed that regardless of the political situation, the sanctions and all the
other things that put pressure on that relationship, that we valued it so
much and saw the importance that this personal connection has to be
maintained, and I will tell you we called on that personal relationship a
number of times. At the turn of the millennium we had a serious of
potential attacks that were uncovered by the Jordanians at ceremonies
celebrating the turning of the millennium in the Middle East, and we found
that the sources of the command and control were located in the Western
areas of Pakistan. I was asked by the administration to contact my
counterpart, then General Musharraf, to ask if he would make the arrests
and based on the intelligence we were receiving from the Jordanians and
our own interrogators, scoff up those responsible. It would seem to
surprise you that you would go to the general, the commander of
CENTCOM, to ask him to ask his counterpart for this, but that was the thin
thread of a relationship that we had, and they were arrested. We were
allowed to have access to those people for interrogation. We were
allowed to have access to discs that were taken and captured by the
Pakistan security forces in the arrests, and about three or four other
requests that came about, and again, all under the blanket of this set of
sanctions that made it difficult for us to operate.
For us as leaders on both sides, we saw the importance of
our officers having this connection. It was unfortunate that we went
through a period of time where we sanctioned the education of Pakistani
officers at our schools. General Karamat is a graduate of Leavenworth,
the Leavenworth Hall of Fame as a matter of fact. He takes pride in that,
and I know that for a fact. That kind of connection, that kind of
communication, made our ability to communicate and operate with each
other despite the political climate much more effective.
I was sent back by the last administration to work the
preliminaries to try to defuse the situation in Kargil. I will tell you I would
have never been able to see the prime minister had it not been for the
chief of the military brokering the access for me to allow the meeting
between the prime minister and the president and eventually the defusing
of that situation. And even if the military did not agree with our approach,
the respect was so great that it allowed that to occur and allowed that
dialogue to begin and defuse what could have been a very serious
situation that would have benefited none of us had it blossomed into
something more deadly.
I find now that the criticism of the military is what probably
disappoints me most. The Pakistani military has suffered over a thousand
killed in those Western Provinces along with their security forces, and over
twice that many wounded, and yet we are demanding more. In the
beginning when they went up into the hills to do these things and to
accomplish missions that maybe were seen by their people as not
necessarily in their interests but our way, they did it anyway. Did they do it
with the kind of equipment with the necessary edge to operate in that very
difficult terrain to have an advantage? No. We can look at the assistance
program, and I am sure there will be questions about the amounts of
money and the amounts of funding and the amounts of support and I
would just tell you to look at the capacity or the capability that is being
provided. If anybody here, and I see may shaved heads in the audience
who have probably have had experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, you
know to right insurgencies and to fight in that kind of terrain and to fight in
that environment you need an edge. Now matter how modernly equipped
your military is, it is reduced to almost a level playing field in those kinds of
environments. And have we provided the edge? Have we provided the
training for the security forces? Have we provided the night-vision
capability and the kinds of ways and the kinds of qualities that are
necessary to operate? I think we need to relook at that kind of support to
see what the funding is actually giving us, understand it is not cheap, and
to get the edge in these kinds of places for a basic conventional military
takes a lot to get it done.
In addition that, I think General Karamat accurately
explained the situation on the border. Border security is the problem,
border control is the problem. It is not that we do not have a problem with
border control, but imagine trying to control that border in Waziristan and
along the Southern reaches out of Waziristan. I have been up into that
terrain courtesy of the Pakistani military to get a sense of it and I can tell
you that it is extremely difficult to control. Yet we have on each side a
different set of controls and a relationship maybe that is not what it should
be. I would offer to you that maybe our role is to bridge those differences,
for us to offer the technical support, the communications, the brokering
and the command and control and everything else that goes with a
common system for controlling that border, Afghan and Pakistani with us
involved. It is in our interests to do it, it is going to take our support and
technology, and it is probably going to take our bridge to make that
happen.
It is important that the Pakistani military retain its confidence
in its leadership and its international flavor for its officer corps. I think we
went through a period where we had a divorce after the first Afghan war,
an unfortunate one at the wrong time. We are two nations that absolutely
have the same strategic aims and absolutely need each other. It is not a
friendly neighborhood. Having been responsible for U.S. military
operations, missions, and relationships in that region, I can tell you that
Southwest Asia is not a place where we have many friends and strategic
relationships that are any more important than this one. This in fact is
probably the most important in that area. And I think instead of trying to
pick and find fault with the relationship, find the fault lines, to let our let our
disagreements wash over and affect the total relationship, I think we need
to look forward to building greater relationships based on mutual security
interests and the interests on creating stability in that region whether it is
economic, political, or security. I think we have both been negligent in
allowing the differences and allowing those who would try to break that
relationship to sort of take the field and get most of the publicity. And it
breaks my heart as a military man knowing that military, having fought
side by side with that military, to see the lack of appreciation for the
sacrifices that are being made and I would offer going forward that we
need to turn that around. Sure, more has to be done. Sure, there needs
to be more effort toward stability done by both sides whether it is political,
economic, or in the security relationship, but we have to stop finding fault
with the relationship and start building it toward a more positive way in my
mind, and I think it begins with the strongest relationship we have, the
military-to-military relationship, and that ought to be the source of us
growing this into what it should be and what it has been in the past.
Thank you.
MR. GORDON: Thanks very much, General Zinni.
Secretary Armitage, you also had a lot of direct relations with the
Pakistanis at the highest levels and the floor is yours.
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Thank you very much, and good
afternoon. I find myself in the rather uncomfortable position of saying that
everything that can be said has been said except not by me, so I will add a
few sentences to try to define the problem that we are talking about today.
The first thing I am going to ask everyone here is to take a
deep breath. Let's not hyperventilate about what is going on. We've got a
problem, but let's take a deep breath. I know that Mark Twain said, even
though you are on the right track, you can run over if you are not going
fast enough, but I think it would behoove us all to as I said take a deep
breath and let's think about the equities involved here.
The vision of Muhammad Ali Jinnah notwithstanding, he set
a pretty difficult task for himself and those who came after him, the
governance of Pakistan, which as far as this citizen is concerned is not a
country, can be well described in a way as four countries. And with the
rather complicating factor now that at least I would say maybe I am
affected by our friends in Singapore who now would call Waziristan al-
Qaedistan to some extent, so the governance of this is an enormous,
enormous problem.
By the way, this is not a problem that the present
administration now matter they came to power brought about. This has
been a problem in the developments since the time General Zinni
acknowledge toward the end of the first Soviet or the Afghan-Soviet war
and some of us bear some relationship for this. We knew exactly what we
were doing in Pakistan at the time and we knew exactly what was going to
happen in Afghanistan when we walked away. This was not a secret. So
let's take it easy and look at this in its entire breadth and scope.
If you look at opinion polls recently in Pakistan, there are
opinion polls on everything, but one of the opinion polls that you would see
is that the affection for extremism in this 162 million populated country of a
median age of 19, the affection for extremism is actually down. What is up
is the penchant for violence among those who do espouse extremism and
that is sort of the big change phenomenon right now.
The difficulty I think is whichever way you look in Pakistan,
nobody can pick what I think our two generals would have said at one time
is candidate for soldier of the month. Who is a good candidate for soldier
of the month? You have a president who I personally have a lot of
affection for. He came to power in an extracurricular way. Unfortunately,
the late Benazir Bhutto had a chance as a democratically elected leader
and I think it not for nothing that she found herself in Dubai for a number of
years, and Mr. Nawaz Sharif also has had his difficulties. I am not being
particularly nasty, I am just pointing out the fact that one of the things that
we have to deal with now is that we do not have a ready candidate for
soldier of the month.
What do we have? We've got a great discussion right now in
Washington and beyond in Europe about democracy in Pakistan and that
is great. I am all for it. I think it is great. But the question I would have for
you is is democracy an endpoint? I would argue it is not an endpoint, it is
a journey that never ends. By the way, the people of Pakistan under
martial law governments and under democratic governments have not
received the governance that I think they really deserve. This is a fact that
you have had a couple of democratically elected governments and people
have not really thrived.
So what we have is a journey and it seems to me as we talk
about these upcoming elections and we want them to be free and fair and
above board and transparent, we've got to realize that if we are going to
have a democracy that matters and stays, it is going to have to be a
democracy which is based on reformed systems whether it is the judiciary,
whether it is rule of law, whether it is freedom of the press, whether it is
the party system, et cetera. We are going to have to somehow resolve
these ethnic and regional differences or smooth them over to some extent.
That is reform and it is a necessary precondition for democracy, and if you
do not have it you will have a situation I believe like we have in our own
Southern Hemisphere with Venezuela. No one would argue that Hugo
Chavez is not democratically elected, he was twice. But what has
happened? Reform was not forthcoming, institutions were not developed
that could deliver to the needs of the people, their expectations were
dashed, they respond to a populist and populists then find themselves with
a couple of ways to go. They can either use their popular prestige for the
betterment for reform or they can use it to become more autocratic, and
that is what I think we are seeing in Venezuela.
So when I say that I want to look at the holistic Pakistan, I
would like you to it not only in the ease with which we speak of
democracy, but the difficulty of having it develop in a country like Pakistan
which as I said has all these ethnic and regional differences with an
overlay of some foreign presence and other things. I know one thing, we
as a nation should continue to encourage respect for human freedoms,
human rights, democracy, all of that. We need to do this. But we've got to
be careful in how we make these presentations I think in Pakistan. It does
not seem to me to be the better part of wisdom to go publicly to Pakistan
to urge that the president of the nation allow U.S. forces, foreign forces, to
be active on their soil. It seems to me somewhat counterproductive.
What are the stakes? I have already mentioned the 162
million very young people in Pakistan who deserve a much better life.
That is part of it. But it is beyond my candidacy how Afghanistan can be
successful unless Pakistan is a success. And for that matter, I have been
delighted in recent years with the betterment of relationships with India
and particularly the lessening of the fever of Kashmir. It is a problem that
needs resolution, but we do not have the situation we had in 2001 and
2002. That is up for grabs if Pakistan is not successful, so the equities
here go far beyond 162 million very worthy people in Pakistan.
MR. GORDON: Thank you very much. Thank you all for
those opening statements. A lot of topics have been put on the table. I
will get to questions, but before I do that I would like to begin though by
trying to promote a conversation among the panelists on some of the
topics that have been raised. I would propose to do that under the two
topics that General Karamat outlined in his opening statement in terms of
what is going on, and what do we do about it, and I would like to start to
press you a bit further on the what is going on part.
Just this week, in fact yesterday even I believe, Director of
National Intelligence McConnell was on the Hill testifying and suggested
that radical groups are not only on the rise in Pakistan but actually I
believe he said pose a threat to Pakistan itself. I would be interested in
any of your reactions to that notion, but specifically, General Karamat, is
that the case? And what as a related point is the relationship between
these radical groups and the state or the military itself? Because on one
hand we sometimes hear that there are links between the two, but at the
same time we see that the radical groups are actually attacking the
military. So any of you, but maybe General Karamat, could begin on that
set of issues.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I think it is evident that they pose a
threat to Pakistan because when a group erodes the writ of the state in an
area or in a specific geographic locality which is within Pakistan then that
means that they are a threat to the country and you are responding to
them as a threat. That is exactly what has been going on, that they pose
a threat, they have eroded the writ of the state, and the end goal that we
are seeking is to reestablish the writ of the state to reestablish civil
administration, to bring about confidence between the public and the civil
and military administrations, and to have an administration which can
respond in the future to that kind of threat. So, yes, they pose a threat to
Pakistan.
MR. GORDON: Anybody else?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: I kind of hesitate to say this, but
this is not a bulletin that extremism is on the rise. The president of the
nation has twice suffered near misses in bombings and the prime minister,
thank God he sat on the wrong side of the car, survived a near miss. Now
what we have had I think is the fact that some people in Pakistan are not
sure of the eventual outcome of Afghanistan so it did rise I think to
extremism. This should not be a great bulletin. To the extent I think that
we do better and the coalitions do better in Afghanistan, and by the way,
Pakistan helps us as they can with Afghanistan, then extremism at least to
some extent will go down.
MR. GORDON: General Zinni?
GENERAL ZINNI: I would just make one point. It strikes me
that the extremists are clever in understanding that the first real center of
gravity they have to unravel is that special relationship between the
Pakistani military and the Pakistani people. That has always been very
strong and I think they see an opportunity of trying to exploit that in
creating situations or taking advantage of maybe some of the political
situations to try to bring the Pakistani military into confrontation with the
people or with elements within there that look like it is the army versus the
people. I think that the Pakistani military is very conscious of this and
trying to avoid these confrontations that play into that role. It all the more
reinforces the idea of us ensuring a very skilled, trained, and wellequipped
military and especially working together on the lessons we have
learned in dealing with insurgencies in these sorts of things and sharing
them because I think that is the primary leverage they are attempting to
achieve and if that break happens, you take arguably but I believe the
most important institution for stability, the military, and you begin to
marginalize it if they are successful.
MR. GORDON: Let's follow-up and stay on this point. We
all agree that it is not a bulletin but it is a pretty serious matter if radical
groups are threatening the Pakistani state and it raises the question of
what to do about it. All of you in one way or another have mentioned the
issue of using military force and actual conflict with these groups. Again I
would be interested, and maybe starting with General Karamat, there are
a range of options. You mentioned the troops in Waziristan and the jirga,
and we have also heard about kinetic operations. How does Pakistan and
how does the United States and Pakistan decide? You said you could
address actually what is working and what are the lessons of the 2006
experience. What are they? The lessons in the United States it seems to
me that many are drawing are that that did not work.
