As
Printed in the Los Angeles Times
August
7, 2002
COMMENTARY
As Kashmir Boils, Keep Heat on Pakistan
By
SELIG S. HARRISON
Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia program at the Center
for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Until last week, the American diplomatic effort to head off
a war between India and Pakistan had focused sharply on stopping
Pakistani-sponsored Islamic extremist incursions into Indian-controlled
areas of Kashmir. Now, after his visit to India and Pakistan,
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has relaxed his pressure
on Islamabad, ignoring continued Pakistani sponsorship of these
incursions and efforts to disrupt the key October elections
in the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir.
This
abrupt tilt toward Islamabad has provoked Indian distrust of
U.S. bona fides that will make it difficult for Washington to
continue acting as a de facto mediator between the two nuclear-armed
South Asian rivals.
Powell
declared that India should permit an "international presence"
to observe the October balloting, "to show the world that
it is a free, open, fair election."
This
was good advice, but Powell failed to couple it with an appeal
to Pakistani intelligence agencies to stop their systematic
assassinations of Kashmiri insurgents who advocate participation
in the elections, like the respected moderate Abdul Ghani Lone,
who was murdered May 21.
Seven
leaders of the National Conference party that governs in the
Indian portion of Kashmir have also been killed during the last
month.
The
new American tilt toward Islamabad was also reflected in the
fact that Powell pointedly avoided calling on Pakistan to dismantle
the training camps and communications facilities on its side
of the Kashmir cease-fire line. So long as this infrastructure
remains in place, Pakistan can adjust the level of infiltration
at will, preventing the return to normalcy that is necessary
for meaningful elections.
Evidence
increasingly points to Pakistani fingerprints in Lone's murder.
Lone had signaled his intention to run in the Kashmir state
assembly election. The director of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Ehsan Ul-Haq, presided over a
strategy meeting held in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, in April
with seven key Kashmiri insurgent leaders who had received Pakistani
aid, including Lone.
Ehsan
denounced Lone for supporting participation in the elections
and warned him to stop, according to accounts in Sharjah Arabic-language
newspapers and the Pakistani press that were confirmed to me
by a Pakistani diplomat.
After
the meeting, Lone went to the United States for medical treatment,
returning to Kashmir on May 19. On May 20, at a meeting of Pakistani-backed
insurgent groups, he urged participation in the elections. The
next day, he was assassinated.
Unless
the U.S. is able to restrain Pakistan, the next targets could
well be Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, the principal Muslim religious
leader in the Indian-controlled Kashmir Valley, who supported
Lone in the Sharjah meeting; and Shabir Shah, another widely
respected moderate, who met with a top Indian official recently
to explore a compromise with India concerning the election and
autonomy for Kashmir.
The
United States should urge Pakistan to support the elections
as the first step toward a dialogue between India and Pakistan
on Kashmir. Before beneficial discussions can take place, New
Delhi will have to negotiate on autonomy with a new, more representative
government in the Indian-ruled portion.
If
India and the Kashmiris under its control could reach an accommodation
on autonomy, the stage would be set for a dialogue between Islamabad
and the Kashmiris in Pakistani-controlled Azad (Free) Kashmir
for a comparable degree of autonomy.
India
and Pakistan could then discuss recognition of the cease-fire
line as a permanent international boundary; interchange between
the two parts of Kashmir; a pullback of the forces of both sides;
and a reduction of the Indian and Pakistani forces stationed
in both parts of the state.
Little
attention is paid to the fact that the Kashmiris under Pakistani
control are also seeking autonomy. On July 26, the Pakistan
Daily Times reported that Altaf Qadiri, a key leader of the
All Party Hurriyat Conference, a Pakistani-sponsored insurgent
coalition, called the Azad Kashmir regime "worse than the
government on the Indian side."
The
October elections mark a critical turning point in the search
for peace in Kashmir, and only an evenhanded U.S. policy can
help promote broad-based participation by the Kashmiri people.
New Delhi should be urged to make the elections fair and to
permit some form of international monitoring. But India's best
efforts will not bring stability to the state unless the U.S.
can get Pakistan to keep its hands off.
Copyright
2002 Los Angeles Times
The
Welcome is Going Sour
Afghanistan
By Selig S. Harrison (IHT)
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
WASHINGTON:
Mounting anger over civilian casualties inflicted by U.S. forces
is not the only reason why anti-American sentiment is growing
in Afghanistan. More than 120 Afghan villagers were inadvertently
killed or wounded by a C-130 gunship on June 30 in Oruzgan Province,
a stronghold of the 10 million Pashtun tribesmen who are Afghanistan's
largest ethnic group. But even before the Oruzgan tragedy, the
Pashtun goodwill earned by the United States for sweeping away
the Taliban had been replaced by resentment after U.S. pressure
to block the re-emergence of a Pashtun-dominated regime at the
recent loya jirga, or grand council, held in Kabul.
Pashtun
domination has been the historical norm in Afghanistan. A Pashtun
monarchy ruled from the birth of the nation in 1747 until a
palace coup in 1973 in which the popular king, Zahir Shah, was
deposed by a cousin.
When
it hastily launched Operation Enduring Freedom last October,
the United States cast its lot with a triumvirate of generals
from the Tajik ethnic minority who helped to dislodge the Taliban
and now dominate the government of Hamid Karzai, a largely powerless
front man. This Tajik triumvirate controls not only the armed
forces and police but also three hated secret police agencies.
In Pashtun eyes, the secret police are dedicated to curbing
Pashtun influence and were automatically suspect in last week's
murder of Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir, although there is
no evidence yet to support this suspicion. To counter Tajik
control of the security apparatus and also Karzai's cabinet,
Pashtun leaders wanted Zahir Shah to run for president of the
new Transitional Authority at the loya jirga. He was to have
critical but clearly limited powers, with Karzai as prime minister
running the government. At 87, the ex-monarch is too old to
wield day-to-day authority, but his presidential powers, it
was argued, plus his commanding popularity among Pashtuns, would
have enabled Karzai to bring the secret police under control.
In
the weeks before the loya jirga, Pashtun tribal delegations
totaling 70,000 streamed into Kabul to pay homage to the king.
This alarmed U.S. diplomats and generals, who have found Karzai
a compliant partner and get along well with the Tajik military
and secret police barons.
On
the eve of the loya jirga, the White House special envoy in
Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, openly demanded that Zahir Shah renounce
his presidential candidacy to avoid a "divisive" situation.
Khalilzad confronted the king in a well-publicized meeting that
one of the royal advisers described to me as "unpleasant."
Khalilzad
is now reviled as "the viceroy" by many Pashtuns,
who refer to the once welcomed U.S. forces in Afghanistan as
an "army of occupation."
The
need to break the Tajik grip on the Afghan armed forces and
intelligence services was one of the major conclusions of a
recent conference of 38 diplomats, aid officials and nongovernment
experts on Afghanistan from 20 countries convened by Francesc
Vendrell of Spain, a former UN special representative for Afghanistan
and now the European Union's special envoy for Afghan affairs.
Spain
had organized the closed-door "brainstorming" meeting
at Cordoba, Vendrell said, "in the hope that the international
community will remain focused on Afghanistan and not repeat
the mistakes of the past by disengaging prematurely." Participants
attended as individuals, not as representatives of their governments,
and authorized Vendrell to sum up the discussions.
In
diplomatic language that avoided the use of the word "Tajik,"
the conference concluded that "it is necessary to overhaul
the Afghan security services in order to depoliticize them,
ensure that they are not dominated by any single ethnic group,
bring them under civilian control and make them accountable
to the central government as a whole."
"Many
participants expressed awareness," Vendrell reported in
his summary, "that a segment of the loya jirga had left
with a feeling of disappointment at what they perceived as their
exclusion from the decision-making process leading to the selection
of the head of state, but it is too early to assess whether
this will have a negative impact on the functioning of the Transitional
Administration."
Among
its 26 recommendations, the conference urged accelerated efforts
to develop a new national army, emphasizing that it should be
multiethnic in character.
