While China’s economic and cultural engagements with Pakistan were important, Pakistan’s real interest was military assistance against India. It is perhaps impossible to overstate the degree to which America’s 1962 decision to send military aid to India shook Pakistani confidence in the United States. This theme recurs during discussions with Pakistan military personnel as well as with ordinary Pakistanis. Pakistan, “convinced that its only hope was to secure political and military support from China[,]. … tried to push the pace of developments in this area (Barnds 1975, 472).
It appears that Pakistan more or less deftly managed its complex relations with both the United States and China throughout this period. There is little evidence that the United States punished Pakistan for refusing to provide military assistance in Vietnam or Korea despite being a member of SEATO.4 (This is in contrast to Pakistan’s persistent, if factually shaky, criticism of the United States for its refusal to assist Pakistan in its wars with India in 1965 and 1971, citing both SEATO and CENTO commitments.) However, this does not mean that Americans suffered these irritations in silence. Both the United States and Great Britain groused that Pakistan had weakened its commitment to SEATO by signing various agreements with Communist China. Pakistan responded that it was in fact furthering SEATO’s peaceful mission by settling its boundary dispute with China, thus removing any friction between the two states (Pande 2011).
Harsh words were exchanged in 1963, when Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Aziz Ahmed, made a farewell call on Kennedy before returning to Pakistan to become Ayub’s foreign secretary. Ahmed complained bitterly over the long-term military aid the United States was offering India. After all, India remained staunchly nonaligned, and the Chinese military threat had receded, while the Kashmir dispute remained very much alive and a perennial potential flashpoint for the next Indo-Pakistan crisis. This decision to help arm India, Ahmed claimed, fundamentally threatened Pakistan’s security. Kennedy responded that the United States was taking Pakistan’s concerns into consideration and in fact was providing India with far less assistance than it had requested. He reminded Ahmed that America had little influence over Indian actions in Kashmir or Pakistani actions in Afghanistan. He spoke frankly about Pakistan’s dalliances with China and the inflammatory anti-American commentary in Pakistan’s press, explaining that “[the] Pak[istanis] display little appreciation of this primary concern of ours and instead apparently feel impelled to move towards [Communist China] and away from us because [of] Pak[istani] concerns about India. In [the] last few months [the] Pak[istani] press has exceeded all but [Communist China] in its attacks on us. One would gather from [the] Pak[istani] press, which is closer [to the government of Pakistan] than [the American press is] to [the US government], that [the] US was enemy number one” (Kux 2001, 142–143). Kennedy took the opportunity to remind Ahmed “that [the] US has one basic interest—prevention of control over Europe by [the] USSR or Asia by [Communist China]. Pakistan should understand this outlook since it accepted [the] responsibilities of [an] alliance with us” (143).
Nevertheless, Pakistan continued to develop its ties to China, even as it tried to minimally satisfy its commitments to the Americans. By 1963, Bhutto reposed sufficient confidence in Beijing to declare in a debate in the National Assembly that any “attack by India on Pakistan would involve “the largest state in Asia”’ (Kux 2001, 143). Such hints gave rise to a general presumption that Bhutto had some sort of defense arrangement with China in hand. But, as Barnds (1975, 472) suspects, this speech may have been an attempt by Bhutto to “frighten India and commit China” to Pakistan’s defense.
The Strains of War
The 1965 Indo-Pakistan war further strained Pakistani relations with SEATO and helped to strengthen ties between Pakistan and China. China applied “strong military pressure on India to stop the war” (Amin 2000, 161), including a public declaration that it was enhancing its defense preparations and alertness along the Sino-Indian border. On September 16, China ordered India to “dismantle all of its military works on the Chinese side of the border and return all captive Chinese nationals and livestock, within three days” or bear sole responsibility for the consequences of refusal (ibid.). This move brought the conflict before the UN Security Council, which demanded an immediate ceasefire. China (through the offices of the US Embassy in Poland) also warned India against attacking East Pakistan. The Chinese identified India as the aggressor in the war with Pakistan, continued to support Kashmiri self-determination, and accused the UN of acting to the detriment of Pakistan (Barnds 1975; Syed 1969). China would not provide such direct assistance in any subsequent Indo-Pakistan conflict.
