[Senate Hearing 108-698]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-698
PAKISTAN: BALANCING REFORM AND COUNTERTERRORISM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 14, 2004
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio BARBARA BOXER, California
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BILL NELSON, Florida
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire Virginia
JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Staff Director
Antony J. Blinken, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware, opening
statement...................................................... 33
Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening
statement...................................................... 1
Nasr, Dr. Vali R., professor, Department of National Security
Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA............... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 12
Schaffer, Hon. Teresita C., South Asia Program Director, Center
for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC........ 2
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Weinbaum, Dr. Marvin G., Scholar-in-Residence, Middle East
Institute, Washington, DC...................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 21
(iii)
PAKISTAN: BALANCING REFORM AND COUNTERTERRORISM
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2004
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met at 9:34 a.m., in room SD-419, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar (chairman of the
committee), presiding.
Present: Senators Lugar, Chafee, Biden, and Bill Nelson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR RICHARD G. LUGAR, CHAIRMAN
The Chairman. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee is called to order.
The Foreign Relations Committee meets today for an
important discussion on Pakistan, a key ally of the United
States in the global war on terrorism. Pakistan's efforts
against terrorists within its borders, its stewardship of its
own nuclear arsenal, and its relations with other nations in
the region are critical to global security. The commitment of
the U.S. Government to provide Pakistan with $3 billion in
assistance over 5 years is a measure of Pakistan's importance
to our own national security objectives.
President Musharraf faces immense challenges in rooting out
extremism and putting Pakistan on a stable path toward economic
development and democracy. He has called for modernization and
conciliation across the Islamic world to reverse the spread of
terrorist influences and movements. Pakistan has improved its
economic performance over the last 2 years and increased
spending on health and education.
To be fully successful, Pakistan's efforts at reform and
modernization will require broad-based participation by the
Pakistani people. Institutional checks and balances, along with
accountability and transparency, are important elements needed
for long-term stability in Pakistan. The international
community and the United States should support reforms and
contribute to the strengthening of Pakistani civilian
institutions.
Pakistan's stability also is intricately tied to the
pursuit of peace with India through comprehensive negotiations.
For many years, Pakistan's conflict with India has sapped its
resources and distracted its attention from reducing poverty
and enhancing its economic potential. The United States has
strongly encouraged Pakistan and India to continue their dialog
in the issues that divide them. The 8-month cease-fire along
the Line of Control in Kashmir is the longest such cease-fire
in more than a decade. This progress, coupled with the nuclear
confidence-building measures, to which both sides agreed last
month, could help build momentum for a more permanent and more
deeply-rooted strategic stabilization of South Asia.
The substantial increase in United States assistance for
Pakistan is intended to help Pakistan meet these challenges. We
must think carefully about how we balance military and economic
assistance to promote security, development, strengthened
democratic institutions, and improved education. Military
assistance provides communications, firepower, and mobility,
three capabilities that are essential to the Pakistani army's
efforts to track down and apprehend al-Qaeda operatives. U.S.
economic and technical assistance programs support social
sector development, particularly in areas like education
reform.
In August 2002, USAID signed a 5-year $100 million grant
agreement with the Government of Pakistan to support reform of
the public education system, with emphasis on early childhood
and teacher education. Currently only 42 percent of Pakistani
children between the ages of 5 and 9 are enrolled in school,
and less than half of these children complete 5 years of
schooling. The failing public education system in Pakistan has
prompted many parents to send their children to madrassahs,
religious schools. Some of these schools incite violence and
serve as a breeding ground for terrorists. The Pakistan
Government has taken some steps to address the problem
surrounding the religious schools, but much more needs to be
done.
Today we welcome a distinguished panel to help us review
the status of U.S.-Pakistan relations and to assess the
Pakistan Government's efforts to combat terrorism and implement
reforms. With us are Ms. Teresita Schaffer, the South Asia
Program Director of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies; Dr. Vali Nasr, Professor of Middle East and South Asia
Politics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,
California; and Dr. Marvin Weinbaum from the Middle East
Institute.
We look forward to the insights of each of these witnesses.
We welcome them to the committee table today as they propose
recommendations for United States policy toward Pakistan.
Let me mention that the distinguished ranking member
Senator Biden's train is due in shortly. It has been delayed.
When Senator Biden arrives, I will recognize him for his
opening statement.
But for the moment, we will proceed with the testimony of
our witnesses, and we look forward to their testimony. I will
ask you to testify in the order I introduced you. That would
be, first of all, Ms. Teresita Schaffer. Would you please
proceed.
STATEMENT OF HON. TERESITA C. SCHAFFER, SOUTH ASIA PROGRAM
DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Ambassador Schaffer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
for inviting me to share my views with the committee.
This discussion of Pakistan is both timely and important.
Policy toward Pakistan has always attracted more than its share
of controversy, in part because of the heavy list of U.S.
interests that are in play and in part because of the internal
stresses that have affected Pakistan over the years.
I believe that the United States needs to adopt a
comprehensive strategy toward Pakistan or we risk failing in
all of our objectives. Focusing primarily on one goal, even a
vitally important one like counter-terrorism, is a false choice
because the issues we face in Pakistan are so intimately
connected. I recommend that we use our assistance and our
diplomatic leverage in three predominant ways.
First, generous economic assistance, most of it
specifically programmed toward the rebuilding of Pakistan's
institutions rather than in cash.
Second, a security relationship conditioned on a Pakistani
foreign policy compatible with U.S. security interests.
And third, an active diplomatic posture, encouraging India
and Pakistan to work toward robust nuclear risk reduction and a
durable settlement.
I will go through each of these elements in turn, but first
let me set the context.
The United States has extraordinarily ambitious hopes and
objectives in Pakistan.
First, combating terrorism. We seek to put out of business
the terrorist organizations that have operated from Pakistan
and Afghanistan.
Second, maintaining peace in the region, eliminating if
possible the risk that two nuclear-armed rivals, Pakistan and
India, will go to war, providing support for a durable peace
process, and helping Pakistan and Afghanistan rebuild a decent
relationship.
Third, ending nuclear transfers, trying to ensure that
Pakistan's nuclear assets and know-how are not transferred, and
that the nuclear bazaar maintained by Pakistani scientist, A.Q.
Khan, is fully revealed and disabled.
And fourth, rebuilding Pakistan's political institutions
which are the foundation of any kind of decent government and
certainly of any kind of democratic government, which I believe
is what most Pakistanis want.
This is a heavy agenda, which the United States has
attempted to deal with by policy triage and by focusing on the
personal leadership of President Musharraf. In practice, high
level dialog between Pakistan and the United States has been
dominated by the anti-terrorism issue.
Both the triage and the personal focus are, I believe,
flawed concepts. By focusing such a high percentage of our
dialog on anti-terrorism, I fear we are leaving Pakistan with
the impression that as long as it satisfies the most urgent
U.S. demands on the anti-terrorism front, the United States
will look the other way if our policies diverge in other areas.
We have already seen that this really is not true. A crisis in
India-Pakistan relations, as happened in 2002 or a crisis on
nuclear transfers, as happened late last year, quickly brings
these issues to the top of the United States' to-do list.
More importantly, triage neglects the connections among the
issues on the U.S. agenda. If we really want to help Pakistan
to dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, we have to help
Pakistan deal with the other ramifications of that terrorist
infrastructure in Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations and we
have to address the connections between India-Pakistan rivalry
and the nuclear issue.
I also believe that the U.S. tendency to build its policy
around the person of President Musharraf is a mistake. Clearly
leaders are important, especially in troubled times. My
argument is that we need to have a broader base to our policy.
President Musharraf is certainly important, but we need to act
as if the institutions in Pakistan, including the parliament
and the elected government, are important, even on those
occasions when Musharraf acts as if they are not.
This brings me back to the U.S. strategy for dealing with
Pakistan. A comprehensive strategy, which is what I am
recommending, would have many elements to it, but I would like
to address three that are intimately connected to issues the
Congress will be asked to vote on.
The first is economic assistance. The administration has
requested a total of $350 million in economic assistance for
the coming fiscal year when you combine ESF and DA. It proposes
to provide $200 million of that in cash, or debt relief, which
is the equivalent, and the remainder under specific programs. I
believe that two-thirds rather than half of the U.S. ESF
package--that would be $400 million in ESF plus the planned $50
million in DA--should be devoted to economic assistance, and
that at least $250 million per year should be programmed, half
of it for activities that rebuild Pakistan's institutions and
its educational system. This economic assistance, I would
argue, should be provided without foreign policy conditions.
Which institutions am I talking about rebuilding? I would
start with the judiciary, the civil service, the police, and
the institutions that administer water and power. Financial
support will make institutional reform an even more attractive
option than it already is for the government.
These are the institutions on which any kind of decent
government depends. Without institutions, there really is no
possibility of democratic government. You can have elections,
but you will have no counterweight to the power of the
Presidency in between elections. Therefore, institutional
rebuilding, to my way of thinking, is the best way and the only
serious way to structure a democracy policy. It will not bring
democracy soon, but it is the only chance of helping democracy
grow over time.
On education, I know you will hear from the other witnesses
on this subject. I would like to put in a plea for rebuilding
Pakistan's public schools rather than strictly focusing on
madrassah reform. If you want to ask me more details about
that, I will be happy to answer questions.
Pakistan today is in better economic shape than it has been
in many years. But two ingredients are still needed for a
healthy economic environment. One of these is increased
investment in productive capacity, and the other is increased
social spending. Both are currently very low by international
standards despite the verbal understandings between the U.S.
and Pakistani Governments on how our cash assistance should be
spent. This is to my mind another reason to try to program more
of our assistance.
The second strategic element I wish to discuss is a
security relationship. Both the nature of Pakistan's problems
and the historical role of its military make it essential to
keep up active communication between their military and ours
and a serious dialog between our two governments on security
issues. Pakistan has a longstanding sense of insecurity,
stemming from its rivalry with a much larger neighbor. Its
friends need to take that seriously.
But the United States should be selective about military
supply. Pakistan has real security needs, but it has also
periodically undertaken reckless policies that were strongly
contrary to U.S. interests. The incursion into Kargil 5 years
ago is a case in point. So is Pakistan's unwillingness to
abandon the option of returning to active support for the
Kashmir insurgency. Therefore, I would argue that the U.S.
supply of major weapons systems should proceed only if we are
confident that Pakistan's foreign and security policy is
compatible with U.S. interests.
The third element to U.S. policy, an active diplomacy on
India-Pakistan peace, is the other side of that coin. Happily,
as you noted, Mr. Chairman, India and Pakistan have now resumed
an active dialog and they have basically restored their
bilateral relations to about where they were before the bombing
of the Indian parliament in December 2001.
I hope that the coming months will see real decisions by
India and Pakistan, to create some visible successes in the
short term and to lay the groundwork for peace in the longer
term. Two great places to start would be by opening the road
between the two parts of Kashmir, something that both sides say
they want to do, and by negotiating an electric grid connection
between the two parts of Kashmir and effectively between India
and Pakistan, a much more ambitious goal.
Another useful early step would be to strengthen the risk-
reduction measures that India and Pakistan have agreed on from
time to time. I was delighted that the Indian and Pakistani
foreign secretaries agreed last month to strengthen the hot
lines between the two countries, both at the military level and
between themselves, between the two foreign secretaries.
Let me diverge for just a moment to tell the committee
about an interesting exercise that I participated in earlier
this year. My colleague Bob Einhorn from CSIS organized three
meetings with a distinguished group of former military
officers, civilian officials, and academics from India and
Pakistan and a small team of Americans to see whether the
concept of nuclear risk reduction centers could be adapted to
be a useful mechanism for India and Pakistan. The group
concluded that the model used by the United States and Russia
was not suitable, but that a new communications mechanism would
be useful. In their concept, the mechanism would provide a
dedicated, secure means of doing three things: first, each side
notifying the other about activities or events on its territory
that might be misperceived or misinterpreted, leading to
conflict; second, exchanging information that the two countries
are obliged to exchange under existing security agreements; and
third, seeking and receiving clarifications about ambiguous
events on the territory of the other. The group also concluded
that the infrastructure in the region could support such a
mechanism for a relatively modest cost.
The Indian and Pakistani members of the group shared our
report with their respective governments, and it is now up to
those governments to decide whether these ideas are useful.
Coming back to U.S. policy, my key point is that the United
States needs to be actively, strategically, and discreetly
involved in helping India and Pakistan move their peace process
forward. The new government in India will need some time to
figure out how it is comfortable interacting with the United
States on this sensitive issue, but I remain convinced that a
serious and sophisticated U.S. diplomatic effort will be very
important to the success of this enterprise.
Let me conclude with a thought about hyphenation, or
linkage between our relations with India and Pakistan. The
United States has, as far back as I can remember, tried to
avoid treating India and Pakistan policy as if they were joined
at the hip. That is a proper goal, but frankly both India and
Pakistan make it hard to achieve. They relentlessly keep score
on U.S. affections. Each of them ultimately needs to understand
that a close tie with Washington is not going to diminish
American ties with the other. That is a tough message
particularly for Pakistan. Pakistan is understandably
suspicious about the blossoming of U.S.-Indian relations in the
last few years, the more so because they have had doubts for
decades about the reliability of their ties to the United
States. The strategy I suggest here is in no way incompatible
with the expansion of U.S.-India ties, which I consider to be
one of the key elements of U.S. policy toward Asia. In short,
we have to do both.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Schaffer follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Teresita C. Schaffer
u.s. strategy in pakistan: high stakes, heavy agenda
Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to share my views with the
Committee. Your discussion of Pakistan is timely and important.
Pakistan's future matters profoundly to the United States. Policy
toward Pakistan has always attracted more than its share of
controversy, in part because of the heavy list of U.S. interests that
are in play, and in part because of the internal stresses that have
affected Pakistan over the years.
I believe that the United States needs to adopt a comprehensive
strategy toward Pakistan, or risk failing in all of our objectives.
Focusing primarily on one goal, even a vitally important one like
counter-terrorism, is a false choice, because the issues we face in
Pakistan are so intimately connected. I recommend that we use our
assistance and our diplomatic leverage in three ways:
Generous economic assistance, most of it specifically
programmed toward the rebuilding of Pakistan's institutions
rather than in cash;
A security relationship conditioned on a Pakistani foreign
policy compatible with U.S. security interests; and
An active diplomatic posture, encouraging India and Pakistan
to work toward robust nuclear risk reduction and a durable
settlement.
I will go through each of these elements in turn, but first, let me
set the context.
The United States has extraordinarily ambitious hopes and
objectives in Pakistan.
Combating terrorism: The United States seeks to put out of
business the terrorist organizations that have operated from
Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as the organizations that
have given them support and sanctuary. I'm referring chiefly to
Al Qaeda and their supporters in the Taliban, but also to
radical militant organizations that have established a base in
Pakistan.
Maintaining peace in the region: The United States wants to
reduce and if possible eliminate the risk that the two nuclear-
armed rivals, Pakistan and India, will go to war, and to
provide appropriate support for a durable peace process. It
also wants Pakistan and Afghanistan to build a constructive
relationship, despite their complicated history.
Ending nuclear transfers: The United States seeks to ensure
that Pakistan's nuclear assets and know-how are not transferred
outside of Pakistan, and that the nuclear bazaar maintained by
Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan is fully revealed and fully
disabled.
Rebuilding Pakistan's political and economic institutions:
Finally, the United States wants to help Pakistan restore the
health of its institutions, and move toward sustainable,
effective, and decent government. I believe that this means
democratic government, and that this is what most Pakistanis
want, but I do not believe that full democratic government will
happen soon.
This is a heavy agenda, which the United States has attempted to
deal with by ``policy triage'' and by focusing on the personal
leadership of President Musharraf. In practice, high-level dialogue
between Pakistan and the United States has been dominated by the anti-
terrorism issue, and the U.S. government has looked on Musharraf
personally as the man who needed to deliver Pakistan.
Both these concepts are flawed. By focusing such a high percentage
of our dialogue on anti-terrorism, I fear we are leaving Pakistan with
the impression that as long as Pakistan satisfies the most urgent U.S.
demands on the anti-terrorism front, the United States will look the
other way if our policies diverge with respect to relations with India,
nuclear transfers, or Pakistan's internal rebuilding efforts. We have
already seen that a crisis in India-Pakistan relations (as happened in
2002) or on nuclear transfers (as happened late last year) can quickly
bring these issues to the top of the U.S. ``to do'' list.
More importantly, ``triage'' neglects the connections among the
issues on the U.S. agenda. Pakistan's long-standing hostile
relationship with India and its grievances over India's possession of
the most important parts of Kashmir have led it to support armed
insurgency in Kashmir. It has maintained a substantial extremist
infrastructure within Pakistan, one that has come to threaten President
Musharraf's life. But even this threat has not led Pakistan to
dismantle that infrastructure, because of the links between these
extremists and Pakistan's yearning to change the status quo in Kashmir.
In other words, if we really want Pakistan to dismantle the terrorist
infrastructure, we have to help Pakistan deal with its other
ramifications, in Kashmir and in India-Pakistan relations, and we have
to address the ties between India-Pakistan rivalry and the nuclear
commerce conducted out of Pakistan.
I also believe that the U.S. tendency to build its policy around
the person of President Musharraf is a mistake. Clearly, leaders are
important, especially in troubled times. President Musharraf dominates
the power structure in Pakistan, and many of his decisions have been
helpful to the United States. My argument is that we need to have a
broader base to our policy. He is not the only person who matters,
especially if one believes, as I do, that Pakistan's ability to face
down its internal extremists ultimately depends on its ability to
rebuild viable political and economic institutions. We need to act as
if these institutions mattered, even when President Musharraf does not.
