Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [279]
There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced [US] assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups [i.e. the Afghan Taleban and their allies] which it sees as an important part of its national security apparatus against India. The only way to achieve a cessation of such support is to change the Pakistani government’s perception of its security requirements.4
The US and other Western countries fighting in Afghanistan should use Pakistan as an intermediary to initiate talks with the Taleban in the hope of eventually reaching a settlement, if, as seems highly probable, the attempt to defeat the Taleban by force does not succeed. Because of its links with the Taleban, Pakistan will have to play a key role in bringing about such negotiations. In 2010 the Obama administration began to move towards the idea of talks, but still seemed very far away from a recognition of what such talks would really entail. In the words of a senior Pakistani diplomat:
The US needs to be negotiating with the Taliban, those Taliban with no links to al-Qaida. We need a power-sharing agreement in Afghanistan and it will have to be negotiated with all the parties ... The Afghan government is already talking to all the stakeholders, the Taliban, the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and Mullah Omar. The Americans have been setting ridiculous preconditions for talks. You can‘t lay down such preconditions when you are losing.5
Such a Western strategy should also stem from a recognition that Pakistan’s goals in Afghanistan are in part legitimate – even if the means by which they have been sought have not been – and this legitimacy needs to be recognized by the West. The US and EU should work hard to try to reconcile legitimate Pakistani goals in Afghanistan with those of India, and to draw other regional states into a consensus on how to limit the Afghan conflict. China, close to Pakistan and fearful of Islamist extremism, could be a key player in this regard.
The US needs to continue to limit Indian involvement in Afghanistan if it is to have any hope of a long-term co-operative relationship with Pakistan. The West also needs to seek a peaceful solution to the Kashmir dispute, despite all the immense obstacles in both Pakistan and India. As Ambassador Patterson told her government:
Most importantly, it is the perception of India as the primary threat to the Pakistani state that colours its perceptions of the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s security needs. The Pakistani establishment fears that a pro-Indian government in Afghanistan would allow India to operate a proxy war against Pakistan from its territory ... Increased Indian investment in, trade with, and development support to the Afghan government, which the USG [US government] has encouraged, causes Pakistan to embrace Taliban groups as anti-India allies. We need to reassess Indian involvement in Afghanistan and our own policies towards India ... Resolving the Kashmir dispute would dramatically improve the situation.6
The overall question of the future of US – Indian relations is far too broad to be discussed here. What can be said is that a balance needs to be struck between the economic and security benefits to the West of closer ties to India and the security threats to the West stemming from a growth of Islamist militancy in Pakistan. In the end, not even the greatest imaginable benefits of US – Indian friendship could compensate for the actual collapse of Pakistan, with all the frightful dangers this would create not just for the West but for India too.
We should also not dream – as US neo-conservatives are apt to do – that India can somehow be used by the US to control Pakistani behaviour. The truth, as outlined by Ambassador Patterson, is exactly the opposite. Only Pakistanis can control Pakistan, and the behaviour of the Pakistani security establishment will always be determined by what they see as the vital needs of Pakistan and the Pakistani army.
A new approach to Pakistan