GENERAL KARAMAT: Yes, I have heard that. Let me just
say that the military's involvement in the Federally Administered Tribal
Areas started post-2001 and in the 2001 through 2003 period, we had
speculator successes in arresting people and eliminating the terrorist
leadership and so on and we were in it together with the U.S. operating on
the Afghanistan side and we had about a two brigade strength operating
on our side. So, yes, that was a period of successes. But after that we
shifted to a period of selective engagement based on actionable
intelligence and going in for targets and so on. That was not so
successful because of the time delay between intelligence and the actions
which had to be taken.
Then there was a period of large-scale operations where we
had more involvement of the military and we had again spectacular
successes in that area. We had people on the run, and that is time if you
recall when there was a lot of talk that there are no sanctuaries and
people are actually on the run in that area and that is the period when we
had maximum success in 2005 through 2006. And that is when the
overtures came from the extremists for a peace agreement and we
responded and we went into those peace agreements and I believe there
minor agreements and bigger agreements, six agreements in all, which at
various times were violated, and now with hindsight we find that they
perhaps sought to undermine the military successes that we had had and
that they allowed consolidation and perhaps expansion because now we
are into military operations again. Which does not mean that the military
is the only option. The military is one option and it is an option of last
resort which we have been pushed into taking. We would very much like
that there is a more comprehensive strategy in terms of a development
strategy in that area with of course economic opportunities, that there is a
political strategy which again revives either the jirga or some kind of peace
overtures which are two-sided and are sustainable and we move in
tandem with all these three toward the end goal that we have, and I
believe that the U.S. and Pakistan can work together on this. The U.S. is
supporting us with capacity building, it is supporting us in governance, it is
supporting us in a whole spectrum of activities in that area and I think we
need to move forward in all those areas if we want to bring that area finally
under control.
So, yes, I am basically optimistic of the end result. It may
take time. It has come at a time when we are also into a political transition
which makes it difficult to focus totally on that area, but given time and the
fact that there is an election coming up on the 18th and a government
hopefully after that, I think that we have the ability to focus and the U.S.
and Pakistan acting together have an opportunity to end this problem once
and for all.
MR. GORDON: General Zinni? Not on that. I will raise one
more and then I will open it to the room, one more question under the
topic of what we do, and it is the democracy question which will no doubt
come from the room, and I will give you a crack at it from up here first. I
think General Zinni wrote a piece in The Post last fall about standing by
our man, our man being Musharraf. You gave some good reasons for
that. Whatever one's personal view of General Musharraf and his
effectiveness and so on, the rebuttal to that usually comes in terms of if
we stand by our man, that he is unpopular and we lose the Pakistani
population, then it is counterproductive to stand by our man. Is there any
reaction to that set of arguments that I know you are quite familiar with?
GENERAL ZINNI: The point I was trying to make was
twofold. One had to do with President Musharraf and the other had to do
with the military which I have explained the value of us valuing what the
military has done and their sacrifices. In the interests of complete honesty
like Mr. Armitage, President Musharraf is a good friend and I believe he is
a patriot, I believe he does what he does and did what he did in the best
interests of his country, and I believe there things that he had done with
the economy and other things that are positive. There are other things
that I may disagree with and certainly many in the audience will disagree
with, and I think the point that is most important here is what his intentions
were and how things came about.
We tend to shorthand things in a way that shape an issue
and give it maybe the wrong context. For example, the shorthand in the
media is when President Musharraf executed the coup, I do not think he
was even in the country when the coup happened. I think it might have
been a coup executed on the military that did not work and may have
backfired. We can argue that, and I certainly do not condone generals
taking over the government, do not worry, the republic is not in danger
from any of us except for those who run for office here, but felt strongly
that President Musharraf felt strongly about the importance of this
relationship and the commitment to it and I think at many times put himself
at personal risk to maintain that. And whether we agree or disagree with
him, I think what he committed to, what his intentions were, that was the
point I was making, that they were sincere and they came from an honest
and sincere I feel interest in the welfare of his own nation and his own
people.
MR. GORDON: Thank you. Anybody else?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: -- ought to be an adherent to the
Hippocratic Oath as well. The people of Pakistan and the one national
institution, the army of Pakistan, will eventually make their wishes known.
The worst thing I think that can happen is if we make our wishes known
that we prefer someone else, we cannot do that from this distance. We
will make an error. Also I think by being on someone's side will also
damage them quite a bit. I was very opposed, for instance, to the way that
we were seen so publicly as assisting Mrs. Bhutto's return. I think it would
have been a fine thing had it been kept quiet and seemed to just sort of
happen because Pakistanis made this decision, but once we get involved I
think it can take on a different sort of color.
The question of whether we are going to lose the affection of
the Pakistani people, when President Musharraf enjoyed a much higher
affection rate than he does today in the minds of the Pakistani people, the
affection with which the U.S. was reviewed was not quite so high. It was
not high at all. So as I say, I would not put -- our losing the Pakistani
people. This is not ours to lose. It is Pakistan, it is the Pakistan nation,
and to some extent as I say, the one national institute will make their
wishes known at some point in time.
That gets back to the question of democracy. Is that
democracy? No, of course it is not. But it does get back to some things
that the general was talking about, institution building, capacity building,
reform, and things of that nature to make this nation confident that they
can put on the cloak of democracy over a framework which will be
maintained.
MR. GORDON: Thank you. We have time for questions. I
would like to open it up. We are going to start right here in the middle.
There is a microphone coming. Please just tell us who you are and direct
your question to somebody.
MR. LAGARI: My name is -- Lagari. I am with the World --
Institute. I have a question for General Karamat.
MR. GORDON: Please speak up a little bit.
MR. LAGARI: How much money the Pakistani military spent
on nuclear weapons as up to now? And how much money you are
spending to maintaining command and control of the nuclear weapons?
The report you gave here today, we feel that we are living in the Stone
Age. So I would think that better to the relationship to U.S. should be
(inaudible) can be helpful for you against the terrorism and nuclear, this
blackmailing to the West. So that is my request to Mr. Armitage and
General Zinni. The (inaudible) strategic position can be helpful compared
to the ethnic Punjabis which are dominating in the military.
GENERAL KARAMAT: What was the question? This was a
comment?
MR. LAGARI: (inaudible)
GENERAL KARAMAT: I have no idea how much money we
spent. I have no idea.
MR. GORDON: The first question was about spending on
nuclear.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I wish I could give you a figure in
terms of dollars or rupees of how much we spent, but I would say that a
colossal amount has been spent as part of our national security in
developing, maintaining, and improving our nuclear assets.
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: I would say certainly the United
States was very unhappy with the development of a nuclear weapons
program in Pakistan, but notwithstanding how much they may spend, it is
money well spent as far as I am concerned. I know when Secretary
Powell was Secretary of State, the State Department spent a good deal of
our time, particularly Assistant Secretary Woolf, working with the Pakistani
military primarily to the extent they would expose us to production of
nuclear weapons to help develop our confidence that they were in good
hands, they were safe, and there were pretty good failsafe mechanisms.
And I would say having said that we did not like the fact that Pakistan
developed these weapons, any amount of money they spend to protect
them is good as far as I am concerned.
MR. GORDON: Right here in the third row.
SPEAKER: Thank you (inaudible) two questions, one for
General Zinni and the ambassador. General Zinni, you said that it is an
unfriendly neighborhood and we do not have many friends. Do you
consider India as your friends? And ambassador, the question for you is
that many Pakistanis and Americans are asking that since 9/11, billions of
dollars have gone to Pakistan to control terrorism and now it has been
rising rather than going down, but also money was to transfer madrassas
from hate to normal education. How much more time do you need? And I
understand that Pakistan is going through turmoil and many attacks now
on the Pakistanis and also on President Musharraf, but how can we
control now and how much time do you need now? And what the U.S.
can do now?
GENERAL ZINNI: To answer your first question, we
certainly consider India a friend, yes. I was describing the area of
responsibility of the U.S. Central Command which does not include India,
which is Pacific Command, and the Southwest Asia that includes Central
Asia, Iran, Pakistan, that I was responsible for. So I apologize if I offended
our Indian friends.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I think that is a good question.
Actually, what you are saying is how much we are spending on education,
and I think there is 2.4 percent of GDP that we are spending at the
moment. Some of the political parties which are campaigning now are
talking of jumping this to 4 percent when they come into power, so this is a
good sign that everybody thinks that more should be going into it.
Your impatience with the pace at which things have moved,
yes, the people of Pakistan are impatient too. We have had U.S. support,
we have had World Bank support with a number of education projects in
Pakistan and a lot of progress has been made, but I think we get
sidetracked into various things in this transition to democracy. I am not
against it. Please note that I am all for the transition to democracy, but it
does take time and you have a new government coming in in February or
after that and it will take a couple of months to get its act together and
then have policies and so on. So those kinds of delays are inherent in a
situation where you are opting for the transition to democracy. So it may
take time, but we headed in the right direction as far as this is concerned.
GENERAL ZINNI: May I say one more thing? When
General Karamat was chief of the military and I was at CENTCOM, the
commander of the U.S. Pacific Command and I had this idea that I would
visit India for an extended visit and he would visit Pakistan because
obviously we had the two countries that had issues with each other and it
would be valuable for us since U.S. command lines were split down the
middle. I talked to General Karamat about that and he highly
recommended it. He said you need to go to India to get the other side
because that is going to give you a clearer view of the situation and we
would welcome the Pacific commander here to explain that. So I would
just put in a pitch for my good friend here that he was looking to
encourage things that might make the tensions be reduced and the
situation better.
MR. GORDON: There is a woman about 10 rows farther
back on the right side.
SPEAKER: My name is (inaudible) and I a Pakistani student
studying here. My question is for General Karamat and the Secretary of
the State Department. The question is how do you think that what
happened with the judiciary and the arrests of the students and the
lawyers for more than 90 days now is helping fighting extremism? And
General Karamat said that he is looking for a three-pronged approach
toward solving that problem. I would assume for that you need a
democratic government, a democratic government with a strong civil
society. And you said that there is some prerequisite for democracy in
any country and one of them could be the strong civil society. I would
assume that is one of the most important prerequisites. Right now what is
happening, do you think that you are actually making civil society stronger,
the liberal Pakistanis in the country right now?
MR. GORDON: How is cracking down on the judiciary and
students contributing to democracy and the necessary civil society in
Pakistan?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: I think the short answer is it is
certainly not. I found nothing to be saluted in cracking on the judiciary or
students. As a matter of fact, this goes along I think with what General
Zinni said about notwithstanding what we personally feel about President
Musharraf, we do not have to agree with every actions he takes. Having
said that, I wish that President Musharraf would have had around him a
brain trust with whom he could talk about these ideas and have someone
say, hey chief, do you really think that is a good idea, or shouldn't we
rethink that? And my experience when I left government was that there
was not that type of brain trust or whatever you call it around President
Musharraf and I think that he suffers for it. Right now I know as you know
that the press and judiciary are the two most popular institutions in
Pakistan with the army slipping to third. I think one of the reasons is the
direct result of that.
MR. GORDON: Secretary Armitage, is it our job to be that
brain trust? The U.S.?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: No, I was suggesting a Pakistani
brain trust. I think that if the U.S. did it publicly this would be stillborn, but I
was hopeful or would be hopeful that there would be more of almost a
national security type adviser or advisers with whom the president of the
nation could exchange views quietly in camera and not have them a
matter of public speculation and could help him inform his activities. I
cannot speak for President Musharraf in this case, but if you approach
most general officers with a problem, they are going to give you a solution.
Those very good general officers I think generally have a staff around who
they can talk to about this and kind of come up with the best solution. I
think that Pakistan would do well to have such a brain trust for lack of a
better term. There certainly are enough brains in Pakistan.
MR. GORDON: I see there are a lot of people waiting but I
am taking them in the order that I see them. There is a gentleman in the
brown jacket there, and then I will go to the gentleman on the wall and the
one in the back. But let's start here.
MR. MEDINA: My name is Francisco Medina. I work with
the Executive Intelligence Review. My boss Lyndon LaRouche has been
identifying more a policy of chaos in the old regions of the British
Commonwealth like in Kenya and what you have in Pakistan right now.
My question is for General Karamat. What is your view on British
influence there? Do you see that the Islamic group the Hizb ut-Tahrir
have a growing influence with the ranks of the army and you have the
British also overseeing the investigation into the assassination, so I just
wanted your view of British influence in the region.
GENERAL KARAMAT: As far as I know, the Hizb ut-Tahrer
is strong in Britain and it has a large following in Britain. I do not think that
it is very active or has any kind of following in Pakistan. So whatever is
happening in Britain and the people who are supported or who are
members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir have probably got involved in some acts of
terror and have been traveling to Pakistan, but it is a British phenomenon.
Which is not to say that we are not working with Britain. We are working
very closely with Britain. In fact, one or two networks were broken with the
active support and collaboration of Pakistan intelligence agencies. There
is total of 15 networks I think which have been broken up by our
intelligence agencies either acting directly or helping others to act against
those networks. And there is close cooperation and collaboration between
Britain and Pakistan on this and a very free flow of information and
collaboration between the intelligence agencies.
The other part of your question had to do with what?
MR. MEDINA: No, that was pretty much it.
MR. GORDON: Can we get a microphone to the gentleman
over standing against the wall there?
SPEAKER: My name is (inaudible) I am a graduate student
here at George Washington University and I am a citizen of Pakistan. My
first question is for General Zinni. Is it rational for the U.S. military
establishment to be supporting your man in Islamabad when you seem to
be able to maintain pretty good relationships with whoever succeeds to
the position of chief of army staff, General Karamat, General Musharraf,
and now General Kayani? So is it really rational for you to support your
man in Islamabad in that way when you are able to maintain good
relationships?