This brings me back to the U.S. strategy for dealing with Pakistan.
A comprehensive strategy would have many elements to it, but I would
like to address three that are intimately connected to issues the
Congress will be asked to vote on.
First, economic assistance. The administration has requested $350
million in economic assistance for FY 2005 under ESF and DA. It
proposes to provide $200 million of that in cash and the remainder
under specific programs. I believe that two-thirds rather than half of
the total U.S. assistance package--that would be $400 million in ESF
plus the planned $50 million in DA--should be devoted to economic
assistance, and that at least $250 million per year should be
programmed, half of it for activities that rebuild Pakistan's
institutions and its educational system. This economic assistance
should be provided without foreign policy conditions. Pakistan's
economic recovery and institutional rebuilding are profoundly important
to the United States, and helping them should be a central element in
U.S. policy.
Which institutions? I would start with the judiciary, the civil
service, the police, and the institutions that administer water and
power. The Pakistan government has tried to make a start by reforming
the Central Board of Revenue, their equivalent of the I.R.S. The effort
was incomplete but shows that there is an interest in this type of
reform, and plenty of talent available to devise a reform program. The
possibility of significant financial support would make institutional
reform an even more attractive option. Other reform targets include
political institutions, including the parliament and provincial
governments.
These are the institutions on which any kind of decent government
depends. If, as I firmly believe, Pakistan's military-dominated
government has become an important part of its domestic problems, the
solution has to involve developing robust institutions that can
eventually stand up to the power of the military and the presidency.
This is, to my mind, the way to structure a serious democracy policy.
It will not bring democracy soon, but it is the only approach that has
a chance of helping democracy grow over time.
A word about education. I'm sure the other witnesses will have
words of wisdom on the effort to reform madrassahs. This is an enormous
task, which may be beyond the capability of Pakistan's Education
Ministry. I would like to put in a plea for rebuilding Pakistan's
public schools. The schools themselves exist. They need staffing,
supervision, books, equipment, and repairs. A couple of dedicated NGO's
have taken on the task of mobilizing corporate philanthropy to
``adopt'' non-functioning schools, restore them, and run them. This
type of effort is likely to have a quicker payoff and a better chance
at the institutional support it needs.
Economic assistance is also supposed to help the economy grow.
Pakistan today is in better economic shape than it has been in many
years. But two ingredients are still needed for a healthy economic
environment. One is increased investment, initially by Pakistanis and
eventually, one hopes, by foreigners as well. Pakistan last year
devoted only 16.5 percent of its GDP to investment in productive
enterprises. This is abysmally low by international standards. More
importantly, it cannot begin to provide jobs for Pakistan's rapidly
growing working age population. Underemployed young people are ripe for
recruitment into terrorism and other anti-social activities.
The other needed element is increased social investment. In
principle, our cash aid has been conditioned on increased allocations
to health and education. In practice, this has had relatively little
effect. Budget expenditures on health and nutrition have risen from 0.7
to 0.84 percent of gross domestic product, but spending on education is
virtually unchanged as a share of GDP since 1998, and is well below the
level of 1995 (1.8 percent, compared with 2.8 percent in 1995). The
ineffectiveness of this effort to encourage a reallocation of
Pakistan's resources based on a handshake is a powerful argument for
programming a higher share of our economic assistance.
The second strategic element I wish to discuss is a security
relationship. Both the nature of Pakistan's problems and the historical
role of its military make it essential to keep up active communication
between their military and ours, and a serious dialogue between the two
governments on security issues. Pakistan has a long-standing sense of
insecurity stemming from its rivalry with a much larger neighbor; its
friends need to take that seriously.
But the United States should be selective about military supply.
For many years we provided generous military supply on the theory that
a robust conventional force would reduce Pakistan's perceived need to
depend on nuclear weapons. There is something to that argument, but it
is also true that Pakistan has periodically undertaken reckless
policies that were strongly contrary to U.S. interests. The incursion
into Kargil is a case in point; so is Pakistan's unwillingness to
abandon the option of returning to active support for the Kashmir
insurgency. Because the possibility of war between South Asia's two
nuclear rivals is a major issue for the U.S., I believe that U.S.
supply of major weapons systems should only proceed if we are confident
that Pakistan's foreign and security policy is compatible with U.S.
interests. Some of the items Pakistan would like to buy, such as the F-
16 aircraft that were denied it in 1990 (and for which we finally
reimbursed the funds Pakistan had spent in 1998), would currently be
inadvisable.
The third element, an active diplomacy on India-Pakistan peace, is
the other side of this coin. The reason Pakistan's security policy has
been so problematic for us is that Pakistan has an unresolved dispute
with India. Pakistan's own policy has fed that dispute, especially by
encouraging insurgency and ultimately risking conflict with India. But
India's reluctance to come to grips with the Kashmir issue is also part
of the problem. Happily, India and Pakistan have resumed an active
dialogue, and they have now restored their bilateral relations to
roughly the situation prevailing before the bombing of the Indian
parliament in December 2001.
I hope that the coming months will see real decisions by India and
Pakistan, to create some visible successes in the short term and to lay
the groundwork for peace in the longer term. Two great places to start
would be by opening the road between the two parts of Kashmir, and by
negotiating an electric grid connection between the two parts of
Kashmir (which effectively means between India and Pakistan).
Another useful early step would be to strengthen the risk-reduction
measures that India and Pakistan have agreed on from time to time. I
was pleased that the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Secretaries agreed
last month to strengthen the hotlines between the two countries'
Directors General of Military Operations, and to reinstate a largely
dormant hotline between the two Foreign Secretaries.
Let me diverge for a moment to tell the Committee about an
interesting exercise that I participated in earlier this year. My
colleague Robert Einhorn from CSIS organized three meetings with a
distinguished group of former military officers, civilian officials and
academics from India and Pakistan and a small team of Americans
knowledgeable about the region and about nuclear risk reduction. The
purpose was to see whether the concept of Nuclear Risk Reduction
Centers could be adapted to become a useful mechanism for India and
Pakistan. The group concluded that the model used by the United States
and Russia was not suitable for India and Pakistan, but that a new
communications mechanism would be useful. This mechanism would provide
a dedicated, secure means for each side to do three things:
(1) Notify the other about activities or events on its
territory that might be misperceived or misinterpreted and lead
to conflict;
(2) Exchange information that the two countries are obliged
to under existing security agreements; and
(3) Seek and receive clarifications about ambiguous events on
the territory of the other. The group also concluded that the
infrastructure in the region could support such a mechanism for
a relatively modest cost.
The Indian and Pakistani members of the group shared our report
with their respective governments. It is now up to the governments to
decide whether these ideas are useful.
Coming back to U.S. policy, the key point is that the United States
needs to be actively, strategically and discreetly involved in helping
India and Pakistan move their peace process forward. Its quiet presence
will be most needed when the process runs into snags, as it inevitably
will. The new government in India will need some time to figure out how
it is comfortable interacting with the United States on this sensitive
issue. But I remain convinced that a serious and sophisticated U.S.
diplomatic effort will be very important to the success of this
enterprise.
It will also be a key element in dealing with Pakistan's broader
problems. Pakistan's chronic insecurity stems largely from its tangled
relationship with India. In the final analysis, the only way to craft a
sustainable U.S. security relationship with Pakistan is to help India
and Pakistan build a new and peaceful relationship.
Let me conclude with a thought about ``hyphenation.'' The United
States had long sought a situation in which its relations with Pakistan
and India could proceed on their own independent tracks. That is a
proper goal, but both India and Pakistan make it hard to achieve. They
relentlessly keep score on U.S. affections. Each of them, ultimately,
needs to understand that a close tie with Washington is not going to
diminish American ties with the other. That's a tough message. Pakistan
is understandably suspicious about the blossoming of U.S.-Indian
relations in the last few years, the more so because they have had
doubts for decades about the reliability of their ties to the United
States. The strategy I suggest here is in no way incompatible with the
expansion of U.S.-India ties, which I consider to be one of the key
elements of U.S. policy toward Asia.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, doctor, for a really
extraordinary paper. We look forward to raising questions after
we have heard the remaining two witnesses, and we would like to
call now upon Dr. Vali Nasr.
STATEMENT OF DR. VALI R. NASR, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF
NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS, NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL
Dr. Nasr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
opportunity to share my observations with the committee.
The recent surge in violence in Pakistan suggests that some
3 years after September 11, 2001, extremism in Pakistan is once
again on the rise and is gaining in sophistication and
strength, posing a threat to political stability in the
country.
Extremism has its roots in regional turmoil that go back to
the Afghan war which produced the infrastructure for a region-
wide network of extremists. This network has had ties with al-
Qaeda and the Taliban and, initially at least, enjoyed support
of Pakistan's military which, since the mid-1980s, saw
extremism as a strategic tool for managing relations with
Afghanistan, keeping India under pressure in Kashmir, and
helping the military manipulate domestic politics in Pakistan.
The extremist network was also viewed as a strategic asset
by Saudi Arabia in its attempt to contain Iran's influence in
the region.
The events of September 11, 2001 led to an international
intervention in Afghanistan that dismantled the Taliban regime
and downgraded the institutional basis of jihadi activism and
also forced the Pakistan military to abandon its overt
patronage of jihadi networks and to cooperate with the United
States in the war on terror. This cooperation, however, did not
reflect a new strategic position. The military's policy, at
least until December 2003, when General Musharraf became the
target of two al-Qaeda assassination attempts, was to mostly
contain and mothball extremists, especially those active in
Kashmir rather than eradicate them.
The Pakistan military has continued to believe that in the
absence of greater U.S. guarantees regarding Pakistan's long
security interests, it is dangerous to completely remove the
threat of extremism to Kabul and Delhi. Eradicating extremism
would be tantamount to dismantling a weapons system without
countervailing concessions from India or Afghanistan.
As a result, in the past 3 years, the military has
distinguished al-Qaeda and Taliban from jihadi forces that were
active in Kashmir and sectarian groups that are active inside
Pakistan. The military cooperated with the United States in
suppressing the former while protecting the latter. In fact,
Pakistan continues to distinguish between terrorists, those who
have ties with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and freedom fighters,
those involved in jihad in Kashmir who are not tied to al-
Qaeda. Hence, the military is not concerned with all
expressions of extremism, but only with particular extremist
groups.
The military has also showed great lenience in allowing
prominent leaders of extremist groups to operate in the open.
Key recruiters and educators associated with various madrassahs
were never targeted by government clamp-downs. Similarly, after
September 11, extremist organizations, which became the target
of international condemnation, were allowed to voluntarily
disband and then to apply for new charters and operate under
new names. There was also little done to reduce the power and
influence of madrassahs, which continue to produce extremists.
This reflects that fact that Pakistan's military leaders remain
concerned with Pakistan's position in the region once the war
on terror comes to an end and the United States' attention
turns elsewhere.
In addition, many in the military, especially among junior
officers and enlisted men, are sympathetic to Islamic extremism
and some may have ties with them, and they hold anti-American
attitudes. The war in Iraq has only accentuated this trend. The
presence of these attitudes in the military has made it more
difficult for senior commanders to effectively suppress
extremism without risking a breach within the military.
Since he rose to power in 1999, General Musharraf has been
primarily concerned with legitimating military rule over
Pakistan and extricating the influence of secular civilian
parties, especially Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League and
Benazir Bhutto's PPP, from national politics and was, by
comparison, relatively indifferent to containing Islamism. This
has provided Islamist activists with ample time and space to
regroup and reorganize after the initial collapse of their
infrastructure in 2001.
The problem of extremism is also compounded by changes in
Pashtoon politics since 2001. Between 1994 and 2001, the
Taliban had largely served as an expression of Pashtoon power
in Afghanistan which has strong emotive appeal among Pakistan's
Pashtoons. The fall of the Taliban has been viewed as the
disenfranchisement of Pashtoons before the ascendance of the
non-Pashtoon Northern Alliance. That both the United States and
Pakistan military are seen as complicit in this development has
turned Pashtoon politics anti-American and also critical of the
Pakistan military's leadership.
The Pashtoon anger will continue to supply extremists with
recruits, and as tensions with the Pakistan military escalate
and possibly anger mounts after the Afghan elections, which
might consolidate Karzai's position in Kabul, Pashtoon
nationalism can become a destabilizing force in both
Afghanistan and Pakistan. It can also impact the cohesion of
the Pakistan military, which has a significant Pashtoon
component.
Revisionist nationalism against a new political order in
the region, anti-Americanism and anti-Shi'ism are all staples
of extremism in Pakistan which have an echo in the burgeoning
extremism in the Middle East. Al-Qaeda and Pakistani extremists
have shared ideas and training and may well connect to extend
their reach. Already there is suggestions that Jaish Muhammad
fighters may have found their way to Iraq. Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi's attacks on Shia targets in Najaf and Karbala have an
eerie resemblance to attacks on Shia places of worship in
Pakistan, and the Ashura bombings in Najaf, Baghdad, and
Quetta, Pakistan on March 2, 2004 are indicative of the
potential of these linkages.
Now, what more can be done to stem the tide of extremism?
In the short run, more needs to be done to directly constrict
the problem. This would mean a blanket policy of opposing all
expressions of extremism. The government in Pakistan must also
do more to disarm extremist groups and limit the space for the
recruitment, training, and organization. The government must
also take reform of madrassahs more seriously and more
effectively limit jihadi propaganda and ability to disseminate
their ideas through newspapers and other publications. The
success of these measures greatly depend on changes in the
broader political climate in Pakistan.
In this regard, it is important to note that the fact that
the military insists on ruling over Pakistan reduces its
ability to contend with extremism and, in fact, necessitates
that it undertake compromises that benefit extremism. Far from
the proverbial bulwark against extremism, the nature of
politics that is fostered by the military's domination has
encouraged extremism. Whereas for the United States, extremism
remains the primary concern; for the Pakistan military, it is
staying in power that matters most.
For instance, in order to secure the agreement of the
Islamic alliance, MMA, to General Musharraf remaining both
President and head of army until December 2004, the military
relaxed its pressure on religious activism and backed away from
the reform of extremist madrassahs, some of which belong to the
constituent parties of MMA, and also shied way from pursuing
al-Qaeda activists in south Waziristan earlier.
The military will be far more effective in dealing with
extremism if it were not distracted by imperatives of politics
and was not duly concerned with political consequences of its
security decisions. Conversely, civilian parties, when not
hindered by the military, have done a better job of eroding the
Islamic forces' base of support.
To the extent that the culture of the Pakistan military is
tolerant of Islamic activism, General Musharraf must continue
to reform the military and clean it of supporters of extremism.
Much of the economic assistance to Pakistan since 2001 has
not found its way to the lower and lower middle classes. The
impact of economic restructuring has not only made it difficult
to wean away the youth from extremism and to absorb the product
of madrassahs into the economy, but has created convergence
between socioeconomic disgruntlement and extremist tendencies.
More must be done to make sure that aid directly impacts those
social classes most at risk of embracing extremism.
Finally, Pakistan military must be encouraged to put forth
a serious plan for return of power to civilian politicians.
Opposition to authoritarianism and decay in political
institutions is on the rise in Pakistan. It will constrict the
military's ability to contend with the security challenges
before it, and it can provide extremists with the kind of
political environment that they need to recruit and operate
more freely.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Nasr follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Vali R. Nasr
Recent attacks on Shia places of worship in Quetta and Karachi, a
bold assassination attempt against the Corp Commander of Karachi, and
growing unrest among Pashtoons following military operations in South
Waziristan all suggest that some three years after September 11, 2001
extremist Islamist forces in Pakistan are resurgent, and are gaining in
sophistication and strength, all of which poses a threat to political
stability in Pakistan.
This brief addresses three issues. First, what are the root causes
of religious extremism in Pakistan. Second, what has been done to date
to contain extremism, and has it been successful? What is the extent of
extremist threat to Pakistan and its surrounding region? Third, what
additional steps can be taken to deal with extremism?
ROOT CAUSES OF EXTREMISM
Religious extremism in Pakistan has its roots in the Afghan war.
The campaign against the Soviet occupation, and the subsequent battle
for dominance in Afghanistan both radicalized various Islamist groups
and produced an infrastructure for jihadi activism that supported the
network of militants that extended from religious seminaries and
recruiting nodes in Pakistan to training camps in Afghanistan. This
network produced and supported the Taliban, jihadi fighters in Kashmir
[Hizb ul-Ansar/Hizb ul-Mujahedin (HUA/HUM), Jaish Muhammad (JM) or
Lashkar Tayiba (LeT)], and Sunni sectarian groups in Pakistan [Sipah
Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) or Lashkar Jhangvi (LJ)].\1\ These groups drew
their followers from the same madrassahs (seminaries) in Pakistan's
NWFP, Baluchistan and Punjab provinces (mostly from Deobandi
seminaries), shared in the same hard-line interpretation of Islamism
that was focused on jihad, advocated a narrow interpretation of Islamic
law and vehement opposition to Shi'ism that represented a new form of
Islamic activism, and in many regards was influenced and inspired by
Saudi Arabia's Wahhabism.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ There has also existed Shia extremist groups in Pakistan such
as Sipah Muhammad (SM), but they were not tied to the same
infrastructure of support, and have not been at the center of the
extremist threat to Pakistan in recent years.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The extremist network from inception had ties with the Arab
fighters in Afghanistan that later coalesced around al-Qaeda and the
Taliban, and enjoyed financial support of Saudi Arabia. More important
it also enjoyed support of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), which since the mid-1980s saw extremism as a strategic tool for
controlling Afghanistan (giving Pakistan strategic depth), keeping
India under pressure in Kashmir (as was evident in the Kargil
operation), and helping the military manipulate domestic politics in
Pakistan.
