The Battle for Pakistan

by Shuja Nawaz

  There were also debates on the US side about the nature of assistance to be given to Pakistan. Feldman said that Holbrooke favoured ‘big signature projects’, more infrastructure. Holbrooke’s view was, ‘Let’s get more credit for what we’re doing. Let’s be up there.’ And his vision was, ‘Let’s build another iconic Tarbela [dam] for the twenty-first century. Turns out, Congress doesn’t like big projects like that any more; they become big White Elephants. The US isn’t equipped to undertake it . . . So it became more focused on core priority areas; energy being the first one, then some infrastructure, like roads, and economic stabilization programs.’ It also shifted to more traditional health and education programmes, leaning towards capacity-building rather than hospitals and school buildings. Feldman recalled a frustrated Holbrooke yelling for more signature projects in his meeting with USAID officials. ‘Alex Thier will tell you he was the last person that Holbrooke yelled at before he died!’ 25 Thier, an old Afghan hand who had developed strong relationships with Pakistan too, was a lawyer who was working as an assistant to USAID Administrator Raj Shah on Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at that time. 26

  Holbrooke may have been right. The sustaining symbols of US direct or indirect help for Pakistan in the past had been the signature projects like the Mangla and Tarbela dams and universities. No longer were such projects on the USAID drawing board.

  One of the most thoughtful analysts of the Afghanistan and Pakistan scenes in Washington DC remained Andrew Wilder, whose parents were Presbyterian missionaries in Pakistan for forty years (first at Gordon College, Rawalpindi, my alma mater, and then in Lyallpur/Faisalabad; his grandparents were missionaries in south India also). He speaks Urdu, the national language of Pakistan; that immediately gave him a leg up. Wilder offered me a detailed and insightful critique of USAID that may not appeal to his Washington audience or even the Pakistani establishment elite. But it is borne out by my own experience:

  Three factors . . . have undermined the effectiveness of USAID programs during the past couple of decades. The first is the assumption that humanitarian and development assistance is an effective tool to ‘win hearts and minds’ and promote stabilization. Security considerations have understandably always influenced USG assistance levels to Pakistan . . . But while levels of assistance were affected by perceived national security interests, it was not until the past 10–15 years that there was an explicit belief in the power of development initiatives themselves to promote COIN or stabilization objectives, or in the case of KLB [Kerry–Lugar–Berman bill] to help ‘win hearts and minds’ in Pakistan . . . But there was very little evidence that shows that aid is an effective tool to achieve these objectives, and indeed considerable evidence that development assistance can in fact be destabilizing. In my view, a major factor that has undermined the effectiveness of US assistance efforts in Pakistan in recent years is that we set development projects up to fail because they are judged by the extent to which they buy stability and/or popularity—where they have consistently fallen short—rather than achieving development objectives—where they have often achieved some success.

  A second factor that has undermined the effectiveness of USAID is that it has been pressured into becoming a contracting organization more than a development organization. In the 1960s–1980s USAID had many more sectoral experts with hands-on experience designing and implementing programs in the field, and much more country-specific expertise. This meant that there was much more practical field experience and many more opportunities to develop relationships with key host-nation officials and partners. Over time USAID budget cutbacks along with security considerations forced it into becoming a much more bureaucratic institution focusing on contracting beltway bandits to implement programs that were increasingly designed by USAID officials with less and less familiarity with the countries and issues with which they were working.

  The third factor . . . is infatuation with ‘metrics’ for measuring impact, which for some reason are considered much more rigorous if they are quantitative rather than qualitative. [This] can often result in the tail wagging the dog, with projects implemented because their impact is measurable (e.g., kilometers of roads built in FATA) rather than effective in achieving positive development outcomes. The multiple levels of bureaucracy created to ensure greater accountability has created a much more risk-averse environment that can easily smother the creativity and innovation that are essential to identifying more effective ways to address the daunting development challenges in countries like Pakistan.

  Wilder simply does not criticize, he also offered me a succinct cure for what ails USAID:

  The root causes of the increasingly ineffective delivery of US development assistance is due to the incentive structures for bureaucracies back in DC. This is where we need more studies done, but even these are unlikely to change the policymaking processes and bureaucratic structures needed to make development assistance more effective as there’s not a strong enough political constituency to prioritize reform of US foreign assistance policies and mechanisms. Development assistance in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, is really only valued by many policymakers if it is justified in terms of promoting security interests rather than improving development indicators. Aid bureaucracies in aid agencies therefore justify what they do in terms of promoting ‘stabilization’ and security, even if most of our development efforts aren’t successful in achieving these objectives. In the current security-centric environment it’s hard to see this change to a point where development assistance is valued for achieving development objectives, where there is more of a proven track record of success. We therefore often set development assistance up to fail by expecting it to achieve something it’s not very effective at doing—but it’s hard seeing that changing anytime soon.