GENERAL ZINNI: I think the important thing is to support
the forces that add to our mutual security interests. It is not a question of
an individual. I go back to what Ambassador Armitage had said. To
reinforce what Ambassador Armitage said, that when we get into this idea
of a personality as opposed to a leader who sees the interests the way we
do and we work on our mutual interests with the forces working together,
when we get into supporting personalities, it does not work that well. I
think we tried to beam in a personality into Iraq and with Mr. Chalabi it did
not work out quite right. So I would never be an advocate of strictly a
personality being our target of our support or the aim of our support. If
that personality happens to be the leader, if that personality's views of the
security situation coincides with ours and we have the mutual interests,
then I think we have to respect that and I think it is in our interests to
support it. What I fear is when we discount the individual and the work
and the sacrifice to maintain that and we try to create a split between the
leadership and maybe the military and it will not work in our interests. If
there is an election come January and there is a new leader, I think it is in
our interests obviously to ensure that we have this strategic discussion
that General Karamat talked about to ensure we are both operating on the
same sheet of paper.
One of the biggest I think flaws in this whole security debate
is the lack of a strategic for this region. I think earlier it was said you
cannot have a solution in Afghanistan without a solution in Pakistan, and I
could probably add Central Asia and maybe even a broader context of
that, and I think that strategic discussion with the leadership is important.
We tend to go down and look at the tactical ends of things, how much
support do we give to the military, what kind of border control do we put in,
whether U.S. troops should go in or not or drones should pass over.
Those things are just the means. You have to have an aim or a direction
at the top that you both agree upon and I think it has to be with the
leadership whoever that leader is.
SPEAKER: To Ambassador General Karamat as well, is a
narrative developing in this conflict with the militants in the tribal areas
which is an ethnic narrative which is Pashtun militancy insurgency against
a predominantly Punjabi military similar to what has developed in
Baluchistan?
GENERAL KARAMAT: One, it has not quite developed in
Baluchistan the way you have put it. There is a problem in Baluchistan.
Let me put it like this, that there is an ethnic imbalance in Baluchistan at
the moment because of the Pashtun influx from Southern Afghanistan and
the refugees and so on and the previous balance which was there
between the Baluch and the Pashtun has been disturbed. That is one
aspect of that. Then the Baluch have certain grievances which they have
been voicing in various ways and we have tried to tackle it politically,
militarily, and I hope that we will continue to tackle it politically. I think it is
moving in a positive direction generally given the sort of economic
opportunities and development projects which are going to come into
Baluchistan and hopefully it will move in the right direction.
The Pashtun problem in Southern Afghanistan and in the
FATA areas because they are also Pashtuns, there is also a liberal
secular Pashtun presence, and the NWFP and the ANP sort of represents
that politically. That is there. There are also within the tribal areas tribes
who are pro-government or with the government and ready to confront the
militants especially in the Wazir for example. Mullah Nazir in Baluchistan
is collaborating with the government to pose that. So that it is not a
question of Pashtun versus Punjabi, but it is Pashtun and within Pashtun
there are two streams. That is why I said that the U.S. jumping in overtly
or covertly into an area might just disturb this balance and sideline the
elements who could be helpful in the future to us so that you do not want
to disturb that, and we are of course working on it in various ways.
The army is drawn from all over Pakistan. The Punjab
happens to be the biggest province and it has the biggest representation.
But traditionally we recruit in large numbers from the Pashtuns. The
regiment to which I believe is 50 percent Pashtun and 50 percent Punjabi.
I know it is made out like that this a Punjabi dominated army and it is the
Punjabis fighting, but it is not like that at all. We do not look at sects or
ethnicities when we are sending people to fight in various areas and so far
I think the track record of the army has been pretty good as a regular
professional army in delivering what we have asked it to do.
MR. GORDON: While we are on the subject of insurgencies
in the tribal areas, I wonder if any of you see any scope at any point for a
U.S. military role there. I do not mean against the will of Pakistan, I mean
invited in. There were recent reports that senior U.S. officials went over
there to talk about this and it was decided that the time was not right. But
can you imagine the circumstances, and does the United States
potentially have something to contribute on the ground? General Karamat
made the point earlier that it was success in fighting in these areas that
led to the ceasefires. So presumably the more effective we are, the more
chance there is of a ceasefire. Is there a potential role for the United
States on the ground? You are all dying to address this I know.
GENERAL ZINNI: I think that that is the least desirable.
The first effort and focus we immediately go to that, it sort of reminds me
of a couple that maybe had their first argument and somebody runs up
and says, are you filing divorce papers now? You are pushing them
toward an end state that maybe is the last place you want to go. What we
should be talking about and thinking about instead of questions like that is
how do we make the Pakistani military more effective to be able to do this.
I can see where our role in security-assistance programs not
only in the provision of equipment and training but sharing our
experiences and the training and education that goes with that. Think
about the since the sanctions began that we have restricted Pakistani
officers from our school systems. That was an investment in the future
when you look back on it that we should have been making for all sorts of
reasons. So I think instead of leaping to a conclusion like that, we should
be talking about how best to ensure the Pakistani military is capable of
handling the situation dealing with their own people that they are going to
be better suited for than us having boots on the ground. To me that would
be something that is never taken off the table by a president, obviously, he
cannot, that would be politically unacceptable, but certainly you have to
work through every possibility before you come to that kind of conclusion,
but we are bumping that question to the front of the line, and that is what I
cannot understand.
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: It seems to me that what we are
witnessing with the Pakistani military is a military who has been up to this
point about your entire career, sir, a force-on-force military. These are the
battles and the wars you have fought, and that is not what you are fighting
now. Matter of fact, we were force on force and now we are fighting a
different war than we thought we would fight in Afghanistan and in Iraq
and it takes a while to sort of, as they used to say in the military,
reorientate yourself to that. But beyond that, if there is something that we
can usefully do it would seem to me that Secretary Gates is on to it by
putting 3,200 more soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan because at the
end of the day in Afghanistan it is an infantryman with a bayonet who is
going to bend the enemy to our will. So if we want to better the situation in
the tribal areas of Pakistan, and all of us do, we can do our part in
Afghanistan and that will start it.
GENERAL ZINNI: If I could just add other thing, I am the
product of the Vietnam War having spent two tours there, and one tour
with the Vietnamese Marines as an adviser. What I saw in that time, the
Vietnamese Marines happened to be a very capable force, but every time
we were around American units, the Americans wanted to push them
away and do the fighting. Matter of fact, my Vietnamese commander said,
You do my job once, I will thank you. You do it twice, you got the job.
After bitter experiences and many years, we suddenly had this light bulb of
Vietnamization go on and decided as President Johnson said, these
Vietnamese boys need to be fighting their own war. Maybe if you started
from that you would reach a better conclusion and, again, I want to
reemphasize that ought to be the starting point.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I would agree with what has been
said because even in Afghanistan what the U.S. is doing is trying to build
up an Afghan national army and police which can take care of their own
problems. So in Pakistan you have a regular professional army which is
experienced, trained, and on the ground and I do not understand why
anybody should ever want to take over their job. The U.S. is in support
and we welcome that and all kinds of help we are getting, we are
collaborating, and as General Zinni said and Mr. Armitage said, there is
very close cooperation military to military and I would add from my
experience as ambassador here that also with the State Department it is a
very good relationship that is not a problem at the official government-togovernment
level between the U.S. and Pakistan. There is complete
understanding and we are on the same page and I hope we stay there.
MR. GORDON: Thank you. There are a lot of questions. I
am going to gather a couple in clusters. We do have to keep an eye on
the time. Back by the camera that is a woman on the aisle and a
gentleman who is taking the microphone as we speak, and then Dan
Benjamin. We will group these three together if you would.
MR. BATOF: Kami Batof from the "Pakistan Chronicle." My
question is about the services that Pakistani forces provide to the U.S. in
the Afghanistan border area. I heard that the U.S. is paying only like $600
per soldier whereas if the U.N. hired the services of UNO, it pays like
$1,400 or $1,500 per soldier, and in Iraq, the U.S. is spending like $14,000
per soldier. My question is, Pakistan is paid very little but we define this
as aid, not something like return of services. So my question is to Mr.
Armitage, what is the result of your threat that we will make Pakistan a
Stone Age country or it was just President Musharraf wants to stay in
power and are just providing very cheap to America? So why should the
Pakistani people be upset at America and President Musharraf for
providing so cheap services? Thanks.
MR. GORDON: I will try to summarize -- think about it. It
was about how badly paid Pakistani soldiers are and the reason they
accepted this deal was that because you threatened to bomb them back to
the Stone Age. That is a short version, but hang onto it because I want to
get the others in as well.
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: But I want to answer it now. As I
said before, I have gone my whole career desperately wanting to tell
somebody that I would bomb them into the Stone Age and I have never
been able to do it because I have never been authorized to do it. And as I
have said, further, I have never threatened anything that I could not do.
So that conversation never happened. To say that General Mahmoud and
I had a very straightforward, candid conversation would be an
understatement, but there were no threats in any way.
MR. GORDON: Thank you.
MS. LABOTT: Elise Labott with CNN. I would like to followup
on some comments that General Zinni made, maybe Mr. Armitage you
can take this one. There has been a lot of talk about reform in Pakistan,
but there has also been a lot of talk about the focus on the relationship
with Musharraf as one man who could solve all the U.S. problems. Do
you think that there has been enough contact across the board with all
levels of Pakistani society, not just at various levels of the government, but
in the civil society, or do you think there has been too much focus on
Musharraf as the solution to all the U.S. problems?
MR. ARMITAGE: The obvious answer, Elise, is it is no. I
can give you examples. General Zinni has already spoken about the
divorce for 10 years because of the nuclear question and our sanctions.
But how about the divorce after 9/11 where many students, many visitors
from many nations including Pakistan, were not welcome and we put that
snarling, sneering face to the world rather than hope, opportunity, and
optimism that we generally export to the world? So the short answer has
to be no, no. We needed education, we needed the judiciary, we needed
students. Thank God right now we are getting back it seems at least as I
understand it in terms of visas and things of that nature and we are
broadening our access to Pakistan, but of course we need to broaden it
across the full spectrum of Pakistani society and give them the full
exposition to U.S. society.
GENERAL ZINNI: If I can sort of reinforce that point, the
reason we ended up in that situation was because of the sanctions and,
as I said before, the thin thread of a relationship came down to the
military-to-military relationship. You cannot believe the things I was asked
to do because there were no other lines of communication there. For
example, I was asked one time to talk to President Musharraf to see if he
would receive our Ambassador to Pakistan. I could not believe our
Ambassador to Pakistan did not have a way of seeing the head of state,
but there was not a connection. I described to you the need for our
intelligence agencies to get involved with the scoffing up of the leaders of
the millennium threat or bombing. Was the commander of CENTCOM
doing these things? Why was I sent to convince the prime minister that he
should withdraw from Kargil?
The reason for all that is because the only thin line of a
relationship despite the sanctions came down to that military to military
and it ended up because of the situation with President Musharraf that that
ended up being the funnel or the point of contact.
I would just make one other point which is critically important
and goes beyond Pakistan because it was something I experienced
throughout my region. If we have an issue and it is political, if we have a
political issue or a human-rights issue or something else, we do a wide
array of sanctions and punishment. I had militaries in my region that were
clean, that were professional and were not part of whatever the issue was,
political or human rights, and we were immediately sanctioned. The
easiest thing to do for an administration or a congress is to sanction the
military-to-military relationship. I had two commanders of the military in
the region, not Pakistani, tell me that they were so frustrated and asked
me were we sending a signal that we wanted them to take over the
government, and of course we were not, but they were being punished for
things that were happening by the political segment.
MS. LABOTT: But if I might just very quickly, and I know we
are short for time, that has not really been the case in the last couple of
years since the sanctions have been lifted and it seems as if even the
contacts with Benazir Bhutto in the last several months to bring her back
were an effort to prop up Musharraf. So why do you think that the United
States was not making an outreach to all of the political parties and all of
the judiciary and the lawyers and at the time to improve the political
situation on the ground?
GENERAL ZINNI: I agree with you that I think we should
have been making the efforts not only on a broader political front, but even
a broader economic front. The whole issue of the component parts of a
society be they political, economic, social, or the security parts, and I think
even after the sanctions were lifted, those efforts were not made on the
scale they should have been made. Obviously 9/11 was the catalyst for
all this, but we sort of still narrowly focused on security rather than the
political, the economic, and others which we should have done.
SPEAKER: I would like to pick up on General Zinni's remark
about needing a comprehensive strategy. Militancy is not confined in
Pakistan to the tribal areas, it has become a problem that threats the state
as has been mentioned. The idea exists and has gotten a lot of currency
in this town that the way to deal with militancy over the long-term is to
restore democracy and then an emboldened and more legitimate
government will be able to cope with it.
I would like to ask whether or not there isn't also an element
here of strategic culture that needs to be confronted, specifically,
Pakistan's attitude toward Afghanistan, and that is that as long as there
are elements within the Pakistani security establishment that view
Afghanistan as an essential part of its strategic depth and therefore are
less than zealous about preserving the border, whether that militancy can
ever be fully beaten back because it seems as though a lot of that
militancy is blowback from Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan, not
least from our first war in that region but even to today.
MR. GORDON: The strategic depth doctrine exists?
GENERAL KARAMAT: That may have been the case at
some point in time, but I do not think it is the case now. And as far as the
border is concerned, Pakistan has been hoping that the border will be
hardened, that the border will be defined, that all movement across the
border will be documented as it is in every other country and that
eventually the special status of the tribal areas and the movement rights
that have been given in due course could be changed into regular
movement between the two countries. So Pakistan has been for that and
is for that.
So even if at some point in the past there were
concentrations of strategic depth, and I think that question came in when
we had a very active threat from our East from India and we were in
conflict with India, but with that having moved into a dialogue stage, we
have not reached resolution on anything, but the very fact that both
countries being nuclear weapons states, both into institutionalized
dialogue, both having shown the political resolve to move on the track of
dialogue, I think there is less and less thought of strategic depth in
Afghanistan.
