by Shuja Nawaz
Insurgency
Meanwhile, Pakistan did little to prepare for the wars within the country, letting the military take the lead in a conflict that demanded a whole of government and whole of society approach. The government made ritualistic efforts to show that it was concerned about the insurgency raging in its borderlands with Afghanistan. But the reality of the continuing power struggle between the civil and the military negated the rhetoric.
In my own assessment at that time I was less than sanguine about the ability of the government to craft a practicable policy:
In October 2008, during the early days of the current government, there was an attempt to get a joint resolution in parliament to fight terrorism within Pakistan. After much arm twisting and cajoling, members of parliament across the political spectrum consented to create the resolution, even if they disagreed politically with the government. The joint resolution they produced essentially ceded all powers to the army chief, even though martial law had not been declared in the Northwest Province or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) . . . The military also reserves the right to detain persons until it finds civil authority capable of taking detainees over. In effect, a quasi-martial law exists.
Thus the civilian government has ceded control to the military. It retains some semblance of involvement with administration in the insurgency-prone areas: Recently the Apex Group [in each province] brought together civilians and military personnel at the highest levels in the province of KP. However, the military has more or less determined and approved the group’s agenda.
The military has a wider national stance than during earlier civilian regimes. Beyond the traditional areas of India and Kashmir, the military has exerted control over national policy concerning Afghanistan, nuclear weapons, and US relations. 69
The civilians had effectively lost control of the security forces of Pakistan. But even the military was not fully prepared to act decisively without clear support from the government and civil society.
When the insurgents tied up with the local Taliban in Malakand Division and threatened the Karakoram Highway, the military did not act immediately, apart from preparing the X Corps headquartered in Rawalpindi to protect that lifeline to China. Looking for public support and the government’s direction, then Army Chief Gen. Kayani went to Islamabad and briefed the political leadership as a group, including Opposition leaders, on the security situation, and purposely stopped short of suggesting specific actions, asking them to think about the issues and then instruct the army to take specific actions. He recalled to me in a conversation in his office that he did not hear back from the leadership for a few weeks and then had to call again to ask for direction. The message he got was that the army should proceed with its plans; the government would catch up. It never did.
Public outcry against the depredations of the Tehreek-e-Nifaaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammedi Taliban in Malakand gave Kayani the popular support he needed. The proximate cause was the video of the Taliban whipping a young girl who was accused of adultery. Civil society wanted the army to move. It did, and rapidly, though it risked legal issues in handling the thousands of Taliban whom it captured and whom it suspected of perpetrating violence and cruelty on unarmed civilians less than 100 miles from the nation’s capital. The regular army was not well-trained in handling the sort of violence perpetrated on civilians and captured soldiers by the local Taliban and their supporters. It also was angry that captured militants often ended up being released by overburdened courts. They ended up keeping many militants in their own custody, as a result. There were reports of summary executions by the military, and a video surfaced at one point showing a Pakistani military unit firing squad killing blindfolded ‘insurgents’. The army denied this action. But the US embassy in Islamabad managed to identify the regiment involved in this action ‘within six hours’, according to a senior US embassy official, 70 and subsequently specific sanctions were placed on the unit involved. The US did not make a public issue of this matter to avoid problems with Congress at home at a time when Pakistan was needed for the egress from Afghanistan. I recall discussing with Gen. Kayani at that time that he and other senior officers could be in legal jeopardy for extrajudicial actions of their subordinate officers and soldiers. Sadly, the celebrated 12 Punjab Regiment was one of the formations accused by Human Rights Watch of having taken in to custody persons whose bullet-riddled bodies were later found in fields in Swat. 71
The army then sought legal cover for its counter-insurgency (COIN) operations. Zardari was happy to oblige.
In June 2011, President Zardari signed the ‘Action in Aid of Civil Power Regulation, 2011’, which provided a new framework for the detention of insurgents in the Federally and Provincially Administered Tribal Areas. This allowed the security forces to take, hold and process detainees captured during conflict. It also provided for detainees to be transferred to civilian custody for prosecution. But, despite calls by the prime minister to move forward, Pakistan’s legislature did not approve legislation aimed at strengthening its Anti-Terrorism Act. Meanwhile, the acquittal rate for terrorist cases remained as high as 85 per cent. 72 This led the military to pursue arbitrary actions against detainees, not all within the ambit of the law.