At
present, the United States plans to maintain a military presence
until the projected new army is in the field. But building a
new army from scratch could take many years. The recent debacle
at Oruzgan, which is only the latest of many similar incidents,
underlines the urgent need to redefine the mission of U.S. forces.
There
is no definitive cumulative estimate of Afghan civilian casualties,
but a credible University of New Hampshire study suggests a
figure of 3,742.
A
redefined U.S. mission should focus on Al Qaeda remnants and
phase out operations against what is left of the Pashtun Taliban
guerrillas, like the raid at Oruzgan, in which it is impossible
to distinguish the enemy from innocent tribesmen and their families.
Zahir
Shah spoke out bluntly in a private Rome meeting in March with
Italian aid agencies operating in Afghanistan. He thought the
meeting was off the record, but a La Stampa reporter was present.
As the war drags on, he said, it is becoming "stupid and
useless - it causes me great pain, and the sooner it is ended
the better." The writer is director of the Asia Program
at the Center for International Policy and author of "Out
of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal."
He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright
© 2002 The International Herald Tribune
As
printed in The Washington Post.
India's
Bottom Line
By Selig S. Harrison
Tuesday,
June 11, 2002; Page A25
While
the world's attention is riveted on Kashmir as the flashpoint
of a possible India-Pakistan war, 120,000 Indian Muslims remain
in Gujarat refugee camps -- afraid to return to their villages,
where they fear a resurgence of the Hindu mob attacks that left
1,200 dead in March.
This
festering challenge to India's stability as a secular democracy
explains what the Kashmir crisis is all about. The governing
factor in the current confrontation between New Delhi and Islamabad
is the danger of an uncontrollable chain reaction of Hindu reprisals
against Muslims throughout India if the Muslims of Kashmir opt
for independence or for accession to Pakistan.
New
Delhi is prepared to risk war not for the sake of retaining
Kashmir as such but to ensure against the destabilizing impact
of a change in the status quo on India as a whole. The political
heirs of Gandhi and Nehru in India believe that Kashmir, as
the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, must remain in
the Indian Union as proof that Hindus and Muslims can live together
in a secular state.
Conversely,
the growing Hindu right wing would point to the secession of
Kashmir as conclusive evidence that all of the 130 million Muslims
in India are potential traitors and should either bow to Hindu
domination or go to Pakistan.
Definitive
action by the United States is urgently needed to make Pakistan
realize, once and for all, nothing is to be gained by stoking
the fires of insurgency in Kashmir.
It
is not enough to insist on a cessation of Pakistani sponsorship
of infiltration by Islamic militants across the 450-mile "Line
of Control," the U.N. cease-fire line imposed when the
first Kashmir war ended in 1949 and ratified in the 1972 Indo-Pakistan
Simla Agreement. Even if Gen. Pervez Musharraf stops infiltration
for the moment, he will be under unremitting domestic pressure
to start it up again as soon as the current crisis subsides.
What
is required is an unambiguous declaration by the United States
that a permanent Kashmir settlement will have to rest on recognition
of the 53-year-old cease-fire line as the permanent international
boundary. Such a declaration by the United States and other
major powers is the only way to get Pakistani leaders to dismantle
their entire infrastructure for cross-border infiltration and
to stop financial and military aid to the insurgents.
Pakistani
policy rests on the hope that the major powers can be induced
to internationalize the dispute and, ultimately, support accession
of the Indian-controlled Kashmir Valley to Pakistan, which holds
the other 37 percent of the state.
Musharraf's
promise to pull back can produce only temporary results, because
there are built-in limits to his power. On the Kashmir issue,
he is beholden to Islamic militant sympathizers among powerful
fellow generals in the armed forces and intelligence agencies.
If
Musharraf is, in fact, ready to negotiate a realistic Kashmir
solution, American support for a settlement based on the cease-fire
line would help him convince his fellow generals that there
is no point in perpetuating the Kashmir insurgency. At the same
time, it would strengthen moderates in India prepared to accept
the Line of Control as the basis for a settlement and to give
up Indian claims to Pakistani-held areas of Kashmir.
In
return for Pakistani acceptance of the Line of Control as a
permanent boundary, the United States should pledge the long-term
continuation of the massive economic aid Pakistan has been receiving
since Sept. 11. Islamabad desperately needs this aid to head
off a fiscal collapse.
An
added inducement would be U.S. recognition of Pakistan's control
over Gilgit, Baltistan and Hunza, three areas of northern Kashmir
incorporated into Pakistan over India's protests, and of a China-Pakistan
border settlement in Kashmir also disputed by India.
To
show that it is serious about stabilizing the Line of Control,
the United States should provide India with state-of-the-art
ground-based and airborne surveillance equipment to enable New
Delhi to detect infiltration and stop it. At a minimum, the
United States could give India the latest ground-based monitoring
equipment developed for use along the Mexican border and for
enforcement of the 1973 Sinai Desert cease-fire agreement.
To
have a decisive impact, U.S. surveillance help would also have
to include sophisticated airborne radar scanners and night-vision
video cameras, such as the Lynx and Skyball systems developed
for the Predator unmanned monitoring aircraft that have proved
so effective in Afghanistan. This would require a waiver of
U.S. export restrictions.
If
U.S. surveillance assistance to India did not deter Pakistani-sponsored
infiltration, the United States could then escalate its help
by leasing the Predator aircraft to New Delhi and sharing the
results of U.S. spy satellite monitoring along the Line of Control.
By
providing surveillance equipment and declaring its support for
a partition that would give India the lion's share of Kashmir,
the United States would be in a stronger position to put effective
pressure on India for a more flexible posture toward negotiations
with the Kashmiri insurgent groups and with Pakistan that would,
one hopes, lead to wide-ranging autonomy for the Kashmiris under
both Indian and Pakistani jurisdiction.
For
different reasons, neither India nor Pakistan wants Kashmir
to be independent, and the United States, like India, has special
reason to view such a prospect with alarm. Independence would
make Kashmir a permanent sanctuary for Islamic extremist terrorist
operations.
American
interests would be best served by promoting an autonomous Kashmir
within the Indian security framework, reflecting a broader recognition
that India, a rising power, will be much more important to the
United States in future decades than troubled Pakistan, one-eighth
its size.
The
writer, a former South Asia bureau chief for The Post, has reported
on the region since 1951. He is currently director of the Asia
Program at the Center for International Policy and a senior
scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
©
2002 The Washington Post Company
As
Printed in The Mercury Times
May
27, 2002
Pakistan
ups the ante, but U.S. should rule out new arms aid
By Selig S. Harrison
JUST
as Washington is stepping up its pressure on India and Pakistan
to pull back from the brink of war, Islamabad has upped the
ante for its cooperation with the United States in hunting down
Al-Qaida remnants.
To
get Pakistan's help after Sept. 11, the Bush administration
gave Islamabad $600 million in cash and another $3.6 billion
in projected grants, credits and International Monetary Fund
aid, not to mention a rescheduling of $12.5 billion in debt
to a U.S.-led international aid consortium.
Now
Gen. Pervez Musharraf is demanding sophisticated military hardware,
starting with 70 F-16 jet fighters and $75 million in spare
parts for previously supplied U.S. equipment. The chief of the
Pakistani air force presented this request to Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld on May 10.
Whether
or not India and Pakistan pull back from the brink, the United
States should categorically rule out new military aid and spare
parts for Pakistan. Such aid would not only exacerbate tensions
between New Delhi and Islamabad but would also poison U.S. relations
with India at a time when relations between the world's two
largest democracies have been rapidly improving.
There
is no need to buy off Pakistan with military aid because Islamabad's
desperate need for U.S. economic aid is sufficient to assure
continued cooperation in the pursuit of Al-Qaida. Moreover,
Pakistan is inhibited in helping the United States. Apart from
the fact that its security and intelligence agencies are riddled
with Al-Qaida sympathizers, Islamabad fears a backlash in the
autonomous Pushtun tribal belt along its border with Afghanistan
if it lets too many Americans operate there. The capture of
Al-Qaida leader Abu Zubayda came after U.S. intelligence intercepts
left Pakistani police no choice but to cooperate in his capture.
