By M K Bhadrakumar
The unthinkable is happening. The United States
is confronting the Pakistani military leadership of General Parvez Kayani. An
extremely dangerous course to destabilise Pakistan is commencing. Can the
outcome be any different than in Iran in 1979? But then, the Americans are
like Bourbons; they never learn from their mistakes.
The NYT report today is unprecedented.
The report quotes US officials not less than 7 times, which is extraordinary,
including “an American military official involved with Pakistan for many
years”; “a senior American official”, etc. The dispatch is cleverly drafted to
convey the impression that a number of Pakistanis have been spoken to, but
reading between the lines, conceivably, these could also probably have been
indirect attribution by the American sources. A careful reading, in fact,
suggests that the dispatch is almost entirely based on deep briefing by some
top US intelligence official with great access to records relating to the most
highly sensitive US interactions with the Pak army leadership and who was
briefing on the basis of instructions from the highest level of the US
intelligence apparatus.
The report no doubt underscores that the US intelligence penetration of the
Pak defence forces goes very deep. It is no
joke to get a Pakistani officer taking part in an exclusive briefing by Kayani
at the National Defence University to share his notes with the US
interlocutors – unless he is their “mole”. This is like a morality play for we
Indians, too, where the US intelligence penetration is ever broadening and
deepening.
Quite obviously, the birds are coming to
roost. Pakistani military is paying the price for the big access it provided
to the US to interact with its officer corps within the framework of their
so-called “strategic partnership”. The Americans are now literally holding the
Pakistani army by its jugular veins. This should serve as a big warning for
all militaries of developing countries like India (which is also developing
intensive “mil-to-mil” ties with the US). In our country at least, it is even
terribly unfashionable to speak anymore of CIA activities. The NYT story flags
in no uncertain terms that although Cold War is over, history has not
ended.
What are the objectives behind the NYT story?
In sum, any whichever way we look at it, they all are highly diabolic. One, US
is rubbishing army chief Parvez Kayani and ISI head Shuja Pasha who at one
time were its own blue-eyed boys and whose successful careers and
post-retirement extensions in service the Americans carefully choreographed
fostered with a pliant civilian leadership in Islamabad, but now when the
crunch time comes, the folks are not “delivering”. In American culture, as
they say, there is nothing like free lunch.
The Americans are livid that their hefty “investment” has turned out to be
a waste in every sense. And. it was a very painstakingly arranged investment, too.
In short, the Americans finally realise that they might have made a miscalculation
about Kayani when they promoted his career.
Two, US intelligence estimation is that things can only go from bad to worse in
US-Pakistan relations from now onward.
All that is possible to slavage the relationship has been attempted. John Kerry,
Hillary Clinton, Mike Mullen – the so-called “friends of Pakistan” in the
Barack Obama administration – have all come to Islamabad and turned on the
charm offensive. But nothing worked. Then came CIA boss Leon Panetta with a
deal that like Marlon Brando said in the movie Godfather, Americans thought
the Pakistanis cannot afford to say ‘No’ to, but to their utter dismay, Kayani
showed him the door.
The Americans realise that Kayani is fighting
for his own survival – and so is Pasha – and that makes him jettison his
“pro-American” mindset and harmonise quickly with the overwhelming opinion
within the army, which is that the Americans pose a danger to Pakistan’s
national security and it is about time that the military leadership draws a
red line. Put simply, Pakistan fears that the Americans are out to grab their
nuclear stockpile. Pakistani people and the military expect Kayani to
disengage from the US-led Afghan war and instead pursue an independent course
in terms of the country’s perceived legitimate interests.
Three, there is a US attempt to exploit the growing indiscipline within the
Pak army and, if possible, to trigger a mutiny, which will bog down the army
leadership in a serious “domestic” crisis
that leaves no time for them for the foreseeable future to play any forceful
role in Afghanistan. In turn, it leaves the Americans a free hand to pursue
their own agenda. Time is of the essence of the matter and the US desperately
wants direct access to the Taliban leadership so as to strike a deal with them
without the ISI or Hamid Karzai coming in between.
The prime US objective is that Taliban should somehow come to a compromise
with them on the single most crucial issue of
permanent US military bases in Afghanistan. The negotiations over the
strategic partnership agreement with Karzai’s government are at a critical
point. The Taliban leadership of Mullah Omar robustly opposes the US proposal
to set up American and NATO bases on their country. The Americans are willing
to take the Taliban off the UN’s sanctions list and allow them to be part of
mainstream Afghan political life, including in the top echelons of leadership,
provided Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura agree to play ball.