The extremist network was also viewed as a strategic asset by Saudi
Arabia in its attempt to contain Iran's influence in the region. The
Saudi-Pakistani management of the extremist forces was designed to
promote militant Sunni identity across the region that would be anti-
Shia and hence, anti-Iranian, and thereby create a militantly Sunni
wall around Iran that would extend from the Persian Gulf into Central
Asia. To this end much was invested in madrassahs that would train a
new breed of firebrand preachers as well as a generation of activists
and militant fighters that would serve as the leaders and foot soldiers
of the Taliban, jihadi fighters in Kashmir and anti-Shia sectarian
forces in Pakistan. Although madrassahs belonging to all schools of
Islam in Pakistan were involved in this enterprise, madrassahs
associated with the Deoband tradition which is particularly influential
among Pashtoons (and is also a force in Punjab) were most prominent in
the rise of the new extremism. Deobandis who support a large network of
madrassahs developed close financial, organizational and ideological
ties with Saudi Arabia to propagate a militant and pro-Wahhabi view of
Islam in the Afghanistan-Pakistan corridor, and to enable Riyadh to
project power in the region.
The extremist network became particularly prominent during the
1994-2001 period when the Taliban's ascendance in Afghanistan also
convinced Pakistan of the greater fighting efficiency of jihadi forces,
and hence their utility as a strategic weapon. By 1994 it was clear
that the various Mujahedin factions were unable to work together and to
control Afghanistan. The fall of Kabul to the Tajik Mujahedin commander
Ahmad Shah Masud and his Northern Alliance troops too seriously
challenged Pakistan's position in Afghanistan, and raised the ire of
Pakistan's Pashtoons who account for about 15% of the military's
officer corps. It was in this context that in 1994 Pakistan abandoned
its erstwhile Mujahedin clients such as Gulbidin Hikmatyar and turned
to the Taliban. During the 1994-96 time period Pakistan military was
instrumental in creating the regional structure of support for the
Taliban, and in organizing militant Sunni madrassah students into
Taliban and other extremist groups for Pakistan-backed operations in
Afghanistan and Kashmir.
The Taliban's control of large parts of Afghanistan in the late-
1990s also provided the extremist forces of all hues with the ability
to more freely operate, train, and implements their objectives. These
groups included Arab fighters, but more important, graduates of Afghan
and Pakistani madrassahs who shared ideological and institutional ties
and in many regards represented different manifestations of the same
phenomenon. These groups worked closely together. For instance,
following the Taliban's capture of the Shia towns of Mazar-i Sharif and
Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 1997-98 thousands of Shias were massacred by
Taliban, Arab fighters and Pakistani SSP and LJ fighters. Many of these
groups also shared fighters--allowing groups to expand and contract in
response to the needs of various theaters of conflict. It is often said
that when in Kashmir or Afghanistan extremists are jihadi fighters, and
when they come back to Pakistan they become anti-Shia sectarian
militants. Sectarian extremist groups such as SSP and LJ have routinely
provided fighters for Taliban campaigns and operations in Kashmir.
By September 11, 2001 state support for extremism had produced a
sustained momentum for jihadi activism that supported surging extremism
in the region. The growing number of religious seminaries had created a
large pool of extremists who supplied various jihadi groups with foot
soldiers and also helped carry their views into mosques, schools, and
various other social institutions.
The events of September 11, 2001 led to an international
intervention in Afghanistan that dismantled the Taliban regime and
downgraded the institutional bases of jihadi activism, but it did not
reverse the rising tide of jihadi activism, nor provide the basis for
absorbing the jihadi manpower that was the product of the rise in
religious activism during the previous decade.
Deobandis had since the 1980s developed close ties with Saudi
Arabia, and were promoting a more militant view of Sunnism in Pakistan
in keeping with Wahhabi teachings. This trend would become more evident
as Deobandi madrassahs became central to the military's project in the
1990s. Over a decade these madrassahs trained upwards of one hundred
thousand students. Although not all graduates have joined extremist
groups, they have helped provide the support structure for militancy,
and propagated jihadi ideals across a broad cross section of society.
In the late-1990s with the help of the military the Deobandi model was
also replicated in other traditions, producing new groups such as LeT
that hail from Ahl-i Hadith madrassahs--which are also close to Saudi
Arabia. The madrassahs meanwhile were responding to financial
incentives provided by Saudi and ISI funding in escalating militancy in
their education systems and encouraging jihadi activity among their
students. The military-madrassah combine accounts for the success to
date of LeT, as well as Deobandi jihadi outfits such as JM or SSP.
The events of September 11, 2001 complicated the ties between the
military, the madrassahs and the jihadis; forcing jihadis out of public
arena, and disturbing the financial linkages that supported their
operations. For instance, the collection boxes that dotted bazaars and
were a staple of many shops are now gone. Similarly overt funding from
outside through charities or financial networks centered in Persian
Gulf states have dried up. Still, since September 11 there has been
more money available in Pakistan. The flow of funds back to Pakistan
after September 11 has provided many more domestic sources of funding
that avoid international financial networks.
THE MILITARY AND EXTREMISM AFTER SEPTEMBER 11
September 11 changed the strategic scene in the Pakistan-
Afghanistan corridor. Most important, it forced the Pakistan military
to abandon its overt patronage of the jihadi network, and to accept the
demise of the Taliban. The military also agreed to cooperate with the
United States in the war on terror. However, Pakistan military's
cooperation did not reflect new strategic thinking on Islamabad's part.
The military's policy, at least until December 2003 when General
Musharraf became the target of two al-Qaeda assassination attempts, was
to only contain and ``moth-ball'' extremists--especially those active
in Kashmir--rather than eradicate them. The military distinguished al-
Qaeda and the Taliban from extremist forces that are active in Kashmir
and sectarian groups inside Pakistan. The military cooperated with the
United States in suppressing the former, while protecting the latter.
In fact, Pakistan continues to distinguish between terrorists (al-Qaeda
operatives) and freedom fighters (those involved in the jihad in
Kashmir). Pakistan also distinguishes between extremists tied to al-
Qaeda such as JM or LJ and extremists that the military believes are
free of al-Qaeda ties, such as SSP or LeT. Hence, the military is not
concerned with all expressions of extremism, but only with particular
extremist groups. Given the deep linkages between various strands of
extremism in the Afghanistan-Pakistan corridor, this policy has allowed
various activists to shift from one organization to another.
The military has also showed greater lenience in allowing prominent
leaders of extremist groups such as Azam Tariq of SSP, Fazlur Rahman
Khalil of HUM or Hafiz Idris of LeT (both of whom were only briefly
under house arrest in 2001-02) to operate in the open. Khalil gave a
Friday prayer sermon in the government owned Red Mosque of Islamabad in
September 2003. In October 2003 LeT held a large public rally in
Muridke in Punjab, which was attended by an estimated 100,000
supporters and retired military leaders. The rally openly defended the
organization's right to wage jihad in Kashmir. Key recruiters and
educators associated with various madrassahs were never the target of
government clamp-downs. For instance, Mawlana Shamzai (who was the
rector of a leading extremist madrassah in Karachi, and who was an
ardent supporter of JM and the Taliban, and had been instrumental in
their recruitment efforts in Pakistani madrassahs throughout the 1990s)
continued his pro-jihadi activity up until his assassination last
month. Similarly, after September 11 extremist organizations such as
SSP, JM or LeT which became the target of international condemnation,
were allowed voluntary disband, and then to apply for new charters and
operate under new names.
There was also little done to reduce the power and influence of
madrassahs which continue to produce extremists. Although sources of
funding for madrassahs and jihadi groups were disrupted, little was
done to either reduce the scope of madrassah influence or to reform
their curricula. Since September 11 the number of madrassahs has
remained unchanged, and whereas their funding has become constrained
none has faced closure as a result financial troubles.
The reason for the military's position was that while the military
had felt compelled to cooperate with the United States in the war on
terror, it did not view the American campaign in Pakistan's strategic
interest. Operation Enduring Freedom had eliminated Pakistan's
influence in Afghanistan, opened Afghanistan to Indian influence, and
brought to power a government in Kabul that Pakistanis view as hostile
to their interests. In the absence of any security guarantees from the
United States Pakistan has viewed the post-September 11 balance of
power in the region as inimical to its national interest.
Pakistan's military leaders remain ill-at-ease with the
implications of changes in the regional balance of power after
September 11, 2001. They are also concerned with Pakistan's position in
the region once the war on terror comes to an end and the United States
turns its attention away from the region. Pakistan views itself as more
vulnerable to Indian pressure with the loss of Afghanistan.
Consequently, Pakistan is by and large a revisionist player in the
region--a power that has lost ground in the recent changes and has
little vested interest in the new order. This revisionist posture has
led to continued interest in extremist forces, which remain Pakistan's
only viable instruments for influencing Afghan politics. Pakistan has
viewed its participation in the war on terror as merely a defensive
measure meant to protect its position and assets during a time of
regional tumult, and also to gain from a tactical relationship with the
United States, as it also had in during the Afghan Jihad in the 1980s.
Although in 2001 General Musharraf made a personal commitment to
reign in extremism in Pakistan, his position is not reflected in the
military's position as a whole. The Pakistan military continues to view
extremist forces as an asset in maximizing Pakistan's regional
interests. Extremism at its core is a military project that has taken a
wrong turn. It is closely tied to the military, institutionally as well
as strategically. This fact has been reinforced by challenges that
President Musharraf has faced as a result of the military's continued
presence in the center of politics. Although initially the Musharraf
regime promised to uproot extremism, it is evident that the military
continues to be part of the problem rather than the solution. The
reasons for this ambiguity in the military's attitude are as follows:
First, the military in Pakistan continues to view extremist groups
as an effective weapon in managing regional interests--protecting
Pakistan's position in Afghanistan and keeping India engaged in
Kashmir. The reasons why Pakistan used jihadis in the 1990s to achieve
its domestic and regional goals have not changed. Pakistan was able at
the time to perpetuate its regional interests by adroitly using
extremism with minimal investment in resources. That Pakistan's
strategic outlook on the Afghanistan and Kashmir issues has not changed
suggests that the military is likely to continue to use extremism to
achieve its strategic objectives. Islamabad has little interest in the
current set-up in Afghanistan--viewing the new regime in Kabul as
hostile to Pakistan's interest. Pakistan would like to limit Kabul's
influence in Southwestern Afghanistan and to prevent India from gaining
a foothold there. For Pakistan the ideal outcome would be a sphere of
influence in Southwestern Afghanistan akin to the Iranian zone of
influence in Herat. To achieve these goals Pakistan is likely to
continue to rely on extremists to alter the status quo and promote
Pakistan's position.
The key issue is how will Pakistan manage to balance its strategy
of preserving its jihadi assets (and even deploying them) while
supporting the war on terror, and how will it manage jihadis without
that policy effecting Pakistan's own society and politics, and General
Musharrafs goals of economic development and social modernization.
Moreover, the military has continued to believe that it can best
control groups such as SSP and LeT by maintaining a patron-client
relationship with them--to allow them to operate under the military's
supervision. Even when that control has weakened as is the case in the
military's relations with JM and LJ, the military has sought to use
extremism to fight extremism--which has helped the military in dealing
with particular groups but with the consequence of expanding the scope
of extremist activism. For instance, the recent escalation in sectarian
violence in Karachi is associated with the regrouping of the militant
Shia Sipah-i Muhammad (SM), which has been a client of ISI, and which
is being used in Karachi to put pressure on JM and LJ over whom the
military has lost control.
Second, many in the military, especially among junior officers and
soldiers are sympathetic to Islamic extremism and hold anti-American
attitudes. The war in Iraq has only accentuated this trend. The
presence of these attitudes in the military has made it more difficult
for the senior commanders to more effectively suppress extremism
without risking a breach within the military. It was for this reason
that the military has proved reluctant to aggressively pursue
extremists in South Waziristan, and was quick to publicly seek a truce
with the tribal forces there after the failure of its operations in
Wana. The problem is all the more sensitive as it has now become
evident that extremist groups have infiltrated the military, and have
been able to use intelligence provided from within the military to
organize assassination attempts against General Musharraf.
Third, since he rose to power in 1999 General Musharraf has been
primarily concerned with legitimating military rule over Pakistan and
extricating the influence of secular civilian parties (Nawaz Sharifs
Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and Benazir Bhutto's PPP) from national
politics, and was by comparison relatively indifferent to containing
Islamism. In fact, the general continues to view civilian parties--and
not Islamists--as the principle threat to the military's position in
politics, and his determination to continue to rule Pakistan.
It was for this reason that in the elections of 2002 the military's
suppression of PML and PPP candidates and change of electoral rules to
favor Islamic parties produced a strong showing for Islamic parties in
the MMA coalition. Still, the election results vindicated the General's
fears as the rump of Nawaz Sharif's PML and Benazir Bhutto's PPP put
together garnered most number of votes. Since 2002 the military has had
closer relations with MMA in the parliament than it has had with those
civilian parties, leading many to facetiously characterize the MMA as
the ``Musharraf-Mullah Alliance.'' For instance, between 2002 and 2003
when he was assassinated, Azam Tariq the leader of SSP--one of
Pakistan's most murderous extremist groups that is responsible for the
bombing and assassination of many Shias and participated in the Taliban
massacre of Shias in Mazar-i Sharif in 1997--was General Musharraf's
closest Islamic ally.
The reliance on Islamic parties to bolster the military's position
and off-set the pressure from secular civilian parties for the return
of democracy led the General to back away from contending with
extremism including adopting policies for reform of madrassah
curricula, greater control of funding for extremist causes, and
constricting the ability of extremists to recruit, train and operate.
The military's policies remained limited to dealing with only specific
acts of violence and explicitly al-Qaeda activists, and leaving other
expressions of extremism free to function as before. General
Musharraf's failure to contend with extremism over the course of past
three years is therefore reflective of the political imperatives that
face a military that is determined to control the civilian political
process.
The time and space that the military provided extremist groups over
the past three years has proved crucial in allowing them to reorganize
their financing, to develop recruitment and training outside of the
military's control, and to function with greater autonomy from the
military. Whereas until 2001 the military had strong control of
extremist outfits today some groups have deliberately severed ties with
the military (fearing that it will eventually bow to outside pressure
and shut them down completely) and have found means to grow and
function independently. This has created a problem in that the
military's dithering in dealing with extremism has served to augment
its threat to Pakistan and the region, and contending with the problem
today is far more challenging than it was in 2001.
The problem of extremism is also compounded by changes in Pashtoon
politics since 2001. Between 1994 and 2001 the Taliban had largely
served as an expression of Pashtoon nationalism. This trend began with
the Afghan jihad and was later closely associated with Jami'at Ulama
Islam (JUI)--the Deobandi political party that has a strong following
in both Afghanistan and Pakistan's Pashtoon areas, and whose madrassahs
were important to the rise of the Taliban. Although the Taliban was an
Islamist force, its rank-and-file were all Pashtoons, and its center of
power in Kandahar lay in the Pashtoon heartland. Finally, the Taliban's
drive to capture Kabul was fuelled by the belief that Afghanistan must
be ruled by Pashtoons.
The fall of the Taliban has been viewed as the disenfranchisement
of Pashtoons before the ascendance of Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks under
the banner of the Northern Alliance. That both the United States and
Pakistan are viewed as complicit in this development has turned
Pashtoon nationalism anti-American and also critical of Pakistan
military's leadership. For instance, in the 2002 elections in Pakistan
the Islamic parties did very well in the Pashtoon areas of West and
Northwest Pakistan (and also Karachi, which is today Pakistan's second
largest Pashtoon city). In many regards the Islamism of MMA and
activism of extremist forces in Pakistan are expressions of Pashtoon
frustration. MMA has been entrenching its support by manipulating
Pashtoon anger, and fanning the flames of opposition to United States'
policy in Afghanistan. MMA has helped create alliances between the rump
of Taliban and other extremist Pashtoon forces such as that of Gulbidin
Hikmatyar, who has been behind attacks on the Karzai regime in Kabul.
This is a source of concern in that it is suggestive of
``Talibanization'' of Pashtoon politics in Pakistan. Talibanization in
Afghanistan meant extremist and jihadi activism. It also meant
Islamization of Pashtoon nationalism. It is this meaning of
Talibanization--Islamization of Pashtoon nationalism--that is what is
at work in Pakistan. The rise of MMA suggests that Deobandis have
completed their domination of Pashtoon politics and nationalism in
Pakistan in the manner that the Taliban had done in Afghanistan. The
Deobandi ascendancy in NWFP and Baluchistan and Afghanistan has in
effect created an Islamist-Pashtoon belt that stretches from Kandahar
in Afghanistan to Quetta and Peshawar in Pakistan. The tenor of
politics in this belt is extremist and anti-American. It is bitter
about the disenfranchisement of the Pashtoons in Afghanistan, is
hostile to the Karzai regime, and is increasingly at odds with the
leadership of Pakistan military. The extent of this disagreement has
become evident during the recent operations in South Waziristan. The
Pashtoon belt will continue to supply extremist recruits, and as
tensions with the Pakistan military escalate (and possibly anger mounts
after the Afghan elections over consolidation of power under Karzai),
Pashtoon nationalism can become a destabilizing force in both
Afghanistan and Pakistan. It can also impact the cohesion of the
Pakistan military which has a significant Pashtoon component.
Another important issue is that extremism in the Afghanistan-
Pakistan corridor is becoming more overtly anti-American. Whereas in
the 1990s extremists were primarily concerned with regional issues and
saw the United States as a distant and secondary concern, today the
reverse is true. Extremists view the United States as their main enemy
and the principal obstacle to the realization of their aims. The United
States dismantled the Taliban and is the main source of support for the
Musharraf regime which some extremists view with opprobrium as an
``American puppet.'' Developments in Iraq, most notably the empowerment
of Shias--who Pakistani extremists view as infidels and who have been
the focus of much violence in Pakistan--has reinforced the belief that
it is the United States that is the impediment to the realization of
their aims, and the adversary that is most likely to threaten their
existence.