MR. GORDON: Thank you. We have time for just two more
that we need to cluster, the gentleman here and then the woman in the
back by the door. If you could be brief so that the gentlemen have time to
answer. Thank you.
MR. JONES: Bill Jones, Executive Intelligence Review, to
General Zinni. The situation in Afghanistan is generally considered that
we took our eye off the ball on that one and started to deteriorate and
much of what we are seeing in Pakistan in the border areas is a result of
the failure to continue with where we started in Afghanistan. And now we
are putting pressure on the Europeans and NATO has taken over to do
more and this is leading to something of a governmental crisis in Germany
and serious implications for NATO. I was wondering what do we do?
How do we reestablish some kind of momentum in the Afghanistan
situation? Do we have to start rethinking the strategy in order to try and
deal with the situation there as a stabilizing element for the region as a
whole? And to General Karamat I would like to mention with the murder of
Mrs. Bhutto, many people thought that this was aimed to destabilize
President Musharraf, to destabilize Pakistan, and to destabilize the region
as a whole and I was one of these people who thought that indeed was
the case. And President Musharraf of course as the representative of the
military, one of the only institutions holding the country together, was
extremely important and therefore if you wanted to see the region remain
relatively peaceful, one had to come to the defense of Musharraf in that
kind of situation. However, today we are seeing in the paper that even
military leaders including former generals are now criticizing President
Musharraf that maybe there is reconsideration of how to deal with this
situation which would not lead to destabilization of Pakistan. So the
question is personally what role does Musharraf play today as a
representative of the military or are there changes which can be made
which would not lead to destabilizing in the country?
MR. GORDON: Thank you. If we can hold off on the
answers, we will take the woman's question and then each can have a
final word.
SPEAKER: My question is to General Zinni. We heard you
talk frequently about your personal relationships with individuals in
Pakistan and often you had to call upon those relationships to get strategic
goals achieved. I just wonder how does that reassure the people of
Pakistan and how does that reflect on the U.S. government and its
capacity to deal with a country like Pakistan? Are we doomed to have a
military dictatorship just because it suits the U.S.? If as a Pakistani I were
to ask any one of you to reassure us that the U.S. would take care of its
most strategic partner 10 years from now, would you be able to do that at
all especially considering the fact that the only time the U.S. does play a
role in our country is when you slap sanctions in our face or when U.S.
wrath falls upon us?
GENERAL ZINNI: I think that going back to the question we
had before about the contacts ending up being just military to military and
then obviously military to the leadership because of the events that put
General Musharraf as head of state, I think that the important lesson from
all that is that we have to broaden the contacts and the interaction society
to society. It should not come down to just the single connection of
military to military. Our strategic interest in Pakistan is that Pakistan be an
economically viable, politically stable country, that it gets the democracy
that people want and seek, it is economically well and prospering. It is not
just a matter of a military-to-military relationship and looking narrowly at
security interests. If you do that, I do not think you achieve stability. I do
not think any soldier would tell you, and I can tell you as being a
commander responsible for the U.S. military interests in the region, the
stability you sought that I was directed to try to either maintain or to
establish could not be accomplished simply through military-to-military
relationships. There had to be something else going on. There had to be
something on the political, economic, and social interaction creating that.
And if we should learn anything about the past relationship from the end of
the first Afghanistan war, is those relationships should have been
maintained and sustained. And so it goes to your point that it cannot be
just this military relationship and looking for mutual security interests and
that is it. It will not work. Do you want me to answer the first part of that?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: No one up here can assure you
in 10 years of what our relationship will be because of our own system.
But I can assure you of one thing, that we failed miserably I think after the
first Afghan war to separate and try to develop a relationship with
Pakistan. It was always about our other greater objective in the cold war
which was the soft underbelly of the then Soviet Union. We did succeed
in this first administration to take the hyphen out of IndoPak, and that is a
good thing as we are developing or trying to endeavor to develop a
relationship in and of Pakistan. Unfortunately, the Afghan situation right
now runs the risk of making this another sort of hyphenated Pakistan-
Afghan situation and we have to fight against it and do what General Zinni
is trying to say and move much beyond security concerns which are valid
to the broader concerns about a relationship that is in and of and about
Pakistan, not about Afghanistan, not about the Soviets, not about India.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I think Afghanistan is going to be a
test for NATO, a critical test, maybe even a crisis. Remember, the
problems that emerged out of Afghanistan that caused 9/11 also impacted
in London, in Madrid, and almost in places like Berlin and Rome. So this
is a NATO fight and not just a U.S. fight. You cannot make the arguments
for other places maybe like Iraq that you can here, and there are some
serious questions about NATO's responsibilities and their ability to stand
up to the commitment. I think that one of the tests of Afghanistan besides
being able to develop a viable strategy for dealing with it and a regional
strategy that overarches that is the question of whether NATO can stand
up to this commitment. I do not want to overstate this, but it could be a
defining moment for this alliance if it does not happen.
MR. GORDON: General Karamat?
GENERAL KARAMAT: In destabilization you are talking
about Benazir Bhutto's assassination, across the board in Pakistan it is
seen as a very great tragedy and a great blow to Pakistan at a critical
moment when we were moving toward democracy. I think she beyond
any doubt was a leader who had experience, who had learned from her
pervious experiences, and who everybody thought has come in at the right
time and is going to be a very positive influence in the whole transition to
democracy and her removal from the scene I think has created an
imbalance which everybody is now trying to correct one way or the other.
As far as the present government, I will not say President
Musharraf, let me just say the present government is concerned, the
freedom that the media has has come in under this dispensation. It is not
going to go away. There have been ups and downs in that with
crackdowns and releases, but I think it is there to stay and it is going to
continue. The civil society which has developed as a very powerful lobby
in Pakistan, again, regardless of crackdowns, regardless of military
tutelage or regulatory procedures, is again a force which is there to stay, it
has demonstrated its sustainability and it is going to be a very important
force as we move toward democracy, and this is welcomed by everybody.
I think the problem starts when destabilization comes in
because of one particular element sort of taking off at a tangent or in a
direction which is unpredictable and you have to bring it back on track,
and that is what has been happening in Pakistan. But there is a
tremendous urge for democracy and there is a tremendous urge for
stability and I think the urge is more urgent now when we have this threat
on the Western border, that we want the country to come together, we
want a democratic dispensation which can bring the country together and
cope with this threat with the military being supported with the full force of
public opinion and the population. That also goes for the relationship with
the United States. There is no doubt in my mind that it is a strategic
relationship, that we have moved into an era where if the U.S. could walk
away from regions in the past without even shaking hands, it cannot do so
now. If it should do so, it risks seriously undermining and destabilizing
areas which are very important for U.S. interests, so I do not see that
happening. And because of that, I think the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has
a future, has sustainability, it is just that we should not allow transient
developments which are inevitable in a strategic relationship to overtake
the overall goal toward which we are heading. We need to keep that goal
in mind and keep moving in that direction.
MR. GORDON: Thank you, very nice final words. Ladies
and gentlemen, thank you all for coming, and please join me in thanking
this distinguished panel.
* * * * *
Very good Q&A. Sorry for the long but very interesting post.
The U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Relationship - Brookings Institution
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
THE U.S.-PAKISTAN STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Moderator:
PHILIP GORDON, Senior Fellow
The Brookings Institution
Panel Presentations:
GENERAL JEHANGIR KARAMAT
Former Pakistan Chief of Army Staff;
Former Ambassador to the U.S.
GENERAL ANTHONY ZINNI
Former Commander, U.S. Central Command
RICHARD ARMITAGE
Former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of State
* * * * *
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P R O C E E D I N G S
MR. GORDON: I am Phil Gordon, a Senior Fellow here at
Brookings. It is a pleasure to welcome you to this event on the U.S.-
Pakistan strategic relationship. I do not think I need to tell this group how
important this issue is and how topical it is given reports of al-Qaeda
forming on the Afghan-Pakistan border, the nuclear issue, the issue of
relations with India, the issue of Pakistan as a test case for democracy.
The important strategic issues go on and on.
It is commonplace on a panel like this to say we could not
have a better panel to address these issues. That happens to be true in
this case. We really could not have a better set of speakers to address
this topic. I think they are already known to you all, so I will be very brief
in my introductions so that we can jump right in. First, to my right, General
Jehangir Karamat I think you all know. He was ambassador of Pakistan to
the United States. Before that he was the Army Chief of Staff in Pakistan
preceding General Musharraf. After General Karamat, General Anthony
Zinni, again known to everybody in this room, a former Marine General
who was our commander of CENTCOM from 1997 to 2000, and after that,
the U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East. Then finally, Richard Armitage
who was Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration from 2001
to 2005. You will notice that the years in which these gentleman all
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served in the posts that I mentioned coincided, so you will also note that
they all know each other extremely well.
In terms of a format, each of the speakers will briefly begin
with 7 to 10 minutes, just some informal remarks on the subject of the
U.S.-Pakistan strategic relationship. I will probably take the liberty to
follow up and ask them a few questions and press them on a couple of
issues. Then we will open it to a discussion and questions and answers
from the room. With that, let me turn it over to General Karamat for the
introductory remarks.
GENERAL KARAMAT: It is a great pleasure to be back at
Brookings and a privilege to be on a panel with so many distinguished
colleagues.
Ladies and gentlemen, the sort of questions that are being
asked in terms of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship right now are what is
really happening in Pakistan's Western border areas, why is it happening,
and what is Pakistan doing about it. In the few minutes that I have, I could
not possibly go into the details, but what I would like to do is tell you and
sort of explain what is happening, why it is happening, and what we are
doing about it.
Of course, the short answer to these questions is that far too
much is happening in the Western border areas, none of it is good, and
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that Pakistan is doing everything that a country would be doing when it is
faced with a potentially existential threat which is that it is doing its utmost
to bring the situation under control and I am glad that it has the support of
the U.S. and that it is part of the U.S.-Pakistan strategic relationship in
what it is trying to do in the Western border areas.
With what has been happening recently, and you have seen
it happening on television, there is no possibility of denying or telling you
something different from what is actually happening. The reality is there
staring us in the face and it has to be understood in terms of the scale, the
dimension, and the danger that it poses not only to Pakistan but to the
region and to the rest of the world.
There are many reasons for why this is happening and why
this militancy has expanded from Southern Afghanistan into Pakistan's
tribal areas. You know there is a land border of 2,500 kilometers,
northwest very high altitudes, southwest lower altitudes. You know there
are routes across this border and it is a porous border. The main routes
which are manned with maybe one in each province, but there are
hundreds of less-frequented routes which are not manned and there is
movement across them. Vehicles average 14,000 a day crossing over,
12,000 of them in Baluchistan. There are 40,000 people crossing every
day with over 30,000 in Baluchistan which is southwest where the altitude
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is lower. There are seven divided villages straddling the border and these
villages are 100 square meters to 3 to 5 square kilometers and they
actually are part on the Afghan side and part on the Pakistan side.
You have 31 refugee camps in the northwest with 1.7 million
refugees and another 17 in the southwest with 230,000 refugees. So
there are 2 million refugees in these camps and these have become over
a period of time centers for drugs, weapons, crime, and some of the
people there have linkages deep inside Pakistan and deep inside
Afghanistan, so they are a problem.
Northwest, bordering the Afghan border we have seven
FATA, or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, with 3.2 million people
in an area of 27,200 kilometers involved, and you have seven border
districts in Baluchistan, five Pashtun, two Baluch, and this indicates that
there is an ethnic mix in Baluchistan which is important to understand. So
there are 2.4 million in those camps with 91,438 square kilometers along
the border in Baluchistan.
As I said, the main crossings with one in each province are
manned, but the others are not. A biometric system put in place by
Pakistan is dysfunctional after just 3 months of operation because the
Afghans did not agree to it. Afghans have also resisted any attempt to
harden the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and there are
several reasons for that. So if you put together this whole picture which
exists on the ground, with the U.S. and NATO operating in Southern
Afghanistan and the central gravity of the militancy in Southern
Afghanistan, you can understand how it has spread into Pakistan's tribal
areas. All the conditions favor this expansion into Pakistan.
What is surprising is that we have not been able to contain
and neutralize this militancy in the tribal areas and they have been able to
not only consolidate in the tribal areas, but they have been able to now
sally out of the tribal areas and attack targets within Pakistan. The recent
fighting has been in Sawat and -- Kohat and Thal areas, and there are
bombings all over the country linked to the violence in the tribal areas.
The situation on the ground, if I may just take a minute to
explain that, is that a new generation of Taliban leaders from within
Pakistan's tribal areas have gained control of vast areas of territory inside
Pakistan's tribal areas. They actually control that territory. We know their
names. They are well known. One of them, Masood, is in the largest
South Waziristan agency. These Taliban are trying to, and according to
them they have already done it, make a tarik Taliban Pakistan which
roughly translates into a Pakistan Taliban organization in that area. And
not only all the leaders are in that organization with Masood as their
leader, but they also have representatives from the settled areas of
Pakistan, Bannu, Kahad, Diafan, and so on, represented in that. They
have established linkages with elements in Afghanistan with people in
refugee camps, with sympathizers in Pakistan's urban areas, and most of
the recent suicide bombings targeting law-enforcement agencies come
from this. Also there are madrassas in each of the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas dating back to our joint jihad against the Soviet Union. There
are I think about 260 madrassas in that area of which 80 are known to be
active. When I say active, it means that they are actively engaged in
training and doing everything to prepare people for suicide bombings, for
IEDs and whatever you want for terrorist activities. These are also
magnets for would-be terrorists from Pakistan and from other parts of the
world and from Islamist organizations in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan who
apparently have free access to Afghanistan because at least I have not
heard of any interdiction and prosecutions taking place in Afghanistan.