In contrast, the United States refused to come to Pakistan’s assistance, both because the defense agreement addressed only communist aggression and because Pakistan had used American weapons to start the conflict. Gen. Musa, in a November 1965 conversation with Maj. Gen. Robert Burns, the chief of the US military assistance mission in Pakistan, condemned the US for giving military aid to India in 1962. Musa exclaimed that Pakistan had “‘burned her bridges’ in accepting US military assistance and was now paying the price” for its decision (Kux 2001, 161). While Pakistan could not understand America’s actions, Americans were flabbergasted by the audacity of Pakistan’s request. The United States cut off military aid to both India and Pakistan.
China’s gamble on Pakistan paid off because Pakistan became China’s window to the Western world. US–Pakistan relations improved in the late 1960s after the US election of Richard Nixon, whose disposition toward Pakistan was positive. Nixon and his chief foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger were interested in a rapprochement with China, but the Vietnam War and the status of Taiwan remained impediments. Against the backdrop of worsening problems in East Pakistan, in 1970 Gen. Yahya Khan facilitated a secret meeting between Nixon and Enlai, which marked the start of the entente between the two nations (Amin 2000; Kux 2001; Pande 2011). But the relationship would again be tested in 1971. As Pakistan’s crisis in East Pakistan deepened, it beseeched China for more economic assistance and diplomatic support. However, while China continued to provide Pakistan with weapons, it carefully crafted its position on the issue to avoid being dragged into the conflict: it stated its support as only for Pakistan’s “state sovereignty and national independence … not its territorial integrity” (Barnds 1975, 483). By spring 1971, while Pakistan was still playing an important role in facilitating US–China détente, China was less dependent on Pakistan. China may also have come to understand that if East Pakistan became independent, China could simultaneously “support a conservative West Pakistan and radicalism in Bangladesh” (484). Decades later, China’s responses to the 1999 Kargil War and the 2001–2002 crisis were similar to those of the United States and even India.
But although China has never again matched the support it provided Pakistan in the 1965 war (a point usually glossed over by Pakistani commentators), Pakistan has to a considerable extent obtained the support it hoped the bilateral relationship would provide. Until recent decades, “at regular intervals China has vetoed proposals harmful to Pakistan or lobbied against bringing a proposal to the UNSC which would hurt Pakistan’s interests” (Pande 2011, 118). Military assistance has been substantial, including the 60 MiG-19 fighters, 100 tanks, and small arms that China provided Pakistan in June 1972. Between 1971 and 1974, China provided Pakistan with $300 million worth of military equipment, in addition to helping Pakistan establish ammunitions and arms factories and later licensing the production of a light tank. China provided extensive assistance in setting up an aeronautics complex in Kamra. After India’s 1974 nuclear tests, China promised Pakistan that it would continue to support Pakistan’s sovereignty and international independence “in the face of foreign aggression and even nuclear blackmail” (125). China sustained its economic support during Gen. Zia ul Haq’s rule (ibid.).
In addition, until 2009 China used its veto power at the UN Security Council to ensure that key jiha
di assets like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, operating under the name of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), would not be declared a terrorist organization. China ceased its resistance only after the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai (Fair 2011a; Pande 2011). Unlike the United States, which has often intervened publicly in Pakistan’s domestic affairs, China has generally avoided doing so (at least publicly).
One important exception to this general rule took place in 2007 during the so-called Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) debacle. In early 2006, Islamist militants seized this mosque and an adjacent madrasa, both of which are located in the middle of Islamabad and a short distance from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters. Until July 2007, the militants engaged in arson, extortion, kidnapping, and violent demonstrations, among other illegal activities, in their effort to bring down the government and assert sharia in the country. The Pakistani government dithered while a serious security threat challenged the writ of law in the capital city. Finally, after militants there kidnapped several alleged Chinese prostitutes, China exerted considerable influence on Pervez Musharraf to take control of the situation in late June 2007. Within days of the June 27 meeting between China’s minister of public security Zhou Yongkang Zhou and Pakistan’s minister of interior Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao in Beijing, Musharraf ordered Operation Silence (renamed Operation Sunrise) to commence on the mosque. The operation lasted about a week, at the end of which the Pakistan military finally had control of the mosque (Pardesi 2008; Shanghai Daily 2007).