  We also know that longer tours of duties where key development (and diplomatic and military) officials can get to know the local contexts and form relationships would also strengthen the effectiveness of our development (diplomatic and military) efforts, but we nevertheless still only assign US officials for one, or if we’re lucky, two-year assignments. We also know that ‘Use it or lose it’ budgeting mechanisms create perverse incentives to spend money quickly and often ineffectively, rather than reward more prudent budgeting based on identified needs, absorptive capacities, changing circumstances, etc . . . These are just some of the examples of very well-known problems that undermine the effectiveness of USAID and other foreign assistance funding, but despite billions of dollars being spent (and often wasted) in contexts like Pakistan and Afghanistan there is still not sufficient political will to prioritize a foreign assistance reform agenda. 27

  The trouble in Washington was that there were few takers for such longer-term and thoughtful approaches. Everyone, from policymakers in each administration to lawmakers on the Hill, wanted that elusive Magic Key to fix the relationship and transform the losing war in Afghanistan into a victory. They knew that the US–Pakistan relationship was in trouble. Almost every time I testified on the Hill, the chair would ask me what that single thing was that we could do to transform it. My response that it was not a linear but a multivariate equation did not satisfy. The only time I seemed to connect with a House committee was when I quoted the Beatles by saying that ‘Money can’t buy you love!’ or when my friend Ambassador Cameron Munter invoked the Tina Turner Doctrine: ‘What’s love got to do with it?’

  Meanwhile on the Pakistani Side . . .

  Adding to the difficulty was the incapacity of the Pakistani civilian establishment, especially following the devolution of powers from the federation to the provinces, to manage development assistance and projects. The Ministry of Finance was keen on aid and other financial flows as a means of resolving some of its Balance of Payments difficulties. Its Economic Affairs Division (EAD) was supposed to be the key liaison with donors. But other than being a post office of sorts, over the years it had not developed the expertise or the mechanisms to track and critically
review appropriations, disbursements or expenditures, especially at the provincial level. Even today, its website offers little clue on the quantum and distribution of aid within Pakistan or project specific information. (USAID’s updated website is a bit more useful but it does not track projects transparently.) Neither the Ministry of Finance nor the EAD has shown any ability related to convening of development economists and project managers from the provinces to better coordinate the development programme and thereby create a useful feedback loop for the Planning Commission. 28 Parliament, in the meantime, slept its way through the whole process, instead of exercising its right to oversee and question economic policy and development policy and administration.

  The Ministry of Finance and EAD also do not have a clear strategy for economic development, largely because that is seen to be the remit of the Planning Commission. These two ministries are often at odds. As a result, the criticism often levelled at Pakistan is that its development agenda is driven by donors.

  Some of the most scathing critiques have emanated from a former head of the Planning Commission and former IMF official Nadeem ul Haque. In his blog entitled ‘Development 2.0’, he takes a verbal scythe to both Pakistani and US aid bureaucracies:

  Inept leadership, perpetually looking for shortcuts has been begging for aid for most of our history. The result: problems and debt both pile up while donors do all manner of experiment here and leave a mess behind . . .

  They give huge contracts—100s of million dollars—to so called contractors—firms of friends and retired aid officials . . . With so much failure around them, donors are quick to reinvent their narrative. Of course the blame is all on the locals who are seen as corrupt, inept and stupid. 29

  He then goes on to level the oft-repeated charge that much of USAID funds go back to the so-called Beltway Bandits in Washington DC or to other NGOs inside Pakistan. Gottleib pushed back on some of these criticisms. The USAID website actually gives the details of US firms that have been given money for projects in Pakistan. But, Gottleib maintains, NGOs like Save the Children ‘had about 2,000 people nationwide in Pakistan and they had only one expatriate. She was a Pakistani with a British passport.’ Both sides deserve criticism. The US for having focused overly on the use of aid as a quid pro quo for political support in different parts of the world, and Pakistan for failing to wean itself off the aid dependency that trapped short-sighted governments.

  Kerry–Lugar–Berman

  For much of the Obama presidency, Kerry–Lugar–Berman became a familiar name, often abbreviated to KLB. A programme for the provision of $7.5 billion in assistance to Pakistan over a period of five years was actually called The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009. Officially known in Senate parlance as S.1707, this act became better known as the Kerry–Lugar–Berman Act. Congress passed it on 15 October 2010. It authorized the release of $1.5 billion per year to the Pakistan as civilian aid over 2010–14. The formal proposal came from Senators John Kerry (Democrat-Massachusetts) and Richard Lugar (Republican-Indiana). What made it significant was that it signalled a major shift in foreign aid to Pakistan, and it effectively tripled the civilian aid given to the country. Democratic congressman Howard Berman, whose name was attached to the bill that the president signed into law on 15 October 2009, had produced his own version of the bill that was merged into the much-shorter Senate version over time and became S.1707.

  The genesis of this bill can be traced back to the efforts of then Senator Joe Biden, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden had been deeply involved in the South Asian region and the war in Afghanistan, especially after the US invasion of Afghanistan. Speaking on 28 January 2004 at the Hearing of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (CFR) on ‘India–Pakistan: Steps toward Rapprochement’, Biden praised the recent meeting in Islamabad of Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. They were attempting to change the dialogue between the two adversaries from war to peace:

  If a lasting peace does arrive this time, it will not come in by leaps and bounds, but by a series of careful, measured steps. Steps that are no less courageous for all their care and measure.