The
package of spare parts now nearing approval would be designed
to upgrade attack helicopters, C-130 military transport planes,
F-16 fighters and P-3 surveillance aircraft.
The
Pentagon spin that U.S. military help for Islamabad would relate
only to the ``war on terrorism'' rekindles Indian memories of
earlier reassurances by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954
that the program of ``limited'' weapons aid to Pakistan then
unfolding was solely for use against communist aggression.
By
1965, the United States had provided $3.8 billion in military
hardware to Pakistan. This led the military dictator then ruling
in Islamabad, Gen. Ayub Khan, to launch cross-border raids in
Kashmir that triggered a broader war, in which Pakistan, predictably,
relied primarily on its U.S. planes and tanks.
Just
when India had begun to forgive and forget, the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan prompted the U.S. to supply Pakistan with $3.5
billion in new weapons aid as a reward for serving as a ``front-line
state.'' The nature of this aid package, with its F-16 aircraft
and its heavy tanks, made clear that it was not intended for
use on the mountainous Afghan border but rather to bolster Pakistan's
balance of power in open-plains warfare with India. Additional
U.S. weapons were sent through Pakistan to the Afghan resistance
forces.
In
contrast to 1954, the United States did not even pretend in
1982 that its aid could be used only against the Soviet Union.
In a controversial speech on Oct. 10, 1984, U.S. Ambassador
to Pakistan Deane Hinton said that the 1959 U.S. mutual security
treaty with Islamabad left the door open for the United States
to support Pakistan in a war with India. Lawrence S. Eagleburger,
who was undersecretary of state at the time, told me later that
the United States wanted to establish a ``balance'' between
India and its smaller neighbor.
Against
this background, India's current brinksmanship becomes more
understandable. New Delhi fears that U.S. military cooperation
with Islamabad will spill over into the India-Pakistan conflict,
and is not likely to pull back from the brink unless the United
States can get Musharraf to take meaningful steps toward peace.
The
most important immediate step would be to stop infiltration
by Pakistani and Kashmiri Islamic militants into the India-controlled
Kashmir Valley. Pakistan's army would have to stop providing
the diversionary covering fire and logistical support that makes
this infiltration possible.
Indian
Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani told a recent off-the-record
meeting in Washington that the cease-fire line should be ``adjusted''
in key places where the terrain makes infiltration easy. If
Musharraf means business, he would agree to negotiations on
such changes. In return, New Delhi would not only have to withdraw
the forward deployments ordered after the Dec. 13 attack on
the Indian Parliament building but, equally important, negotiate
with insurgent groups on greater autonomy for Kashmir within
India.
Such
negotiations would require Pakistani support for a cease-fire
between the Indian army and Kashmiri insurgents like the one
proposed in July 2000 by Hizbul Moujahedeen. Hizbul consists
solely of Kashmiris, not Pakistanis, and was sensitive to the
mood of war-weariness in the valley. But the group receives
Pakistani weapons aid, and when Islamabad objected to the proposal,
Hizbul withdrew its cease-fire offer.
Despite
its denials, Pakistan controls most Kashmiri insurgent groups.
On May 29, 1999, shortly after the Pakistani army launched its
offensive across the cease-fire line at Kargil, Indian intelligence
intercepted a revealing international telephone conversation
between then-Gen. Musharraf, who was in Beijing, and his deputy,
Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz. CIA sources have validated the authenticity
of the intercept. Nawaz Sharif, then prime-minister, had expressed
concern, Aziz said, that Kashmiri insurgent groups fighting
with the army might get out of hand and force an escalation,
but that ``there need be no such fear, since we have them by
the scruff of the neck and whenever desired, we can regulate
the situation.''
-----------------------------------------
Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia Program at the Center
for International Policy. He is the author of five books on
South Asia and has reported on India and Pakistan since 1951.
Head
off more South Asian instability
May
13, 2002
By Selig S. Harrison
WASHINGTON
- As the snow melts in the Himalayas, Pakistan is again sending
Islamic militants into Indian-held areas of Kashmir. This, despite
US pleas for restraint and Gen. Pervez Musharraf's Jan. 12 pledge
to curb Islamic extremism.
Trouble
in Kashmir could quickly trigger a conflict between the forward-deployed
Indian and Pakistani forces that have faced each other since
the attack by Islamic extremists on the Indian Parliament four
months ago.
Is
there nothing the United States can do to head off a new crisis
between South Asia's nuclear-armed adversaries?
Anxious
not to disturb its cooperation with Pakistan in tracking down
Al Qaeda remnants, Washington is unwilling to threaten a cutoff
of its massive post-Sept. 11 economic aid to put pressure on
Islamabad.
But
there is another way the United States and other concerned powers
can help stabilize the situation in Kashmir: Provide India with
state-of-the-art ground-based and airborne surveillance equipment
that would enable New Delhi to detect infiltration across the
cease-fire line in time to stop it.
At
a minimum, the US could give India the latest ground-based monitoring
equipment developed for use along the Mexican border and for
enforcement of the 1973 Sinai Desert cease-fire agreement, especially
magnetic sensors sensitive to metal; infrared sensors; long-range,
night-vision video cameras; and new types of halogen lighting
systems capable of illuminating wide areas at night.
To
have a decisive impact, US surveillance help would also have
to include sophisticated airborne radar scanners and night-vision
video cameras, such as the Lynx and Skyball systems developed
for the Predator unmanned monitoring aircraft that has proved
so effective in Afghanistan. This would require a waiver of
US export restrictions.
Pakistan
Army units on their side of the cease-fire line help infiltrators
elude Indian detection by firing on Indian forces to divert
their attention. In addition to this overt Army role, Pakistani
military intelligence agencies bankroll, arm, and train the
infiltrators, most of them Pakistanis, Arabs, Afghans, and other
non-Kashmiri Islamic militants.
Hopefully,
US surveillance assistance to India, or even the possibility
of it, would be a powerful deterrent to Pakistani-sponsored
infiltration. Should Pakistan proceed with its infiltration
anyway, the United States could then consider arrangements for
leasing Predator aircraft to New Delhi and for sharing the results
of US spy satellite monitoring along the cease-fire line.
The
United States and India have already established a Joint Working
Group on Counter-Terrorism, which discussed the possibility
of cooperation in monitoring along the cease-fire line at a
January meeting attended by monitoring experts from the Pentagon
and the Sandia National Laboratory. Sandia experts are now training
Indian specialists in monitoring technologies that can be applied
along all of India's borders to counter terrorism. But no decision
has yet been made to provide US equipment specifically earmarked
for use on the Kashmir cease-fire line.
Such
a decision would send a powerful signal to Pakistan that the
United States regards cross-border incursions by Pakistani-sponsored
Islamic militants into Kashmir as a threat to the US interest
in a stable South Asia.
At
the same time, it would make clear that the US favors a long-term
Kashmir settlement based on a recognition of the existing cease-fire
line as a permanent international boundary.
Signals
of support for a settlement based on the cease-fire line from
the US would compel Pakistan to reconsider whether there is
anything to be gained by stoking the fires of insurgency in
Kashmir.
Pakistani
policy rests on the hope that the major powers can be induced
to internationalize the dispute, and ultimately support accession
of the Indian-controlled Kashmir Valley to Pakistan.
Until
now, all that the US has done is to exhort President Musharraf
to stop sending Pakistani Islamic militants into Kashmir, and
to cut off weapons aid to Kashmiri insurgent groups.
But
there are limits to what Musharraf can do, even if he tries,
given the entrenched grip of Islamic militant sympathizers in
the Pakistan armed forces and intelligence services. If he is,
in fact, ready to negotiate a realistic Kashmir solution, American
support for a settlement based on the cease-fire line would
strengthen his hand. At the same time, it would strengthen moderates
in India prepared for such a solution.