Most important, China has been a valuable benefactor in Pakistan’s quest for a deployable nuclear deterrent (discussed in Chapter 8). The available evidence suggests that Sino-Pakistan nuclear cooperation began early in the 1980s. In 1983, American intelligence discovered that China had provided Pakistan with an entire nuclear weapon design, along with sufficient weapons-grade uranium for up to two weapons. In 1986, Pakistan and China forged a comprehensive nuclear cooperation agreement; later that same year Chinese scientists began guiding Pakistanis on how to enrich weapons-grade uranium. China is even believed to have involved Pakistan scientists in its 1989 nuclear tests at Lop Nor (Center for Nonproliferation Studies 1999; Pande 2011, 126).
Pakistan’s Relations with the United States and China through the Eyes of the Army
As the previous sections demonstrate, Pakistan’s relations with both the United States and China were dictated solely by the players’ national security interests. This should not be surprising. Unexpected, however, is the way Pakistan’s defense literature recasts the facts of Pakistan’s foreign relations, even creating new facts as the occasion warrants. This section focuses on Pakistani defense literature’s narratives of its relations with the United States and China. The literature devotes less space to Pakistani relations with China than to those with the United States, and this section reflects that discrepancy. Demonstrating the degree to which the military’s strategic culture has permeated that of civilian institutions, few differences can be found between military and civilian accounts of these relationships.
NARRATING AMERICAN DUPLICITY
Several narrative tropes cut through both Pakistani military and diplomatic histories. First, whereas the previously discussed Western accounts suggest that the United States was indifferent toward South Asia in the early years after independence, Pakistani military and civilian writers insist that the United States immediately, and feverishly, sought to drag Pakistan into its orbit. Brig. (Ret.) Tughral Yamin, writing in Hilal in 2011, explains that Pakistan’s early “decision to move into the American camp was basically premised on the national security threat from India. … The Americans exploited Pakistan’s geo-strategic position by integrating it within their overarching strategy to contain the rising tide of communism” (Yamin 2011, 9, emphasis added).
One of the most important and enduring tenets of Pakistani military accounts of US–Pakistan relations is that the United States connived to draw Pakistan into an anticommunist alliance yet, having done so, repeatedly failed to defend Pakistan in its various misadventures with India. The same essay affords a typical and recent example. In addition to “exploiting Pakistan’s geostrategic position,” Yamin alleges that the United States took cunning advantage of Pakistan’s security predicaments. He opines that “naturally, [the Americans] were aware of Pakistani threat perceptions from India, but as long as it suited their convenience, they were willing to turn a blind eye” (9). Yamin even claims that the Americans “relentlessly pursued the Pakistani leadership and literally seduced it into submission” (ibid.). In his assessment, Pakistan bears no responsibility for undertaking commitments not to attack India while at the same time seeking to obtain military aid to do just that.
In another essay for Hilal, Yamin (2012) rehearses Pakistan’s disappointment with the supposed American failure to honor its defense commitments to Pakistan in the 1965 or 1971 war. Drawing on Pakistan’s ostensible experience of American perfidy, he cautions against entering into such “one-sided relationships” and avers that “never again should we allow our young men to become cannon fodder in somebody else’s war” (9). He adds, “At least four times in the past, Pakistan has allowed itself to become part of the American scheme of things. Each time it ended up as the loser from this lopsided equation” (9–10). A. Z. Hilali, in a 1990 essay in the Pakistan Defence Review, makes a similar claim: “Americans didn’t help Pakistan in [the] 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistan wars, in which India was regarded as an aggressor by many Americans and Western Partners but Pakistan could not invoke much support in American circles” (58).
Other Pakistani defense writers seek to downplay the value of Pakistan’s various western alliances while exaggerating the costs to Pakistan of such agreements. For example, Zia’s associate Gen. Khalid Mahmud Arif (2001) describes Pakistan’s relationship with the United States as an unequal friendship, with Pakistan desperate to address its security concerns vis-à-vis India. Arif emphasizes, if not outright exaggerates, the burdens that Pakistan took on as a result of this relationship but minimizes the political, diplomatic, and military aid that Pakistan received. He contends that the United States convinced Pakistan to aid its efforts to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan; however, as this volume has already shown, Pakistan’s Afghan policies in Afghanistan predated the Soviet invasion, and it sought and received highly lucrative US support for these policies.