The pattern of activity, raids, attacks, IEDs, suicide attacks,
bombing blasts, kidnappings, hostage-taking, interdiction of logistics,
attacks on law-enforcement agencies, captured personnel, and suspected
collaborators periodically beheaded publicly, and more important, the
traditional tribal leadership more or less systematically eliminated. This is
the leadership we traditionally depended upon to solve problems in the
tribal areas. And recently they have also attacked infrastructure targets
like the Kohat tunnel and other targets on intercity routes apparently to
isolate parts of the country and bring them under their control. This is the
sort of explanation for the geographic expansion that has taken place, the
proximity of the tribal areas, the special status of the tribal areas, the
madrassas, the capacity of law-enforcement agencies to confront this new
threat that is coming.
Add to this mix poor governance, lax administration, and
enormous economic incentives for the militants. These economic
incentives have to be understood. I will not go into the details unless you
want to know about it and during the questions I will be happy to answer
them.
Two other aspects really beyond the scope of this talk - I do
not have the time; one is we need to analyze the 5-year political
government in the frontier provinces in terms of what it has achieved and
what is has not achieved, not to blame, but to learn lessons for the future
because we headed into elections and another political government. The
second is the exact situation on the ground in Afghanistan, going beyond
the random acts of violence into economic reasons for what is happening
there, the war loads, governance, justice, the police, the military, the
political structures, and the actual development which has taken place and
the progress toward democracy that has to be made. I think this analysis
will turn up a picture that may be the real reason for the resurgence of the
militancy and the expansion into Pakistan.
There is of course smuggling from Pakistan into Afghanistan
and the recent food shortages that we have had can be explained from
that point of view. And let me just mention that with 400,000 acres under
poppy cultivation with an implication of something like $40 to $50 billion, at
least $4 billion are going into funding the chaos in which these activities
then can thrive because they need this chaos. Then of course there is the
absence of any central coordinating authority in Afghanistan. So the
logistics of the militancy needs analysis and this is an aspect that needs to
be tackled.
Finally, when we come down to the last question, what are
we going to do about this, there is a whole raft of ideas that are floating
around. There are ideas like overt intervention by the U.S. or covert
intervention by the U.S. and about taking care of Pakistan's nuclear assets
and so on. I am sure they are good ideas for debate, but they are not
going to address the threats that are outlined. In fact, al-Qaeda and the
Taliban may welcome that kind of an action but nobody else will. And of
course, it will also strengthen the Islamist connection which the militants
are very keen on, and weaken the secular liberal Pashtun element which
we hope to harness to confront this militancy eventually.
Military operations, yes, we need them and we have a
pattern of how we have undertaken these military operations from 2001
through 2006, and I will be happy to share the results with. From 2006
through 2007, we had the peace agreement situation and we have to see
how those peace agreements helped, whether they shored up this military
situation or they undermined this military situation. I am not saying it was
bad because we may eventually have to resort to jirgas and the political
element again. It just has to be a strategy which has many prongs, the
military, the political, and the development strategy, and development I
must say has been far too little and far too late. If you want to undertake
that, then it has to be in tandem with the military and the political strategy.
So I will stop here and just say that it is perhaps time to look
at this whole situation within the U.S.-Pakistan strategic relationship, not to
go into areas which will not help us combat this threat and which will
undermine the institutions which we are going to rely on to tackle this
threat. We need to go into a very comprehensive strategy, a multipronged
strategy, which we can discuss later, to tackle this threat over the longterm
because it is going to be there for several years. It is not going to go
away in a hurry.
Everybody is saying that Pakistan is a crucial ally of the
United States. I also think so. And I also think that for Pakistan the U.S.
is a very important ally. So with that kind of a situation, the U.S.-Pakistan
strategic relationship has a great future and we must do everything to
make sure that it keeps progressing in the direction that we want to move
us toward the end state that we want in Afghanistan and in our tribal
areas. Thank you.
MR. GORDON: Thank you, General. Thank you very much
for those opening remarks. We will in due course have lots of questions
for you, but I think what we ought to do now is give our other speakers a
chance to give their opening comments.
GENERAL ZINNI: I would like to talk briefly about the
military-to-military relationship, obviously the area that I am most familiar
with. My first experience with the Pakistani military came in Somalia. As
director of operations for the Combined Task Force that the U.S. led in
Somalia in the early 1990s, I was impressed with the fact that we had a
battalion of Pakistani military there on the ground when we arrived in an
unfortunate situation with the U.N. mandate that was insufficient for the
problems that were there with the Pakistanis very ably trying to
accomplish the mission to get humanitarian aid and support to the needy.
When our mission expanded and the U.N. mission that followed us, the
Pakistanis were willing to expand their presence. They upped their
commitment to one of the largest contingents for that mission even though
it was very difficult, and they took on the most difficult area of
responsibility. The Pakistanis were willing to take on the city of
Mogadishu itself. Those of you who are familiar with events in Somalia
know what happened. Pakistani forces very bravely and very competently
tried to manage a city that was in complete chaos and as a result of the
events that occurred on October 19 that we are all well-familiar with here
as the Blackhawk Down day, the Pakistanis in the fighting that ensued that
day and immediately afterward suffered far more casualties than we did,
the Americans, or anybody else in the coalition. Of course, we left and
they stayed. I came back to Mogadishu and to Somali as the commander
of the task force to cover the withdrawal of U.N. forces and I can tell you
the last off the beaches were the Pakistani brigade. As a matter of fact,
what was impressive is we had given the Pakistani brigade equipment,
kind of old equipment we had in stocks in Italy, cold war equipment, that
were generations beyond our most modern equipment. I was told that as
we recovered that equipment after the years in Somalia would probably be
in bad shape, probably really not very useful. The logisticians who
recovered the equipment told me it was in pristine condition. It was turned
over with full kit, completely operational, and in amazingly good shape.
And in my experience there, that was an indication or hallmark of the
forces that I know there and the leadership there. I knew General
Karamat's predecessor as chief of the military and worked closely with him
for the Somali operations. Today the Pakistanis have the second most
number of troops on U.N. peacekeeping missions. Up until the end of last
year, they had the most with over 10,000, which says something about
their international commitment, the quality of their forces, and the
demands places on those kinds of forces.
In my time at CENTCOM, the military-to-military relationship
hung on the thread of the personal relationship between myself and
General Karamat, myself and General Musharraf, his successor. We had
agreed that regardless of the political situation, the sanctions and all the
other things that put pressure on that relationship, that we valued it so
much and saw the importance that this personal connection has to be
maintained, and I will tell you we called on that personal relationship a
number of times. At the turn of the millennium we had a serious of
potential attacks that were uncovered by the Jordanians at ceremonies
celebrating the turning of the millennium in the Middle East, and we found
that the sources of the command and control were located in the Western
areas of Pakistan. I was asked by the administration to contact my
counterpart, then General Musharraf, to ask if he would make the arrests
and based on the intelligence we were receiving from the Jordanians and
our own interrogators, scoff up those responsible. It would seem to
surprise you that you would go to the general, the commander of
CENTCOM, to ask him to ask his counterpart for this, but that was the thin
thread of a relationship that we had, and they were arrested. We were
allowed to have access to those people for interrogation. We were
allowed to have access to discs that were taken and captured by the
Pakistan security forces in the arrests, and about three or four other
requests that came about, and again, all under the blanket of this set of
sanctions that made it difficult for us to operate.
For us as leaders on both sides, we saw the importance of
our officers having this connection. It was unfortunate that we went
through a period of time where we sanctioned the education of Pakistani
officers at our schools. General Karamat is a graduate of Leavenworth,
the Leavenworth Hall of Fame as a matter of fact. He takes pride in that,
and I know that for a fact. That kind of connection, that kind of
communication, made our ability to communicate and operate with each
other despite the political climate much more effective.
I was sent back by the last administration to work the
preliminaries to try to defuse the situation in Kargil. I will tell you I would
have never been able to see the prime minister had it not been for the
chief of the military brokering the access for me to allow the meeting
between the prime minister and the president and eventually the defusing
of that situation. And even if the military did not agree with our approach,
the respect was so great that it allowed that to occur and allowed that
dialogue to begin and defuse what could have been a very serious
situation that would have benefited none of us had it blossomed into
something more deadly.
I find now that the criticism of the military is what probably
disappoints me most. The Pakistani military has suffered over a thousand
killed in those Western Provinces along with their security forces, and over
twice that many wounded, and yet we are demanding more. In the
beginning when they went up into the hills to do these things and to
accomplish missions that maybe were seen by their people as not
necessarily in their interests but our way, they did it anyway. Did they do it
with the kind of equipment with the necessary edge to operate in that very
difficult terrain to have an advantage? No. We can look at the assistance
program, and I am sure there will be questions about the amounts of
money and the amounts of funding and the amounts of support and I
would just tell you to look at the capacity or the capability that is being
provided. If anybody here, and I see may shaved heads in the audience
who have probably have had experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, you
know to right insurgencies and to fight in that kind of terrain and to fight in
that environment you need an edge. Now matter how modernly equipped
your military is, it is reduced to almost a level playing field in those kinds of
environments. And have we provided the edge? Have we provided the
training for the security forces? Have we provided the night-vision
capability and the kinds of ways and the kinds of qualities that are
necessary to operate? I think we need to relook at that kind of support to
see what the funding is actually giving us, understand it is not cheap, and
to get the edge in these kinds of places for a basic conventional military
takes a lot to get it done.
In addition that, I think General Karamat accurately
explained the situation on the border. Border security is the problem,
border control is the problem. It is not that we do not have a problem with
border control, but imagine trying to control that border in Waziristan and
along the Southern reaches out of Waziristan. I have been up into that
terrain courtesy of the Pakistani military to get a sense of it and I can tell
you that it is extremely difficult to control. Yet we have on each side a
different set of controls and a relationship maybe that is not what it should
be. I would offer to you that maybe our role is to bridge those differences,
for us to offer the technical support, the communications, the brokering
and the command and control and everything else that goes with a
common system for controlling that border, Afghan and Pakistani with us
involved. It is in our interests to do it, it is going to take our support and
technology, and it is probably going to take our bridge to make that
happen.
It is important that the Pakistani military retain its confidence
in its leadership and its international flavor for its officer corps. I think we
went through a period where we had a divorce after the first Afghan war,
an unfortunate one at the wrong time. We are two nations that absolutely
have the same strategic aims and absolutely need each other. It is not a
friendly neighborhood. Having been responsible for U.S. military
operations, missions, and relationships in that region, I can tell you that
Southwest Asia is not a place where we have many friends and strategic
relationships that are any more important than this one. This in fact is
probably the most important in that area. And I think instead of trying to
pick and find fault with the relationship, find the fault lines, to let our let our
disagreements wash over and affect the total relationship, I think we need
to look forward to building greater relationships based on mutual security
interests and the interests on creating stability in that region whether it is
economic, political, or security. I think we have both been negligent in
allowing the differences and allowing those who would try to break that
relationship to sort of take the field and get most of the publicity. And it
breaks my heart as a military man knowing that military, having fought
side by side with that military, to see the lack of appreciation for the
sacrifices that are being made and I would offer going forward that we
need to turn that around. Sure, more has to be done. Sure, there needs
to be more effort toward stability done by both sides whether it is political,
economic, or in the security relationship, but we have to stop finding fault
with the relationship and start building it toward a more positive way in my
mind, and I think it begins with the strongest relationship we have, the
military-to-military relationship, and that ought to be the source of us
growing this into what it should be and what it has been in the past.
Thank you.
MR. GORDON: Thanks very much, General Zinni.
Secretary Armitage, you also had a lot of direct relations with the
Pakistanis at the highest levels and the floor is yours.
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Thank you very much, and good
afternoon. I find myself in the rather uncomfortable position of saying that
everything that can be said has been said except not by me, so I will add a
few sentences to try to define the problem that we are talking about today.
The first thing I am going to ask everyone here is to take a
deep breath. Let's not hyperventilate about what is going on. We've got a
problem, but let's take a deep breath. I know that Mark Twain said, even
though you are on the right track, you can run over if you are not going
fast enough, but I think it would behoove us all to as I said take a deep
breath and let's think about the equities involved here.
The vision of Muhammad Ali Jinnah notwithstanding, he set
a pretty difficult task for himself and those who came after him, the
governance of Pakistan, which as far as this citizen is concerned is not a
country, can be well described in a way as four countries. And with the
rather complicating factor now that at least I would say maybe I am
affected by our friends in Singapore who now would call Waziristan al-
Qaedistan to some extent, so the governance of this is an enormous,
enormous problem.
By the way, this is not a problem that the present
administration now matter they came to power brought about. This has
been a problem in the developments since the time General Zinni
acknowledge toward the end of the first Soviet or the Afghan-Soviet war
and some of us bear some relationship for this. We knew exactly what we
were doing in Pakistan at the time and we knew exactly what was going to
happen in Afghanistan when we walked away. This was not a secret. So
let's take it easy and look at this in its entire breadth and scope.
If you look at opinion polls recently in Pakistan, there are
opinion polls on everything, but one of the opinion polls that you would see
is that the affection for extremism in this 162 million populated country of a
median age of 19, the affection for extremism is actually down. What is up
is the penchant for violence among those who do espouse extremism and
that is sort of the big change phenomenon right now.
The difficulty I think is whichever way you look in Pakistan,
nobody can pick what I think our two generals would have said at one time
is candidate for soldier of the month. Who is a good candidate for soldier
of the month? You have a president who I personally have a lot of
affection for. He came to power in an extracurricular way. Unfortunately,
the late Benazir Bhutto had a chance as a democratically elected leader
and I think it not for nothing that she found herself in Dubai for a number of
years, and Mr. Nawaz Sharif also has had his difficulties. I am not being
particularly nasty, I am just pointing out the fact that one of the things that
we have to deal with now is that we do not have a ready candidate for
soldier of the month.