•
Selig S. Harrison is the author of 'India: The Most Dangerous
Decades' and five other books on South Asia. He is a senior
scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
and director of the Asia Program at the Center for International
Policy.
Copyright
© 2002 The International Herald Tribune
Why Musharraf Clings to Power
By Selig S. Harrison (IHT)
Friday, May 10, 2002
WASHINGTON: General Pervez Musharraf tells the world that he
must perpetuate military rule in order to save Pakistan from
two scourges: corrupt, money-grubbing politicians and Islamic
extremists.
But
one of the key reasons why he is so determined to hold on to
power is that the generals like the smell of money just as much
as the politicians. As chief of staff of the armed forces, Musharraf
presides over a vast industrial, commercial and real estate
empire under direct military control with assets and investments
of at least $5 billion.
As
for Islamic extremists, despite promises of a crackdown designed
to please foreign listeners, he has done little for fear of
alienating powerful hard-line generals who want to continue
using Islamic militants to destabilize India.
Shielding
the business activities of the armed forces from the prying
eyes of civilian government ministers and parliamentary committees
has been a preoccupation of the four military regimes that have
ruled Pakistan. Musharraf's rigged presidential referendum last
week will give him the power to curb the investigative activities
of the lawmakers scheduled to be elected in October.
The
core of the military business empire is a little-known network
of four foundations that were originally created to promote
the welfare of retired servicemen but have since branched out
into multifarious money-making ventures manned by 18,000 serving
and retired military officers.
The
biggest of these, the Fauji Foundation, is the single largest
business conglomerate in Pakistan, with assets of $200 million.
Fauji operates 11 enterprises ranging from cereal, cement and
fertilizer companies to sugar mills and oil storage terminals.
Three other foundations, Shaheen, Bahria and the Army Welfare
Trust, run everything from banks and insurance companies to
airlines, all under the control of the Defense Ministry or one
of the three services.
In
addition to the foundations, the armed forces also control a
variety of large independent business activities, notably the
National Logistics Cell, a trucking and transportation giant,
and the Frontier Works Organization, which has a virtual monopoly
in road-building and construction. Both were established to
serve military needs but grew so fat with military contracts
that they moved into the civilian economy and have gradually
squeezed out most private competitors.
Musharraf
would no doubt say that the armed forces know how to run business
ventures more efficiently than civilians. But the Pakistani
defense analyst Ayesha Agha-Siddiqa demonstrated in her carefully
documented study, "Soldiers in Business," that "most
of these business ventures have been suffering losses that are
covered by financial injections from the national exchequer,"
either from the defense budget or from various public sector
enterprises vulnerable to military pressure.
Agha-Siddiqa,
former director of naval research for the Pakistan Navy, points
to the opportunities for corruption resulting from the military
business empire's exempttion from "even a trace of public
accountability."
Whether
or not they are a cover for large-scale corruption, it is clear
that the foundations provide perks, privileges and fancy salaries
for serving and retired officers, beyond public scrutiny, that
give the armed forces a powerful vested interest in retaining
power. Moreover, the constant flow of public resources from
the national budget to military-controlled ventures to cover
their losses constitutes a financial drain that a deeply indebted,
bankrupt country like Pakistan, dependent on U.S. and International
Monetary Fund aid, cannot afford.
Musharraf's
claim that military rule is needed to combat Islamic extremism
is increasingly implausible. After making a big show of arresting
2,000 Islamic militants immediately after his Jan. 12 speech
pledging a crackdown, most of them were released with a "conditional
amnesty" on March 7, provided they agreed to sign a statement
declaring that they would give up extremist activities.
Among
those released were the leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed,
Hafiz Mohammed Saeed and Maulana Masood Azhar. These groups,
which have close ties with Al Qaeda, are on the State Department
list of foreign terrorist organizations. Both send Pakistani
Islamic militants into Indian-held areas of Kashmir to carry
out terrorist attacks against state officials and other Kashmiri
civilians who refuse to support Pakistani-sponsored Kashmiri
insurgent groups. Saeed is in a Pakistan government guest house
where he has a telephone. Azhar is under house arrest but can
receive his Jaish-e-Mohammed lieutenants.
When
a key Qaeda fugitive, Abu Zubayda, was captured with his henchmen
by FBI agents and Pakistani police in early April, the Pakistani
authorities, ignoring American protests, released 16 of the
captured Pakistanis who were suspected to be Lashkar-e-Taiba
members.
To
give Musharraf his due, he has made good on his Jan. 12 pledge
to crack down on one type of Islamic extremism: the destructive
sectarian warfare between militant Shia and Sunni groups within
Pakistan that target each other, undermining Pakistan's internal
stability. But he has pointedly stopped short of dismantling
the Islamic extremist groups that target India and the United
States.
The
reason is that the Pakistan armed forces and intelligence agencies
are still riddled with Islamic extremist sympathizers such as
General Mohammed Aziz, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
Perpetuating military rule will not cleanse Pakistan of corruption
or Islamic extremism. It will intensify the danger of another
war between the forward-deployed armies of South Asia's nuclear-armed
neighbors and it will assure that Qaeda fugitives hiding out
in Pakistan will continue to have protectors in high places.
The
writer, director of the Asia Program of the Center for International
Policy, contributed this comment to the International Herald
Tribune.
Copyright
© 2002 The International Herald Tribune
As
Printed in the New York Times
February 17, 2002
Who's the Proxy Here?
By
JOHN KIFNER
In the wake of the swift collapse of Afghanistan's Taliban regime,
there was considerable triumphant talk in Washington that a
new form of warfare had been developed: massive bombing guided
by small cadres of Special Operations troops on the ground and,
best of all, the use of what were called proxy forces to do
the actual fighting.
For
the Pentagon, the great advantage of this was to reduce the
possibility of American casualties to the absolute minimum.
To hear the Pentagon briefers tell it, virtually all the bombs
were smart — or at least above average — and were
dropping with surgical precision. When the Green Berets and
Seals went into action, it was in daring commando raids to snatch
Al Qaeda leaders and blow up their arms caches. The ultimate
weapon was the Predator drone, an unmanned spy plane fitted
with a Hellfire missile that could be fired by remote control,
eliminating any chance of harm befalling an American because
there was nobody aboard.
But
as journalists on the ground in Afghanistan became able to make
their way along the rough and dangerous roads in recent weeks,
a much more complex and disturbing picture began emerging. Indeed,
it often seemed that there were two different wars being reported:
the neat, efficient one of the Pentagon briefings and the messier
one in the field, where there were civilian casualties, botched
raids and — lest it be forgotten — the failure to
capture or kill Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and the Al Qaeda
leadership.
The
reliance on proxy forces — Afghanistan's legendarily independent
warlords — is beginning to emerge as one of the more troubling
aspects of the strategy. Indeed, it raises the question of just
who is whose proxy, as some warlords use their American- supplied
satellite phones to call in raids on their rivals.
Given
Afghanistan's history of chaotic warfare, which stretches back
over centuries, along with the scarcity of American intelligence
resources on the ground, it was probably inevitable that local
warlords would emerge as forces to be dealt with. Most were
former local satraps whose corruption and brutality gave rise
to the Taliban in the first place, allowing it to claim to be
reformers who would impose order on a country where even smugglers
couldn't function.
The
danger these days is that the Americans will act on false or
faulty information and, in the longer run, be drawn into local
conflicts or become targets because of the damage they cause.
Historically,
the American military does not deal well with political ambiguity.
A cautionary case in point is Lebanon, where troops were dispatched
in 1983 with the seemingly unimpeachable goal of assisting what
was referred to as "the legitimate government" after
years of civil war, an Israeli invasion and the massacre of
Palestinians by Christian militiamen,
But
the legitimacy of the government was the question at the heart
of that civil war, and the Americans came to be seen as just
another faction in it. The mission ended with with the death
of 242 American servicemen at the hands of a Shiite Muslim suicide
truck bomber. In a parting gesture, the battleship New Jersey
shelled the nearby mountains before sailing off.
