Saving Pak US Relations

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By: Thomas Houlahan, an analyst with the Centre for Security and Science, US.

I’ve never pulled any punches with regard to the US government’s policies towards Pakistan. Its best could be described as ill-considered; its worst have bordered on insane. The US government has a bad reputation among the Pakistani people because it deserves it.

I have to say this though: I believe that the policies have been the result of ignorance rather than any sinister plot to destroy Pakistan. The fact is that most American policymakers know next to nothing about Pakistan. As a result, they depend on people from the ‘big name’ think tanks in the US to tell them what they should do. That is largely where the problem lies.

Knowing so little about Pakistan, officials are unduly deferential to such supposed experts. In practice, once you get hooked up with one of the famous think tanks, officials in Washington tend to take every word you say or write as though it were absolute gospel, no matter how poorly-informed the opinion or how ill-considered the recommendations. Conversely, if you are not with one of the big names, you could know more about Pakistan than any other American and offer the soundest advice in the world and it would be dismissed out of hand. After all, as the thinking goes, if your ideas had any validity, you would have been snapped up by one of the big name think tanks.

The government thus proceeds on superficial analyses. The resulting recommendations, when followed, make the situation worse. The recommendations the US government has received from these institutions regarding Pakistan since 9/11 have been nothing short of disastrous. We saw a classic example bad advice last week in Christine Fair’s article, ‘Can this alliance be saved? Salvaging the US-Pakistan relationship’, in Time magazine.

There is simply too much wrong with the article to address it here. The gist of it is: (1) sanctions against Pakistan have failed because our (the US) government has not been tough enough in implementing them; (2) “Pakistan has undermined US interests at every turn,” principally by continuing to support the Taliban; (3) Pakistan continues to develop nuclear weapons pursuant to a policy of “nuclear extortion”.

Fair concludes that the United States should get tougher and offers specific recommendations along those lines. One of these is to declare “American support to render the Line of Control cutting through those portions of Kashmir administered by Pakistan and India as the international border” if Pakistan doesn’t toe the American line.

If Fair’s ultimate goal is to have Pakistan’s prime minister summon our ambassador and tell him that he has 72 hours to remove himself and all American government personnel from Pakistan’s soil, this would be the perfect course to take.

According to Fair, if her other recommendations don’t have the desired effect the US should be prepared to “let Pakistan fail.” Again, the arrogance of big name think tank theorists: I work with a prestigious think tank. I must be a top thinker. Therefore my recommendations must be the right ones. Therefore, if they turn out badly, it can only mean that the situation is absolutely hopeless and we should give up and walk away. I envy her self-assuredness.

Fair seems to assume that an alliance with the US is something so desirable that any nation would beg for it, no matter what the US did to it (see above: recognition of Line of Control as permanent border), so this is a simple matter of our government deciding whether or not it should continue to bless Pakistan with such an alliance. I’m not so sure.

Nawaz Sharif has spoken about the need to re-examine the US-Pakistan relationship. This is significant because, whether the US government likes it or not, he will be forming the next government after the elections.

Sharif is a wildly successful businessman. As such, when he is examining the value of a continued alliance with the United States, he’ll be weighing the costs – which are pretty obvious – against the benefits, much less so.

The PML-N chief will also find it difficult to identify any tangible benefit the people of Pakistan have received from the relationship so far. Other than thousands of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians, a wrecked economy and a security situation as bad as I’ve ever seen it, I can’t see what the Pakistani people have gained.

No one will ever make me believe that had we given Pakistan assistance it actually needed, like help with education, law enforcement and its justice system, the power grid, agriculture, clean drinking water, etc we would not be every bit as popular with the Pakistani people as China is. In other words, had the US government’s dealings with Pakistan been directed by common sense rather than by so-called experts from big name think tanks, we would not even be having this discussion.

To Pakistanis, ingratitude is an unpardonable sin. They would be duly grateful and the relationship would thrive if only the US would give them something to be grateful for.

I’ve just completed my race-by-race analysis of the 272 contested National Assembly races. Here are my predictions: The PML-N will win 110 seats. The PPPP will win 66. The MQM will win 20. The JUI-F will win 16. The PTI will win 11. The ANP will win eight. The PML-Q will win six. The JI and the PML-F will each win four seats. Nine seats will be won by smaller parties and 18 by independents.

Woolwich attack: of course British foreign policy had a role

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While nothing can justify the killing of a British soldier, the link to Britain’s vicious occupations abroad cannot be ignored

I am a former soldier. I completed one tour of duty in Afghanistan, refused on legal and moral grounds to serve a second tour, and spent five months in a military prison as a result. When the news about the attack in Woolwich broke, by pure coincidence Ross Caputi was crashing on my sofa. Ross is a soft-spoken ex-US marine turned film-maker who served in Iraq and witnessed the pillaging and irradiation of Falluja. He is also a native of Boston, the scene of a recent homegrown terror attack. Together, we watched the news, and right away we were certain that what we were seeing was informed by the misguided military adventures in which we had taken part.

So at the very outset, and before the rising tide of prejudice and pseudo-patriotism fully encloses us, let us be clear: while nothing can justify the savage killing in Woolwich yesterday of a man since confirmed to have been a serving British soldier, it should not be hard to explain why the murder happened.

These awful events cannot be explained in the almost Texan terms of Colonel Richard Kemp, who served as commander of British forces in Afghanistan in 2001. He tweeted on last night that they were “not about Iraq or Afghanistan”, but were an attack on “our way of life”. Plenty of others are saying the same.

But let’s start by examining what emerged from the mouths of the assailants themselves. In an accent that was pure London, according to one of the courageous women who intervened at the scene, one alleged killer claimed he was “… fed up with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan …”. It is unclear whether it was the same man, or his alleged co-assailant, who said “… bring our [Note: our] troops home so we can all live in peace”.

It should by now be self-evident that by attacking Muslims overseas, you will occasionally spawn twisted and, as we saw yesterday, even murderous hatred at home. We need to recognise that, given the continued role our government has chosen to play in the US imperial project in the Middle East, we are lucky that these attacks are so few and far between.

It is equally important to point out, however, that rejection of and opposition to the toxic wars that informed yesterday’s attacks is by no means a “Muslim” trait. Vast swaths of the British population also stand in opposition to these wars, including many veterans of the wars like myself and Ross, as well as serving soldiers I speak to who cannot be named here for fear of persecution.

Yet this anti-war view, so widely held and strongly felt, finds no expression in a parliament for whom the merest whiff of boot polish or military jargon causes a fit of “Tommy this, Tommy that …” jingoism. The fact is, there are two majority views in this country: one in the political body that says war, war and more war; and one in the population which says it’s had enough of giving up its sons and daughter abroad and now, again, at home.

For 12 years British Muslims have been set upon, pilloried and alienated by successive governments and by the media for things that they did not do. We must say clearly that the alleged actions of these two men are theirs alone, regardless of being informed by the wars, and we should not descend into yet another round of collective responsibility peddling.

Indeed, if there is collective responsibility for the killings, it belongs to the hawks whose policies have caused bloodbaths – directly, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, and indirectly in places as far apart as Woolwich and Boston, which in turn have created political space for the far right to peddle their hatred, as we saw in the immediate aftermath of the Woolwich attack.

What we must do now is straightforward enough. Our own responsibilities are first of all to make sure innocents are not subject to blanket punishment for things that they did not do, and to force our government – safe in their houses – to put an end to Britain’s involvement in the vicious foreign occupations that have again created bloodshed in London.

By: Joe Glenton