All this while, the government’s draft legislation on the introduction of a National Counter Terrorism Authority or NACTA sat in the Ministry of Interior. Its founding coordinator, Tariq Parvez, a highly trained and effective police officer, resigned in frustration following lack of resources from his ministry. He had also suggested that the NACTA be housed in the prime minister’s office so that it could be seen as a national entity in its coordination role that would include both civil and military institutions and the chief ministers of the four provinces of Pakistan. Rehman Malik, the Minister of Interior, wanted to play a key role in supervising NACTA. He offered to share an amended draft with me that made the prime minister the chairman, with the interior minister as vice chair, so that the interior minister would chair the meetings in the absence of the prime minister. I told him that this would not work from the first time that he chaired the meeting in the prime minister’s absence. This drafting legerdemain did not work for the military, among others, and the NACTA effectively lay dormant within the Interior Ministry. My own conversations with senior military and intelligence officials led me to believe that shifting the NACTA to the prime minister’s office could have elicited military participation and support at high levels. 73 The PPP government failed to move forward on this. It was left to the successor government of Prime Minister Sharif to try to revive the NACTA, but even that government failed to provide it the resources or the central location that would make it most effective. In the 2018–19 budget, for example, NACTA received only Rs 143 million as opposed to its request for over Rs 1.4 billion to implement its remit. 74
A government that was hamstrung by its coalition partners and survived crisis after crisis was tested by a series of events in 2011 that not only shook it to the core but also raised serious issues about the relationship with the US. Further, the army, which had regained its popularity after years of martial law as the most respected institution in the country, suffered a jolt to its reputation as its popularity dropped from a high approval rate of 86 per cent in 2009 to 77 per cent in 2012 (while still ranked number one), even as Army Chief Kayani trailed Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif in the popularity ratings of the Pew Poll. 75
Against this bleak backdrop, a silent drama unfolded as Kayani reached the end of his three-year term. He had begun receiving criticisms from friendly and hostile quarters related to his inability to launch a comprehensive operation against the Taliban and foreign fighters in FATA. Also, there were reports of preferential treatment of businesses with which his brothers were involved without proof of Kayani’s personal involvement in any of those deals. Reports circulated about Kayani himself building a real estate portfolio. 76 Most senior military officers invested in subsidized real estate on small monthly payments via the De
fence Housing Authorities (DHA) in different military cantonments. The plots increased enormously in value once the DHA colonies became fully operational, and army officers then sold them to take care of children’s weddings and education expenses. Even President Musharraf, who prided himself on his honesty, declared multiple plots when he took over in 1999. The military saw the DHAs as private entities even though serving General Officers Commanding (GOCs) of Divisions in cities that had DHAs and corps commanders had supervisory roles in their management.
Amid these rumours and innuendo, Kayani’s tenure was heading to its conclusion. Zardari saw an opportunity and used his prime minister to effectively ‘persuade’ Kayani to take a full-term three-year extension of his service as army chief till 2016. This caused much dyspepsia among senior officers in the army, who lost out on the chance to be considered for promotion to the two four-star positions that would result from vacation of the senior-most slots in the military on time. Pasha and Kayani also parted ways, as Kayani only got a one-year extension for Pasha at the helm of the ISI.
Ex post, and in the middle of another civil–military brouhaha, the prime minister offered to explain the circumstances surrounding these extensions:
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani . . . dispelled the impression of a government–military standoff when he announced on Monday the government had no intention to remove the Army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and DG ISI Lt. General (retd) Ahmad Shuja Pasha, terming the idea as ‘foolish’.
‘Generals are not removed in the middle of a war,’ he remarked and added that Kayani or Pasha had never asked for an extension last year, rather it was he who requested them to continue. ‘General Kayani is pro-democracy,’ the prime minister told a hurriedly-called news conference at the PM House. 77
The general may have been pro-democracy but not necessarily in favour of the Zardari government, as later events proved. Both Kayani and Pasha left a lasting effect on Pakistani politics and the army, way beyond their tenures, as the actions they took shaped the nature of the army’s and ISI’s response to domestic and regional crises.
2
Friends or Frenemies?
O’ What a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive
—Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field
by Sir Walter Scott, 1808 1
Pakistan’s internal battles, between the civil and the military, and against militancy and terror, were overshadowed by its failing ties with the US. The roller-coaster relationship between the US and Pakistan went through a number of highs and lows during the presidency of Barack Obama, marked by well-meaning attempts to create a new partnership in the region on the one hand and deep distrust of each other’s hidden aims and lack of clarity of long-term goals on the other. Equal parts mistrust and co-dependence marked this fraught relationship. And confusion on both sides, as different parts of the establishment in both Pakistan and the US struggled to be the main interlocutor with the other country.
In 2008, the US was still embroiled in a losing war in Afghanistan, as public opinion at home and casualties in the field were forcing it to consider an eventual withdrawal. Senator Barack Obama, one of the leading Democratic candidates for president, had called Afghanistan the ‘good war’ and the ‘war of necessity’, and decried the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq as a mistake and a big distraction from the Afghan theatre of war. But he vowed also to bring the troops home from Afghanistan. Pakistan both feared a vacuum inside Afghanistan if the US were to leave in a precipitate manner and blamed the US invasion and the presence of Coalition Forces as a stimulus for anti-Americanism and insurgency inside Pakistan. It also feared India’s growing economic and military ties with Afghanistan as a move to squeeze Pakistan between two hostile entities.
The people of Pakistan were confused by their government and military’s visible closeness to the Americans on the one hand and the continuous statements from their leaders against the US’s policies in the region as well as increasing US drone attacks inside Pakistani territory.