Years
later, when Shiite hijackers seized a Trans World Airlines flight,
one passenger from New Jersey who didn't know the background
recalled in bafflement: "They kept shouting about New Jersey.
What did we ever do to them?"
In
Afghanistan these days, civilian casualties and the strengthening
of local warlords at the expense of the nascent central government
are becoming major problems for the American-backed interim
president, Hamid Karzai, said Selig Harrison, an expert on Afghanistan.
"It's just laughable the amount of money being put in the
hands of these warlords, telling us they are doing things they
aren't doing," Mr. Harrison said. "It's clear that
Afghans have made fools of us in many respects."
HIS
point is illustrated by several accounts of civilian casualties
inflicted in error in recent weeks.
One
incident was on Jan. 24. At the time, the Pentagon announced
that a commando team had raided two compounds in a tiny mountain
village, Hazar Qadam, north of Kandahar. The team had destroyed
a huge weapons depot, killing at least 15 people and carrying
off 27 others who were said to be "relatively senior"
Taliban leaders. But it turned out that the incident really
began with a rivalry between two officials of the new government
over the power to collect arms. Villagers say one or both factions
told the Americans the other was Taliban. Among those killed
were two local commanders who had fought for Mr. Karzai.
When
questions were raised, a spokesman for the United States Central
Command, Maj. Bill Harrison, said, "We take great care
to ensure we are engaging confirmed Taliban or Al Qaeda facilities."
Nevertheless, the C.I.A. decided to pay $1,000 to the families
of the victims. And the 27 detainees were released, leaving
them free to tell foreign reporters they had been kicked and
beaten in captivity. "I can never forgive them," said,
Abdul Rauf, 60, the newly appointed police chief, who said his
ribs had been broken. "Why did they bomb us? Why did they
do this?"
Afghans
also have said that some 50 people killed when a convoy from
Paktia Province was hit by missiles were actually tribal elders
on their way to the inauguration of Mr. Karzai, and that they
had been targeted by a warlord named Padsha Khan Zadran. That
name also turns up in accounts of the death of the only American
soldier killed by hostile fire in the war. He was ambushed,
but not by Al Qaeda; he was caught up in a power struggle in
Khost between Padsha Khan Zadran and yet another warlord.
In
the latest incident, a Predator drone fired a missile at several
armed men gathered around a four- wheel drive vehicle in an
area where the Pentagon said Al Qaeda had been active. Local
villagers claimed the three men killed were collecting scrap
metal left by previous bombings.
Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that the United
States might have killed or wounded friendly Afghans in the
raid on the two compounds, and in doing so he offered an insight
into the difficulties of gathering good information: "In
Afghanistan, people who are friendly and unfriendly are constantly
meeting together. Indeed, sometimes the same people can be friendly
and later unfriendly within a relatively short period of time.
There are also people who can pretend they're friendly and who,
in fact, are not very friendly, and who provide aid and comfort
and assistance to the Taliban and Al Qaeda that are still in
the country."
Copyright
2002 The New York Times Company
Turn
an old line into a lasting boundary
The solution for Kashmir
By Selig S. Harrison
Wednesday, February 13, 2002
WASHINGTON: As the fighting in Kashmir drags on and the danger
of a new war between India and Pakistan remains undiminished,
is there nothing that the international community can do?
The
Bush administration has wisely ruled out U.S. mediation to help
resolve the Kashmir dispute unless both sides invite such a
role. But Washington could set the stage for a direct dialogue
between New Delhi and Islamabad by publicly stating the obvious
during President Pervez Musharraf's visit this week: that any
solution must rest on recognition of the existing cease-fire
line as the permanent international boundary.
Such
a declaration by America and other major powers is the only
way to get Pakistani leaders to stop stoking the fires of insurgency
in Kashmir. Pakistani policy rests on the hope that the major
powers can be induced to internationalize the dispute, and ultimately
to support accession of the Indian-controlled Kashmir Valley
to Pakistan.
Until
now, all that the United States has done is to exhort Musharraf
to stop sending Pakistani Islamic militants into Kashmir, and
to cut off weapons aid to Kashmiri insurgent groups. But there
are limits to what he can do, even if he tries, given the entrenched
grip of Islamic militant sympathizers in the Pakistan armed
forces and intelligence services. If he is, in fact, ready to
negotiate a realistic Kashmir solution, American support for
a settlement based on the cease-fire line would strengthen his
hand. At the same time, it would strengthen moderates in India
prepared for such a solution.
The
formal position of both India and Pakistan is that the Kashmir
Valley and Pakistan-controlled "Azad" (Free) Kashmir
should be reunited under their rule. By contrast, most influential
Kashmiri groups espouse a reunited, independent Kashmir, which
neither India nor Pakistan would accept. A realistic compromise
would give maximum autonomy within India and Pakistan, just
short of independence, to Kashmiris on both sides of the cease-fire
line, together with a reduction of Indian and Pakistani forces
in Kashmir monitored by an expanded United Nations observer
force.
Negotiations
between India and Pakistan would have to be preceded not only
by a termination of Pakistani support for the insurgency but
also by Pakistani agreement to back a cease-fire between the
Indian Army and the insurgent groups that Islamabad has subsidized
and armed. One such group, Hizbul Mujahidin, responding to the
mood of war-weariness in the valley, proposed a cease-fire in
July 2000 but was forced to renege on the offer by its Pakistani
mentors.
Once
a cease-fire is in place, the burden would be on India to adopt
a newly flexible approach to negotiations with insurgent groups
that would induce them to participate in elections for the Kashmir
State Assembly now scheduled for September. The last state elections,
held in 1997, were boycotted by most of the insurgent groups.
Since
the insurgency against Indian rule was touched off by rigged
elections in 1987, New Delhi would have to satisfy the insurgent
groups that the Indian Elections Commission would conduct this
one fairly, possibly by agreeing to accept some form of international
monitoring.
The
election of a Kashmir state government more broadly based than
the present one headed by Chief Minister Farouq Abdullah, widely
regarded as too pro-Indian and too corrupt, would open the way
for negotiations between New Delhi and Srinagar on greater autonomy
and would weaken the demand for independence.
The
controversy over what to do in Kashmir is part of an ongoing
debate over whether the entire Indian federal system should
be more decentralized. This debate is directly linked to the
sensitive problem of Hindu-Muslim relations in India. The secular
principle is under attack from the Hindu right. Advocates of
secularism fear that special status for an autonomous, Muslim-majority
Kashmir would expose 120 million Muslims in other parts of India
to attack as potential traitors.
Pakistan
presses its demand for a plebiscite to put India on the propaganda
defensive and would be horrified if New Delhi said "yes."
It
was the United Nations that drew the cease-fine line, imposing
a division of the state that should now be formalized to stabilize
the peace between South Asia's nuclear-armed neighbors.
The
writer is director of the National Security Project at the Center
for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow
Wilson International Center. He contributed this comment to
the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright
© 2002 The International Herald Tribune
As
Printed in the Los Angeles Times
January
27, 2002
SOUTH
ASIA
America's
India Problem
By
SELIG S. HARRISON, Selig S. Harrison has reported on South Asia
since 1951 and written five books on the region. He is director
of the National Security Project at the Center for International
Policy and a senior scholar.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON -- "If Pakistan is an ally of the United States
of America ... good luck to the United States of America."
When
Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh made this caustic remark
to an American journalist recently, he was sending multiple
messages to Washington. The most obvious one was that Pakistan
remains a hotbed of Islamic extremists, despite President Pervez
Musharraf's promised crackdown, and cannot be trusted. But at
a deeper level, his words also serve as a powerful reminder
that Indian anger over Pakistani provocations in Kashmir is
directed not only at Islamabad, but also at the United States.
