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The U.S.-Pakistan Relationship in the Year Ahead

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The U.S.-Pakistan Relationship in the Year Ahead JANUARY 2012 . VOL 5 . ISSUE 1 Contents The U.S.-Pakistan Relationship FEATURE ARTICLE 1 The U.S.-Pakistan Relationship in the in the Year Ahead Year Ahead By Ahmed Rashid By Ahmed Rashid REPORTS 5 Profiles of Mexico’s Seven Major Drug Trafficking Organizations By Peter Chalk 8 Bioterrorism: Still a Threat to the United States By Leonard A. Cole 12 Radicalization Processes in Afghanistan By Marisa L. Porges 15 Individual Jihadist Operations in Europe: Patterns and Challenges By Petter Nesser 18 Al-Shabab’s Western Recruitment Strategy By Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens 22 Recent Highlights in Terrorist Activity 28 CTC Sentinel Staff & Contacts Pakistani students demonstrate against the November 2011 cross-border NATO airstrike on Pakistani troops. - Photo by AFP/Getty Images n the past six months, a series for the year 2012 will be whether the of major incidents between the United States and Pakistan can rebuild United States and Pakistan has a much abused relationship. brought their relationship to a Inew low. Even Pakistan’s longstanding This article will review the primary allies and European aid donors are incidents that led to the worsening increasingly at odds with Islamabad’s of relations in 2011, identify some current foreign policy. These tensions U.S. missteps, warn of a number of have Pakistani civilians feeling as if flashpoints that could occur in 2012, About the CTC Sentinel their country is at war with the world. and finally offer critical suggestions The Combating Terrorism Center is an for how the U.S.-Pakistan relationship independent educational and research Although all of Pakistan’s international can be resuscitated in the months institution based in the Department of Social relationships are important, it is the ahead. Sciences at the United States Military Academy, one with the United States that is most West Point. The CTC Sentinel harnesses critical to its future stability as well The Year 2011 in Review: the Center’s global network of scholars and as the maintenance of peace in South The Fracturing U.S.-Pakistan Alliance practitioners to understand and confront Asia. The 60-year alliance between The May 2011 killing of al-Qa`ida contemporary threats posed by terrorism and the United States and Pakistan is leader Usama bin Ladin by U.S. Special other forms of political violence. deteriorating rapidly.1 A key question Operations Forces in Abbottabad, close to a Pakistani military base, humiliated the Pakistan Army. Pakistan’s Inter- The views expressed in this report are those of 1 The U.S.-Pakistan relationship perhaps reached its peak Services Intelligence (ISI) has avoided the the authors and not of the U.S. Military Academy, in June 2004, when President George W. Bush designated the Department of the Army, or any other agency question of whether it was complicit in Pakistan a “major non-Nato ally.” See “Bush Names Paki- of the U.S. Government. hiding Bin Ladin, or merely incompetent stan ‘Major Ally,’” BBC, June 17, 2004. 1 JANUARY 2012 . VOL 5. ISSUE 1 in not discovering the al-Qa`ida chief critical issues such as the country’s Contributing to the tensions is the earlier. Instead, it has beat the drum of ongoing economic crisis. Defending country’s failure to provide security to protecting the country’s sovereignty on national sovereignty, even at the price its citizens. Even as the Afghan Taliban account of repeated U.S. “aggression.” of allowing anti-American, Islamist continue to enjoy safe sanctuaries By November 26, 2011, when 24 extremist groups to operate on its soil, in Pakistan, the army is fighting the Pakistani soldiers were killed by U.S. is considered acceptable by many. Army Pakistani Taliban in the northwest helicopters and fighters jets in Pakistani chief Kiyani has mobilized additional who are determined to overthrow the territory at a checkpoint on the Afghan forces and a range of anti-aircraft government. Since 2004, thousands border, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship weaponry on the Pakistan-Afghanistan of soldiers and civilians have died had deteriorated dramatically.2 The border and ordered his troops to shoot in Pakistani Taliban suicide attacks. United States had failed to convince the down any future American intruders, Pakistan also suffers from the separatist Pakistan Army to rein in the Taliban’s without answering the key question of insurgency in Baluchistan, which is Haqqani network, and Pakistan now what would happen should that outcome becoming bloodier by the day. felt it was being targeted by the United occur. States deliberately in retaliation. As a result of this violence, large An already weak and paranoid civilian tracts of the country are no longer At home, the Pakistan Army’s image government has virtually given up on controlled by the government, while was dented by the killing of Bin Ladin in governance, and has been beset with other regions have been denuded of Abbottabad and the Pakistani Taliban scandals. It is cowed by the military one