Extremist activism is today on the rise in the Afghanistan-Pakistan
corridor. It draws on an entrenched infrastructure of support in the
region, and continues to recruit from among the large number of
students that have come out of madrassahs over the past decade (and
continue to do so). It is poised to take advantage of instability in
the larger region--possible failure of the Karzai regime in Kabul and
growing anti-Americanism as a result of the war in Iraq. In addition,
extremism in the Afghanistan-Pakistan corridor is based on ideas that
have resonance elsewhere, and as such can create ties with other
extremist forces. Revisionist nationalism against the new political
order, anti-Americanism, and anti-Shi'ism are all staples of extremism
in Pakistan, which have an echo in the burgeoning extremism of the
Middle East. Al-Qaeda and Pakistani extremists have shared ideas and
training, and may well connect to extend their reach. Already there is
suggestions that JM fighters may have found their way to Iraq. Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi's attacks on Shia targets in Najaf and Karbala have an
eerie resemblance to attacks on Shia places of worship in Pakistan. The
Ashura bombings in Najaf, Baghdad, and Quetta on March 2, 2004 are
indicative of these linkages.
WHAT MORE CAN BE DONE?
Extremism in Pakistan must be dealt with by both short run and long
run strategies--contending with immediate security issues while looking
to address underlying causes of and sources of support for extremism.
In the short run more needs to be done to constrict extremism. This
would mean a blanket policy of opposing all expressions of extremism.
The government in Pakistan must also do more to disarm extremist groups
and limit the space for their recruitment, training and organization.
The government must also take reform of madrassahs more seriously, and
more effectively limit jihadi propaganda and ability to disseminate
their ideas through newspapers and other publications. The success of
these measures greatly depends on changes in the broader political
climate of Pakistan.
A key issue to consider is that the military in Pakistan has only
been partially successful in accomplishing its stated goal of
containing--if not eradicating--extremism. One can excuse this
shortcoming in terms of inertia within the military, and limits to
general Musharrafs ability to change the culture and strategic thinking
in the military. It is, however, important to note that the fact that
the military insists on ruling over Pakistan reduces its ability to
contend with extremism, and in fact necessitates that it undertake
compromises that benefit extremism. Far from the proverbial ``bulwark''
against extremism the nature of politics that is fostered by the
military's domination of politics has encouraged extremism. Whereas for
the United States extremism remains the primary concern for the
Pakistan military it is legitimating military rule that matters most.
For instance, in order to secure the agreement of the MMA Islamic
alliance (which is a major voice in the parliament and also controls
the governments of NWFP and Baluchistan) to General Musharraf to
remaining both president and head of the army in contravention to the
constitution, the military relaxed its pressure on religious activism,
and backed away from the reform of extremist madrassahs (which are
closely linked with constituent parties of MMA, and most notably the
Deobandi JUI), and also shied away from pursuing al-Qaeda activists in
South Waziristan earlier. The military will be far more effective in
dealing with extremism if it were not distracted by imperatives of
politics, and was not duly concerned with political consequences of its
security decisions. Conversely, civilian parties when not hindered by
the military have done a better job of eroding the Islamic forces' base
of support.
To the extent that the culture of the Pakistan military is tolerant
of Islamic activism, General Musharraf must continue to reform the
military and clean it of supporters of extremism. Two factors will help
him in this regard. First, a military command that is not encumbered by
constraints of ruling the country will have a freer hand to address
security and cultural issues within its own ranks, and to enforce
professionalism to a degree that is currently not possible. Second,
Pakistan military continues to view United States' security
considerations with suspicion, believing that in the absence of greater
guarantees regarding Pakistan's long run security interests it is
dangerous to more forcefully confront Islamic forces and to remove the
threat of extremism to Kabul and Delhi. Eradicating extremism would be
tantamount to dismantling a weapons system without countervailing
concessions from India or Afghanistan. The United States must address
Pakistan's strategic concerns as a part of the war on terror.
Much of the economic assistance to Pakistan since 2001 has not
found its way to the lower and lower middle classes. In fact, even the
salaried middle class is losing ground as a consequence of economic
reforms. The impact of economic restructuring--as witnessed in Latin
America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and the 1990s--has not only
made it difficult to wean away the youth from extremism and to absorb
the products of madrassahs into the economy, but has created a
convergence between socioeconomic disgruntlement and extremist
tendencies. More must be done to make sure that aid directly impacts
those social classes most at risk of embracing extremism.
Pakistan military must be encouraged to put forth a serious plan
for return of power to civilian politicians. Opposition to
``authoritarianism'' is on the rise in Pakistan. It will constrict the
military's ability to contend with the security challenges before it,
and it can provide extremists with the kind of environment that they
need to recruit and operate more freely. The problem is likely to grow
after a technocrat hand-picked by General Musharraf takes over the job
of prime minister later this year, and the general backs away from the
agreement he made with the parliament to relinquish his leadership of
the military in December 2004. A confirmation of military rule at that
time can lead to serious political instability in Pakistan with direct
consequences for the security operations there. The main beneficiaries
of such a development will be the extremists. The war on terror should
not be a license for authoritarianism, for no more important reason
than that it is likely to make the fight against extremism less
effective.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Nasr.
We would like to hear now from Dr. Marvin Weinbaum. Dr.
Weinbaum.
STATEMENT OF DR. MARVIN G. WEINBAUM, SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE,
MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE
Dr. Weinbaum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Chafee.
Pakistan's performance in countering terrorism and its
progress in promoting social, economic, and political reforms
cannot be understood without understanding General Musharraf
and the corporate interests of the military. The Pakistani
President regularly displays his well-meaning, principled
intentions. Yet, Pakistan's policies regarding terrorism and
reform, I submit, are noticeably incomplete, inconsistent, and
not infrequently disingenuous.
Behind my remarks this morning is the proposition that a
military-guided regime bears responsibility for many of
Pakistan's problems but it is also indispensable to finding
their solutions. The same military that fails to provide a more
democratic, stable, and secure country is also uniquely
positioned to advance those goals.
And I would further premise that Musharraf and the military
have more to gain from a viable democracy than they have from
authoritarianism. And I say that because if Pakistan continues
to fall behind other countries in the region, because it is
trapped in violence, it is economically uncompetitive,
politically fragile, with a society that is largely uneducated
and unskilled, the military will also fail.
Pakistan, as it is presently, cannot serve as a
sustainable, reliable partner for the United States unless its
leaders come to accept reasonable risks associated with
harnessing popular forces. It needs to build the consensus and
coalitions that can further a more just society and progressive
Islamic state, and this will require democratic institutions
that honor civilian rule and constitutionalism. While we cannot
dictate to Pakistan what kind of political system it should
have, we do have leverage and that leverage, I am afraid, has
sometimes, indeed perhaps often, been used in a
counterproductive way.
To understand the half measures and seemingly contradictory
aspects of Pakistan's foreign and domestic policies, it is
necessary that we see Musharraf as a leader who functions,
above all, as a marginal satisfier. Musharraf seems
particularly adept at calculating what is required in order to
manage competing demands and to keep everyone minimally
satisfied. He has shown a keen sense of limits, knowing just
how far to pursue policies. He has managed to placate the
military with perks, to please us, occasionally apprehending
militants. He has shown great talent in maneuvering the
religious political establishment, and understanding how to
appease his own political loyalist jihadi groups, business
groups, ethnic groups, intellectuals, democrats, and so on.
Musharraf has taken decisive actions on the international
front: a break with the Taliban, restraint on Kashmir. We see
here many of the same tactical approaches. His actions are too
often compromised by an unwillingness to sever older ties
completely and to alienate sympathizers.
This calculus that I am referring to I think is at work
along the Afghan border region. Until recently, Pakistan's
efforts against the Taliban and other anti-Kabul elements have
been unconvincing. Security forces have failed to effectively
monitor and control movement of those who launch raids into
Afghanistan and deny them sanctuary in Pakistan. Military
action by Pakistani troops along the border have been brief and
largely unproductive. All of this is to accommodate the various
constituencies, the jihadis, the tribals, popular opinion in
Pakistan, and, of course, the United States and Afghanistan.
Pakistan's military operations, however, in the last few
weeks have broadened and intensified. In their sweeps, the
Pakistani army units are increasingly engaged in bribing,
threatening, and punishing local tribal populations, and
fighting the foreigners, as they are called, that they are
harboring. Why has this taken place? Well, I think we know.
This is because we here in Washington have been pressuring
Pakistan to give greater urgency to finding high-value targets
and through coordinated intelligence and joint military
operations along the frontier, we are making some progress, at
least in the south Waziristan area.
There is another element here too, and that is that the
Pakistani military itself has a new determination. And that
grows out of the fact that in some of their initial, more
showcase operations, they did not do well. Indeed, the regular
Pakistani military was, to some extent, humiliated, and what we
are seeing here now, together with also the attempted
assassination of the corps commander in Karachi, is that the
Pakistan military has decided that they are going to have to
get serious.
Yet, I would say that Musharraf is likely to return to his
satisfier mode. We have only to compare this with last December
when there were two attempts on Musharraf's life, and it was,
indeed, thought at that time by most analysts that we were
looking at him declaring war on jihadis. Instead, what we found
after a short time was the familiar truce between their leaders
and security forces.
We see the same customary weighing of demands in the area
of the wide range of reforms that Musharraf has promised to
introduce in Pakistan. We often refer to the blasphemy law, the
hudood ordinances, and what is being spent on the social
programs in Pakistan as against what goes to the military. The
promised pursuit of corruption in business and politics, like
most of the other programs, have petered out.
Musharraf's boldest domestic initiative involved the
devolution of power to local councils and officials, but I am
afraid this has also been temporized under pressure from
provincial and national government officials.
The context for this is that Musharraf continues to fear
Pakistan's mainstream parties and their leaders. The military,
indeed, has a disdain for the country's traditional political
classes and in the process has discredited or sought to
discredit these more secular parties. In doing so, it has
promoted political opportunists and de facto alliance with some
of Pakistan's mostly obscurantist Islamic parties. Musharraf
has chosen to placate and to seek alliances with those elements
that in fact preclude his delivering on most of his pledges to
pursue a reform agenda and progressive laws.
Now, what about U.S. policy? I think we have had a short-
sighted policy, and that has already been suggested here. We
have tied the future too closely to a single individual. A
bilateral relationship so personality-dependent is unavoidably
fragile, its survival subject to outcomes over which the United
States may exercise little or no control.
The lavish praise which we continue to heap on Musharraf,
designed to strengthen his resolve on combating terrorism, has
in effect given Musharraf a pass on satisfying Washington on
issues of democracy, nuclear proliferation, domestic extremism,
and social investment. Ironically, we may not have helped
Musharraf domestically nor helped insure that he stays on the
course to combat terrorism.
Now, for conclusions and my recommendations. The United
States must alter the impression that our support for Pakistan
is essentially support for Musharraf. Instead, we must
emphasize by our statements and our actions that it is not
about keeping one man in power or keeping a military ascendant
to serve our interests, but we are aiming here at strengthening
the country's institutions and the well-being of its people, as
well as serving our interests. We should be prepared to engage
with the country's political parties, to invest in its
institutions, to refocus our aid into Pakistan education,
health, and employment-generating projects, and find other ways
to create a more solid foundation for a sustained relationship
with Pakistan.
It follows that the United States must refrain from the
kind of unqualified public praise that we have accorded
Musharraf for his cooperation on anti-terrorism. We require a
more nuanced approach that blends strong incentives with
conveying a better appreciation that there are red lines and
that Pakistan recognized them.
We must recognize that our terrorism agenda with Pakistan
cannot be detached from the broader need for domestic reform.
If Pakistan fails to make progress in resolving its civilian
military strains, if it compromises with forces of intolerance
and radicalism and ignores basic popular grievances, we could
find ourselves without a partner to pursue our objectives.
Last, the United States must better appreciate the stakes
in Pakistan. If we get it wrong, Pakistan could very well
become our major national security interest or concern. Above
all, we must convince the Pakistanis that our concerns in the
region are multifaceted and long-term and that we will not
desert them once we have achieved our leading objectives.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Weinbaum follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Marvin G. Weinbaum
musharraf as catalyst: balancing counterterrorism and reforms
Pakistan's performance in countering terrorism and its progress in
promoting political, social, and economic reforms cannot be understood
without probing the mind-set of Pervaiz Musharraf and the corporate
interests of his military. Pakistan's president regularly displays his
well-meaning, principled intentions, and has ordered actions consistent
with his stated commitments. Yet Pakistan's policies regarding
terrorism and reform are noticeably incomplete, inconsistent and, not
infrequently, disingenuous.
Behind my remarks today is the proposition that a military-guided
regime bears major responsibility for many of Pakistan's problems but
is also indispensable to finding their solutions. The same military
that fails to provide for a more democratic, stable, and secure country
is also uniquely positioned to advance those goals.
Pakistan, as it is presently, cannot serve as a reliable partner
for the United States unless its leaders accept reasonable risks
associated with harnessing popular forces. To build the necessary
consensus and coalitions that can further a more just society and
progressive Islamic state also requires democratic institutions that
honor civilian rule and constitutionalism. While the United States
cannot tell Pakistan how to fashion its political system, it does have
leverage that has been used to date in an often counter-productive way.
Musharraf and Our Expectations
The United States has invested heavily in President Musharraf as
valued partner in preventing Pakistan and its region from becoming a
safe haven for terrorists and descending toward armed conflict,
potentially between two nuclear-armed powers. We have also seen in him
a leader who possesses the personal values that we believe can bring
together a Western-oriented foreign policy with a Pakistani state
dedicated to what he calls ``enlightened moderation.''
Specifically, we look to Pakistan for enhanced cooperation in
flushing out Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists and their support network
along the Afghan frontier. Our government expects Musharraf to honor
his pledge that Pakistan will not materially aid the armed insurgency
in India's Kashmir. We furthermore are anxious for him to reverse a
trend toward Islamic extremism by reforming madrassahs and cracking
down on radical Islamic groups inside Pakistan. To match the country's
observable progress in growing and disciplining the national economy,
the United States encourages Pakistan to also address its formidable
economic deficits, notably worsening poverty and unemployment, and its
broken educational and health systems.
The United States has been prepared to take Musharraf and his
military at their word that they are committed to installing genuine
democracy. This would entail not only holding elections and appointing
civilian officials, but instituting the kind of open politics that
allows for full competition and expression. While Pakistan's military
would no doubt retain influence and perhaps a constitutional role, it
would divest itself of much of its formal and informal hold on power.
Ideally, the military would transform itself from rulers to guarantors
of the political system. Indeed, it can be argued that Musharraf and
the military have ultimately more to gain from viable democracy than
from authoritarianism.
Musharraf As Marginal Satisfier
To understand the half-measures and often seemingly contradictory
aspects of Pakistan's foreign and domestic policies, it is necessary
that we see Musharraf as a leader who functions, above all, as a
marginal satisfier. Musharraf seems particularly adept at calculating
what is required in order to manage competing demands and keep everyone
minimally satisfied. He has shown a keen sense of limits, usually
knowing how far to pursue policies. Musharraf has managed to placate
his military with perks and please Washington with occasionally
apprehending militants. He has been adept over time at maneuvering with
the religious political establishment, and in understanding how to
appease political loyalists, jihadi groups, the business class, ethnic
and tribal groups, intellectuals, and democrats, among others. Though
Musharraf has taken decisive actions on the international front,
including Pakistan's break with the Taliban and restraint on Kashmir,
here too his actions seem compromised by an unwillingness to sever
completely older ties or alienate sympathizers.
Not surprisingly, this tactical approach has become increasingly
difficult, and Musharraf's popularity and reputation at home have
suffered as his various constituencies become less willing over time to
defer their expected payoffs. For the country's more progressive
elements, there is disappointment that he has not used his considerable
authority to create a new framework for domestic politics. Instead,
despite his declared intentions about bringing enlightened moderation,
most of Musharrafs attention politically has gone into sidelining and
undercutting his real or imagined enemies in the political mainstream.
And in his effort to retain power, his security forces have employed
the same manipulative political tactics normally associated with the
discredited politicians of the 1990s. However, for all of the
accumulated disappointments with Musharraf, virtually none of his
domestic and foreign constituencies--aside from those sectarian
terrorists who have targeted Musharraf for assassination--can imagine
him leaving the political scene anytime soon.
Counter-Terrorism and the Afghan Border Region
At least until recently, Pakistan's efforts against the Taliban and
other anti-Kabul elements have been unconvincing. Notwithstanding the
difficulties encountered in the rugged, porous border areas, Pakistan's
security forces have failed to effectively monitor and control the
movement of those who continue to launch raids into Afghanistan from
sanctuaries in Pakistan. Military actions by Pakistani troops along the
border have been brief and largely unproductive in apprehending higher
level Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders. Elements of both groups have
reportedly established training camps and terrorist cells in and around
Quetta and Peshawar. Extremist groups in Pakistan have been allowed to
finance and facilitate these activities. Though Pakistan's religious
parties and tribal leaders raised objections to the army's border
operations, few took the raids by Pakistani troops as much more than
necessary theater.