What do we have? We've got a great discussion right now in
Washington and beyond in Europe about democracy in Pakistan and that
is great. I am all for it. I think it is great. But the question I would have for
you is is democracy an endpoint? I would argue it is not an endpoint, it is
a journey that never ends. By the way, the people of Pakistan under
martial law governments and under democratic governments have not
received the governance that I think they really deserve. This is a fact that
you have had a couple of democratically elected governments and people
have not really thrived.
So what we have is a journey and it seems to me as we talk
about these upcoming elections and we want them to be free and fair and
above board and transparent, we've got to realize that if we are going to
have a democracy that matters and stays, it is going to have to be a
democracy which is based on reformed systems whether it is the judiciary,
whether it is rule of law, whether it is freedom of the press, whether it is
the party system, et cetera. We are going to have to somehow resolve
these ethnic and regional differences or smooth them over to some extent.
That is reform and it is a necessary precondition for democracy, and if you
do not have it you will have a situation I believe like we have in our own
Southern Hemisphere with Venezuela. No one would argue that Hugo
Chavez is not democratically elected, he was twice. But what has
happened? Reform was not forthcoming, institutions were not developed
that could deliver to the needs of the people, their expectations were
dashed, they respond to a populist and populists then find themselves with
a couple of ways to go. They can either use their popular prestige for the
betterment for reform or they can use it to become more autocratic, and
that is what I think we are seeing in Venezuela.
So when I say that I want to look at the holistic Pakistan, I
would like you to it not only in the ease with which we speak of
democracy, but the difficulty of having it develop in a country like Pakistan
which as I said has all these ethnic and regional differences with an
overlay of some foreign presence and other things. I know one thing, we
as a nation should continue to encourage respect for human freedoms,
human rights, democracy, all of that. We need to do this. But we've got to
be careful in how we make these presentations I think in Pakistan. It does
not seem to me to be the better part of wisdom to go publicly to Pakistan
to urge that the president of the nation allow U.S. forces, foreign forces, to
be active on their soil. It seems to me somewhat counterproductive.
What are the stakes? I have already mentioned the 162
million very young people in Pakistan who deserve a much better life.
That is part of it. But it is beyond my candidacy how Afghanistan can be
successful unless Pakistan is a success. And for that matter, I have been
delighted in recent years with the betterment of relationships with India
and particularly the lessening of the fever of Kashmir. It is a problem that
needs resolution, but we do not have the situation we had in 2001 and
2002. That is up for grabs if Pakistan is not successful, so the equities
here go far beyond 162 million very worthy people in Pakistan.
MR. GORDON: Thank you very much. Thank you all for
those opening statements. A lot of topics have been put on the table. I
will get to questions, but before I do that I would like to begin though by
trying to promote a conversation among the panelists on some of the
topics that have been raised. I would propose to do that under the two
topics that General Karamat outlined in his opening statement in terms of
what is going on, and what do we do about it, and I would like to start to
press you a bit further on the what is going on part.
Just this week, in fact yesterday even I believe, Director of
National Intelligence McConnell was on the Hill testifying and suggested
that radical groups are not only on the rise in Pakistan but actually I
believe he said pose a threat to Pakistan itself. I would be interested in
any of your reactions to that notion, but specifically, General Karamat, is
that the case? And what as a related point is the relationship between
these radical groups and the state or the military itself? Because on one
hand we sometimes hear that there are links between the two, but at the
same time we see that the radical groups are actually attacking the
military. So any of you, but maybe General Karamat, could begin on that
set of issues.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I think it is evident that they pose a
threat to Pakistan because when a group erodes the writ of the state in an
area or in a specific geographic locality which is within Pakistan then that
means that they are a threat to the country and you are responding to
them as a threat. That is exactly what has been going on, that they pose
a threat, they have eroded the writ of the state, and the end goal that we
are seeking is to reestablish the writ of the state to reestablish civil
administration, to bring about confidence between the public and the civil
and military administrations, and to have an administration which can
respond in the future to that kind of threat. So, yes, they pose a threat to
Pakistan.
MR. GORDON: Anybody else?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: I kind of hesitate to say this, but
this is not a bulletin that extremism is on the rise. The president of the
nation has twice suffered near misses in bombings and the prime minister,
thank God he sat on the wrong side of the car, survived a near miss. Now
what we have had I think is the fact that some people in Pakistan are not
sure of the eventual outcome of Afghanistan so it did rise I think to
extremism. This should not be a great bulletin. To the extent I think that
we do better and the coalitions do better in Afghanistan, and by the way,
Pakistan helps us as they can with Afghanistan, then extremism at least to
some extent will go down.
MR. GORDON: General Zinni?
GENERAL ZINNI: I would just make one point. It strikes me
that the extremists are clever in understanding that the first real center of
gravity they have to unravel is that special relationship between the
Pakistani military and the Pakistani people. That has always been very
strong and I think they see an opportunity of trying to exploit that in
creating situations or taking advantage of maybe some of the political
situations to try to bring the Pakistani military into confrontation with the
people or with elements within there that look like it is the army versus the
people. I think that the Pakistani military is very conscious of this and
trying to avoid these confrontations that play into that role. It all the more
reinforces the idea of us ensuring a very skilled, trained, and wellequipped
military and especially working together on the lessons we have
learned in dealing with insurgencies in these sorts of things and sharing
them because I think that is the primary leverage they are attempting to
achieve and if that break happens, you take arguably but I believe the
most important institution for stability, the military, and you begin to
marginalize it if they are successful.
MR. GORDON: Let's follow-up and stay on this point. We
all agree that it is not a bulletin but it is a pretty serious matter if radical
groups are threatening the Pakistani state and it raises the question of
what to do about it. All of you in one way or another have mentioned the
issue of using military force and actual conflict with these groups. Again I
would be interested, and maybe starting with General Karamat, there are
a range of options. You mentioned the troops in Waziristan and the jirga,
and we have also heard about kinetic operations. How does Pakistan and
how does the United States and Pakistan decide? You said you could
address actually what is working and what are the lessons of the 2006
experience. What are they? The lessons in the United States it seems to
me that many are drawing are that that did not work.
GENERAL KARAMAT: Yes, I have heard that. Let me just
say that the military's involvement in the Federally Administered Tribal
Areas started post-2001 and in the 2001 through 2003 period, we had
speculator successes in arresting people and eliminating the terrorist
leadership and so on and we were in it together with the U.S. operating on
the Afghanistan side and we had about a two brigade strength operating
on our side. So, yes, that was a period of successes. But after that we
shifted to a period of selective engagement based on actionable
intelligence and going in for targets and so on. That was not so
successful because of the time delay between intelligence and the actions
which had to be taken.
Then there was a period of large-scale operations where we
had more involvement of the military and we had again spectacular
successes in that area. We had people on the run, and that is time if you
recall when there was a lot of talk that there are no sanctuaries and
people are actually on the run in that area and that is the period when we
had maximum success in 2005 through 2006. And that is when the
overtures came from the extremists for a peace agreement and we
responded and we went into those peace agreements and I believe there
minor agreements and bigger agreements, six agreements in all, which at
various times were violated, and now with hindsight we find that they
perhaps sought to undermine the military successes that we had had and
that they allowed consolidation and perhaps expansion because now we
are into military operations again. Which does not mean that the military
is the only option. The military is one option and it is an option of last
resort which we have been pushed into taking. We would very much like
that there is a more comprehensive strategy in terms of a development
strategy in that area with of course economic opportunities, that there is a
political strategy which again revives either the jirga or some kind of peace
overtures which are two-sided and are sustainable and we move in
tandem with all these three toward the end goal that we have, and I
believe that the U.S. and Pakistan can work together on this. The U.S. is
supporting us with capacity building, it is supporting us in governance, it is
supporting us in a whole spectrum of activities in that area and I think we
need to move forward in all those areas if we want to bring that area finally
under control.
So, yes, I am basically optimistic of the end result. It may
take time. It has come at a time when we are also into a political transition
which makes it difficult to focus totally on that area, but given time and the
fact that there is an election coming up on the 18th and a government
hopefully after that, I think that we have the ability to focus and the U.S.
and Pakistan acting together have an opportunity to end this problem once
and for all.
MR. GORDON: General Zinni? Not on that. I will raise one
more and then I will open it to the room, one more question under the
topic of what we do, and it is the democracy question which will no doubt
come from the room, and I will give you a crack at it from up here first. I
think General Zinni wrote a piece in The Post last fall about standing by
our man, our man being Musharraf. You gave some good reasons for
that. Whatever one's personal view of General Musharraf and his
effectiveness and so on, the rebuttal to that usually comes in terms of if
we stand by our man, that he is unpopular and we lose the Pakistani
population, then it is counterproductive to stand by our man. Is there any
reaction to that set of arguments that I know you are quite familiar with?
GENERAL ZINNI: The point I was trying to make was
twofold. One had to do with President Musharraf and the other had to do
with the military which I have explained the value of us valuing what the
military has done and their sacrifices. In the interests of complete honesty
like Mr. Armitage, President Musharraf is a good friend and I believe he is
a patriot, I believe he does what he does and did what he did in the best
interests of his country, and I believe there things that he had done with
the economy and other things that are positive. There are other things
that I may disagree with and certainly many in the audience will disagree
with, and I think the point that is most important here is what his intentions
were and how things came about.
We tend to shorthand things in a way that shape an issue
and give it maybe the wrong context. For example, the shorthand in the
media is when President Musharraf executed the coup, I do not think he
was even in the country when the coup happened. I think it might have
been a coup executed on the military that did not work and may have
backfired. We can argue that, and I certainly do not condone generals
taking over the government, do not worry, the republic is not in danger
from any of us except for those who run for office here, but felt strongly
that President Musharraf felt strongly about the importance of this
relationship and the commitment to it and I think at many times put himself
at personal risk to maintain that. And whether we agree or disagree with
him, I think what he committed to, what his intentions were, that was the
point I was making, that they were sincere and they came from an honest
and sincere I feel interest in the welfare of his own nation and his own
people.
MR. GORDON: Thank you. Anybody else?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: -- ought to be an adherent to the
Hippocratic Oath as well. The people of Pakistan and the one national
institution, the army of Pakistan, will eventually make their wishes known.
The worst thing I think that can happen is if we make our wishes known
that we prefer someone else, we cannot do that from this distance. We
will make an error. Also I think by being on someone's side will also
damage them quite a bit. I was very opposed, for instance, to the way that
we were seen so publicly as assisting Mrs. Bhutto's return. I think it would
have been a fine thing had it been kept quiet and seemed to just sort of
happen because Pakistanis made this decision, but once we get involved I
think it can take on a different sort of color.
The question of whether we are going to lose the affection of
the Pakistani people, when President Musharraf enjoyed a much higher
affection rate than he does today in the minds of the Pakistani people, the
affection with which the U.S. was reviewed was not quite so high. It was
not high at all. So as I say, I would not put -- our losing the Pakistani
people. This is not ours to lose. It is Pakistan, it is the Pakistan nation,
and to some extent as I say, the one national institute will make their
wishes known at some point in time.
That gets back to the question of democracy. Is that
democracy? No, of course it is not. But it does get back to some things
that the general was talking about, institution building, capacity building,
reform, and things of that nature to make this nation confident that they
can put on the cloak of democracy over a framework which will be
maintained.
MR. GORDON: Thank you. We have time for questions. I
would like to open it up. We are going to start right here in the middle.
There is a microphone coming. Please just tell us who you are and direct
your question to somebody.
MR. LAGARI: My name is -- Lagari. I am with the World --
Institute. I have a question for General Karamat.
MR. GORDON: Please speak up a little bit.
MR. LAGARI: How much money the Pakistani military spent
on nuclear weapons as up to now? And how much money you are
spending to maintaining command and control of the nuclear weapons?
The report you gave here today, we feel that we are living in the Stone
Age. So I would think that better to the relationship to U.S. should be
(inaudible) can be helpful for you against the terrorism and nuclear, this
blackmailing to the West. So that is my request to Mr. Armitage and
General Zinni. The (inaudible) strategic position can be helpful compared
to the ethnic Punjabis which are dominating in the military.
GENERAL KARAMAT: What was the question? This was a
comment?
MR. LAGARI: (inaudible)
GENERAL KARAMAT: I have no idea how much money we
spent. I have no idea.
MR. GORDON: The first question was about spending on
nuclear.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I wish I could give you a figure in
terms of dollars or rupees of how much we spent, but I would say that a
colossal amount has been spent as part of our national security in
developing, maintaining, and improving our nuclear assets.
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: I would say certainly the United
States was very unhappy with the development of a nuclear weapons
program in Pakistan, but notwithstanding how much they may spend, it is
money well spent as far as I am concerned. I know when Secretary
Powell was Secretary of State, the State Department spent a good deal of
our time, particularly Assistant Secretary Woolf, working with the Pakistani
military primarily to the extent they would expose us to production of
nuclear weapons to help develop our confidence that they were in good
hands, they were safe, and there were pretty good failsafe mechanisms.
And I would say having said that we did not like the fact that Pakistan
developed these weapons, any amount of money they spend to protect
them is good as far as I am concerned.
MR. GORDON: Right here in the third row.
SPEAKER: Thank you (inaudible) two questions, one for
General Zinni and the ambassador. General Zinni, you said that it is an
unfriendly neighborhood and we do not have many friends. Do you
consider India as your friends? And ambassador, the question for you is
that many Pakistanis and Americans are asking that since 9/11, billions of
dollars have gone to Pakistan to control terrorism and now it has been
rising rather than going down, but also money was to transfer madrassas
from hate to normal education. How much more time do you need? And I
understand that Pakistan is going through turmoil and many attacks now
on the Pakistanis and also on President Musharraf, but how can we
control now and how much time do you need now? And what the U.S.
can do now?