their population through insurgency, attack on the Karachi naval base. Both day, terrified by an angry public the next. sectarian warfare, ethnic conflict and incidents highlighted the military’s Other days it is defiant and threatens multiple natural disasters including two failure to provide security—in the first the army, while at the same time is in consecutive years of devastating floods instance, a U.S. military force violated danger of being thrown out of office by in Sindh Province. There are millions of Pakistan’s sovereignty undetected; in the Supreme Court. The latest crisis internally displaced persons as a result the second, a band of Pakistani Taliban is the “memogate” scandal in which of conflicts in two provinces and floods fighters breached one of the country’s Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former in another two, although there is no most secure military facilities. ambassador to Washington, is alleged definitive knowledge of the true figure to have asked an intermediary to send or where many of the displaced citizens Due to these two embarrassments, a memo to the Obama administration have taken refuge. Pakistan’s military went on a domestic asking for American help to defang offensive by allowing and encouraging the military’s all powerful ISI. This U.S. Missteps a wave of anti-Americanism to sweep has already led to questions on whether There is little doubt, however, that the country and by depicting itself President Asif Ali Zardari, who is ill but Pakistan’s series of crises have been as a victim of U.S. machinations. defiant, will survive politically or whether exacerbated by a mismanaged U.S. Pakistan’s military manipulated the he will be linked to “memogate” and be strategy for Pakistan. For eight years, local media, allowed banned Islamic forced to resign. former President George W. Bush extremist parties to hold rallies in the largely preferred not to recognize that streets, and persuaded parliament to In the wider world and the global there were Taliban on Pakistani soil defend the army’s position. As each marketplace, there is naturally because former Pakistani President crisis point with the United States enormous international concern when Pervez Musharraf was considered a close played out, the military ensured that a nuclear weapon state places honor ally. Between 2001 and 2010, Pakistan Pakistan’s elected, civilian government before discourse and negotiations. received approximately $20 billion in was sitting under a cloud of uncertainty While most of the more than $2 billion U.S. funds, with the majority of the and paralysis regarding its tenure and in U.S. aid to Pakistan for 2011-2012 money going to the military, while the longevity. Yet it is also true that on the has been canceled, suspended or slowed economy and civil society were largely street and among the army rank-and- down, even European diplomats who ignored.3 Still, the army resented that it file, anti-Americanism is rampant to provide major donor aid to Pakistan are was never taken on board as a partner the point that younger army officers angry that the country refuses to carry out to discuss the Bush administration’s are demanding that General Ashfaq desperately needed economic reforms. Afghanistan strategy. That resentment Parvez Kiyani, the Pakistan Army chief, has only deepened under President break relations with the United States The economy is crashing, while Barack Obama, who promised a tougher entirely. inflation and joblessness are reaching but more realistic U.S. strategy with intolerable levels. As of early 2012, aid geared toward Pakistan’s civilian Today, anti-Americanism has become Pakistan’s civilian government has sector. Yet the Obama administration the passport to political legitimacy failed to provide gas, can only keep has also remained unwilling to share and patriotism in Pakistan. Sustaining the electricity running for a few hours with the Pakistan Army its plans for the ghairat, or honor of the country, has a day, and has been unable to alleviate Afghanistan, and it has intensified come to dominate the collective mindset constant fuel shortages. The country’s drone attacks in Pakistani territory, at the cost of rational dialogue or other infrastructure—railways, the national airline, the supply of gas, electricity 3 Chris Allbritton, “Analysis: Civilians Have Hand in 2 “Pakistan Buries 24 Troops Killed in NATO Airstrike,” and fuel—are all in poor condition. Showdown With Pakistan Military,” Reuters, January BBC, November 27, 2011. 13, 2012. 2 JANUARY 2012 . VOL 5. ISSUE 1 periodically crossed the Pakistan border through Pakistan for Afghanistan have could intervene, ratcheting up border without permission, and deployed spies been stopped; an airbase used by the tensions even more. across the country. U.S. drone campaign has been evacuated; military and intelligence sharing are at Third, Pakistan says it will respond The Obama administration surged a halt; and all written agreements with with force to any new U.S.-NATO troop levels in Afghanistan even while the United States are being reviewed intrusion—even if by mistake—into its announcing their withdrawal.
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