Staving Off Pakistan's Collapse, One Step At A Time

By Steve Hynd

My friend Josh Mull, the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation, has a couple of excellent posts on what he sees as the coming Pakistani meltdown, here and here. I urge you to read both, they're fairly long but will repay close reading because Josh knows Pakistan and it's people at first hand and has the brights to be able to translate that experience into analysis without succumbing to cliche. For my mind, these two posts should be required reading for anyone thinking about Af/Pak and the wider ripples of geopolitics the war in Afghanistan creates.

Josh paints a bleak picture of the future:

Pakistan�s national security policy of supporting terrorist groups and militias as proxies against India, known as "strategic depth," is accelerating out of control, and they are either deliberately or inadvertently engineering a globalized religious war, a Clash of Civilizations. Both terrorist and insurgent elements are evolving, with the Taliban co-opting Al-Qa�eda�s idea of religious war to legitimize its fight against the Pakistani state, and Al-Qa�eda in turn co-opting the Taliban�s objective of confronting India to legitimize the sub-continent as the premier theater of global jihad. Hawkish India, for one, will not take these developments lightly.

If pressure on congress is not increased, if the US remains on the slow, ambiguous timetable it is on now, it will be caught right in the middle of this clash. The bloodbath of Iraq in 2006 was only a preview of what will happen if there is a civil war in Pakistan, or a (nuclear?) war between Pakistan and India. Or both. If the US does not expedite its withdrawal, as well as dramatically reform its policies toward the region as a whole, we will very quickly be sucked into that conflagration.

And writes that this increasingly likely possibility has been arrived at by many little steps.

Every ISAF soldier, every night raid, every civilian casualty, every fresh Taliban recruit, every drone strike, every Blackwater mercenary, every stolen election we overlook, every elected representative we sideline and marginalize, every "strategic summit" with tyrants like General Kayani and Musharraf before him, every unaccountable dollar we funnel to the corrupt criminals in Kabul, Islamabad, and Rawalpindi, every single, tiny action is a pin prick to the stability of the region, an almost unnoticeable chipping away at the integrity of Pakistan, as well as its neighbor Afghanistan.

Pakistan is equally liable, with their long history of supporting terrorists and militants, their capitulation to the worst extremist and de-stabilizing elements in their society, their willingness to betray democracy in favor of dictatorship, their negating long-term national goals for short-term gains from unhelpful foreign alliances, their hideous victimization of their own citizens (first in East Pakistan, now in Balochistan), and of course the inexplicably obsessive apatite, the fetish, Pakistan�s elite has for war with India.

These individual policies in turn feed our mistaken perceptions. We see them as isolated, not in their complete context. Sure the civilian casualties recruit militants, we say, but we�re fighting a war. Sure the war in Afghanistan is bad, but we�re pushing the extremists across the border. Sure the extremists in Pakistan are bad, but we support the western-educated Army. Sure the Army is unelected, but the civilian government is corrupt. And on and on it goes until there�s simply nothing left. Afghanistan destroyed, Pakistan inflamed, and our own country politically and economically ripping apart at the seams. It all adds up, whether we�re awake to it or not.

...

The liberal, educated Pakistani democrat has an ally in the extremist who wants to fight the US puppet government, who in turn has an ally in the Taliban fighting the Americans, who in turn has an ally in Afghanistan whose family was killed by NATO bombs, who in turn has an ally in the Pakistani intelligence services, them an ally in the Army, and those in the Army undermine the government which, of course, then sets off the liberal, educated Pakistani democrat.

Get the picture? This is where it all crashes together, the crossroads of the war in Afghanistan, "Strategic Depth," undermining democracy in Pakistan � everything. This is how it works out, how we�ll see the "complete collapse of Pakistan as a recognizable entity." There is no awesome explosion, no moment of shattering, no one thing to pin all the blame on.

That�s just what the complete collapse looks like. No one left we can recognize as an ally, only violent resistance, war, and destruction. No more vibrant, democratic society, no more progressive struggles, no more women�s, minority, or even human rights. Only war remains, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and likely spreading out into India and across the entire sub-continent. No one sets out deliberately to cause these massive problems, of course. These huge issues like US imperialism in Central Asia, the Long War, and the collapse of Pakistan weren�t created out of thin air, they are simply the consequences of many smaller, individual actions, the war in Afghanistan and "strategic depth" and so forth.

