Asia Times - Pakistan and the US: the odd couple

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border="0" align="left" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top" width="392"><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><font color="#000000" size="3"><strong>Pakistan and the US: The odd couple</strong></font><br> By Ehsan Ahrari <br> <br> Ambivalence may be the phrase that best describes United States-Pakistan ties. At one time in the distant past - the early 1950s - Pakistan's vain hope was to become the Israel of South Asia for the United States, and get enormous financial, political, and military support from Washington, notwithstanding the dynamics of its own policies in its immediate neighborhood. On the US side, Pakistan - unlike Israel - never became important enough a country to be given that status. <br> <br> Indeed, it can be argued that the entire subcontinent was of little importance to the United States during the Cold War, save from the late 1970s until 1989, when the United States came to South Asia for the specific purpose of defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. <br> <br> Before the terrorist attacks of September 2001on its own territory, the United States perception of Pakistan was that, despite becoming a nuclear power, it was a near-failed state with a highly politicized and corrupt military and which had a low regard, if not outright contempt, for democracy. Thus, it was to be kept at arm's length, even when the administration of then president Bill Clinton renewed its interest in South Asia and decided to develop a strategic partnership with Pakistan's archrival, India. <br> <br> Washington's lackadaisical attitude toward Pakistan was especially evident in the 1990s, when the US left the region after the Soviet Union was forced out of Afghanistan. At that time, Washington was too busy with the heady issues of dealing with Russia and its immediate environ of Central Europe to be bothered with comparatively "insignificant" South Asia. In the duration, Pakistan not only became a major playing field for Islamist forces, but an active supporter of those groups in disputed Kashmir, thereby making South Asia a region ripe for war. <br> <br> Toward the end of the 1990s, both South Asian nations had shocking news for Washington. They had become nuclear states. Even then, it took a couple more years for the US to engage India in dialogue for a strategic partnership, while excluding Pakistan largely because its military had once again showed its contempt for democracy by ousting the highly corrupt - though democratically elected - government of Nawaz Sharif. The time from 2000 to September 2001 was marked by strong ambivalence and considerable ill will in Islamabad and Washington toward each other. Pakistan was resentful of the United States for its manifest preference for a special relationship with India. The United States was irate with Pakistan for ousting democracy and supporting the Taliban regime. Clinton's visit to South Asia in 2000 dramatized how remarkably divergent the US perspectives had become toward the two South Asian states by then. <br> <br> As Islamic radicalism emerged as a powerful anti-US force in the 1990s, any country where Islamist forces had a high profile became automatic recipients of America's scorn, scrutiny, and antagonism. Saudi Arabia was a rare exception to that rule until the September 11 terrorist attacks. But Pakistan was one of the main recipients of the aforementioned American behavior. From the US side, the contrast between it and Pakistan could not have been starker. One was a secular Western democracy, with an explicit global agenda for the promotion of those traits. Pakistan, on the contrary, was a military dictatorship permeated by Islamists even in the highest echelons of government, and a dedicated supporter of the Taliban regime, which was overtly linked with Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. <br> <br> The post-September 11 environment created a new era of engagement between Washington and Islamabad. Pakistan made a major about-face by abandoning the Taliban regime and by becoming a frontline state in America's "war on terrorism". But that pesky and unrelenting feeling of ambivalence refuses to go away. It is correct to argue that this ambivalence is the direct outcome of the stark contrast between the political systems of the two countries. Thus, it might go away only if Pakistan becomes a democracy. As radical as this proposition sounds, it might be the only way to create any real basis for a long-term rapprochement between the United States and Pakistan. <br> <br> Another point of engagement, some say controversy, between the US and Pakistan is the latter's role in post-Taliban Afghanistan. There has been plenty of speculation about whether Pakistan has really stopped supporting the Taliban. The controversial aspect of this issue is related to the fact that the Taliban, after being ousted from Afghanistan, have been gathering strength in the Northwestern Frontier Province and Balochistan. Then there is that "mysterious" Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) service - which is given more power in Western analyses than it really has - and its role in cooperating with US law enforcement officials. Undoubtedly, there is support for the Taliban within the ISI, but any suggestion that the ISI still operates as a "government within the government" is an exercise in sheer speculation or wishful thinking. <br> <br> From the US side, there is no clearcut evidence of official support for the Taliban in Pakistan. The only point of contention is whether Musharraf's regime is doing enough to track down the al-Qaeda elements. Washington is fully cognizant of the fact that it is hard to establish a clear-cut distinction between the Pakistani Islamists and the Taliban. But the Arab elements of al-Qaeda are easy for the Pakistani authorities to identify, track, and capture. One school of thought in Washington is that Islamabad is doing quite a bit in this regard, but could do more. President George W Bush falls into this category. The other school is more ambivalent on the issue. <br> <br> From the Pakistani side, the issue of developing a sustainable friendship toward the US may be a myth at best, or even a fiction, under the present environment of anti-Americanism, which is so heavily couched in religious phraseology. Persuading the uneducated part of its population - which might only be between 6 to10 percent of the entire population but which formulates the hardcore support for the jihadi culture - that the United States is not an anti-Islamic force would be akin to performing a miracle. Short of a miracle, the only feasible way of lowering the intensity of anti-Americanism is through a two-pronged strategy of programs of massive economic assistance and the radical refurbishing of Pakistan's religious educational institutions. <br> <br> Meanwhile, the process of nurturing young jihadis must stop immediately if Pakistan is to have a future as a stable and modern Muslim state. The question posed in a classic children's story, "Who will bell the cat?" becomes relevant here with a slight modification. It is not only important to ask who'll bell the cat, but also, "What will the process of belling the cat entail?" <br> <br> The United States knows the intricacy, obduracy, and durability of the process involved in the creation of a moderate democracy in Pakistan. But in order to accomplish a task of this nature, Bush's global "war on terror" must be radically altered with a view to assigning primacy to economic assistance and nation-building everywhere, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While the United States has offered economic assistance to Pakistan, no other elaborate measures related to nation-building have been taken yet. <br> <br> The foremost measure related to nation-building in Pakistan is radical reform of its religious educational institutions. A country where a sector of the population envisions women as livestock - largely useful for procreation and carrying out household chores - can claim to be neither Islamic nor having any craving for modernity, since modernity involves the entire population, not just the male part of it. That frame of mind - which is essentially a part of the Taliban culture - has to be eradicated through radical reforms of the entire political and cultural milieu of Pakistan. No US government has the patience to do it, considering that it largely responds to crises. Even then, its response is driven by a preference for simple and quick-fix solutions, which, more often than not, are neither on target nor ameliorative. But as a country that has assigned itself the lead role of winning the global "war on terror", the United States does not have much of a choice other than stamping out obscurantism, which has been one of the major sources of promotion of terrorism in Muslim countries. <br> <br> Even though measures of this nature are not likely to do away with the seemingly enduring ambivalence between Washington and Islamabad, they do promise to be a step in the right direction. <br> <br> (Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. 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Asia Times - Pakistan and the US: the odd couple