Some excerpts from an interview earlier this year:
On a 'dangerous Pakistan':
Trudy Rubin: Bruce, you say in your article that Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world today, no issue is more critical to get right for the next President. What do you mean by that?
Bruce Riedel: I actually wrote those lines for the first time ten years ago in a memo for then-President Clinton. I think Pakistan is the most dangerous country because all of the nightmares of the twenty-first century that should concern Americans come together in Pakistan in a unique way. This is a country with nuclear weapons. This is a county with a history of proliferating nuclear technology. This is a country that has fought four wars with its neighbor, and at least one of those wars went very close to becoming a nuclear war. This is a country that has been the host of numerous international terrorist organizations and is today the safe haven and stronghold of the al Qaeda terrorist organization. This is a country also awash in drugs, narcotics, and this is a country where the clash between reactionary Islamic extremism and democracy is being fought out literally in front of us. All of those issues come together in this one place like nowhere else in the world. That is why it is so important to Americans.
On Al Qaeda in Pakistan:
"And there is abundant evidence that they are operating outside of Pakistan, in the badlands on the Afghan-Pakistan border."
TR: Outside of Pakistan or just inside the border?
BR: Probably inside Pakistan somewhere, maybe going back and forth. The most important thing about their safe haven there is that it is growing. It is getting bigger. A lot of experts have focused on the FATA, the so-called federally administered tribal areas, which is the most lawless part of Pakistans borderlands. But, in fact, al Qaeda and its allies, the Taliban and other groups, operate along the entire western border, from Balukistan through FATA, through the northwest frontier province, into Kashmir; a 1500-mile long borderland in which they can operate with complete impunity.
TR: In Pakistan. So basically, al Qaeda in Pakistan, like corporate headquarters, is setting strategy and holding training seminars?
BR: That is right. And, they are also publishing a lot of propaganda. They put out an unending stream of their public diplomacy. In 2004, al Qaedas Pakistan propaganda apparatus put out twelve tapes. In 2007, they put out almost a hundred. In 2008, they are off to an even faster start, and this is a very slick operation. They put out audio tapes and video tapes with interactive maps in them, with video of the targets that are being attacked, with pictures of presidents and other world figures to illustrate their arguments. We have even seen on TV that their corporate studio now has coffee mugs with their logo on them, just like it was CNN or Fox. That is not someone operating in a cave. That is a highly sophisticated propaganda organization, directly responsive to Osama bin Laden.
On Building a relationship with pakistan:
TR: Now there is a new civilian government, and this largest party, the PPP, the late Benazir Bhuttos party, claims that it wants to try a new strategy towards dealing with the jihadi threat, using non-military means and dealing with tribal leaders. But there are two huge problems. One, it seems elements in the military, elements in the ISI, are trying to carry out their own policy. It seems that the civilian government may not even be in charge of the policy. So how do we help them on that front? And, second problem, the civilian government itself is divided. The PPP has a clear policy about recognizing that the jihadi threat is their problem, not just Americas. But the other civilian party in the coalition is much less willing to take that approach. So how do we help a civilian government that is divided within itself over that very issue to deal with the jihadi threat?
BR: Again, these are very, very difficult problems. Let me start with the first one. How do we encourage the development in Pakistan of what we would consider normal, civil military relations? In our country, if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is fired by the President, he goes home. In Pakistan, he stages a coup and overthrows the government. That is not democracy and that is not right civil-military relations. We ought to be absolutely clear in our conversation with Pakistans generals and with the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence; the proper place for an army and for an intelligence service is to obey the commands of the democratically elected civilian establishment. We ought to be very clear that any US assistance to Pakistan is conditioned on the continued survival in office of a civilian government, and the cooperation of the Pakistani military with its directives. I would go a step further with regards to the ISI, because this problem with the ISI is not a new one. We have been dealing with this problem for twenty years of whose side is the ISI really on. George Tenet writes about this in his memoirs of his time. I would ask, in a new administration, that the director of national intelligence be instructed to provide an annual secret report to the Congress on the question of, is ISI on our side or the other side, and if it is not totally on our side, then our relationship with that organization and with the Pakistani military should suffer as a consequence. I think that is how we try to encourage strong and normal civil-military relations. Getting Pakistani politicians to work together, that is even more difficult. The Pakistani political leadership we have are people we know well, they have been around for a long time. They are not Thomas Jefferson, they are not George Washington. They are what they are. We do not get the choice of picking Pakistans elected leaders, that is up to the Pakistani people. We will have to try to work with them. As I said, it is not going to be easy. We are going to disagree with them, and some issues we are going to disagree on are very, very important ones. But we ought to try to do it in the spirit of an alliance, in which we are working with a partner.