Pakistani military operations have, however, broadened and
intensified over recent weeks. In their sweeps, the Pakistani army
units have increasingly engaged in bribing, threatening, and punishing
the local tribal population. Washington is pressuring Pakistan to give
greater urgency to finding Osama bin Laden through coordinated
intelligence and joint U.S.-Pakistani military operations along the
frontier. In the course of those operations, mostly focused on South
Waziristan, the Pakistani army has encountered far more resistance than
in the past and taken surprisingly heavy casualties. Negotiations to
enlist tribal militias to turn in ``foreign'' fighters have brought no
results. Frustrated and humiliated--and smarting from the near
assassination by jihadis of the Karachi corps commander--the military
has mounted forays into the area with a new determination.
And yet Musharraf, to mollify mounting criticism, could soon return
to his more accustomed satisfier mode. The seeming new leaf in clearing
the border regions may instead mirror Musharrafs supposed resolve to
attack extremism following two attempts on his life during December
2003. In a matter of weeks his declared war on some of the more
notorious groups turned into a familiar truce between their leaders and
security forces.
Islamabad's recent military actions are serving not only to please
Washington but also to quiet complaints from Kabul charging Pakistan
with negligent border policies. For some time, the United States has
been concerned that Islamabad might be contributing to destabilizing
the Kabul government. Islamabad insists on its common objectives with
the Karzai government in fighting terrorism and has offered development
assistance. A politically stable Afghanistan, able to secure the flow
of commerce, is in fact preferable to any current alternatives.
However, Pakistani agents continue to befriend power brokers within
Afghanistan's Pashtun tribal belt. A pro-Pashtun policy serves
Islamabad as insurance against the possibility that should the Afghan
experiment fail, Pakistan can complete with other regional powers in
their likely bids for spheres of influence inside Afghanistan.
Compromising on Reform
Musharraf's cautionary weighing of demands on a wide range of
reforms is easily documented. Some issues such as land reform have
never made the reform agenda. Musharraf quickly backed off an initial
attempt to modify the country's misused blasphemy law. Moreover,
religious-inspired ordinances that fundamentally compromise women's
rights remain untouched. While a self-confident finance minister has
addressed a number of economic reforms, including more effective
revenue collections, the promised pursuit of corruption in business and
politics by a specially appointed bureau has largely petered out. In
any case, the political selectively of the process has been all too
evident. Musharraf's boldest domestic policy initiative, involving the
devolution of power to local councils and officials, has also been
temporized under pressure from provincial and national office holders.
Though some extremist groups have been declared illegal, the most
influential of them continue to flourish, and their fund raising and
recruitment are hardly affected. Most of their leaders move freely and
are active politically. Widely touted policies to gain control over the
country's madrassahs have produced very few results. Registration of
religious schools has been stubbornly resisted, as have attempts to
revise curricula. Elaborate plans for reform of state schools are
starved for a lack of funds. Like other social programs, education
cannot compete with the military's claims on the country's treasury.
Any successful political figure must balance interests and make
prudent judgments about what issues to push and which to defer. But
Musharrafs continuing fears of Pakistan's mainstream parties and their
leaders, and the military's disdain for the country's traditional
political class have resulted in the promotion of political
opportunists and a de facto alliance with Pakistan's mostly
obscurantist Islamic parties. Musharraf has chosen to placate and seek
alliances with elements that in fact preclude his delivering on most of
his pledges to pursue a reform agenda and enact progressive laws.
U.S. Policy
Since September 11, 2001, Washington has taken the view that
virtually any change from the present leadership in Pakistan is likely
to set back the prime objectives of the United States in the war on
terror. In turn, Musharraf has staked much of his political future on
his close ties with the United States and the benefits it can bring to
Pakistan. With American interests hanging so critically on Musharrafs
remaining in power, Washington, however, may have shortsightedly tied
the future too closely to a single individual. A bilateral relationship
so personality-dependent is unavoidably fragile, its survival subject
to outcomes over which the United States may exercise little or no
control.
Cooperation on counter-terrorism operations and, in particular,
targeting high-value leadership, has long trumped all other American
demands on Musharraf. The lavish praise heaped on Musharraf by
Washington, designed to strengthen his resolve on combating terrorism,
has, in effect, given Musharraf a pass on satisfying Washington on the
issues of democracy, nuclear proliferation, domestic extremism, and
social investment. Ironically, though, we may not have helped to insure
that he stays the course on combating terrorism.
Repeated expressions of support for Musharraf from the highest
echelons of the U.S. government strengthen his claim that he is
personally indispensable for attracting American and Western resources
to Pakistan. Even many elements in Pakistani society that object
vigorously to American foreign policies are unwilling to alienate the
United States. At the same time, Musharraf, carrying our unqualified
endorsement, is regularly charged with being a puppet of Washington by
deferring to American interests in the region. The religious
establishment questions his commitment to Islamic causes, and most
democrats in the country accuse the United States of indiscriminate
support for Pakistan's military at the expense of meaningful political
reforms. Because Musharraf may believe that he can take American
backing for granted on all but the issue of terrorism, we may have also
inadvertently emboldened him to act--arranging a sham 2002 presidential
referendum, arbitrarily invoking constitutional amendments, and
unashamedly pre-cooking a parliamentary election--in ways that have, in
fact, weakened him politically.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The United States must alter impression that our support for
Pakistan is essentially support for Musharraf. Instead, we must
emphasize by our statements and actions that our policies are not about
keeping one man in power to serve our interests but are aimed at
strengthening the country's institutions and the well being of its
people. We should be prepared to engage with all of the country's
political parties and work with civil society. We must refocus our aid
to Pakistan on education, health, and employment generating projects,
and find other ways to help create a more solid foundation for a
sustained relationship with Pakistan.
It follows that the United States must refrain from the kind of
unqualified public praise that we have accorded Musharraf for his
cooperation in anti-terrorism. We require a more nuanced approach that
blends strong incentives with conveying a better appreciation in
Islamabad that the red lines in our relationship are not effectively
erased by our concerns about terrorism.
We must recognize that our terrorism agenda with Pakistan cannot be
detached from the broader needs for reform. If Pakistan fails to make
progress in resolving its civilian-military strains, compromises with
forces of intolerance and radicalism, and ignores basic popular
grievances, we could find ourselves without a partner for any of our
objectives.
The United States must better appreciate the stakes in Pakistan. If
we get it wrong, Pakistan could dwarf Afghanistan, Iran, and even Iraq
in threatening our national interests. Above all, we must convince
Pakistanis that our concerns in the region are multifaceted and long
term, and that we will not desert them once we have achieved our
leading objectives.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, sir.
Let me just say that one of the benefits of this committee
is the educational experience we receive which occurs when
there are three remarkable papers such as we have heard this
morning. I certainly have that feeling, and I am certain those
who have witnessed this hearing have, too. We will take
advantage of your presence to probe the recommendations you
have made as well as those that we might hear in our
discussion.
Let me start with the thought that many of you have
stressed. We have been, perhaps, preoccupied with our own
national security interests, which are our fight against
terrorism, including very specifically in the war in
Afghanistan against al-Qaeda, against Osama bin Laden and his
lieutenants. The general supposition about Osama bin Laden is
that he is now resident somewhere in Pakistan, probably near
the border of Afghanistan, as are many other al-Qaeda leaders,
perhaps protected by Taliban or whoever may be there.
So one of the basic questions, before getting into the very
important concerns about institution building and the political
parties, and the future relationship, is specifically, why has
Pakistan been ineffective in finding Osama bin Laden? Why has
it been ineffective in routing out the rest of the al-Qaeda
operatives who happen to be there? We understand that there are
questions of sovereignty. The Pakistani military has taken a
very dim view of United States forces simply coming into the
area and cleaning up. So as a result, we have indicated that we
will support the Pakistani military, and we understand that
President Musharraf shares that goal.
But many Americans would simply raise the question to begin
with, why have we together been ineffective? The ramifications
of Osama bin Laden and/or others planning out there, wherever
they are, for destruction and attacks on the United States, or
what have you, are rampant in our political discussion here
now, a very topical subject. This very building, for that
matter, for all we know, may be targeted. We hear homeland
defense people discussing the possibility of attacks during the
upcoming fall political season, or even this summer.
Do any of you have any thoughts as to what we ought to be
doing about Osama bin Laden with regard to our relationship
with Pakistan, with Musharraf? Or is this one of these
situations that are virtually hopeless, in which you simply try
to do the best you can to encourage Pakistanis to do their duty
as we see it, to have Musharraf step up to the plate? Do any of
you have thoughts about this specific security conundrum?
Yes, Ambassador Schaffer.
Ambassador Schaffer. In the short term, I am not sure we
have a lot of terribly different options from what we are doing
now with respect to trying to find Osama and put the rest of
al-Qaeda out of business.
Why has it not worked so far? A combination of it being
difficult to get operational intelligence on these matters, the
weakness of some of Pakistan's operational instruments in the
police and military--and this gets back to the institutional
question very quickly--and some level of ambivalence, as Dr.
Nasr alluded to, that really putting extremism out of business
is tantamount to abandoning a major weapons system. The people
that we were looking for in the past have been assets of the
Pakistani intelligence services. I do not think there is an
intelligence service in the world that likes to give up an
asset. If Osama bin Laden came within range of the Pakistani
forces, I dare say that they would nab him, but when it comes
to dismantling all of al-Qaeda and particularly the Taliban,
that involves both more people and people with direct personal
relationships. So you may have some level of ambivalence in
Pakistan in dealing with it. As I said, I think in the short
term we are pretty much at the mercy of what the Pakistanis can
deliver, plus whatever our intelligence is able to sustain.
In the long term, I think that the institutional rebuilding
task I talked about is absolutely central to making this kind
of task more feasible.
The Chairman. Dr. Nasr, do you have a thought?
Dr. Nasr. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think the problem of
Pakistan dealing with bin Laden has changed somewhat since
2001. I agree with Ambassador Schaffer that initially it was a
matter of foot-dragging and trying to protect assets and also
inertia within a military that supported jihadis. Now the issue
is somewhat different in that primarily extremist forces in the
past 3 years have been able to establish an infrastructure
which is now partially independent of the control of the
military, and their ability to carry out assassination attempts
and directly targeting the military is indicative. So it is not
as easy for the military now to essentially shut down these
operations.
Second, Pakistan is in a very difficult year. President
Musharraf is coming upon his promise of taking his uniform off.
He has sacked the Prime Minister. He is trying to bring in a
technocratic government. Going after the extremist groups and
particularly bin Laden would require a great deal of political
capital to be put on the table. As Dr. Weinbaum mentioned, it
is a matter of will. The political costs from this point
forward for Pakistan are much higher.
And I would say at least as far as the United States is
concerned, in the past 2 years we have relied a great deal more
on the carrot in hoping that the Pakistanis would step up to
the plate. That might need to be reassessed.
The Chairman. Dr. Weinbaum.
Dr. Weinbaum. I think in specific response to your
question, Osama bin Laden is not in south Waziristan, as the
operation is almost entirely directed there. There is
infiltration from that area. But if we are talking about those
high-value targets around Osama bin Laden, if I had to place
them somewhere, I would place them much further north along the
border, a far easier place in which to hide and to cross back
and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. So I do not think
that is what it is about there.
I do believe, though, that there is a sense in Pakistan
that if they ever did take care of the jihadi problem,
particularly the al-Qaeda problem, that somehow we would lose
interest in the region. So the idea of doing something and also
not solving the problem has a lot of appeal. Now, maybe that is
just a bit cynical, but there is a strong feeling,
nevertheless, that this keeps us interested.
Further, I would mention, of course, that I also believe
that most of the al-Qaeda leadership is not in the tribal area.
They have long left that area. What we will find and what is
being discovered here are foot soldiers. They are not
unimportant for the stability of Afghanistan. But aside from
Osama bin Laden and his immediate entourage, we are probably
not going to find the people that you are speaking of in that
region.
The Chairman. Well, what if we proposed, just
hypothetically, that we understand that the Pakistani military
is stretched, that perhaps as you say, bin Laden is not in
Waziristan, but somewhere else? Could we take a more aggressive
posture and say, well, we are more impatient, we need to get on
with this? Our own security, as well as yours, depends upon
this. What is likely to be the Pakistani reaction to a
concerted military operation by the United States to find bin
Laden and other high-value targets, as you point out, of the
al-Qaeda leadership?
Dr. Weinbaum. There is a cost to Musharraf if he allows us
to play a larger role than we are playing right now. First of
all, Osama bin Laden is not viewed by many Pakistanis as their
enemy, and so Musharraf has to take that into account as he
balances off, as he satisfies. He is going to have to be very
careful, as I think has already been indicated, that anything
which suggests that Pakistan's territorial sovereignty is being
compromised could be a very serious issue for him. So I suspect
that it is not going to happen. He does have the forces there.
He started off with some 70,000 troops. We are providing the
majority of the financing to keep those troops busy. So I think
that what we are doing is a great deal and that eventually we
may get lucky.
The Chairman. All right. Well, I will return for another
round of questioning in my turn. I would really like each of
you, in one way or another, to talk about our ties with
Musharraf, including any problems he has internally and
balancing that relationship with problems we have.
Senator Chafee.
Senator Chafee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to the
witnesses.
Dr. Nasr, you talked quite a bit about the Afghanistan-
Pakistan border, the corridor between Kandahar and Peshawar and
the extremism there. Is that different from the rest of
Pakistan? I assume that most of the people do not live in that
corridor, the 140 million people, whatever, in Pakistan. Most
of the people do not live in that corridor. But does it spread
out of that corridor, some of that same extremism you talked
about? Or is there a difference?
Dr. Nasr. Well, there is extremism also in Punjab and also
in Karachi. But one has to note also Karachi is now Pakistan's
second largest Pashtoon city after Peshawar. The reason that
the problem is focused on that corridor is essentially because
of the growing Pashtoon nationalism and Pashtoon political
frustration after the fall of the Taliban. And if one looked at
the elections of 2002, Islamist parties did extremely well in
that border area, in the Pashtoon area. Essentially the problem
of the government is dealing with the Pashtoon unhappiness.
Ambassador Schaffer. Could I add something to that,
Senator?
Senator Chafee. Absolutely.
Ambassador Schaffer. I think you have got to look at both
extremism and ethnic politics, and you have got to look at the
things that drive extremism within Pakistan that are not
directly part of the Afghan problem but feed into it. One of
the most difficult problems Pakistan has faced in recent years
has been sectarian violence. That has been actually
predominantly in the city of Karachi and in parts of Punjab.
You have a combination of sectarian hostility, organizations
that feed on the extremist sentiments of one particular sect.
Now, some of these are predominantly Shia organizations and
some are predominantly Sunni. Shia doctors have been a
particular target of violence.
But one other dimension to it is simply bad governance. Why
is it that the cities of Pakistan have been hit by such
sectarian violence? Well, it is not just that cities in
Pakistan, as elsewhere, have a rich cocktail of ethnic and
sectarian differences in their population. It is also that the
police force is corrupt and does not work, and that they have
slums where it is relatively easy to hide out, and if the
police are looking for you, it probably does not cost very much
to bribe the cop on the beat.
So that is why I have argued that the problems of extremism
and institution-building and policy toward India and
Afghanistan all get tangled up together when you try to deal
with them in practice.
Dr. Weinbaum. May I just add one brief thought? Since you
mentioned both sides of the border, we are talking about the
essentially Pashtoon areas, which include the tribal area of
Pakistan but also settled areas of Pakistan also along with
Afghanistan. There is an important distinction, though, to make
here. Afghan Pashtoons are not ideologically extremists.
Pakistanis are. The kind of Islamic radicalism that we saw
enter into Afghanistan by virtue of the Taliban was based on
the schooling that took place in Pakistan. The Afghan Pashtoons
are conservative. They are consumed with their religion, but
they are not politically extremists. That is a learned behavior
in Pakistan, and I think it is important that we recognize that
particularly for our policy toward Afghanistan.
Senator Chafee. So the answer to my question about the
extremism kind of in that mountainous corridor that Dr. Nasr
talked about, does that spill over eastward into the valley? Is
there a difference in the extremism?
Dr. Nasr. It does, Senator, and actually many of the
extremist groups, also as Ambassador Schaffer mentioned, are
located in Punjab and in Karachi. But in the past 3 or 4 years,
it is resurgent in that corridor for the reasons of Pashtoon
awakening. There are also other factors, including that is the
drug corridor as well and there are linkages between extremists
and drug lords going all the way into Iran and Afghanistan. It
is an area that is also now under the control of an Islamic MMA
government which gives it a certain degree of liberty in terms
of providing a space for extremist behavior.
Senator Chafee. Forgive my ignorance, but is the MMA
popular east at all in the country, into the valley, or is it
mostly out of the mountains?
Dr. Nasr. Well, it did not do very well in the 2002
elections. Some of the political parties have roots in Lahore
and in Karachi, but it did not virtually win anything outside
of NWFP. And all but one of the leaders of the parties are all
Pashtoons. Actually I think now all of them are Pashtoons. So
they also really play to the bleachers when it comes to the
issue of Pashtoon nationalism as well.
Senator Chafee. Could I ask you to expound a little bit on
the anti-Shi'ism? What are the dynamics of that?
Dr. Nasr. Well, this goes back to essentially the 1980s
where anti-Shi'ism grew as a reaction to the resurgence that
was produced by the Iranian revolution. It is my belief that
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan helped invest in extremist Sunniism
as a way of containing Iran's influence. The consequence was
that anti-Shi'ism was sort of built into the ideology of
extremist groups that now is also spreading out through al-
Qaeda also into Iraq and the like. And the conflict has been
surging every once in a while. Both sides now have extremist
groups. They engage in assassinations and in bombing of
religious holy places. Although since the mid-1990s onwards,
Shia extremism has been essentially more docile and on the
street has largely lost the war in terms of numbers and
activity to the far larger network of Sunni militants which
were tied to the Taliban and received far more funding from the
Persian Gulf and far more support from the security services in
Pakistan.