Behind
the polite diplomatic exchanges now taking place between New
Delhi and Washington lies the Indian belief that America's unconditional
embrace of Musharraf since Sept. 11 has emboldened Pakistani
hawks to step up their pressure in Kashmir. More broadly, in
this view, U.S. military aid to Pakistan (some $7.3 billion
over the past five decades) has encouraged Pakistan to twist
India's tail, and there is no sign yet that Washington is ready
for a showdown with Musharraf if he fails to stop cross-border
terrorism in Kashmir. If the United States wants to restrain
Indian hawks and help prevent another India-Pakistan war, the
Bush administration should send a threefold message back to
New Delhi: first, that it regards India, some seven times bigger
than Pakistan, as the focus of U.S. interests in South Asia;
second, that it will gradually phase out U.S. military cooperation
with Islamabad now that the need for it is declining; and finally,
that it will make economic aid to Musharraf conditional on an
end to Pakistani army support for Islamic militants infiltrating
Kashmir.
Until
Sept. 11, the White House was moving toward a long-overdue reversal
of Cold War policies, in which Washington either tilted toward
Islamabad or, at best, treated India on a par with Pakistan--notwithstanding
its superior size and its growing importance to the United States
as a counterweight to China in the Asian balance of power.
Since
the World Trade Center and Pentagon tragedies, in the hopes
of getting military and intelligence cooperation in Afghanistan,
the United States has lionized Musharraf, showering him with
a cornucopia of economic aid--no strings attached--that has
so far included $600 million in immediate cash infusions, $2.1
billion in projected grants and credits, $1.5 billion in International
Monetary Fund credits (which had previously been blocked by
the United States because Pakistan had not met IMF criteria)
and a rescheduling of $12.2 billion in Pakistan's debt to a
U.S.-led consortium of aid donors (including $3.75 billion owed
directly to the United States). This aid was possible only after
sanctions imposed on Pakistan after its 1998 nuclear test were
lifted in the wake of Sept. 11.
With
budgetary sleight of hand, much of this economic aid can be
used to subsidize military spending. More important, Pentagon
statements increasingly envisage the establishment of permanent
U.S. military bases in Pakistan, closer Pakistani ties with
the U.S. Central Command, the supplying of spare parts and components
for U.S. weapons already in Pakistani hands and a possible resumption
of grants and sales of military hardware.
To
balance out its growing ties with Islamabad, the United States
is offering to sell sophisticated defense equipment to New Delhi.
Since India wants to get as much as it can while the getting
is good, New Delhi is not making a public fuss, for the moment,
over the U.S. embrace of Pakistan. If a U.S. military role there
temporarily serves Indian interests, New Delhi will swallow
it. But the test in Indian eyes will be whether Musharraf's
crackdown on Islamic extremists extends to Kashmir, and whether
it will last or is merely a tactical gambit.
New
trouble in Kashmir would quickly bring to the surface sublimated
Indian anxieties over a long-term U.S. military role in Pakistan.
In any case, Musharraf has strongly advised against such a role,
warning that Pakistani anger over U.S. policy in the Middle
East would make U.S. forces a divisive issue. To the extent
that a continuing U.S. military role is needed in Afghanistan
to back up peacekeeping forces, it can be adequately supported
by the new U.S. military base now being established in Kandahar.
The
Pentagon spin that the U.S. military role in Pakistan relates
only to the "war on terrorism" rekindles Indian memories
of earlier reassurances by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in
1954 that the program of "limited" weapons aid to
Pakistan then unfolding was solely for use against communist
aggression. By 1965, the United States had provided $3.8 billion
in military hardware to Pakistan. This led the military dictator
then ruling in Islamabad, Gen. Ayub Khan, to launch cross-border
raids in Kashmir that triggered a broader war, in which Pakistan,
predictably, relied primarily on its U.S. planes and tanks.
Just
when India had begun to forgive and forget, the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan prompted the U.S. to supply Pakistan with $3.5
billion in new weapons aid as a reward for serving as a "front-line
state." The nature of this aid package, with its F-16 aircraft
and its heavy tanks, made clear that it was not intended for
use on the mountainous Afghan border but rather to bolster Pakistan's
balance of power in open-plains warfare with India. Additional
U.S. weapons were sent through Pakistan to the Afghan resistance
forces.
In
contrast to 1954, the United States did not even pretend in
1982 that its aid could be used only against the Soviet Union.
In a controversial speech on Oct. 10, 1984, U.S. Ambassador
to Pakistan Deane Hinton said that the 1959 U.S. mutual security
treaty with Islamabad left the door open for the United States
to support Pakistan in a war with India. Lawrence S. Eagleburger,
who was Undersecretary of State at the time, told me later that
the United States wanted to establish a "balance"
between India and its smaller neighbor.
Against
this background, India's current brinkmanship becomes more understandable.
New Delhi is not likely to pull back from the brink unless the
United States can get Musharraf to take meaningful steps toward
peace.
The
most important immediate step would be to stop infiltration
by Pakistani and Kashmiri Islamic militants into the India-controlled
Kashmir Valley. Pakistan's army would have to stop providing
the diversionary covering fire and logistical support that makes
this infiltration possible.
Indian
Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani told a recent off-the-record
meeting in Washington that the cease-fire line should be "adjusted"
in key places where the terrain makes infiltration easy. If
Musharraf means business, he would agree to negotiations on
such changes. In return, New Delhi would not only have to withdraw
the forward deployments ordered after the Dec. 13 attack on
the Indian Parliament building but, equally important, negotiate
with insurgent groups on greater autonomy for Kashmir within
India.
Such
negotiations would require Pakistani support for a cease-fire
between the Indian army and Kashmiri insurgents like the one
proposed in July 2000 by Hizbul Moujahedeen. Hizbul consists
solely of Kashmiris, not Pakistanis, and was sensitive to the
mood of war-weariness in the valley. But the group receives
Pakistani weapons aid, and when Islamabad objected to the proposal,
Hizbul withdrew its cease-fire offer.
Despite
its denials, Pakistan controls most Kashmiri insurgent groups.
On May 29, 1999, shortly after the Pakistani army launched its
offensive across the cease-fire line at Kargil, Indian intelligence
intercepted a revealing international telephone conversation
between then-Gen. Musharraf, who was in Beijing, and his deputy,
Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz. CIA sources have validated the authenticity
of the intercept. Nawaz Sharif, then prime-minister, had expressed
concern, Aziz said, that Kashmiri insurgent groups fighting
with the army might get out of hand and force an escalation,
but that "there need be no such fear, since we have them
by the scruff of the neck and whenever desired, we can regulate
the situation."
Copyright
2002 Los Angeles Times
Stop
Building Up Pakistani Military Capacities Against India
By Selig S. Harrison
Thursday, December 20, 2001
WASHINGTON: The unconditional American embrace of General Pervez
Musharraf as an ally has emboldened government-sponsored Pakistani
terrorist groups to step up pressure on India, increasing the
danger of a new war over Kashmir. Secretary of State Colin Powell
has responded decisively to the attack on the Indian Parliament
last week by placing two of these groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and
Jaish-e-Mohammed, on the official U.S. list of foreign terrorist
organizations. But much stronger action will be needed to rein
in President Musharraf and dissuade India from retaliating militarily.
To get Pakistani cooperation in Afghanistan, the United States
has promised grant economic aid totaling $1.1 billion in cash.
Half of this aid has already been disbursed. Since this aid
is not earmarked for specific civilian projects, it can be used
to subsidize military spending. America and its allies are also
giving Pakistan debt relief and a relaxation of the conditions
governing $1 billion in IMF aid, which will free up additional
funds for military purchases.
The
United States should use its new economic leverage in Islamabad
to stop the drift toward a war that could escalate to the nuclear
level, and to promote the long-term stabilization of South Asia.
First,
before disbursing the rest of its promised economic aid and
making any new aid commitments, the Bush administration should
make certain that its assistance will not be diverted to military
spending by earmarking it for civilian uses. Second, it should
resist blandishments for the sale or grant of military equipment,
spare parts and components. Nearly $50 million worth of military
spare parts and components has been transferred since Sept.