  A lasting peace must be a peace with honor, one in which all sides are winners. The people of India and Pakistan, and Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control, must feel as if their aspirations and their security considerations are fully recognized.

  A lasting peace can be facilitated by the United States and other nations, but it cannot be imposed by any outside power. The only peace that will survive will be one forged and negotiated by the parties themselves. 30

  Biden had a bold plan—much bolder than the one that President George W. Bush had presented to Congress. That day he laid the ground for that plan by declaring:

  We in the United States must indeed be prepared to facilitate such a peace. It is in our own national interest, and the interest of the world community. Even if the spectre of nuclear weapons were not part of the equation, the threat of war in South Asia would be a prospect too dangerous to be ignored.

  What can we do to help? That depends what the parties themselves request. India and Pakistan have pledged to reopen bus service between the two main cities in divided Kashmir, and there are suggestions that this will be merely the first step towards more entry points and softer borders. Perhaps we can help with technical assistance, and the expertise we’ve gained from managing thousand-mile borders to our north and our south.

  President Bush has pledged a $3 billion aid package to Pakistan, to be spread over the coming five years. We in Congress will have to consider this proposal very carefully. Questions we’ll have to consider include:

  – Is this the right figure?

  – Should any conditions be attached?

  – Is the mix of aid proposed by the President—half for military aid, half for nonmilitary—the right ratio?

  This last question is, perhaps, the most important. A Task Force of the Council on Foreign Relations has proposed shifting the ratio from 1:1 to 1:2—that is, keeping the overall aid figure stable, but doubling the percentage that goes for such things as schools and hospitals. 31

  Biden had invited three members of that CFR Task Force, Amb. Frank Wisner, Stephen Cohen of Brookings and Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center, to meet him and his colleagues. The ensuing discussion helped Biden work with his Republican colleague Senator Richard Lugar to come up with what they called the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act 2008. This was designed to further US interests at a ‘discount’, as Pakistani commentator Mosharraf Zaidi later put it. Coming in at $8.72 per Pakistani, compared with $353 per Iraqi, $114 per Afghan and $22 per Egyptian (no longer denizens of a frontline state in a conflict zone). But there were also certification requirements that the administration would have to satisfy for Congress before monies could be disbursed each year.

  Senator Biden’s main drafter was Jonah Blank, who was the policy adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on South Asia and the Near East. Blank, a PhD from Harvard, had extensive first-hand knowledge of the subcontinent. He had lived in Mumbai while studying the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community that led to a book Mullahs on the Mainframe. 32 He learned Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, and Hindi and Gujarati, the language of the Bohras. He also lived in Lahore, while studying Urdu. His aim in coming up with the new legislation was to provide a broad framework for a new US–Pakistan relationship that gave the US Congress some control over how the administration would implement the aid programme. Hence the front-loaded requirements for certification by administration officials. The final draft was relatively concise, but Biden and Blank had not taken into account the bigger size of the House of Representatives and the many different views on how Pakistan needed to be corralled, even while the US was attempting to recast its relationship with a country that many considered a sometime ‘ally’.

  The lead on the House side went to Congressman Berman. His principal South Asia expert wa
s Jasmeet Ahuja, of Sikh parentage, fluent in both Hindi and Punjabi, who knew South Asia very well and had worked closely with Pakistan. She oversaw the sale of the F-16s to Pakistan as well as parts for its different weapons systems. Ahuja was a Stanford graduate who had also worked on her undergraduate and honours’ thesis on the birth of India and Pakistan at the University of Oxford (UK), then worked in the Pentagon, and subsequently at the State Department. She had travelled frequently to Pakistan, building relationships there, before being hired by Congressman Berman to become his South Asia adviser. She also had a close relationship with Pakistani officials, being their point of contact on the Hill. These included the Pakistan ambassador in Washington DC, Husain Haqqani.

  Haqqani, who also maintained very close relations with Blank, had a direct line to President Asif Ali Zardari. Haqqani was walking the fine line between representing the wide national interests on the one hand, and the sometime competing viewpoints of the Pakistani military and the civilian president on the other. This led to the widespread perception in some Pakistani quarters that he had been complicit in the front-loading of the certification requirements that became part of the bill to aid Pakistan.

  Biden’s wishes could not be fulfilled. The 110th Congress ran out of time as a new election took place in November 2008. President Bush was replaced by President Obama, and Biden moved on to become vice-president, taking with him his foreign policy adviser Anthony Blinken. Blank was left behind to continue to shepherd the Biden–Lugar bill that later became KLB, as Senator John Kerry took over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Blank was later to leave the Hill to join the RAND Corporation. Blinken went on to become an influential senior official in President Obama’s White House, as the Deputy NSA, and then Deputy Secretary of State.