But I must add also that there is a cynical view that the
resurgence of violence in Karachi has to do with the military's
struggle with extremists, in particular the Shia extremist
groups, the Sipah Muhammad, which was always known to be the
client of the military, is going back into Karachi in the past
few months, and a cycle of assassinations and bombings has been
escalating. So there is a sort of an argument about a
subterranean war going on as well.
Ambassador Schaffer. It is worth remembering that there are
a couple of areas with higher than average concentrations of
Shia population, and one important one is in southern Punjab
where you have a number of fairly substantial land-owning
families that are Shia, whereas the rest of the population may
not be. And there is also a significant Shia population in
Lahore. As with other divided populations, this tends to stoke
hostility where you have other roots for it. So this is one of
the things that gives the sectarian problem roots in Pakistan
proper that have been aggravated by trouble spilling over from
Afghanistan.
Senator Chafee. It seems to me there are so many fingers to
the anti-Americanism and the civil strife also and the anti-
Shi'ism.
But I will change my question, if President Musharraf does
not abide by his pledge by the end of 2004, what would you
guess would happen then. Any predictions?
Dr. Weinbaum. I think right now President Musharraf is
keeping his options open. By everything he has said and done,
it is very clear that he wants to hold onto his army office. He
believes that that is an important lever in terms of wielding
power and he views himself as being indispensable for Pakistan.
Naturally he gains strength with that office.
However, he has made some promises to us, to the Europeans,
and to the Pakistani ruling classes that he is going to step
down. The military would like him to step down. It sort of
frees up the promotion ladder. So he is under pressure to meet
the obligations which he himself has agreed to, although
reluctantly. However, I believe that if there is the least
reason that he can cite as to why it is necessary to hold onto
his uniform for the good of the country, he will take that
route.
I think if he does give it up, it is in the belief that at
least for a time, through his appointments among the corps
commanders--that is the senior military leadership--that he has
placed enough loyalists in position so that at least for the
first year, he is secure. However, he knows how he came to
power. He knows how General Zia came to power and he knows that
is not worth anything for very long.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Chafee.
Senator Nelson.
Senator Nelson. Shortly after September 11, 2001, President
Musharraf was confronted with the mullahs and the madrassahs
and was going to try to crack down on some of the madrassahs.
Can you give us a progress report? Bring us up to date.
Dr. Nasr. I do not believe much has been done for a variety
of reasons. First of all, whereas the growth of madrassahs may
have slowed down, particularly because of the shutting down of
the outside funding through the charities and the like, none
has been completely shut down. None have really lost students.
In fact, the government has gradually backed away from its
pressure as well, as part of its compromises that it is making
with the Islamic opposition for reasons of military rule
wanting to stay in power.
In addition, the efforts to reform curricula have
essentially ground to a halt. It was largely left to madrassahs
to voluntarily engage in reform, and some of them tried to do
so, but they found that there are no resources. For instance,
there are no mathematics teachers to hire. Even though the
government gave financial incentives for madrassahs to hire
mathematics and physics teachers, there are none to be hired.
As a result, not much has been done, and they continue, in the
vacuum of absence of public education, to be the education
choice for much of the rural areas and some urban areas as
well.
Senator Nelson. At the same time, our ambassador was trying
to get some of our financial assistance specifically out into
the rural areas for just what you said, straight to the
classroom to hire teachers and mathematics teachers and so
forth. Can you critique whether or not that U.S. effort has
been forthcoming, and if so, has it been in any way successful?
Dr. Nasr. At least in terms of interviews I did with one of
the Islamic parties, which was forthcoming, the Jama'at Islami,
which is a member of the MMA, they have taken advantage of some
of the financial incentives that have been provided by the
government. The problem is that this is not a problem that
could be solved in 3 years. For instance, as I said, they first
of all could not find a sufficient number of mathematics
teachers to fill up 3,000 madrassahs that they have. Second,
for some of the classes that they were asked to reform, they
essentially are presenting the same old material under new
course titles. So physics or natural sciences are still the
same old courses. Even at the best of times, they just admit
that it is not something that can be done because of the
manpower constraint that Pakistan has.
Ambassador Schaffer. Senator, I think there is another
interesting perspective on this. The madrassah reform program
was supposed to start with registration. Registration has not
got very far partly because the religious parties saw it as the
camel's nose under the tent, but partly because of the well-
known administrative weaknesses of the Education Ministry in
Pakistan.
I had a long talk a few months ago with the director of an
NGO coordinating agency, a woman who was trying to mobilize
corporate support for adopting particular public schools. She
had found that in some areas the funding from the Ministry of
Education, presumably with external donor support, was helping
madrassahs buy computers, which was leading parents in the area
to say, hey, we have got a school with a computer. Let us put
the rest of our kids into the madrassah.
This is one of the reasons that I think we must not lose
sight of the potential for taking these shells of public
schools and trying to make sure that they have teachers and
proper supervision and can provide some competition. This
particular NGO/corporate effort, the Pakistan Center for
Philanthropy, was most impressive partly because of whom it has
mobilized in this effort. I am a big believer in getting a lot
of different people involved in the education sector because no
one, not the Education Ministry and not any other organization,
is big enough and sufficiently able to operate at scale to take
on the whole task.
Dr. Weinbaum. They were also up against something else
about Pakistan. Pakistan traditionally trained the elite. After
all, this is a country which has 35 percent literacy. In
training the elite, the emphasis historically has been on
higher education and ignoring primary schools. So it even
involved changing the mind set of Pakistan, the need to invest.
As has been suggested here, it is an enormous undertaking. It
will take years to be able to create the pool of people who
could conceivably provide an education which would give them,
the madrassah students, the option to do something other than
opening their own madrassah or perhaps joining a jihadi group.
So there is a problem here which is very deep. As has been
suggested, it cannot be solved in the short term, and yet I
think everyone agrees this is where the investment has to go
and it has got to start now if we are ever going to see any
progress in the future.
Senator Nelson. And is it starting with the United States
assistance?
Dr. Weinbaum. It is about $20 million that we are now
programmed to provide. That is a pittance for what is needed
here. We have talked about in this large package of $100
million, but that is spread out. So I think that if we are
serious about this, we are going to have to put a lot more in
the way of resources behind it, but even that will not be
enough because, again as has been suggested here, we have got
to get them to change their attitude and we need the ministry
to be capable of following through.
There are other solutions too. We should perhaps be
encouraging the right kind of private schools. Right now most
middle class people will send their child to an English medium
private school and this is filling the gap for them. So it may
very well be that indeed we have to support the state schools,
but we may in the near term have to depend on better private
schools to step in and perhaps to be subsidized so that they
can take the students who cannot afford the normal tuition.
Dr. Nasr. If I may add, Senator, that this is not just an
educational problem. The madrassahs in Pakistan are the
political base of Islamic parties and they will not give that
up easily. In fact, if President Musharraf is to back away from
his promises on the political front, it is more likely that he
will compromise with Islamic parties to get their consent to
his continuance in office, and that will mean that he is going
to back away from encroaching onto the power base of the
Islamic groups, which are the madrassahs. That is where they
train the population. That is where they are creating the next
generation of voters, and that is where they are recruiting.
This is a political battle that the government has to engage
in. It is not educational.
Senator Nelson. It is very troubling.
Let us talk about maybe some ray of hope. It seems that
things have cooled on the Kashmir border. Do you think India
and Pakistan are really at a point at which they are serious
about wanting to reduce tensions? Where do you see it going?
Ambassador Schaffer. I think they are serious about wanting
to reduce tensions. When the outgoing government, the Vajpayee
government, agreed last January to start talks with Pakistan,
it was very clear to me that that represented a serious
decision. It is interesting to me that during the Indian
election campaign just a few months later, relations with
Pakistan were not an issue. In fact, the Congress Party, which
eventually wound up winning the election, made it clear that
they wanted to continue the effort. The Pakistanis have said
the same thing.
So far what they have done has been relatively easy. They
have been agreeable to each other. Officials have met the
number of times that they were expected to. The two Foreign
Ministers keep running into each other in third party places
and on airplanes and smiling and shaking hands for the cameras,
and they have brought their bilateral relationship up to where
it was 3 years ago. They have got functioning ambassadors in
both places. They have got their embassies and consulates built
back up to the strength they were at least 3 years ago. They
have restored the rail and air links that were severed.
Now it is going to start to get interesting. They are going
to have to get beyond the mood and into making some real
decisions on what they want to do next. As we all know, that is
harder. They are going to have to figure out what policies both
of them are prepared to change.
This issue of opening up a bus service between the two
sides of Kashmir is a very interesting case in point. It was an
idea that was proposed by India, initially greeted rather
coolly by Pakistan but eventually embraced. It is very popular
in Kashmir, actually on both sides of Kashmir, which I visited
last March. The issue is what kind of documentation should be
used by those who travel on the road. India's position is they
should have passports and visas. They want this both because it
provides them greater security against people they do not want
to let in and because it represents, one can argue, some kind
of acknowledgement of India's sovereignty in Kashmir. For
precisely that reason, Pakistan initially said, no, no, they
have to have U.N. travel documents and has now backed off of
that to say we want them to travel on some kind of local
documentation. As a technician, I could draw you three or four
different solutions to this, all of which would include an
agreement that this did not prejudge the eventual outcome.
I believe both sides understand they can solve this
problem. They will solve it when the President of Pakistan and
the Prime Minister of India tell their officials ``go solve it
and do not come back to me until you have done it''--and not a
moment earlier. That has not happened yet. I hope that it
eventually will because I think they need some concrete
progress in order to sustain the overall process.
Dr. Weinbaum. Senator, in the broader sense, I do not
believe that there are the ingredients on the table for a
solution of the Kashmir issue. What is important here, though,
is that this process continue partly because of the hope that
over time the chemistry may change. Also I believe that the way
in which it ultimately is going to be resolved, however that
is--and it probably will look something like the status quo--to
see it in the larger context of the bilateral relationship
between India and Pakistan. When they begin to see the mutual
advantages in their bilateral relationship, in that context
perhaps the Kashmir solution lies. But if the problem itself is
contained as Kashmir, what I worry about is that because they
will not show that kind of progress any time soon, that there
will be domestic pressures from both sides to back away from
that process. So what one can hope for, most of all, is that
there is enough continuity to create the momentum so that both
sides will see that it is in their mutual interest to certainly
not go back to where they were.
Dr. Nasr. If I may also add. It will not go forward without
direct U.S. assistance to the process, the reason being that
after September 11, the balance that existed before has
changed. India has gained greatly. Pakistan has been a major
loser, having lost its position in Afghanistan. The fate of
Afghanistan and its implications for Pakistan are still not
clear. It will be decided after the elections. President
Musharraf is likely to be weaker domestically and not able to
take the bold moves that are required to go the next step after
December. So without some outside power providing a certain
degree of confidence and security to Pakistani mind set, it
will be very difficult for them to take any risky moves.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Nelson.
I would like to recognize Senator Biden now. Senator Biden,
if you would in the next 10 minutes give your statement or ask
questions----
Senator Biden. Well, I am going to withhold the statement.
I will wait to be the last one to question. Has everyone
questioned already?
The Chairman. Yes.
Senator Biden. I would just go right to questions, if I
may, if that would be appropriate.
The Chairman. All right, fine.
Senator Biden. I would ask unanimous consent that my
statement be placed in the record.
The Chairman. It will be placed in the record.
[The opening statement of Senator Biden follows:]
Opening Statement of Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Mr. Chairman, I commend you for calling today's hearing. There are
few places in the world more vitally important to the national security
of the United States than Pakistan--and few places where our policy is
in more desperate need of a serious, long-term strategy.
Do we have such a strategy in place? If we do, I'm hard-pressed to
figure out what it is. Some of the administration's policies toward
Pakistan make sense, but it's difficult to see how the various pieces
add up to any coherent long-range plan.
And we can't go on much longer without a plan. The stakes are far
too high--for Pakistan, for the rest of South Asia, and for the United
States itself.
Let's take a minute to review a few of the formidable challenges
that our policy must address:
First (certainly from our perspective) is counter-terrorism.
Pakistan has been an important partner in this effort--but far more
remains to be done. Nearly three years after September 11, 2001, the
architects of the worst terrorist assault in history are still believed
to be hiding on Pakistani soil.
Osama bin Laden, his terrorist aides, and his Taliban confederates,
are holed up in the tribal areas near the Afghan border. In recent
months the Pakistani military has finally launched a campaign against
al-Qaeda hideouts, but the operations have not yet rooted the
terrorists from their sanctuary.
What is the administration's plan for crushing al-Qaeda? Are we any
closer to achieving this goal now than we were three years ago?
Secretary Ridge tells us that al-Qaeda is planning a massive terrorist
strike in the U.S.--so why did the White House wait until just this
year before pressing Pakistan to launch a campaign in the tribal areas?
Maybe there truly is a coherent plan for counterterrorism
cooperation with Pakistan, but I don't see it.
The second challenge is nuclear proliferation. Earlier this year,
we learned that the head of Pakistan's nuclear program had sold both
technology and know-how about the most dangerous weapons in the world
to countries like Iran and Libya.
It's difficult to see how this trade could have gone on--for years,
at facilities under military control--without the tacit consent or
active participation of top officers in the Pakistani army.
Dr. Khan, the worst nuclear proliferators in the world, received a
pardon for his activities from President Musharraf; he has not spent so
much as a day in jail, and there is no likelihood that he ever will. To
the best of my knowledge, he has not even been questioned by American
officials, in order to shut down the nuclear black market he
established.
Over the past few years, we've repeatedly been promised that
Pakistan's nuclear secrets were not for sale. Even after 9/11--when
everything was supposed to have changed, when we all were supposed to
woke up to the dangers of weapons of mass destruction potentially being
sold on the open market--there were signs that the promise wasn't being
kept.
When rumors surfaced two years ago of nuclear trade between
Pakistan and North Korea, both Musharraf and the Bush administration
promised that if any leakage had occurred, it was absolutely 100%
contained. Well, we now know that wasn't true. So what's the response
today: a new promise that this time things will be different.
And maybe they will be. Maybe A.Q. Khan, and his cronies in the
Pakistani military and intelligence agencies, truly have seen the
light. But I wouldn't bet my life--or the lives of my grandchildren--on
it.
What's the plan? What's our strategy to make sure that Pakistan's
nuclear know-how isn't spread further afield?
The third challenge is Pakistan's relations with its neighbors. To
the east is India--a relationship that has seen four wars so far (the
most recent, in 1999, was sparked by reckless adventurism at Kargil,
and ended only with the intervention of President Bill Clinton). In
addition, Pakistan has supported a range of militant groups operating
in Jammu and Kashmir, including some of the most brutal terrorist
organizations currently in existence.
Thankfully, the leaders of Pakistan and India have tried to forge a
peace between their countries. But all too often the current
administration's policy toward Indo-Pakistani peace appears to be
little more than crisis management. And the failure to crack down on
several hard-core terrorist groups based on Pakistani soil threatens
the long-term prospects of any treaty.
Relations with Pakistan's neighbor to the west, Afghanistan, are
hardly more encouraging. Elements of the Pakistani military and
intelligence agencies still provide support to the resurgent Taliban,
and to other militants seeking to destroy Afghanistan's fledgling
democracy. U.S. officials complain about it, but nothing seems to get
done.
Does the administration have a strategy for bringing a lasting
peace to one of the most volatile regions in the world? Is there a plan
to give Pakistan sufficient reassurance of its legitimate security
needs that it doesn't have to embark on dangerous adventurism to the
east and to the west? If so, I'd sure like to know what it is.
There are a range of other pressing challenges--the increasing
power of extremist groups in Pakistani politics, the failure of
Pakistan's secular education system, the urgent need for
democratization. If I were to touch even briefly on each of these
topics, I'd leave little time for our witnesses.
And, Mr. Chairman, we have an excellent panel of witnesses today.
Ambassador Schaffer has served her country both as a diplomat in
South Asia, and the director of the Foreign Service Institute.
Prof. Nasr is widely known as one of this country's foremost
authorities on Pakistani politics, particularly the role of Islamic
parties and the rise of radical groups.
Dr. Weinbaum is also a top scholar of the region, and was until
recently the head of the Pakistan desk at the State Department's Bureau
of Intelligence and Research.
I look forward to hearing their testimony on this vitally important
topic.
Senator Biden. I apologize. I was, as we say in the
business, necessarily absent but I cannot think of anything
more important, Mr. Chairman, than this hearing and, quite
frankly, the fate of Pakistan. That is the single greatest
concern I have, quite frankly, of all that hangs in the balance
out there in our present attempts to grapple with a foreign
policy that makes some sense.
If the questions that I raise have been raised before,
please just tell me and I will be briefed by my staff and look
at the record so we do not have to take more of the committee's
time.
Doctor, you just indicated that Pakistan has been a loser
relative to India in the recent past, and you indicated that
part of that evidence of that loss is its loss of influence in
Afghanistan. Would you amplify what you mean by that?
Dr. Nasr. Well, historically Afghanistan had always been an
irredentist power vis-a-vis Pakistan all the way until the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and it had always traditionally
been an ally of Delhi. Pakistan had always felt under a pincer
between Afghanistan and India. For the period of 1980 to 2001,
Pakistan was able to reverse that situation. It essentially
controlled Afghanistan and claimed to have gained strategic
depth. As a consequence of September 11, it essentially in one
swoop lost its back yard, and the Pakistanis are very nervous
about the fact.
Senator Biden. I hope you are right. I do not see any
evidence that that is true. That is what I thought you meant.
So you are not asserting that India has regained its
influence in Afghanistan, are you? I have seen evidence of
that.