GENERAL ZINNI: To answer your first question, we
certainly consider India a friend, yes. I was describing the area of
responsibility of the U.S. Central Command which does not include India,
which is Pacific Command, and the Southwest Asia that includes Central
Asia, Iran, Pakistan, that I was responsible for. So I apologize if I offended
our Indian friends.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I think that is a good question.
Actually, what you are saying is how much we are spending on education,
and I think there is 2.4 percent of GDP that we are spending at the
moment. Some of the political parties which are campaigning now are
talking of jumping this to 4 percent when they come into power, so this is a
good sign that everybody thinks that more should be going into it.
Your impatience with the pace at which things have moved,
yes, the people of Pakistan are impatient too. We have had U.S. support,
we have had World Bank support with a number of education projects in
Pakistan and a lot of progress has been made, but I think we get
sidetracked into various things in this transition to democracy. I am not
against it. Please note that I am all for the transition to democracy, but it
does take time and you have a new government coming in in February or
after that and it will take a couple of months to get its act together and
then have policies and so on. So those kinds of delays are inherent in a
situation where you are opting for the transition to democracy. So it may
take time, but we headed in the right direction as far as this is concerned.
GENERAL ZINNI: May I say one more thing? When
General Karamat was chief of the military and I was at CENTCOM, the
commander of the U.S. Pacific Command and I had this idea that I would
visit India for an extended visit and he would visit Pakistan because
obviously we had the two countries that had issues with each other and it
would be valuable for us since U.S. command lines were split down the
middle. I talked to General Karamat about that and he highly
recommended it. He said you need to go to India to get the other side
because that is going to give you a clearer view of the situation and we
would welcome the Pacific commander here to explain that. So I would
just put in a pitch for my good friend here that he was looking to
encourage things that might make the tensions be reduced and the
situation better.
MR. GORDON: There is a woman about 10 rows farther
back on the right side.
SPEAKER: My name is (inaudible) and I a Pakistani student
studying here. My question is for General Karamat and the Secretary of
the State Department. The question is how do you think that what
happened with the judiciary and the arrests of the students and the
lawyers for more than 90 days now is helping fighting extremism? And
General Karamat said that he is looking for a three-pronged approach
toward solving that problem. I would assume for that you need a
democratic government, a democratic government with a strong civil
society. And you said that there is some prerequisite for democracy in
any country and one of them could be the strong civil society. I would
assume that is one of the most important prerequisites. Right now what is
happening, do you think that you are actually making civil society stronger,
the liberal Pakistanis in the country right now?
MR. GORDON: How is cracking down on the judiciary and
students contributing to democracy and the necessary civil society in
Pakistan?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: I think the short answer is it is
certainly not. I found nothing to be saluted in cracking on the judiciary or
students. As a matter of fact, this goes along I think with what General
Zinni said about notwithstanding what we personally feel about President
Musharraf, we do not have to agree with every actions he takes. Having
said that, I wish that President Musharraf would have had around him a
brain trust with whom he could talk about these ideas and have someone
say, hey chief, do you really think that is a good idea, or shouldn't we
rethink that? And my experience when I left government was that there
was not that type of brain trust or whatever you call it around President
Musharraf and I think that he suffers for it. Right now I know as you know
that the press and judiciary are the two most popular institutions in
Pakistan with the army slipping to third. I think one of the reasons is the
direct result of that.
MR. GORDON: Secretary Armitage, is it our job to be that
brain trust? The U.S.?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: No, I was suggesting a Pakistani
brain trust. I think that if the U.S. did it publicly this would be stillborn, but I
was hopeful or would be hopeful that there would be more of almost a
national security type adviser or advisers with whom the president of the
nation could exchange views quietly in camera and not have them a
matter of public speculation and could help him inform his activities. I
cannot speak for President Musharraf in this case, but if you approach
most general officers with a problem, they are going to give you a solution.
Those very good general officers I think generally have a staff around who
they can talk to about this and kind of come up with the best solution. I
think that Pakistan would do well to have such a brain trust for lack of a
better term. There certainly are enough brains in Pakistan.
MR. GORDON: I see there are a lot of people waiting but I
am taking them in the order that I see them. There is a gentleman in the
brown jacket there, and then I will go to the gentleman on the wall and the
one in the back. But let's start here.
MR. MEDINA: My name is Francisco Medina. I work with
the Executive Intelligence Review. My boss Lyndon LaRouche has been
identifying more a policy of chaos in the old regions of the British
Commonwealth like in Kenya and what you have in Pakistan right now.
My question is for General Karamat. What is your view on British
influence there? Do you see that the Islamic group the Hizb ut-Tahrir
have a growing influence with the ranks of the army and you have the
British also overseeing the investigation into the assassination, so I just
wanted your view of British influence in the region.
GENERAL KARAMAT: As far as I know, the Hizb ut-Tahrer
is strong in Britain and it has a large following in Britain. I do not think that
it is very active or has any kind of following in Pakistan. So whatever is
happening in Britain and the people who are supported or who are
members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir have probably got involved in some acts of
terror and have been traveling to Pakistan, but it is a British phenomenon.
Which is not to say that we are not working with Britain. We are working
very closely with Britain. In fact, one or two networks were broken with the
active support and collaboration of Pakistan intelligence agencies. There
is total of 15 networks I think which have been broken up by our
intelligence agencies either acting directly or helping others to act against
those networks. And there is close cooperation and collaboration between
Britain and Pakistan on this and a very free flow of information and
collaboration between the intelligence agencies.
The other part of your question had to do with what?
MR. MEDINA: No, that was pretty much it.
MR. GORDON: Can we get a microphone to the gentleman
over standing against the wall there?
SPEAKER: My name is (inaudible) I am a graduate student
here at George Washington University and I am a citizen of Pakistan. My
first question is for General Zinni. Is it rational for the U.S. military
establishment to be supporting your man in Islamabad when you seem to
be able to maintain pretty good relationships with whoever succeeds to
the position of chief of army staff, General Karamat, General Musharraf,
and now General Kayani? So is it really rational for you to support your
man in Islamabad in that way when you are able to maintain good
relationships?
GENERAL ZINNI: I think the important thing is to support
the forces that add to our mutual security interests. It is not a question of
an individual. I go back to what Ambassador Armitage had said. To
reinforce what Ambassador Armitage said, that when we get into this idea
of a personality as opposed to a leader who sees the interests the way we
do and we work on our mutual interests with the forces working together,
when we get into supporting personalities, it does not work that well. I
think we tried to beam in a personality into Iraq and with Mr. Chalabi it did
not work out quite right. So I would never be an advocate of strictly a
personality being our target of our support or the aim of our support. If
that personality happens to be the leader, if that personality's views of the
security situation coincides with ours and we have the mutual interests,
then I think we have to respect that and I think it is in our interests to
support it. What I fear is when we discount the individual and the work
and the sacrifice to maintain that and we try to create a split between the
leadership and maybe the military and it will not work in our interests. If
there is an election come January and there is a new leader, I think it is in
our interests obviously to ensure that we have this strategic discussion
that General Karamat talked about to ensure we are both operating on the
same sheet of paper.
One of the biggest I think flaws in this whole security debate
is the lack of a strategic for this region. I think earlier it was said you
cannot have a solution in Afghanistan without a solution in Pakistan, and I
could probably add Central Asia and maybe even a broader context of
that, and I think that strategic discussion with the leadership is important.
We tend to go down and look at the tactical ends of things, how much
support do we give to the military, what kind of border control do we put in,
whether U.S. troops should go in or not or drones should pass over.
Those things are just the means. You have to have an aim or a direction
at the top that you both agree upon and I think it has to be with the
leadership whoever that leader is.
SPEAKER: To Ambassador General Karamat as well, is a
narrative developing in this conflict with the militants in the tribal areas
which is an ethnic narrative which is Pashtun militancy insurgency against
a predominantly Punjabi military similar to what has developed in
Baluchistan?
GENERAL KARAMAT: One, it has not quite developed in
Baluchistan the way you have put it. There is a problem in Baluchistan.
Let me put it like this, that there is an ethnic imbalance in Baluchistan at
the moment because of the Pashtun influx from Southern Afghanistan and
the refugees and so on and the previous balance which was there
between the Baluch and the Pashtun has been disturbed. That is one
aspect of that. Then the Baluch have certain grievances which they have
been voicing in various ways and we have tried to tackle it politically,
militarily, and I hope that we will continue to tackle it politically. I think it is
moving in a positive direction generally given the sort of economic
opportunities and development projects which are going to come into
Baluchistan and hopefully it will move in the right direction.
The Pashtun problem in Southern Afghanistan and in the
FATA areas because they are also Pashtuns, there is also a liberal
secular Pashtun presence, and the NWFP and the ANP sort of represents
that politically. That is there. There are also within the tribal areas tribes
who are pro-government or with the government and ready to confront the
militants especially in the Wazir for example. Mullah Nazir in Baluchistan
is collaborating with the government to pose that. So that it is not a
question of Pashtun versus Punjabi, but it is Pashtun and within Pashtun
there are two streams. That is why I said that the U.S. jumping in overtly
or covertly into an area might just disturb this balance and sideline the
elements who could be helpful in the future to us so that you do not want
to disturb that, and we are of course working on it in various ways.
The army is drawn from all over Pakistan. The Punjab
happens to be the biggest province and it has the biggest representation.
But traditionally we recruit in large numbers from the Pashtuns. The
regiment to which I believe is 50 percent Pashtun and 50 percent Punjabi.
I know it is made out like that this a Punjabi dominated army and it is the
Punjabis fighting, but it is not like that at all. We do not look at sects or
ethnicities when we are sending people to fight in various areas and so far
I think the track record of the army has been pretty good as a regular
professional army in delivering what we have asked it to do.
MR. GORDON: While we are on the subject of insurgencies
in the tribal areas, I wonder if any of you see any scope at any point for a
U.S. military role there. I do not mean against the will of Pakistan, I mean
invited in. There were recent reports that senior U.S. officials went over
there to talk about this and it was decided that the time was not right. But
can you imagine the circumstances, and does the United States
potentially have something to contribute on the ground? General Karamat
made the point earlier that it was success in fighting in these areas that
led to the ceasefires. So presumably the more effective we are, the more
chance there is of a ceasefire. Is there a potential role for the United
States on the ground? You are all dying to address this I know.
GENERAL ZINNI: I think that that is the least desirable.
The first effort and focus we immediately go to that, it sort of reminds me
of a couple that maybe had their first argument and somebody runs up
and says, are you filing divorce papers now? You are pushing them
toward an end state that maybe is the last place you want to go. What we
should be talking about and thinking about instead of questions like that is
how do we make the Pakistani military more effective to be able to do this.
I can see where our role in security-assistance programs not
only in the provision of equipment and training but sharing our
experiences and the training and education that goes with that. Think
about the since the sanctions began that we have restricted Pakistani
officers from our school systems. That was an investment in the future
when you look back on it that we should have been making for all sorts of
reasons. So I think instead of leaping to a conclusion like that, we should
be talking about how best to ensure the Pakistani military is capable of
handling the situation dealing with their own people that they are going to
be better suited for than us having boots on the ground. To me that would
be something that is never taken off the table by a president, obviously, he
cannot, that would be politically unacceptable, but certainly you have to
work through every possibility before you come to that kind of conclusion,
but we are bumping that question to the front of the line, and that is what I
cannot understand.
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: It seems to me that what we are
witnessing with the Pakistani military is a military who has been up to this
point about your entire career, sir, a force-on-force military. These are the
battles and the wars you have fought, and that is not what you are fighting
now. Matter of fact, we were force on force and now we are fighting a
different war than we thought we would fight in Afghanistan and in Iraq
and it takes a while to sort of, as they used to say in the military,
reorientate yourself to that. But beyond that, if there is something that we
can usefully do it would seem to me that Secretary Gates is on to it by
putting 3,200 more soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan because at the
end of the day in Afghanistan it is an infantryman with a bayonet who is
going to bend the enemy to our will. So if we want to better the situation in
the tribal areas of Pakistan, and all of us do, we can do our part in
Afghanistan and that will start it.
GENERAL ZINNI: If I could just add other thing, I am the
product of the Vietnam War having spent two tours there, and one tour
with the Vietnamese Marines as an adviser. What I saw in that time, the
Vietnamese Marines happened to be a very capable force, but every time
we were around American units, the Americans wanted to push them
away and do the fighting. Matter of fact, my Vietnamese commander said,
You do my job once, I will thank you. You do it twice, you got the job.
After bitter experiences and many years, we suddenly had this light bulb of
Vietnamization go on and decided as President Johnson said, these
Vietnamese boys need to be fighting their own war. Maybe if you started
from that you would reach a better conclusion and, again, I want to
reemphasize that ought to be the starting point.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I would agree with what has been
said because even in Afghanistan what the U.S. is doing is trying to build
up an Afghan national army and police which can take care of their own
problems. So in Pakistan you have a regular professional army which is
experienced, trained, and on the ground and I do not understand why
anybody should ever want to take over their job. The U.S. is in support
and we welcome that and all kinds of help we are getting, we are
collaborating, and as General Zinni said and Mr. Armitage said, there is
very close cooperation military to military and I would add from my
experience as ambassador here that also with the State Department it is a
very good relationship that is not a problem at the official government-togovernment
level between the U.S. and Pakistan. There is complete
understanding and we are on the same page and I hope we stay there.