Pakistan’s defense writers occasionally suggest that Pakistan’s leadership did not adequately appreciate the onerous burdens it was accepting when it entered into these various commitments. Ayub himself employed this strategy in his 1967 autobiography Friends not Masters (2006), in which he explains that his interest in CENTO was “exclusively in terms of the defense of the country. I was anxious to take maximum advantage of this arrangement to build up the defence forces of Pakistan” (136). In joining CENTO as well as SEATO, he opined, Pakistan alienated the Soviet Union and “lost her sympathy. … Since we had never been a party to any design against her and our membership of the Pacts was dictated solely by the requirements of our security, it should be possible to come to an understanding with the Soviet Union by removing her doubts and misgivings” (138). This set of statements is telling because it demonstrates the extent to which Pakistan wanted to have the benefits of alliances against the Soviet Union without incurring the costs of its choice. These statements also stand in sharp contrast to American narratives in which successive Pakistani officials—including Ayub himself—persistently offered Pakistan’s cooperation should the United States wish to form an alliance against the Soviet Union.
Ayub similarly disavowed SEATO. He claims that “we soldiers were not consulted; I think we learnt of it in the General Headquarters after the Foreign Minister had already signed the Pact” (M.A. Khan 2006, 179). Since he was the army chief at the time the treaty was signed, it is inconceivable that his input was not solicited, particularly given that power was already shifting from the politicians to the bureaucratic-military complex and that the US–Pakistan relatio
ns had historically been the responsibility of the army. Despite the evidence that Pakistan lobbied to be included in SEATO, Ayub writes, “Even at that time I thought that Pakistan had no reason to join SEATO at all. Perhaps the main consideration was to oblige the United States, who had been giving us considerable economic help. Beyond that, I really did not see any purpose to our being a member” (ibid.).
Other authors focus on how Pakistan’s alliances with the United States undermined its relations with other countries, including key Arab states. Zulfikar Khalid (1989a), writing in the Pakistan Army Journal, argues that Pakistan broke the ranks of Arab solidarity on Palestine by joining CENTO. His logic is based on CENTO’s inclusion of Turkey, which Khalid explains felt “honoured by cooperating with the Jewish state” (4). Khalid laments that Saudi Arabia, held in high regard in Pakistan, retaliated by feting Nehru in September 1956. To Pakistan’s horror, Saudi Arabia’s leadership declared its belief that Indian Muslims are safe in India and welcomed Nehru with slogans such as “prophet of peace” (5). Even Egypt retaliated against Pakistan by declaring that the “Suez is as dear to Egypt as Kashmir to India” (ibid.). Pakistan was able to restore its relations with Saudi Arabia by “assert[ing] the Islamic roots that were the underpinnings of Pakistani ideology and the rationale for its separation from India in 1947” (8). Saudi Arabia eventually became a major source of aid to Pakistan.
Another, more recent, rhetorical strategy is to distort the history of US nuclear sanctions against Pakistan. Pakistani accounts continually focus on the unfairness of US laws, arguing that India escaped punishment for its 1974 test. But India’s test (which did not violate US laws in place when it occurred) did prompt the American government to begin erecting an elaborate nonproliferation regime, using domestic law and international accords to prevent further Indian proliferation as well as proliferation by others, including Pakistan. Pakistanis also tend to emphasize the final invocation of Pressler Amendment sanctions against Pakistan in 1990. Pakistani defense narratives suggest that the sanctions were punitive and Pakistan-specific and were invoked only when the United States felt it could safely discard Pakistan. However, as I explained in Chapter 8, the Pakistan-specific nature of the sanctions was actually an attempt to resolve the interagency discord that arose when US knowledge of Pakistan’s nuclear program conflicted with the need to work with and through Pakistan during the anti-Soviet Afghan campaign. Indeed, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry was a part of the negotiations leading to the amendment’s passage and the Foreign Ministry even viewed the legislation as a victory for Pakistan. As I argued in Chapter 8, Pakistan was given ample warning that the Pressler sanctions would be imposed if Pakistan refused to roll back its program or crossed very clear red lines. Ultimately, Pakistan’s defense literature does not hold Pakistani civilian and military leadership accountable for their decisions.
Fighting to the End Page 31