Dr. Nasr. Well, the Pakistanis would often tell you that
they view with concern the fact that India has now eight
consulates, including one in Kandahar, and that Hamid Karzai
was educated in Delhi and the Northern Alliance were allies of
India before the war began. In other words, as far as they are
concerned, they are looking at a glass half empty and they see
that compared to before 2001, their situation is more
precarious.
Senator Biden. Well, before 2001, they were the Taliban.
Now, the Pashtoon--let me ask you the question rather than me
state it because I do not want to, by a statement I make, lead
anyone to believe that I am in any way referencing any
intelligence data because I am not. But that sometimes happens
in this business.
Is there evidence that the ISI and others have ceased and
desisted from their involvement in the internal affairs of
Afghanistan and that they have, in fact, become the good
neighbor? Is there any evidence of that, or is there contrary
evidence?
Dr. Nasr. Well, I can only give you my opinion rather than
hard evidence, and my opinion is that no, they have not. The
extremists or the Taliban remain the one instrument with which
Pakistan could possibly remain involved in Afghanistan. Until
such time as there are alternate ways to influence the future
of Afghanistan, they are likely to remain engaged.
I also personally believe that the Pakistanis, based on my
observations, would not like the consolidation of power in
Kabul in the manner that it is occurring and would rather see a
southwestern Afghanistan as a zone of influence, much like
Iran's zone of influence in Herat, a buffer that can give them
the kind of strategic depth that they always looked for in
Afghanistan.
Dr. Weinbaum. Can I just add on to this?
Senator Biden. Yes, please.
Dr. Weinbaum. I do not believe that Pakistan is at the
moment deliberately trying to undermine the Karzai regime.
Pakistan, as do the regional neighbors in general, believes
that a successful, a stable Afghanistan at this point would be
in its interest. All of them, however, and especially Pakistan,
are taking out insurance policies. They are not completely
severing their connections with their former clients. So those
relationship, remains, and should the Afghan experiment fail,
these countries are likely to bid for their spheres of
influence. But I would not want to characterize certainly
Musharraf's views as ones which are sometimes expressed in
Afghanistan that he is simply trying to undo the Karzai
government.
Senator Biden. I know we are talking about Pakistan, but
what is your view of the Iranian's attempt--let me back up. On
the front page of the newspaper a couple days ago, Karzai has
changed his tune a bit and is now saying what the chairman and
I have been saying for a while and that is the warlords have
gained ascendancy, that they are a problem. It is not merely
the Taliban. How do you assess Karzai's assertions in the
press, which I am sure you read, I guess it was Monday, saying
that the postponement of elections relates in part at least to
the warlords? And as you point out, historically the five
neighbors have viewed Afghanistan as a place to compete for
influence, and they have had their own clients. It looks like
most of the clients are up and running. It looks like most of
the clients are still in business.
Dr. Weinbaum. We have reason to be surprised. When
President Karzai was here in Washington last month, he made a
point of saying: do not fear the fact that I am talking to the
warlords. Ambassador Schaffer and I sat together when he made
that statement; he tried to allay fears, particularly expressed
within Afghanistan, that somehow he was throwing his lot in
with the mujahedin leadership and the warlords.
Then the statement just the day before yesterday. The only
way one can interpret that is that some of the deals that he
thought he had made have gone sour.
Senator Biden. Well, let me help you. I can tell you how to
interpret that. And I am willing to bet my career on it.
The administration made a judgment a year ago in a direct
conversation I had with Dr. Rice that there was an
inevitability of the warlords maintaining control. When we were
trying to expand ISAF--we were trying to significantly expand
it 2 years ago--the assertion was made to me, that is always
how it has been. There is security. There is stability. Meaning
the Taliban and al-Qaeda are not in Herat. They are not up in
the Tajik area. They are not functioning. That was a judgment
made.
In my humble opinion, Karzai was left with a reality. The
reality was he knew he was not going to get what he desperately
wanted at first, a significant, as you will remember--and it is
amazing, Ambassador, how we all have such short memories--a
significant expansion of ISAF. A significant expansion and
striking while the iron was hot, when all the warlords are
ready to buy in, and the reason they were ready to buy in was
because they viewed ISAF as apartheid cops. They were not sure
they still had their sponsors, and they were willing to take a
risk that if in fact ISAF was in their area and in control, at
least their competitors would not be in and in control.
So he made a Faustian bargain. He thought, given the fact
that he was not going to get help to do what needed to be done,
he would have to try to figure out how to control these guys,
and he figured out he cannot control them. Now he is doing what
some of us pleaded personally with him to do 10 months, say
straight up, I need help. I need force. Force. So there is
nothing surprising about this. I am surprised you are
surprised.
Dr. Weinbaum. But, Senator, I think it is wrong to label
all those who are competing with him for power as one kind of
warlord. We have a variety of types.
Senator Biden. I could not agree with you more. But people
who maintain large militias who have no intention of Kabul
being the center of power in that country, starting with
Ishmail Khan in Herat, just to name one, Dostum--we can go down
the list--doctor, do you think any one of those folks envisions
himself in Kabul with a united Afghanistan? What do you think?
Ambassador Schaffer. Only if he is in charge.
Senator Biden. No. But do you think they think that is
remotely possible? No. I want to hear the answer.
Ambassador Schaffer. I do not.
Senator Biden. Right. I do not either.
Ambassador Schaffer. But I also believe that every leader
that Afghanistan has ever had has had a job that involved a mix
of forced negotiations, guile----
Senator Biden. Exactly right.
Ambassador Schaffer [continuing]. And perhaps a little
luck.
Senator Biden. And that is exactly what Karzai was looking
for. Leaders in the past, when they have been able to unite
that country under one leader, have been in the position where
there have not been robust militias that were in full flower
and making it clear their claim was absolute in the region in
which they operated. There have been deals cut. And so what
Karzai tried to do, in my humble opinion, is cut those deals
and found out he had no power really to pull off. What does
Ishmail Khan need from him? What does Dostum need from him?
So there was not much to cut here except what they want to
make sure is that he is not, I would suspect--this is a
question. I do not know this. My guess is their greatest
concern is what one of you just said is the concern of the
Pakistanis, that there is a strong, united government out of
Kabul controlling the money and making the judgments about
development in the country. Does anybody disagree with that
assertion?
Ambassador Schaffer. Senator, I think there is one asset--
--
Senator Biden. My time is up, but please go forward.
Ambassador Schaffer [continuing]. That arguably the
government in Kabul ought to be able to mobilize, and that is
foreign assistance.
Senator Biden. How can they do that?
Ambassador Schaffer. But their ability to mobilize that
depends critically on their ability to get it to be relevant to
its distribution in the different parts of the country.
Senator Biden. That is exactly right.
Ambassador Schaffer. That very quickly brings you back to
two problems, the problem of security outside of Kabul and the
problem of roads.
Senator Biden. Exactly right.
Ambassador Schaffer. Those are the two areas where I think
a strategic investment ought to have been made as early as the
beginning of 2002.
Senator Biden. I could not agree with you more.
Ambassador Schaffer. It is still important but it is late.
Senator Biden. It is not only important and late, I do not
know how it gets done now. We had a significant debate up here
with the administration. One of the things we argued--I speak
for myself--that I argued repeatedly and intensely about as
that we were providing for projects in relatively small amounts
throughout Afghanistan and not having every one of them go
through Kabul. That is all you are talking about. This is not
rocket science, Ambassador, to go into Herat and let Ishmail
Khan build the road, the sewer system, the school. What other
power did Kabul theoretically have? They had no army. They had
no ability to extend force. The only thing Kabul was needed for
by any other part of Afghanistan was aid, and instead of
funneling every single dollar through Kabul so it became
relevant, it was done ad hoc. So what did Karzai have? He did
not make the decision on the distribution of the dollars or the
aid. He still doesn't make that distribution.
Dr. Weinbaum. But, Senator, he does not have the
administrative capacity to do what you are asking him to do.
Senator Biden. Sure he does. He has as much administrative
capacity to do what we are talking about with our aid as we do
to do it directly with Ishmail Khan. He does not have the
administrative capacity anymore either.
Dr. Weinbaum. Ishmail Khan has a very effective
administrative apparatus. This central government cannot
effectively control its own governance. So I agree with you
that we should have focused more of our assistance toward the
center, but the idea that somehow you can have a central
government in Afghanistan which is able to take on the
responsibilities now I think just flies against what history
has shown us.
Senator Biden. Well, your approach is guaranteed we are not
going to have a united Afghanistan.
Dr. Weinbaum. We will always have a united Afghanistan
because the Afghans want it united. That is not the problem.
Senator Biden. Let me be more precise. There will be a
place called Afghanistan with a border that will have
territorial integrity on a map. That will be an Afghanistan.
There will be five Afghanistans like there was before, and
there will be very little ability for the United States of
America to have any impact on whether or not it becomes a
cesspool again for terror. And there will be, as a consequence
of that, an awesome impact upon Pakistan, and that will be
hell.
So when I say administrate from Kabul, I do not mean
physically build the project. I mean when Ishmail Khan wants to
build a road, he goes to Karzai to ask if he can. Karzai signs
off on it and we release the money to Ishmail Khan. That is
what I mean by administrate. It is not administrative in the
sense that he had an apparatus to be able to go out there and
make the independent judgment. It is called patronage. It is
called political power. It is called having power. And he has
none. None. None. And it is a policy dilemma that is our
responsibility and a serious mistake we have made.
As you can tell I do not feel strongly about this. Thank
you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Biden. I think
Senator Biden has indicated, as you have, the relevance of
Afghanistan to our topic today. It is very important.
It illustrates the complexity of our new foreign policy
endeavors. Working so that Afghanistan would be a functioning
democracy with a constitution, would have elections, quite
apart from being economically viable, is a daunting task.
Certainly as our committee has explored it, the resources our
government is devoting to this probably are inadequate for the
ambitions that we have, quite apart from the reluctance of our
NATO allies to come forward, even though the new mission calls
for more participation. So we are not unique among governments
of the world, in terms of lack of commitment, including both
persons and money.
Coming back to Pakistan, the problem is even more daunting.
As you mentioned, Ambassador Schaffer, the public school
dilemma, quite apart from rebuilding other institutions, is a
long-term project. We understand that here today around the
table. But we also have, as I tried in my first questions to
indicate, a short-term problem that is very serious with regard
to security of our country. And these two situations may have
brought about a certain amount of conflict. As policymakers
attempt to gain more efficacy from the relationship with the
Pakistani military and General Musharraf, perhaps they have
neglected or even compromised other issues.
So you could argue that, on the one hand, we will have to
hope for the best on the terrorism and military front. In any
event, we ought to be planning long-term for considerable
expenditures, and hopefully organizing an international view of
this. We point out that there are only 42 percent of children
of elementary school ages now attending school at all. The
alternatives, the madrassah schools, are extremely difficult,
in terms of the future of Pakistan, and certainly our
relationship. As you point out, the relationship of the
political parties and General Musharraf is, to say the least,
troubled. The evolution politically there does not appear to be
encouraging, not moving along in a very healthy way.
For somebody attempting to draw up our foreign policy to
Pakistan, there are so many moving parts in this situation that
I suppose that in the past this has led not only
administrations, plural, but Congress to simply either ignore
it, or hope for the best, or allow experts to deal with it as
best they could until a crisis such as 9/11 comes along, and
then we refocus on Pakistan and what has been going on there.
You have indicated some places to begin, including the
public schools and education. We could provide some
manifestation to the people of the country that we care about
them at the lower levels, as opposed to the elite. We do so
regardless of whether, as the Pew Foundation or others who are
polling Pakistanis indicate, they do not like us. Now, you
could qualify that and say, well, they do not like American
Government policy or they do not like the American military,
but down deep, if any of us were to come in the room, they
would like us, perhaps.
But the fact is even as we try to talk to our public, the
American people, about why they ought to invest money in
Pakistan, many of my constituents ask, well, why indeed?
Granted, it is an abysmal public school system. But we have got
some problems with Leave No Child Behind in our own States
right now. Full funding is not occurring.
What are the fundamental reasons why, if we were to do this
right, either in Afghanistan or Pakistan, we propose to our
administration that they enhance the appropriations very, very
substantially, and change the priorities or make a much more
comprehensive list; get a lot of people involved in diplomacy
in that area, beyond what we have now, and beef up our own
efforts? State for me, what is the case to be made, even after
we explore Pakistan today? Why is it important, and why would
this depth of commitment be required? Would you start with
that, Ambassador Schaffer?
Ambassador Schaffer. Pakistan embodies, in concentrated
form, the most severe dangers that face U.S. foreign policy in
the region, and it certainly would be on the short list for
that honor in the world.
Terrorism. We all know that Afghanistan was a sanctuary for
terrorists before 9/11. Part of that sanctuary has moved into
parts of Pakistan where it may not have government support, but
it has relatively little difficulty operating below the
government's radar screen.
Nuclear war. I do not believe that Pakistan and India have
any intention of going to war with one another, but it
certainly is not beyond the realm of possibility that this
could happen by accident or miscalculation. It came
uncomfortably close a couple of years ago.
Nuclear transfers. We all know what happened last year when
A.Q. Khan was using his Rolodex to transfer nuclear materials
and know-how to some of the worst customers that one could
possibly imagine.
And then, of course, the reconstruction of Afghanistan,
something that I believe has been indirectly impacted by our
decision to go into Iraq, but whether or not you accept that
argument, it is beyond question that this has been a
complicated enterprise and is in some trouble.
The way to deal with all of these dangers so far has run
through Pakistan. Pakistan, as we have discussed this morning,
is in difficult shape itself.
I did an exercise in the past couple of years of looking at
different scenarios for what Pakistan might look like a few
years from now. There is an uncomfortably large number of very
unattractive scenarios, ranging from the succession to power of
a more irredentist military leadership to a kind of an
alliance, a more explicit alliance between the military and the
extremists, to a breakdown of governance where governmental
authority falls apart and the people with the guns, not all of
whom are in the army, wind up on top.
One can also imagine good outcomes, but without exception,
the good outcomes start with a rebuilding of Pakistan's civic
and political institutions. I would be a fool to tell you that
that is a sure bet.
I still think that the other options are unattractive
enough that it is worth making that the center of gravity of
our policy. But I do think that somewhere in the recesses of
the government and outside of it, we need to be thinking about
what happens if that policy fails because that is not beyond
the realm of possibility.
You mentioned earlier in the session the question of
whether the United States should simply go after the high-value
al-Qaeda targets itself. Dr. Weinbaum said--and I agree with
this--that there would be a very high cost to be paid in terms
of backlash in Pakistan from the undercutting of Pakistani
sovereignty by the United States against the background of
decades of Pakistani conviction that the U.S. is a fickle
friend at best.
I would argue that for the United States to take on that
task and to do it in such a way that it was obvious--I am
having a little trouble figuring out a way that it would not be
obvious--would, in effect, be making a decision that we may not
be able to work with Pakistan anymore, so we want to take
matters into our own hands. That means that you are headed
toward a really messy outcome in South Asia, one in which you
have to worry, in ways that we may not have to worry quite as
intensely now, about the stewardship of Pakistan's nuclear
weapons, about the future of its relations with India and with
Afghanistan and a host of related problems. For that reason, I
hope we are not too eager to make those matters into our own
hands, not to speak of the fact that the intelligence support
for this operation has got to be very difficult to achieve. We
arguably had better access to intelligence information on the
whereabouts of Saddam Hussein and we had over 100,000 troops on
the ground, and it took us a while to pull that one off. But I
cannot sit here and tell you that there is no way we would have
to do that because one can imagine circumstances in which it is
possible.
The hope had been, first when Musharraf came in and then
when he held elections 2 years ago, that after a period of 10
years of essentially failed governments, that this would be an
opportunity to rebuild the economy and the system of
governance, and that the elections would be the first step down
what everyone understood would be a long road to rebuilding the
political institutions.
The political institutions have not made any progress since
that time. In fact, I would argue that they have probably moved
backward because they have not really been taken seriously by
the holder of real power, namely President Musharraf. I
appreciate that he has got one of the toughest jobs in the
world and a very difficult country to govern in difficult times
and that nothing in his training as a military officer really
equips him to deal with the world of uncertainty that is the
essence of democratic politics. But that is where we are today.
The Chairman. Well, I thank you for that assessment.
Let me just raise one more question during this time. With
regard to President Musharraf himself, you have all described
the problems that he has governing. At the same time, it has
never been clear, I think, to most of us what the alternative
may be. As we lean on General Musharraf to do this or that and
so forth, and perhaps inadvertently knock this equilibrium off
so that in fact he loses authority for one reason or another,
or more tragically he is assassinated by someone in Pakistan
and is gone, at that point, what do we do? What are the courses
of action?
Dr. Weinbaum. Senator, under the constitution there is a
process where he will be succeeded by the chairman of the
senate and then elections will be held. However, realistically
speaking, were Musharraf to leave the scene, his replacement
will be another general or perhaps two or three generals, at
least in the short term. So we should not anticipate
structurally that there would be any change in the balance of
power, civilian/military, with this. Depending on the
circumstances, we could see, however, the introduction of
martial law, depending on how he leaves the scene. So we might
very well see a severe setback to the democratic or elected
institutions.
I think the problem here with our policy is that we do not
have a plan B. We have not seriously thought through in our
government how we would proceed without General Musharraf. We
put so much of our faith in him. He has got an investment in
us; we have got an investment in him. And it is understandable
because he has been there when we wanted him, although as I
suggested in my remarks, he has a way of backing off when he
feels it necessary.
