Pakistan's Enduring Challenges

Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges This page intentionally left blank Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges Edited by C. Christine Fair and Sarah J. Watson UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS PHILADELPHIA Copyright ᭧ 2015 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10987654321 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges / edited by C. Christine Fair and Sarah J. Watson.— 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-8122-4690-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Pakistan—Politics and government—21st century. 2. Pakistan—Economic conditions—21st century. 3. Pakistan—Foreign relations—21st century. 4. Political stability—Pakistan—21st century. 5. Internal security—Pakistan—21st century. 6. Religious militants—Pakistan—21st century. 7. Democracy—Pakistan—21st century. 8. Military assistance, American—Pakistan—21st century. 9. Pakistan—Military relations—United States. 10. United States—Military relations—Pakistan. I. Fair, C. Christine. II. Watson, Sarah J. DS389.A73 2015 954.9105'3—dc23 2014029616 Contents Introduction: Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges 1 C. Christine Fair and Sarah J. Watson PART I. SECURITY CHALLENGES Chapter 1. Pakistani Militancy in the Shadow of the U.S. Withdrawal 27 Stephen Tankel Chapter 2. A Cooperative Jihad? The Religious Logic of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and the Limits of Pan-Sunni Cooperation in Pakistan 55 Joshua T. White Chapter 3. The Future of the American Drone Program in Pakistan 72 Sarah J. Watson and C. Christine Fair Chapter 4. The Safety and Security of the Pakistani Nuclear Arsenal 98 Christopher Clary PART II. DOMESTIC POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES Chapter 5. Democracy on the Leash in Pakistan 131 C. Christine Fair Chapter 6. New Media in Naya Pakistan: Technologies of Transformation or Control? 156 Huma Yusuf vi Contents Chapter 7. Pakistan’s Self-Inflicted Economic Crises 178 Feisal Khan PART III. FOREIGN RELATIONS Chapter 8. America and Pakistan After 2014: Toward Strategic Breathing Space 205 Paul Staniland Chapter 9. Partner or Enemy? The Sources of Attitudes Toward the United States in Pakistan 227 Karl Kaltenthaler and William J. Miller Chapter 10. Friends of Last Resort: Pakistan’s Relations with China and Saudi Arabia 256 Aparna Pande Chapter 11. Violent Nonstate Actors in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Relationship: Historical Context and Future Prospects 278 Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Tara Vassefi List of Contributors 297 Index 303 Acknowledgments 311 Introduction: Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges C. Christine Fair and Sarah J. Watson Pakistan on 9/11: From Pariah to Paladin On September 10, 2001, Pakistan was virtually a pariah state. It was encum- bered by layers of sanctions meant to punish it for, inter alia, nuclear and missile proliferation, its May 1998 nuclear tests (conducted almost immediately after those of India), and the 1999 bloodless coup in which Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The U.S. Department of State had even considered placing Pakistan on its list of countries that support terrorism. While Pakistan narrowly escaped designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, it did in fact support a vast fleet of Islamist militants waging a terror campaign throughout India, particularly in Indian-administered Kashmir, and it was providing key military, political, diplomatic, and other support to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.1 When then U.S. President Bill Clinton visited the subcontinent in 2000, he spent several days in India, but in contrast, only a few hours in Pakistan. He took the opportunity to lecture Pakistani leaders on their reckless policies and even refused to shake the hand of General Musharraf, the country’s fourth military dictator. Prior to 9/11, the George W. Bush administration had embarked on a serious effort to reconfigure its relations with India and Pakistan. Whereas the United States sought to engage India in a significant strategic partnership, it was trying to prepare Pakistan to accept its unequal position in South Asia and diminished importance to the United States (Fair 2004; Tellis 2001: 88; Tellis 2008). The tragic events of September 11, 2001, afforded Pakistan the opportunity to regain its standing among the community of nations and to force 2 C. Christine Fair and Sarah J. Watson the United States to modify its plans to forge an entirely new policy in South Asia, one predicated upon moving boldly forward with India while helping Pakistan to accept its unequal and indeed inferior position in South Asia. Almost immediately, the United States had to find some way of re- leasing Pakistan from its burden of sanctions, both in order to secure the necessary Pakistani political will to support the looming war effort in Afghanistan and also to arm Pakistan, which would—once again—become a frontline state in an American war. Virtually overnight, President Mu- sharraf was transformed from yet another ‘‘mango republic’’ dictator into a much-feted partner of the free world and an intrepid cobelligerent in what became known as ‘‘the war on terror.’’ Pakistan’s assistance was critical to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, launched on October 7, 2001, under the name ‘‘Operation Enduring Free- dom.’’ Pakistan provided the United States with unprecedented access to ports, military bases, airspace, and ground lines of control, and Pakistani security forces also provided highly necessary security for U.S. assets posi- tioned in Pakistan (Fair 2004). As the United States and NATO developed the Afghan theater, they freed themselves somewhat from their dependence on Pakistan. But Pakistan remained a crucial player in the war effort because the United States was unable to find a cost-effective alternative to trucking supplies into Afghanistan over Pakistani territory. Goods were off- loaded at the Karachi port and then transferred onto thousands of privately owned local transport trucks for the trip into Afghanistan, either through the pass at Chaman (in Baluchistan) or through Torkham (in Khyber Pakh- tunkhwa). As the war in Afghanistan drew on, Pakistan also became an indispensable partner in the drone program, which targeted al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and (ostensibly) their ‘‘allied forces’’ in Pakistan and Afghanistan. President Musharraf benefited politically from his role in the war effort. Even as he became a greater and greater liability for the Pakistan army and as his policies vexed and alienated ever more Pakistanis, the United States redoubled its commitment to securing his place in Pakistan’s politics (Mar- key 2007). In order to keep him on as president while quieting critics of U.S. hypocrisy, the United States, working with the United Kingdom, helped broker a deal in 2007 that would allow Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan. The legislation that came about, the National Reconciliation Ordinance, offered her and her associates amnesty for any crimes commit- ted during their previous spells in power, thus allowing them to contest elections. Musharraf would remain the president, with Benazir Bhutto as Introduction 3 prime minister. The deal faltered when Bhutto was tragically assassinated in late 2007. Musharraf’s career could not be resuscitated, and by the end of 2008, he had resigned from the position of the presidency and from the military (Wright and Kessler 2007; Sehbai 2011). Even though the 2008 elections ushered in a civilian government led by the Pakistan Peoples Party, the United States focused instead on Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Mushar- raf’s successor as chief of army staff. For the first five or six years of the war, Washington was relatively pleased with Pakistan’s cooperation. President Bush would frequently cite the various al-Qaeda operatives who had been captured with Pakistani help as proof of Musharraf’s dedication to the war. When al-Qaeda began tar- geting President Musharraf in 2004 for this very cooperation, Washington worked even harder to support him and his army (Vandehei and Lancaster 2006). Between fiscal years 2002 and 2008, the United States provided Paki- stan some $2.2 billion in security-related assistance and $3.2 billion in economic aid. These figures paled, however, in comparison to the $6.7 billion that the United States transferred to Pakistan under the Coalition Support Funds (CSF) program, under which the United States reimbursed Pakistan for its expenditures on the war on terror in the same period (Congressional Research Service 2014). The terms of reimbursement under this program were absurdly favorable and subject to very little oversight (GAO 2008a). By 2007, tensions between the two countries were apparent. The Bush administration had slowly come to the realization that, while Pakistan had aided the U.S. war on al-Qaeda, it had also continued supporting its clients in Afghanistan, most importantly Mullah Omar’s Taliban and the North Waziristan-based network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani. This realization was all the more troubling because the United States and its NATO partners were finally convinced that they were fighting an insurgency in Afghanistan, led by the very same groups patronized by Pakistan. Prior to 2007, the international community had assumed that the military operations in Afghanistan would soon begin winding down, as the Taliban had long been vanquished and even al-Qaeda no longer operated in Afghanistan (Jones 2007a; Jones 2007b). From Pakistan’s perspective, on the other hand, the United States had fallen short on many counts. First, in late 2001, the United States was unable to prevent the Northern Alliance from taking Kabul. The Northern Alliance was the only remaining source of resistance to the Taliban and it received assistance from India, as well as Iran, Russia, Tajikistan, and the 4 C.

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