11, and history shows that this will be used to bolster Pakistan's
military posture toward India, not to fight terrorism.
Third
and of the most immediate importance, the United States should
condition new economic aid and the fulfillment of existing aid
commitments on an end to Pakistani terrorism in Kashmir. General
Musharraf has commendably begun to restrain the use of Islamic
religious schools in Pakistan for military purposes. However,
Pakistani intelligence agencies continue to arm and finance
both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which assassinate
moderate Kashmiri leaders as well as government officials and
police.
Both
groups consist mainly of Pakistanis, not Kashmiris. Having designated
them as terrorist groups, the United States should insist that
their military capabilities be dismantled. Finally, and most
important, the United States should condition the fulfillment
of economic aid commitments on steps toward a meaningful transfer
of power to a broad-based civilian government. General Musharraf
has appointed himself president in perpetuity and is planning
to set up a façade of phony civilian rule, with the armed
forces continuing to maintain control through veto power in
the National Security Council.
Permanent
de facto military rule would lock in the power of the hard-line,
anti-Indian generals who were responsible for the rise of the
Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba and are waiting for their chance
to unseat General Musharraf. The Islamic parties are a minority
in Pakistan. Their strength rests primarily on their support
from powerful generals, and their power would be greatly diluted
by democratic elections. Past so-called democratic elections
in Pakistan have been based on gerrymandered National Assembly
constituencies that have kept politics confined to a small circle
of landed oligarchs and their conservative allies in monopolistic
sections of big business and in the armed forces. This inbred,
closed system has encouraged corruption, made the rich richer
and blocked egalitarian economic reform measures targeted on
the impoverished majority of Pakistanis. The United States should
press for a new electoral system based on constituencies that
would give the educated urban middle class fair representation.
Some
observers argue that putting conditions on U.S. aid could lead
to a withdrawal of Pakistani support for U.S. military operations
in Afghanistan. But the importance of the Pakistani contribution
to the war has been greatly exaggerated.
Pakistan
has provided the use of airfields that have been valuable for
close-in helicopter operations. At the moment, the border is
being patrolled to try to prevent Qaida units from escaping
to Pakistan. But the big U.S. planes used in Afghanistan have
come from aircraft carriers, bases in Diego Garcia and Central
Asia, and captured airfields in Afghanistan itself. The Interservices
Intelligence Directorate in Islamabad (ISI) is so divided between
moderates and Taliban sympathizers that Pakistani intelligence
has been much less helpful than expected. General Musharraf
replaced the head of the ISI, but he has not really purged it
or the armed forces in general of hard-line, anti-Indian elements
allied with Islamic extremists. Nor can he do so without undermining
his own position. General Mohammed Aziz, the leading hard-liner,
has been kicked upstairs from corps commander in Lahore to chairman
of the joint chiefs of staff. But he has not been kicked out.
Another
argument against conditionality is that it could lead to General
Musharraf's overthrow in a coup. But the hard-liners appear
to recognize that it is in the interests of Pakistan to get
as much from the United States as possible while the getting
is good. So they go along with General Musharraf and bide their
time.
The
danger now is not that Pakistan will throw the United States
out but rather that the Bush administration will pay an exorbitant
price for Pakistani cooperation at the expense of the broader
American interest in South Asian peace and improved relations
with India, a rising power that will be of growing importance
to the United States long after Qaida has dropped out of the
news.
The
writer is director of the National Security Project at the Center
for International Policy in Washington and author of five books
on South Asia. He contributed this comment to the International
Herald Tribune.
Copyright
© 2001 The International Herald Tribune
Dealing
With North Korea: Does Bush Want Détente or Not?
By Selig S. Harrison (IHT)
Friday, August 3, 2001
ISLESFORD,
Maine: In seeking to justify its missile defense program, the
Bush administration often warns that North Korea is developing
long-range missiles. But is the administration really worried
about such missiles? Or are some of the president's more hawkish
advisers exaggerating North Korean missile capabilities and
sabotaging a détente that could undermine the rationale
for missile defense?
From
a North Korean perspective, Washington is pursuing confrontational
policies that seem calculated to make détente impossible
and could drive North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and missiles.
When I was recently in Pyongyang, a leading general, Ri Chan
Bok, suddenly said to me over lunch: "What we in the armed
forces cannot understand is why we are not entitled to have
nuclear weapons and missiles when our principal belligerent
adversary, the United States, has thousands of them."
"At
this stage," he declared, "I don't know anybody who
believes that we need nuclear weapons, but everybody is thinking
in that direction in view of the hostile attitude and hostile
policies of the Bush administration."
Foreign
Minister Paek Nam Sun delivered a similar warning, but he also
emphasized, "It's up to the United States." He said
Pyongyang was ready to resume the promising negotiations initiated
by the Clinton administration on a deal that would freeze North
Korean long-range missile development in conjunction with broader
progress toward normalization of relations. Secretary of State
Colin Powell said last week that the United States was ready
to meet anywhere at any time. However, the way the administration
has handled Pyongyang has predictably made North Korean leaders
reluctant to negotiate. George W. Bush said in February that
the North Korean regime could not be trusted. Then, on June
6, after President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea protested that
the United States was damaging his efforts to improve relations
with the North, Mr. Bush offered to open negotiations. But he
failed to say that the goal of negotiations would be to normalize
relations.
The
June offer treated North Korea as the defendant at the bar.
It put the burden on North Korea "to demonstrate the seriousness
of its desire for improved relations." It implied that
North Korea had cheated on its 1994 agreement with the United
States to freeze its nuclear weapons program, even though American
and international inspectors have found no evidence of such
cheating.
Calling
for broadened nuclear inspections not required under the agreement
and for unilateral North Korean force pullbacks from the border
with the South, the United States has refused to put North Korean
priorities on the agenda, especially non-nuclear energy assistance
pending completion of two nuclear reactors promised in the 1994
agreement.
That
agreement envisaged completion of these reactors, of a type
not suitable for making weapons-grade plutonium, by 2003, but
their completion is not expected now until 2008.
Because
North Korea is a small, impoverished country, it is intensely
proud and nationalistic. Kim Jong Il is ready for an opening
to the United States and South Korea, but he cannot afford the
appearance of bowing to superpower pressure.
If
the administration does in fact want to resume negotiations,
it should agree to discuss non-nuclear energy assistance. A
flat refusal to provide the aid would strengthen hard-line sentiment
in Pyongyang.
In
1994, President Bill Clinton pledged to facilitate "interim
energy alternatives pending completion of the first reactor."
At present the United States is not even letting South Korea
give Pyongyang desperately needed energy assistance that Seoul
had promised.
This
is the principal reason for Kim Jong Il's delay in visiting
the South for a second summit meeting. Encouraging South Korean
energy aid to the North is the key to a resumption of both the
American-North Korean and South Korean-North Korean dialogues.
And
the United States should make good on Mr. Clinton's pledge of
direct energy aid as the quid pro quo, together with food aid,
for an end to North Korean missile exports. The writer is director
of the Century Foundation's Korea Project and author of the
forthcoming "Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification
and U.S. Disengagement." He contributed this comment to
The New York Times.
Copyright
© 2001 The International Herald Tribune
India-Pakistan:
How to Move Toward a Kashmir Settlement
By Selig S. Harrison (IHT)
Tuesday, July 24, 2001
ISLESFORD, Maine: President Pervez Musharraf came to the South
Asian summit meeting of July 14 to 16 portrayed by his spin
doctors as an all-powerful military strongman who could deliver
a Kashmir settlement that has eluded his civilian predecessors,
if only the Indians would be reasonable. But the underlying
explanation for the deadlock at the summit lies precisely in
the fact that General Musharraf does not have unchallenged power
in Pakistan.
On
the contrary, he is a front man dependent for his position on
the support of hard-line generals linked to Islamic fundamentalist
groups opposed to a Kashmir compromise.