TR: Some experts and people interested in this subject have called for a much broader kind of economic aid to be given to Pakistan. The foreign minister, Mr. Qureshi, just mentioned that he and Senator Biden have been talking about it. Can you describe how that would work, aid that would help foster civilian institutions, and one particular issue, the issue of madrasas. We have given aid, it seems to have gone into a hole, and religious schools called madrasas are still turning out candidates for the Taliban and even training Americans from Pakistani-American families. How can the aid be used better? And could it affect the schools and try to undercut the training grounds for people who go off and fight in the border areas and in Afghanistan?
BR: Let us first look at the aid we are providing. We have provided somewhere in excess of $11 billion in aid to Pakistan since 9/11. That is more aid than we have provided in the previous fifty years to Pakistan. Almost all of that aid was military assistance, almost all of it is an unaccounted funding that went directly to the Pakistani army, for which we have no idea how it was spent. Senator Biden has put forward a very interesting bill, which is now being co-sponsored by Senator Obama and a number of others on both sides of the aisle. What he proposes is that the Congress commit to a ten-year-long program of $1.5 billion a year in economic assistance. We would continue to provide some military aid, but $1.5 billion in economic assistance every year. And that economic assistance would be targeted on two general areas. One, infrastructure. Pakistan has abysmal infrastructure; it needs roads, airports, ports. Second, on the educational system. The reason the madrasas have grown so rapidly in Pakistan is because the public education system has collapsed in the last fifty years, largely because all the money in the Pakistani budget went to the army and their nuclear weapons program. The idea behind the Biden Bill is to help Pakistan rebuild its public education infrastructure in a way that will undercut the need for the madrasas. If you have good colleges and universities in Pakistan and good high schools, that is where people will send their kids, just like any other place in the world. Right now, they do not have a choice. The only option is the madrasas.
TR: So then aid should be targeted at institution-building and long range relationships outside of the military?
BR: I think a very large portion of the aid needs to go there. My own view, though, is also that the Pakistan military needs to be reconfigured from fighting a war with India to fighting a counter-insurgency, and that is expensive, too. But it is a different kind of expense. Instead of providing Pakistan with sophisticated F16 aircraft, which can be used to deliver nuclear bombs on Indian cities, we should be helping them procure night vision devices and helicopters, which can be used to track down terrorists on the other borders.
On Kashmir and Pakistan's relationship with India:
TR: Do you think that we can help the civilian government behind the scenes move towards talks with India that would improve that relationship?
BR: I think that is one of the most important things we can do. If you look at the itch that Pakistan has been scratching for the last thirty years that has produced this jihadist culture, it is all about India, and in the end it is all about Kashmir. The conflict in Kashmir is what drives the Pakistani armys pursuit of supremacy within the country. The conflict in Kashmir is what has been at the heart of the ISIs relationship with terrorist organizations. There is a unique opportunity here; for the first time in many years the battlefield in Kashmir is relatively quiet. India and Pakistan have begun negotiations about trying to improve their relationship, and they have made some important moves in that regard. The United States ought to, very quietly and very discreetly, be encouraging that process. We ought to be giving assurances to both New Delhi and Islamabad that if they continue down this process, the United States is right there with them and will help them in every way possible, economic assistance, diplomatic assistance, whatever it takes; it has to be done with discretion and reliability, quietly, but I think this is one of the great opportunities that the next president will have.
On operations in Pakistan:
TR: If Pakistan will not, in the near term, or cannot because the civilian government does not control the reins, go after al Qaeda and jihadis in the border areas, how can we press them? Do you think that we should conduct military operations across the border from Afghanistan?
BR: If the United States, if the President, had what is called actionable intelligence that a very important al Qaeda figure, let us say Osama bin Laden, was in a specific location in Pakistan, I do not think that there is any doubt that any President of the United States would try to get him, with or without Pakistani help. But that is not likely to be the case very often. That kind of intelligence I can tell you from thirty years in the CIA comes along on a very, very rare occurrence. So that scenario aside, is there a unilateral military option for dealing with Pakistan? No, there is not one. First of all, we do not have the forces. We do not have enough NATO and American forces in Afghanistan today to consolidate our control over our side of the border, let alone move over into the Pakistani side. Secondly, if we did move into Pakistan the terrorists would just go deeper into the Pakistani state. Pakistan is a large country. It is very easy for these people to operate anywhere in those badlands, and even in the major cities of Pakistan. Occupying a slice of the border is only going to spread the disease deeper into the Pakistani system, and antagonize 170 million Pakistanis. And, finally, Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state. The Pakistani army is not going to tolerate an invasion of its sovereignty without being prepared to use all of the weapons at its disposal. The bottom line is, whether we like it or not, we have to find a way to work with Pakistan. There is not a military solution to this problem.
I left out quite a bit, and I woudl recommend reading the entire interview.
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