MR. GORDON: Thank you. There are a lot of questions. I
am going to gather a couple in clusters. We do have to keep an eye on
the time. Back by the camera that is a woman on the aisle and a
gentleman who is taking the microphone as we speak, and then Dan
Benjamin. We will group these three together if you would.
MR. BATOF: Kami Batof from the "Pakistan Chronicle." My
question is about the services that Pakistani forces provide to the U.S. in
the Afghanistan border area. I heard that the U.S. is paying only like $600
per soldier whereas if the U.N. hired the services of UNO, it pays like
$1,400 or $1,500 per soldier, and in Iraq, the U.S. is spending like $14,000
per soldier. My question is, Pakistan is paid very little but we define this
as aid, not something like return of services. So my question is to Mr.
Armitage, what is the result of your threat that we will make Pakistan a
Stone Age country or it was just President Musharraf wants to stay in
power and are just providing very cheap to America? So why should the
Pakistani people be upset at America and President Musharraf for
providing so cheap services? Thanks.
MR. GORDON: I will try to summarize -- think about it. It
was about how badly paid Pakistani soldiers are and the reason they
accepted this deal was that because you threatened to bomb them back to
the Stone Age. That is a short version, but hang onto it because I want to
get the others in as well.
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: But I want to answer it now. As I
said before, I have gone my whole career desperately wanting to tell
somebody that I would bomb them into the Stone Age and I have never
been able to do it because I have never been authorized to do it. And as I
have said, further, I have never threatened anything that I could not do.
So that conversation never happened. To say that General Mahmoud and
I had a very straightforward, candid conversation would be an
understatement, but there were no threats in any way.
MR. GORDON: Thank you.
MS. LABOTT: Elise Labott with CNN. I would like to followup
on some comments that General Zinni made, maybe Mr. Armitage you
can take this one. There has been a lot of talk about reform in Pakistan,
but there has also been a lot of talk about the focus on the relationship
with Musharraf as one man who could solve all the U.S. problems. Do
you think that there has been enough contact across the board with all
levels of Pakistani society, not just at various levels of the government, but
in the civil society, or do you think there has been too much focus on
Musharraf as the solution to all the U.S. problems?
MR. ARMITAGE: The obvious answer, Elise, is it is no. I
can give you examples. General Zinni has already spoken about the
divorce for 10 years because of the nuclear question and our sanctions.
But how about the divorce after 9/11 where many students, many visitors
from many nations including Pakistan, were not welcome and we put that
snarling, sneering face to the world rather than hope, opportunity, and
optimism that we generally export to the world? So the short answer has
to be no, no. We needed education, we needed the judiciary, we needed
students. Thank God right now we are getting back it seems at least as I
understand it in terms of visas and things of that nature and we are
broadening our access to Pakistan, but of course we need to broaden it
across the full spectrum of Pakistani society and give them the full
exposition to U.S. society.
GENERAL ZINNI: If I can sort of reinforce that point, the
reason we ended up in that situation was because of the sanctions and,
as I said before, the thin thread of a relationship came down to the
military-to-military relationship. You cannot believe the things I was asked
to do because there were no other lines of communication there. For
example, I was asked one time to talk to President Musharraf to see if he
would receive our Ambassador to Pakistan. I could not believe our
Ambassador to Pakistan did not have a way of seeing the head of state,
but there was not a connection. I described to you the need for our
intelligence agencies to get involved with the scoffing up of the leaders of
the millennium threat or bombing. Was the commander of CENTCOM
doing these things? Why was I sent to convince the prime minister that he
should withdraw from Kargil?
The reason for all that is because the only thin line of a
relationship despite the sanctions came down to that military to military
and it ended up because of the situation with President Musharraf that that
ended up being the funnel or the point of contact.
I would just make one other point which is critically important
and goes beyond Pakistan because it was something I experienced
throughout my region. If we have an issue and it is political, if we have a
political issue or a human-rights issue or something else, we do a wide
array of sanctions and punishment. I had militaries in my region that were
clean, that were professional and were not part of whatever the issue was,
political or human rights, and we were immediately sanctioned. The
easiest thing to do for an administration or a congress is to sanction the
military-to-military relationship. I had two commanders of the military in
the region, not Pakistani, tell me that they were so frustrated and asked
me were we sending a signal that we wanted them to take over the
government, and of course we were not, but they were being punished for
things that were happening by the political segment.
MS. LABOTT: But if I might just very quickly, and I know we
are short for time, that has not really been the case in the last couple of
years since the sanctions have been lifted and it seems as if even the
contacts with Benazir Bhutto in the last several months to bring her back
were an effort to prop up Musharraf. So why do you think that the United
States was not making an outreach to all of the political parties and all of
the judiciary and the lawyers and at the time to improve the political
situation on the ground?
GENERAL ZINNI: I agree with you that I think we should
have been making the efforts not only on a broader political front, but even
a broader economic front. The whole issue of the component parts of a
society be they political, economic, social, or the security parts, and I think
even after the sanctions were lifted, those efforts were not made on the
scale they should have been made. Obviously 9/11 was the catalyst for
all this, but we sort of still narrowly focused on security rather than the
political, the economic, and others which we should have done.
SPEAKER: I would like to pick up on General Zinni's remark
about needing a comprehensive strategy. Militancy is not confined in
Pakistan to the tribal areas, it has become a problem that threats the state
as has been mentioned. The idea exists and has gotten a lot of currency
in this town that the way to deal with militancy over the long-term is to
restore democracy and then an emboldened and more legitimate
government will be able to cope with it.
I would like to ask whether or not there isn't also an element
here of strategic culture that needs to be confronted, specifically,
Pakistan's attitude toward Afghanistan, and that is that as long as there
are elements within the Pakistani security establishment that view
Afghanistan as an essential part of its strategic depth and therefore are
less than zealous about preserving the border, whether that militancy can
ever be fully beaten back because it seems as though a lot of that
militancy is blowback from Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan, not
least from our first war in that region but even to today.
MR. GORDON: The strategic depth doctrine exists?
GENERAL KARAMAT: That may have been the case at
some point in time, but I do not think it is the case now. And as far as the
border is concerned, Pakistan has been hoping that the border will be
hardened, that the border will be defined, that all movement across the
border will be documented as it is in every other country and that
eventually the special status of the tribal areas and the movement rights
that have been given in due course could be changed into regular
movement between the two countries. So Pakistan has been for that and
is for that.
So even if at some point in the past there were
concentrations of strategic depth, and I think that question came in when
we had a very active threat from our East from India and we were in
conflict with India, but with that having moved into a dialogue stage, we
have not reached resolution on anything, but the very fact that both
countries being nuclear weapons states, both into institutionalized
dialogue, both having shown the political resolve to move on the track of
dialogue, I think there is less and less thought of strategic depth in
Afghanistan.
MR. GORDON: Thank you. We have time for just two more
that we need to cluster, the gentleman here and then the woman in the
back by the door. If you could be brief so that the gentlemen have time to
answer. Thank you.
MR. JONES: Bill Jones, Executive Intelligence Review, to
General Zinni. The situation in Afghanistan is generally considered that
we took our eye off the ball on that one and started to deteriorate and
much of what we are seeing in Pakistan in the border areas is a result of
the failure to continue with where we started in Afghanistan. And now we
are putting pressure on the Europeans and NATO has taken over to do
more and this is leading to something of a governmental crisis in Germany
and serious implications for NATO. I was wondering what do we do?
How do we reestablish some kind of momentum in the Afghanistan
situation? Do we have to start rethinking the strategy in order to try and
deal with the situation there as a stabilizing element for the region as a
whole? And to General Karamat I would like to mention with the murder of
Mrs. Bhutto, many people thought that this was aimed to destabilize
President Musharraf, to destabilize Pakistan, and to destabilize the region
as a whole and I was one of these people who thought that indeed was
the case. And President Musharraf of course as the representative of the
military, one of the only institutions holding the country together, was
extremely important and therefore if you wanted to see the region remain
relatively peaceful, one had to come to the defense of Musharraf in that
kind of situation. However, today we are seeing in the paper that even
military leaders including former generals are now criticizing President
Musharraf that maybe there is reconsideration of how to deal with this
situation which would not lead to destabilization of Pakistan. So the
question is personally what role does Musharraf play today as a
representative of the military or are there changes which can be made
which would not lead to destabilizing in the country?
MR. GORDON: Thank you. If we can hold off on the
answers, we will take the woman's question and then each can have a
final word.
SPEAKER: My question is to General Zinni. We heard you
talk frequently about your personal relationships with individuals in
Pakistan and often you had to call upon those relationships to get strategic
goals achieved. I just wonder how does that reassure the people of
Pakistan and how does that reflect on the U.S. government and its
capacity to deal with a country like Pakistan? Are we doomed to have a
military dictatorship just because it suits the U.S.? If as a Pakistani I were
to ask any one of you to reassure us that the U.S. would take care of its
most strategic partner 10 years from now, would you be able to do that at
all especially considering the fact that the only time the U.S. does play a
role in our country is when you slap sanctions in our face or when U.S.
wrath falls upon us?
GENERAL ZINNI: I think that going back to the question we
had before about the contacts ending up being just military to military and
then obviously military to the leadership because of the events that put
General Musharraf as head of state, I think that the important lesson from
all that is that we have to broaden the contacts and the interaction society
to society. It should not come down to just the single connection of
military to military. Our strategic interest in Pakistan is that Pakistan be an
economically viable, politically stable country, that it gets the democracy
that people want and seek, it is economically well and prospering. It is not
just a matter of a military-to-military relationship and looking narrowly at
security interests. If you do that, I do not think you achieve stability. I do
not think any soldier would tell you, and I can tell you as being a
commander responsible for the U.S. military interests in the region, the
stability you sought that I was directed to try to either maintain or to
establish could not be accomplished simply through military-to-military
relationships. There had to be something else going on. There had to be
something on the political, economic, and social interaction creating that.
And if we should learn anything about the past relationship from the end of
the first Afghanistan war, is those relationships should have been
maintained and sustained. And so it goes to your point that it cannot be
just this military relationship and looking for mutual security interests and
that is it. It will not work. Do you want me to answer the first part of that?
SECRETARY ARMITAGE: No one up here can assure you
in 10 years of what our relationship will be because of our own system.
But I can assure you of one thing, that we failed miserably I think after the
first Afghan war to separate and try to develop a relationship with
Pakistan. It was always about our other greater objective in the cold war
which was the soft underbelly of the then Soviet Union. We did succeed
in this first administration to take the hyphen out of IndoPak, and that is a
good thing as we are developing or trying to endeavor to develop a
relationship in and of Pakistan. Unfortunately, the Afghan situation right
now runs the risk of making this another sort of hyphenated Pakistan-
Afghan situation and we have to fight against it and do what General Zinni
is trying to say and move much beyond security concerns which are valid
to the broader concerns about a relationship that is in and of and about
Pakistan, not about Afghanistan, not about the Soviets, not about India.
GENERAL KARAMAT: I think Afghanistan is going to be a
test for NATO, a critical test, maybe even a crisis. Remember, the
problems that emerged out of Afghanistan that caused 9/11 also impacted
in London, in Madrid, and almost in places like Berlin and Rome. So this
is a NATO fight and not just a U.S. fight. You cannot make the arguments
for other places maybe like Iraq that you can here, and there are some
serious questions about NATO's responsibilities and their ability to stand
up to the commitment. I think that one of the tests of Afghanistan besides
being able to develop a viable strategy for dealing with it and a regional
strategy that overarches that is the question of whether NATO can stand
up to this commitment. I do not want to overstate this, but it could be a
defining moment for this alliance if it does not happen.
MR. GORDON: General Karamat?
GENERAL KARAMAT: In destabilization you are talking
about Benazir Bhutto's assassination, across the board in Pakistan it is
seen as a very great tragedy and a great blow to Pakistan at a critical
moment when we were moving toward democracy. I think she beyond
any doubt was a leader who had experience, who had learned from her
pervious experiences, and who everybody thought has come in at the right
time and is going to be a very positive influence in the whole transition to
democracy and her removal from the scene I think has created an
imbalance which everybody is now trying to correct one way or the other.
As far as the present government, I will not say President
Musharraf, let me just say the present government is concerned, the
freedom that the media has has come in under this dispensation. It is not
going to go away. There have been ups and downs in that with
crackdowns and releases, but I think it is there to stay and it is going to
continue. The civil society which has developed as a very powerful lobby
in Pakistan, again, regardless of crackdowns, regardless of military
tutelage or regulatory procedures, is again a force which is there to stay, it
has demonstrated its sustainability and it is going to be a very important
force as we move toward democracy, and this is welcomed by everybody.
I think the problem starts when destabilization comes in
because of one particular element sort of taking off at a tangent or in a
direction which is unpredictable and you have to bring it back on track,
and that is what has been happening in Pakistan. But there is a
tremendous urge for democracy and there is a tremendous urge for
stability and I think the urge is more urgent now when we have this threat
on the Western border, that we want the country to come together, we
want a democratic dispensation which can bring the country together and
cope with this threat with the military being supported with the full force of
public opinion and the population. That also goes for the relationship with
the United States. There is no doubt in my mind that it is a strategic
relationship, that we have moved into an era where if the U.S. could walk
away from regions in the past without even shaking hands, it cannot do so
now. If it should do so, it risks seriously undermining and destabilizing
areas which are very important for U.S. interests, so I do not see that
happening. And because of that, I think the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has
a future, has sustainability, it is just that we should not allow transient
developments which are inevitable in a strategic relationship to overtake
the overall goal toward which we are heading. We need to keep that goal
in mind and keep moving in that direction.
MR. GORDON: Thank you, very nice final words. Ladies
and gentlemen, thank you all for coming, and please join me in thanking
this distinguished panel.
* * * * *
You'll be dead in six months...
You and other expatriates like you will not be effected by any thing that happens here.You people are 
ALONE.
NATO.