So I think right now, as we look at this question that you
raise here about what if, we have got a very uncertain
situation in Pakistan. The best estimate would be that other
generals would come up. Now, they, I think initially, would try
to maintain a certain degree of continuity, but ultimately my
concern is that they would have to make even greater
compromises with some of those elements with which Musharraf
has already thrown in his lot. Therefore, the long-term
possibilities that we would proceed along this road to greater
institutionalization would be at least derailed for a short
time.
Senator Biden. Can I ask for a clarification on this?
Dr. Weinbaum. Yes.
Senator Biden. God forbid Musharraf is assassinated. The
attempts that have occurred so far are coming from, as I
understand it, fundamentalist elements of the Pakistani society
and the radicals who are empathetic, sympathetic, or
cooperative with the very elements that have now moved into the
northwest province of Pakistan, including al-Qaeda.
Do I understand you to be saying that if that was the
source of the assassination, that element--and I agree with you
that it most assuredly would be another general or series of
generals--that that would incline those generals to be more
cooperative with those elements or to take them on more
directly? What would be the inclination in your view?
Dr. Weinbaum. Were he to be removed by a political mistake
in which then the jihadi groups, the religious establishment,
and others went into the street to demonstrate, and the
generals would then come to him and say we think it is time for
you to take a vacation, which is a conceivable scenario, I
think under those circumstances I would worry more about their
compromising with those elements. Initially I suspect that the
generals will get as tough as they can get with those jihadi
elements. My concern here is, in doing so, they may have to
unleash their own security forces in a way, which is simply
going to set back whatever progress we have seen toward
democratic governance.
Senator Biden. Is it a possibility to have progress toward
democratic governance as long as the northeast province is in
fact ungovernable and in the hands of what appears to be the
jihadists?
Dr. Nasr. If I may answer. Actually these are sort of straw
men that the general himself puts up in the sense that there is
no alternative to the current setup. That is not true. I
believe that in fact ideal for Pakistan would be that if the
military went back to the barracks and got down to the business
of dealing with the extremists and left the politics to
civilian politicians, the military being out of power has no
bearing on their effectiveness of dealing with extremists. In
fact, I think they would be far more effective because right
now General Musharraf is making compromises with Islamists in
order to get consent to rule.
Also, regarding the issue you mentioned, namely, if he were
to be assassinated, one of the key issues for the Pakistan
military, which is also at play right now in their dealing with
Islamists is that the Pakistan military does not want to end up
losing its popular base of support. It is always viewed much
like the Israeli military is in Israel as the last defense of
the religious homeland. It is a popular military, and it is
gradually getting into that sort of gray area where it is
losing that.
If General Musharraf was to be toppled or to be
assassinated, the military will try to restore its social-
political position, which means that it will pursue the actual
murderers, the actual assassins, but more than likely will very
quickly try to get back to the high ground that they have
enjoyed before 2001.
I believe actually before beginning with the nuts and bolts
policies of addressing varieties of issues of how do we get
there, one of the key issues is that we are sort of trusting
450,000 men and one general to figure it out, and I do not have
confidence in that. I believe that actually the political
imperatives that are driving President Musharraf are making
Pakistan a more dangerous place. We really need to think, as we
are talking about the Arab world, what kind of a government do
we believe Pakistan ought to have, and we should not really
trust it to the generals to decide what is the best way to
manage the extremism issue.
The Chairman. Let me just inquire. Let us say we came to a
government of new generals, or of the current general. Do any
of these people have an interest in the public school system?
In our democracy, why, parents would say we want public
schools. We want money spent for public schools. We want all of
our children to succeed. Now, what you have described is a
society in Pakistan which a certain elite might receive
education and the emphasis on expenditure is only for the
highest levels. This is a practical solution as only so many
dollars or local currency are available, and therefore the
government would spend it on only a few people who might offer
leadership. But is there an ethos here?
It is probably beyond our Nation's ability in terms of our
diplomacy, to bring about a constituency in which the people
are all heard and in which money is spent for public schools,
and in which something other than the madrassah is available as
an alternative. But just how does this get done at any level of
the Pakistani Government?
Ambassador Schaffer. First of all, I think there is lots of
evidence that there is grassroots support for functioning
schools.
Second, as far as the army's attitude is concerned, the
army insists on what is called ``matric'' which is essentially
10 years of school, plus an exit exam, for recruitment even to
the enlisted ranks. In a society with literacy levels are as
low as the ones you have cited, Mr. Chairman, this is an
extraordinary high standard, and they are able to meet it. The
military educate all of their kids. They basically have their
own school system. They allow others to enroll in their school
system, but the others have to pay slightly higher fees, and if
there are enough army brats to fill the school, then the others
are on the waiting list.
On the face of it, this would appear to create a situation
where the military could become backers of the public school
system, but not because of their own immediate needs because
their own immediate needs are taken care of. So I think they
could be part, if they wanted to, of the kind of transformed
mind set that Dr. Weinbaum spoke about. I do not think so far
they have really seen this as a cause that they had to throw
themselves into, although you do have a certain number of
retired military officers who have.
Dr. Weinbaum. Mr. Chairman, I think it is important that we
see Pakistan as a kind of company town. The military has seized
the country as its subsidiary. What the great hope here is that
because this is a military which owns most of the assets of the
country, makes most of the important decisions, has claims on
the budget, that there would be enough enlightenment to say, if
this country fails, we are going to fail too. This has been the
hope, and there are some people in the military--as Ambassador
Schaffer said, we find them typically when we talk to retired
officers--who recognize that it is more than simply winning a
battle. It is more than Kashmir. They have got the
responsibility of Pakistan. I think we have been waiting for a
long time for them to step up to that.
However, at the moment the problem is that this is a
welfare state for the military. The military is a disciplined,
professional military with very good reason. If they play ball,
if they stay with the system, there is something for them for
the rest of their lives. They get taken care of, whether it is
education at one end for their children or housing and
allowances at the other end. They have every reason to simply
stay with the system. Somehow one has to hope that this is
going to change. Unless we change the military and the
military's mind set, I am afraid we do not have solutions for
Pakistan.
The Chairman. Yes, Ambassador.
Ambassador Schaffer. One statistic may be of interest to
you. Spending on education in the last year came to about 1.8
percent of gross domestic product. In 1995, the civilian
government, which had a lot of discredits on its dossier, spent
2.8 percent of GDP on education. This is from Government of
Pakistan statistics. So they have got a big way even to go to
get back to where they were.
The Chairman. Finally, this is my last question. Is it
possible that if the military government does succeed in
identifying itself with the rest of the country, and tries to
build these institutions, among the institutions it may try to
build are the political parties or some civilian system, so
that at some point it might cede control, step back, and allow
others to have a go at it?
What is the prospect of that occurring in the short term or
even in the intermediate term, even if we would all agree it
might be healthy to have development of political parties
again?
Dr. Nasr. Well, actually initially President Musharraf
tried to play that card of creating his own political party,
but with the sacking of the Prime Minister and his indication
that he would like a technocrat with no political base,
independent of President Musharraf--that is, the current
Finance Minister to become Prime Minister--essentially he is
moving in the direction of apolitical politics, politics run by
technocrats with no basis of support. And the danger of that is
that even the minimum amount of political support he was
getting from some landlords and parties that he was able to
lure to support him, he is going to lose that, and his
political base will become even more narrow.
Dr. Weinbaum. What is so tragic here is that he had the
power, coming in in October 1999, to change the political
framework in the country. Democrats were with him, obviously
the military, and most recognized the failures of the 1990s and
that kind of democracy. He could have changed the framework. He
has chosen instead, especially as we have seen in the last 2
years, to play by the old rules, so that what he has done is to
manipulate the political scene just as they did in the 1990s
except it is being done now through the military and through
the ISI. And I think that is the great sadness here, that had
he wanted to reexamine this and to say, OK, the political class
has let us down, how can we change the rules, how can the
military operate not as rulers here, but as guaranteers of a
system which brings us to more genuine democracy. He chose
however, to play the same old manipulative game. That
ultimately will discredit him, just as it has previous
politicians.
The Chairman. Well, thank you.
Senator Biden. Can I ask a question?
The Chairman. Yes, Senator Biden. Why do you not continue
with your questions?
Senator Biden. If I may.
What leverage does this or any administration have with the
Pakistan military?
Dr. Nasr. I would say there are two parts to this. One is
what leverage we have with the military. Second is what
leverage we have with President Musharraf personally. I think
there is more leverage with President Musharraf than there is
with the military partly because to some extent his power base
in Pakistan is dependent on his relationship with Washington,
and part of his utility and power among the other generals
comes from the fact that he has been able to secure a very
lucrative tactical relationship with Washington, which had not
existed since the time of General Zia. So there is
substantially more leverage on him personally than there is on
other generals. And to some extent, our window of opportunity
in influencing Pakistan is while he is in power and before he
faces too many political crises to nudge him in the right
directions.
Ambassador Schaffer. There are two major things the
military wants from the United States. One is military supply,
including the famous F-16s. The other is diplomatic support
against India. And I am phrasing it the way they would probably
phrase it in their heart of hearts, but they realize that that
is not the way U.S. policy is currently structured. By
withholding those things, according to the normal way these
things are calculated, we ought to have leverage with them.
The problem is this. First of all, some of the supply items
that the military is most interested in, including in my
judgment the F-16s, may not be a good idea from the U.S. point
of view because I think there are limits to the traditional
argument that by beefing up Pakistan's conventional defenses,
you raise the nuclear threshold. I think you may do that, but
in the process you also tend to increase their willingness to
engage in risky policies like the incursion in Kargil. So I
think that we should stay away from that kind of military
supply.
But more fundamentally the things that we want from the
Pakistan military and from Pakistan more generally tend to be
very important in their scheme of things. We want them to close
down support for the insurgency in Kashmir and keep it closed
because we see a war risk there. This is, as Dr. Nasr said a
few minutes ago, like giving up a weapons system, something
they are very reluctant to do. The military particularly are
attached to the dream of getting Kashmir, and therefore even
more reluctant than they normally would be to give up what they
see as practically the only tool that they can use for that
purpose.
That is where the diplomatic support comes in. I do not
think that what we ought to be doing is anything that could be
described as diplomatic support against either Pakistan or
India. But I do think that a serious diplomatic effort aimed at
shoring up Pakistan's and India's peace process, smoothing out
some of the inevitable rough spots, and trying to help them
turn these initial steps into a serious move toward completely
rebuilding their relationship and, in the process, settling
Kashmir would be the greatest contribution we could make both
to U.S. foreign policy goals and to the peace of the region,
from which Pakistan will benefit almost more than anybody else.
Dr. Weinbaum. We have got some ground to make up here. We
had some 12 years in which our relationship with the Pakistani
military was nil. This was because when we instituted sanctions
in 1990. One of the things we cutoff was the very intimate
relationship between our two militaries. This had served us
very well. One has only to talk to middle-level Pakistani
military now to recognize that necessarily we are alienated. As
has been suggested here, they still see us in their corporate
interests as serving a purpose, and they are not prepared to
alienate us. And that is one of the reasons why they support
Musharraf because they see Musharraf as their ticket to the
United States.
The degree of good feeling that we once had between our two
militaries has, I am afraid, severely eroded. That together
with the greater Islamization of the military and as part of
the greater Islamization of Pakistani society, has been driving
us apart. To be very honest, it is something that is going to
take a while for us to reconstitute.
Senator Biden. Well, the only way you reconstitute it is to
be more forthcoming with their desires. Right? That is what
they want.
I am not sure I got an answer. I got an answer, but there
are two ways traditionally leverage is viewed. It is carrots
and sticks. Ambassador, you indicated that--and I do not
disagree with your overall premise that the best thing we could
do for our interest, their interest, is to use our good offices
to accommodate, as best we can, a continued movement toward
rapprochement between the Indians and the Pakistanis,
ultimately hopefully ending where you suggested. But in the
meantime, there are specific requests being made by the
military and not just fighter aircraft.
You have, for example, the Council on Foreign Relations
recommending shifting the balance of U.S. aid from a 1 to 1
ratio to a 1 to 2 ratio. When I raise that with the
administration, they make a very fervent plea that it will have
the very impact, doctor, you suggested, that it will just
exacerbate an already strained relationship with lack of trust
with the military. Therefore, we cannot do that. Listening to
you, Madam Ambassador, it sounds to me like that would be
something that might make some sense from your perspective.
Let us just be very specific. Good policy, bad policy for
the U.S. Congress to insist that we shift the ratio, $2 non-
military for every military dollar, keeping the amount the
same. What is the impact of that?
Ambassador Schaffer. Senator, when you have a chance to
take a look at my statement, I have actually recommended that
in my statement. I agree with the Council on Foreign Relations'
recommendation. I have also argued that the economic aid ought
to be given essentially without foreign policy conditions, but
that military supply ought to reflect our judgment of whether
Pakistan's foreign and security policies are compatible with
ours.
There also, however, are a whole lot of ways that we can
rebuild relations with the military that do not necessarily
involve weapons systems.
Senator Biden. Let me be very specific. What impact do you
believe such a change in policy would have upon the military
today? The policy gets passed today by the Congress. The
President supports it or his veto is overridden. It is now
policy. The aid is now 1 to 2. What is the impact in your view
immediately as it relates to our ability to influence? What
impact does that have on the military and on Musharraf?
Ambassador Schaffer. I think that if you couple this with a
serious diplomatic effort, the military gets over its
disappointment. I think what they are going to be watching more
than the appropriations even, although they will be watching
that very carefully, is what gets delivered.
They also prize very much the professional relationships
that they have with the U.S. military. One of the unfortunate
things that happened when we imposed sanctions in 1990--and I
was in government at the time--was that the broad sweep of the
Pressler amendment required us to cutoff international military
education and training, to make them pay for anybody they might
wish to send to West Point. There was a whole range of
professional contacts that got cutoff as a result, which I
believed at the time and still believe was very short-sighted.
Obviously, changing the ratio of our aid is not going to
make them happy, but I think if you put it in a policy context,
where we are in fact trying to facilitate forward movement on
the peace process, which is something Pakistan professes to
have wanted for 50 years, that they would get over their
disappointment and ultimately there will still be enough
military supply there to be interesting to them.
Senator Biden. Do you agree, Dr. Weinbaum?
Dr. Weinbaum. Yes, I do. I think that is indeed the only
course we have. It would be wonderful if we could say let us
have more money for the social sector, as well as satisfy the
military, but your assumption here was we are dealing with the
same----
Senator Biden. No, no. Let us understand. As I understand
the reason for the ratio, it is not so much dealing with the
limited funds. It is to make a political point.
So, doctor, let me ask it this way. Let us assume we double
the amount of money and we keep the ratio 1 to 2 instead of 1
to 1. Madam Ambassador, is it your view that this relates to
the amount or the allocation of the formula?
Ambassador Schaffer. I would say that amount is probably
more important.
Senator Biden. So if in fact we were to be able to----
Ambassador Schaffer. Let me make sure I express myself
properly, Senator. I think that for the Pakistan army, looking
at what they get from the United States, getting more is better
and getting more is more important than getting a higher
percentage.
Dr. Nasr. Senator, at this particular time, the Pakistan
military is the Pakistan Government. The kind of distinction we
might have in another part of the world where giving to the
military is different from giving to the civilian government,
they control large parts of the public sector, private sector,
and even the aid that we would give to Pakistan will still
strengthen the military position in politics.
Senator Biden. So it does not matter then.
Dr. Nasr. I think they would cry wolf or they may try to
use----
Senator Biden. If you are correct, which I do not doubt
that you are, then what difference does it make? Why do we go
through this effort? Why would I spend the time here to try to
go through a battle to change the ratio when in fact what you
are saying is it does not matter?
Dr. Nasr. Well, politically it does not matter.
Senator Biden. Why does it politically not matter?
Dr. Nasr. Because it strengthens the military either way.
But in terms of at least if you were to give the money for
public schools--the program will be run by the military. A
general will be put in charge of it--at least you know that the
money is not going to hardware that has no economic or social
impact on Pakistan. But either way, the military is going to
get strengthened through this process.
Dr. Weinbaum. And this is one of the problems that we have.
So many people in Pakistan at this point, unfortunately, view
our support for Musharraf as support for the military, and by
virtue of that, that it means support for the military rather
than for civilian government and democracy. That is something I
do not know how we get through right now because they are one
and the same. Indeed, what happens in Pakistan repeatedly now
is when Musharraf takes decisions, which have a non-democratic
coloration to them, too many people in Pakistan say, well, that
is the way the United States wanted it, that this is something
we are signing on with, even though, of course, we may actually
have objections. Unfortunately, we do not raise those
objections, or if we do, we raise them in such a low voice and
so privately that the Pakistani people do not hear them.
Ambassador Schaffer. Senator, there is one other dimension
of this question of the balance between economic and military
assistance, and that is the conditionality. Part of my argument
is that on military supply in particular we should apply a
filter looking at what Pakistan's policies are and what they
are likely to become before making decisions. I am not focused
so much on the amount, but on the types of equipment that we
finance.
Senator Biden. Give me an example, please.
Ambassador Schaffer. The best example is the F-16s. Before
deciding to go ahead with a new F-16 deal, I would want to be
very confident that the Pakistanis really had closed down their
support for insurgency in Kashmir and that the peace process
had gone enough more rounds that it looked much more robustly
on track than it is now.
You could apply the same logic to the possibility of other
unattractive discoveries in nuclear transfers. Those are the
two issues that I am most concerned about in Pakistan's foreign
and security policy.
Senator Biden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Senator Biden. We
thank each of you as witnesses for the preparation of your
papers, and likewise for your very forthcoming responses to our
questions. I think we have had a good hearing, and we
appreciate your contribution and that of all members.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:48 a.m., the committee adjourned, to
reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.]