His
freedom of action is inherently limited because he is one of
a small minority of Urdu-speaking generals, whose parents immigrated
from India, while the armed forces are dominated by Punjabi-speaking
officers from Pakistan's majority province of Punjab.
India's
prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is constrained by his
own hard-liners. But he persuaded his ruling coalition on the
eve of the summit that it was time to defuse a conflict in which
India is forced to keep 300,000 troops and police in Kashmir
at a cost of more than $2 billion a year.
Mr.
Vajpayee's trump card in dealing with Indian hard-liners - and
eventually with Pakistan - is the changing political climate
in Kashmir itself. On a recent visit there, New York Times correspondent
John Burns found a "growing number" of war-weary Kashmiris
ready to consider a compromise with New Delhi that would give
them far-reaching autonomy in return for remaining within the
Indian Union.
Such
a bargain is bitterly opposed by Pakistani Islamic militant
groups which want to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir as the
prelude to a broader campaign to subvert Muslims throughout
India.
It
is often said that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom
fighter. In Kashmir, however, there is a clear distinction between
key Islamic militant groups operating there, largely Pakistani
in composition, that rely almost exclusively on terrorist attacks
against civilians, and the indigenous Kashmiri insurgents who
have been fighting the Indian armed forces for a decade, using
Pakistani-supplied weapons, but are now moving toward a political
compromise.
For
example, Lashkar-e-Taiba, a creation of Pakistani intelligence
agencies and linked to Osama bin Laden, is increasingly assassinating
moderate Kashmiri political leaders as well as Kashmiri state
officials at all levels and Indian and Kashmiri police.
Indian
unwillingness to give the Kashmir issue centrality in the summit
communiqué was attributable in large part to General
Musharraf's refusal to pledge an end to "cross-border terrorism."
Such a pledge, followed by Pakistani government measures reining
in Lashkar-e-Taiba and several allied groups, is a prerequisite
for meaningful progress in future negotiations.
This
would be easier to verify than paper pledges to stop sending
weapons across the porous, mountainous cease-fire line dividing
Kashmir, which would be difficult to monitor.
If
agreement could be attained through quiet diplomacy on curbing
Lashkar-e-Taiba, General Musharraf and Mr. Vajpayee could then
begin to pursue an agreement linking an end of Pakistani weapons
aid with Indian force reductions and redeployments in Kashmir
designed to reduce the frequency and intensity of clashes between
Indian and insurgent forces. This could possibly be accompanied
by mutual pullbacks of Indian and Pakistani forces from the
cease-fire line.
Given
such a reduction of tensions, India could then profitably pursue
serious negotiations with representative Kashmiri leaders like
Shabir Shah on greater autonomy for Kashmir in the context of
revamped Kashmiri political institutions free from Indian manipulation.
This would set the stage for the participation of a legitimized
Kashmiri leadership in some aspects of the India-Pakistan dialogue,
such as opening up discussions on trade and other contacts between
Kashmiris on both sides of the cease-fire line.
Eventually,
most independent observers agree, a permanent solution is most
likely to require conversion of the cease-fire line into an
international border, possibly with some alterations.
Direct
American intervention in seeking to bring India and Pakistan
together would be unwise, given the lingering distrust in U.S.
relations with both countries left over from the Cold War. However,
the United States could make a critical indirect contribution
by doing what Britain did this year: formally designating Lashkar-e-Taiba
as a terrorist group. That would strengthen General Musharraf
if he wants to curb Lashkar-e-Taiba to promote the peace process.
Putting Lashkar-e-Taiba on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations
would stop short of the more fateful step of putting Pakistan
on the U.S. list of terrorist states. That step would be going
too far, since it would close off avenues of economic engagement
that can be used to promote a settlement with India.
The
most effective U.S. leverage to promote a settlement would be
economic incentives to Pakistan, plus implicit and explicit
threats to withhold support for desperately needed bilateral
and multilateral economic assistance. Until now Washington has
been unwilling to use this leverage. But if it is serious about
furthering the peace process, this will ultimately become unavoidable.
The writer, a senior fellow of The Century Foundation, contributed
this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright
© 2001 The International Herald Tribune
Time
To Leave Korea?
by Selig S. Harrison
Foreign Affairs, March/April 2001
To
Get at the Taleban, Apply Pressure on Pakistan
By Selig S. Harrison (IHT)
Thursday, March 8, 2001
WASHINGTON:
The key to ending the threat from Osama bin Laden and the Taleban
does not lie in Afghanistan but in Pakistan, which keeps the
Kabul regime on life support with military and economic aid.
Islamabad
also promotes Pakistan-based Islamic extremist groups that have
training camps in Afghanistan and work closely with Mr. bin
Laden. The most important of these, the Lashkar-e-Taiba or Army
of the Pure, is an arm of the Taleban secret police, helping
to hunt down enemies of the regime. Outside Afghanistan it is
largely responsible for the recent upsurge of assassinations
of moderate Kashmiris seeking to negotiate peace with India.
Donors
of economic aid to Pakistan should actively support enforcement
of UN Security Council Resolution 1333, which went into effect
a month ago calling for an end to military support for the Taleban
but did not contain sanctions for noncompliance. Pakistan has
responded predictably by continuing its military aid while declaring
its support for the embargo.
In
addition to the establishment of UN monitoring machinery, backed
by sanctions, aid donors should use all of their intelligence
capabilities to do their own monitoring. And the United States
should add Lashkar-e-Taiba to the 27 other groups on its list
of "foreign terrorist organizations." This would stop
short of putting Pakistan on the U.S. list of states sponsoring
terrorism, but it would be a warning that such a step is possible.
In
its new Anti-Terrorist Act announced last week, the British
government, after a long internal debate, put Lashkar-e-Taiba
on its own list of terrorist groups.
The
Clinton administration debated inconclusively up to its final
hours whether to list it. Such a designation would require a
finding by the Justice Department that the group's activities
"threaten the national security of the United States,"
including its foreign relations, and that this threat can be
proved in court without the use of secret intelligence.
In
November the Justice Department did make the necessary finding.
But when the issue came up at interagency meetings, the CIA
objected, arguing that it needs to maintain its ties with Pakistani
intelligence agencies in order to get the scant information
that it does get on Mr. bin Laden. The State Department's South
Asian Bureau also argued that General Pervez Musharraf, the
Pakistani leader, is a moderate doing his best to cooperate
on the bin Laden issue. He would be undermined if he tried to
crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba, his defenders say, and might
be unseatd by a general with a hard-line Islamic agenda.
This
is a fallacious argument because General Musharraf has been
unable to give the United States more than token cooperation
on the bin Laden problem. He is beholden to a dominant clique
of Islamic militants among his fellow generals who have encouraged
the growth of Lashkar-e-Taiba to make it hot for India in Kashmir.
Failing
to put the group on the terrorist list gives these hard-liners
carte blanche. Calling a spade a spade would strengthen General
Musharraf in persuading them that future economic aid to Pakistan
will be jeopardized unless it takes action to curb both the
Taleban and Pakistan-based terrorist activity.
The
IMF recently gave Pakistan its latest $800 million installment
of aid. Until the government takes effective steps to limit
Lashkar-e-Taiba and allied groups to religious education, the
IMF, the United States and other aid donors should quietly suspend
further aid and further rollovers of debt.
Advertising
such a step would be a mistake because it would inflame nationalist
sentiment. There are other ways. The IMF can insist that Pakistan
meet its aid criteria, especially with respect to tax collection.
Diplomatic and procedural excuses can be found for stretching
out the timetable for Islamabad's other multilateral aid and
for refusing debt rollovers.
Economic
leverage will work only if the donors are patient and united.
Over time, it offers the best and perhaps the only way to solidify
a consensus among pragmatic elements in the armed forces, the
bureaucracy and moderate political forces in Islamabad that
terrorism in the name of Islam is incompatible with Pakistan's
survival.
The
writer, a senior fellow of The Century Foundation, contributed
this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright
© 2001 The International Herald Tribune