I don't pretend to have the single answer to the Gordian Knot that the sub-continent has become, nor do I think anyone else does, but here's some thinking aloud:

1) The Pakistani army is huge and far better equipped than the Taliban and its allies. The Pakistani feudal/military elite will doubtless use it to fight back and are already showing signs of ditching any pretense at "population-centric" counter-insurgency. Then there's the 800lb gorilla just over the horizon - the PLA - with its deep ties to the Pakistani military establishment and the manpower to swamp the ungoverned areas with troops should Pakistan's Western-educated rulers issue a desperate invite. But Josh's point is that fighting a civil war in Pakistan, even Sri Lankan style under a full media blackout, isn't exactly going to be stabilizing for the region.

2) Until now, the West's attitude to folks like Zardari, Gilani and General Kayani has been that they're douchebags, but they're smart douchebags we can do deals with - and there's been enough of a veneer of democtratic election to assuage many people's misgivings about doing those deals, even if the military largely pulls the civilian government's strings. One possible set of small steps that can be taken by the West is to strengthen the clout of the Pakistani middle class by funding and training for effective governance. That holds out hope of a series of small resets that will eventually lead to an empowered middle class unseating the entrenched feudal interests that currently provide the bulk of those standing for high public and military office. My freind Mosharraf Zaidi, the go-to guy on Pakistan's laregly silent liberal middle class, says the process of changing pakistan's governance away from the feudals who empower extremism will take 25 years. I hope we've got the time. 

3) The majority Sufi Barelvi sect has finally gotten off it's 85 million strong collective ass and said enough.

In speech after speech, bearded religious figures screamed into a microphone and pounded the podium, denouncing Deobandi groups such as the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, which has expressed sympathy for the Taliban. Closer to home, they also criticized Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawah, groups accused of links with Punjabi militants.

They also highlighted what they describe as lax or complicit figures in the government and security forces. Many called for the resignation of Rana Sanaullah, the Provincial Law Minister, whom they accuse of using a banned militant group to draw support for a campaign rally.

�Our intelligence agencies know full well who is a terrorist, and where they get their support,� said Sahibzada Fazal Karim, chairman of the Sunni Itehad Council and a member of Parliament.

If that passion turns to religious groups directly fighting, then we'll have civil war in Pakistan. But if it works to energise the working and middle classes politically, then again a series of small steps might see the extremists marginalised and collapse headed off.

4) We have to stop throwing gasoline on the fire. Josh writes:

That these problems are so enormous does not, however, mean that they are ultimately un-solvable. In fact, the exact same principles that went into creating these problems � disconnected, individual actions, is precisely what will work for us to help fix these problems.

Pakistani citizens are standing up, rejecting the extremists� calls for violence, fighting the corruption of their elected officials, and working in all branches of the government to reform their fragile system. Each individual adds up into a movement, and that movement adds up to stifling their country�s descent into civil war.

But we as Americans also have a responsibility to act individually. Every time you call congress (dial (202) 224-3121 and ask for your representative), every meeting you attend, every bit of pressure on your government � it all adds up. A few concerned filmmakers and journalists becomes Rethink Afghanistan. A couple of dedicated bloggers becomes Firedoglake. A handful of progressive activists becomes ActBlue. Small, disconnected acts turn into a huge movement. Your short meeting at your congressman�s office turns into their vote for reforming our policies toward the region, into ending the war in Afghanistan, peace in Pakistan, and free and stable governments for both Pakistanis and Afghans.

No one action created the horrendous instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and no one person, not even President Obama himself, can end the war and solve these problems by themselves. The problems will be solved the same way they were created, through concerned, individual citizens taking action for themselves.

5) Lastly, one thing Josh has done is to negate the pro-war narrative that if we withdraw from Afghanistan then nuclear wars and civil wars will reduce the region to chaos. Josh looks at the same situation and, quite reasonably to my mind, sees all that happening if we don't withdraw troops. He told me: "Do I actually want to be right, or for any of this to come to pass? No way. Do I want to wash out the argument that withdrawal means the end of the world? Absolutely."