How Pakistanis View the United States
Source: Pew Global Survey 2009, Chapter 3, http://www.pewglobal.org/2009/08/13/chapter-3-attitudes-toward-the-united-states/
Over the period 2000–2009 the favourability rating of the US had never gone higher than 27 per cent, and that too was in 2006, after the US had helped Pakistan enormously with earthquake relief. In 2009, Pakistan, at 16 per cent favourable view of the US, rested near the bottom of the twenty-four countries surveyed by Pew. ‘Most Pakistanis consider the US an enemy, while only about one-in-ten say it is a partner. Distrust of American foreign policy runs deep, and few believe the US considers Pakistani interests when making policy decisions. Moreover, most think that American policy in South Asia favours Pakistan’s arch-rival India.’ 2
Yet, and this issue seemed to be overlooked by many news media and analysts of the Pew data, more than half of the Pakistanis surveyed wanted improved relations with the US. Little effort was devoted by Pew to unpacking the reasons behind this desire on the part of 53 per cent of the survey’s respondents in Pakistan. And it was unclear if US policymakers had even focused on leveraging this Pakistani majority that favoured better relations with their country.
Flashback to Aid that Worked
The answers to this might lie in a short step back into Pakistan’s recent history, when a massive 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck in northern Pakistan in 2005, destroying homes and villages in remote mountainous terrain, killing some 80,000 persons and leaving 4 million homeless. 3 Along with others, the US rushed to assist Pakistan in the earthquake relief effort. The US began the relief effort within thirty-six hours of the earthquake. Then Rear Admiral Michael ‘Mike’ LeFever was a strike force commander on his ship in the Persian Gulf, ferrying Marines to support the Iraqi elections in the Fallujah area. He received a call earlier in the day as they sailed through the Straits of Hormuz, asking him if he had watched the news of the earthquake in Pakistan. Six hours later, he got another call from his boss, Vice Admiral Dave Nichols: ‘Pack your bags. General Vessey (the US Army chief) just talked to Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker.’ 4 LeFever was on his way to Pakistan to do a damage-and-aid assessment.
According to LeFever, Amb. Crocker saw the disaster relief ‘as a strategic initiative to help Pakistan in their time of need . . . Normally, you are there for 60–90 days. We ended up being there for almost seven months.’ The US brought in 1,500 people, a MASH (mobile hospital) unit in Muzaffarabad, a Marine–Navy hospital up in the North West Frontier Province, a Seabee unit of 70–80 persons with its construction equipment, offloaded in Karachi and brought up-country. And helicopters. Initially some helicopters for ferrying relief workers and supplies came in from the war zone in Afghanistan. Later, some thirty helicopters were brought in from the US, and new big Sea Stallions and CH53s from Bahrain. Those thirty-four-odd helicopters, many of them Chinooks, flying seemingly endlessly and helping the people affected by the earthquake, came to be seen as ‘Angels of Mercy’ by the locals.
A young air force officer on his team, Eliot Evans (now a lieutenant colonel in the Delaware Air National Guard) recalls his own excitement on landing at Islamabad airport in Chaklala from his post at the Standing Joint Force Headquarters of the US Joint Forces Command at Norfolk Naval Station in the Hamptons Road region of Virginia. The JFC had been set up only a year earlier and assigned staff to the combatant commands, as needed. He and his naval officer colleagues, under US Navy Capt. Patrick Hall, had to put up their own tent, near other tents of the Red Crescent Society and other NGOs. The Japanese joined them shortly. They got to work immediately, to prepare for the arrival of equipment from the McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. In the meantime, they pitched in to offload supplies from Russia that arrived in large cargo aircraft, but, unlike the organized pallets of the US airlift, the Russians resorted to floor-loading the materials, and the Americans had to help organize the offloaded supplies.
Since it w
as Ramadan, Evans recalls he found it easier to join his Pakistani colleagues for pre-dawn breakfast or sehri. Capt. Hall had made him the liaison with local forces. Being with the Pakistanis at close quarters from that early morning hour allowed him to ‘collect whatever information I could get from Pakistan Army officers there to find out what supplies were needed most and what villages needed those supplies’. This unfettered access to each other and the urgency of the humanitarian task brought the Pakistani and American military personnel together in a way that no politician could have imagined. 5 And it led to Evans volunteering to return to Pakistan later when floods struck the country in 2010.
LeFever had also created a blue baseball-style cap, with the US and Pakistani flags and ‘Team Pakistan’ embroidered on the peak, for his earthquake relief effort. 6 LeFever called this ‘one of the most rewarding events in my career, to be able to help so many’. The key to the success of this mission in his mind was threefold: ‘support Pakistan in its time of need, improve US–Pak relations and provide humanitarian relief.’ There were no strings attached to this aid. Pakistanis dealt directly with Americans. And the locals benefited directly from the US presence. Clearly this formula worked.