The US tried its damnest to get Kayani to bring
the Taliban to the reconciliation path. When these attempts failed, they tried
to establish direct contact with the Taliban leadership. But ISI has been
constantly frustrating the US intelligence activities in this direction and
reminding the US to stick to earlier pledges that Pakistan would have a key
role in the negotiations with the Taliban. The CIA and Pentagon have concluded
that so long as the Pakistani military leadership remains stubborn, they
cannot advance their agenda in Afghanistan.
Now, how do you get Kayani and the ISI to back
off? The US knows the style of functioning of the Pakistani military. The army
chief essentially works within a collegium of the 9 corps commanders. Thus, US
has concluded that it also has to tackle the collegium. The only way is to set
the army’s house on fire so that the generals get distracted by the
fire-dousing and the massive repair work and housecleaning that they will be
called upon to undertake as top priority for months if not years to come. To
rebuild a national institution like the armed forces takes years and
decades.
Four, the US won’t mind if Kayani is forced to
step aside from his position and the Pakistani military leadership breaks up
in disarray, as it opens up windows of opportunities to have Kayani and Pasha
replaced by more “dependable” people – Uncle Sam’s own men. There is every
possibility that the US has been grooming its favourites within the Pak army
corps for all contingencies. Pakistan is too important as a “key non-NATO
ally”. The CIA is greatly experienced in masterminding coup d-etat, including
“in-house” coup d’etat.
Almost all the best and the brightest Pak
army officers have passed through the US military academies at one time or
another. Given the sub-continent’s middle class mindset and post-modern
cultural ethos, elites in civil or military life take it for granted that US
backing is a useful asset for furthering career. The officers easily succumb
to US intelligence entrapment. Many such “sleepers” should be existing there
within the Pak army officer corps.
The big question remains: has someone in
Washington thought through the game plan to tame the Pakistani military? The
heart of the matter is that there is virulent “anti-Americanism” within the
Pak armed forces. Very often it overlaps with Islamist sympathies. Old-style
left wing “anti-Americanism” is almost non-existent in the Pakistani armed
forces – as in Ayaz Amir’s time. These tendencies in the military are almost
completely in sync with the overwhelming public opinion in the country as
well.
Over the past 3 decades at least, Pakistani
army officers have come to be recruited almost entirely from the lower middle
class – as in our country – and not from the landed aristocracy as in the
earlier decades up to the 1970s. These social strata are quintessentially
right wing in their ideology, nationalistic, and steeped in religiosity that
often becomes indistinguishable from militant religious faith.
Given the overall economic crisis in Pakistan
and the utterly discredited Pakistani political class (as a whole) and
countless other social inequities and tensions building up in an overall
climate of cascading violence and great uncertainties about the future gnawing
the mind of the average Pakistani today, a lurch toward extreme right wing
Islamist path is quite possible. The ingredients in Pakistan are almost
nearing those prevailing in Iran in the Shah’s era.
The major difference so far has been that
Pakistan has an armed forces “rooted in the soil” as a national institution,
which the public respected to the point of revering it, which on its part,
sincerely or not, also claimed to be the Praetorian Guards of the Pakistani
state. Now, in life, destroying comes very easy. Unless the Americans have
some very bright ideas about how to go about nation-building in Pakistan,
going by their track record in neighbouring Afghanistan, their present course
to discredit the military and incite its disintegration or weakening at the
present crisis point, is fraught with immense dangers.
The instability in the region may suit the US’
geo-strategy for consolidating its (and NATO’s) military presence in the
region but it will be a highly self-centred, almost cynical, perspective to
take on the problem, which has dangerous, almost explosive, potential for
regional security. Also, who it is that is in charge of the Pakistan policy in
Washington today, we do not know. To my mind, Obama administration doesn’t
have a clue since Richard Holbrooke passed away as to how to handle Pakistan.
The disturbing news in recent weeks has
been that all the old “Pakistan hands” in the USG have left the Obama
administration. It seems there has been a steady exodus of officials who knew
and understood how Pakistan works, and the depletion is almost one hundred
percent. That leaves an open field for the CIA to set the
policies.
The CIA boss Leon Panetta (who is tipped as
defense secretary) is an experienced and ambitious politico who knows how to
pull the wires in the Washington jungle – and, to boot it, he has an Italian
name. He is unlikely to forgive and forget the humiliation he suffered in
Rawalpindi last Friday. The NYT story suggests that it is not in his blood if
he doesn’t settle scores with the Rawalpindi crowd. If Marlon Brando were
around, he would agree.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian
Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri
Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and
Turkey.
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