US and Pakistan: A Tough Friendship

Snakes in the grass.

Can the United States count on Pakistan’s loyalty? With relations between Washington and Islamabad continuing to deteriorate, how this situation plays out will influence not just the future of the war in Afghanistan but also the fate of the whole of southern Asia.

In December, Jonathan Banks abruptly packed his bags and left Pakistan. All of a sudden, the recently unmasked chief of the CIA’s Islamabad station could no longer feel safe there. A few days earlier, his name and true occupation had been cited in a lawsuit brought by a Pakistani man who had lost relatives in the attacks by U.S. drones. Once the Pakistani media published details of the case, Banks had no choice but to disappear. Many people believe that the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, were taking revenge for a previous lawsuit filed in the U.S. courts by relatives of the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008. Other CIA agents were soon forced to follow Banks’ lead and flee.

In January 2011, one of them, Raymond Davis, shot dead two Pakistanis on a Lahore street, before hitting a third person as he sped away in his car. Arrested by police and brought before the courts, he stood to face the death penalty. Although the Americans argued that, as an employee of the U.S. Consulate, Davis enjoyed diplomatic immunity and that he had fired in self-defense during an attempted robbery, few believed their story. After tense negotiations, Davis was released from prison in mid-March and quickly moved back to the U.S. His release cost over $2 million in “blood money” — compensation for the victims’ families — and sparked the resignation of Foreign Minister Mehmood Qureshi, who had refused to compromise with the United States. Tempers had not had time to cool before an even greater crisis erupted.

In May, in the small garrison town of Abbottabad, not far from the Pakistani capital, a secret operation by Navy Seals — U.S. special forces — ended with the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. It was not the first time that members of the organization had been discovered on Pakistani soil: In 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks, was captured in a “safe haven” in Rawalpindi. In total, Pakistan has handed over more than 600 alleged members of al-Qaida. This time, however, the difference was that the Americans had mounted the operation on their own, keeping the Pakistanis completely in the dark. The U.S. military were afraid that the Pakistanis might tip off bin Laden and thwart their high-level mission.

Bone of contention

The U.S. commando operation proved a double humiliation for the proud Pakistani army: in the eyes of the Pakistani people, because it had been unable to protect its own territory against a unilateral mission mounted by foreign forces, and in the eyes of the Americans, because the army had been unaware that the most dangerous terrorist in the world was hiding less than a mile away from the military academy and many retired military personnel. Some Pakistanis seriously started to fear for the safety of their nuclear weapons, the country’s main national treasure and guarantor of security. For their part, the Americans began to openly question their ally’s loyalty. To hide their embarrassment, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani threatened that, in future, similar acts will not be tolerated, and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani headed off on a trip to China, showing that the United States was not Pakistan’s only serious partner.

Ever since the loss of trust between U.S. intelligence services and Pakistan, relations between the two countries have been going from bad to worse. The main bone of contention is the activities of the Haqqani network, which is based mainly in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region and is one of the most dangerous aggressors faced by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Despite repeated pleading and threats, for some years now the Pakistani army has refused to launch a new offensive against this group. An increasingly impatient U.S. government has taken to stepping up its unmanned airstrikes on targets in Pakistan.

The year 2010 alone saw 117 such attacks, which killed more than 800 alleged terrorists. This year, there have been 65 airstrikes, which have taken the lives of more than 400 people. We have arrived at something of a paradoxical situation: A major U.S. ally in the “war on terror” is also one of the main targets for attacks by U.S. drones and special forces.

Boiling point

The past few months have seen a never-ending stream of accusations, slander and threats from both sides. In July, the United States suspended some military aid, and it is currently considering whether to withhold civilian aid as well if Pakistan fails to up its counter-terrorism efforts. In September, outgoing U.S. military chief Admiral Mike Mullen sparked widespread astonishment when he explicitly accused Pakistan for the first time of supporting terrorist attacks on targets in Afghanistan and calling the “Haqqani network … a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence Agency.” Previously, the only time such a critical statement from U.S. officials had been revealed was with the publication by WikiLeaks of confidential cables sent by the U.S. Department of State.

“The water in Afghanistan must boil at the right temperature” — back in 1979, this was how General Zia-ul-Haq, the then military dictator of Pakistan, described his objectives for the country to the head of the intelligence agency. Supporting the Afghan mujahideen against the Red Army allowed Pakistan to influence Afghanistan’s future and gave it a position of international importance and the gratitude of the U.S.

However, Pakistan remained interested in keeping Afghanistan in “hot water,” even after 2001. The double game it has been playing has become, in effect, the main hotbed of U.S.-Pakistani tensions. On the one hand, Pakistan backed American intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, supporting NATO operations in the country and paying a high price for its efforts (the war on terror has already claimed the lives of some 5,000 Pakistani soldiers and more than 30,000 civilians). On the other hand, some elements within the Pakistani security forces have kept their ties with the Taliban, and Pakistani strategists seeking to establish a pro-Pakistani government in Kabul treat certain Islamic extremists as “strategic resources.” This “game” has seen the inaccessible mountains along the Afghan border once again become the main base for Afghan guerrillas; only this time, they are targeting their attacks on NATO.

Locked in a fatal embrace

Giving evidence to the U.S. Senate in January 2007, John Negroponte, head of the U.S. intelligence agencies, put it dramatically: “Pakistan is our partner in the war on terror … It is also a major source of Islamic extremism.”

Pakistan is also accused of torpedoing the peace process in Afghanistan, including having a hand in the assassination of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission leading negotiations with the Taliban. In response, Pakistani foreign minister Rabbani Khar has warned that the U.S. could lose Pakistan completely as its ally.

Without the ability to use Pakistani territory to transport supplies and with an openly hostile neighbor, NATO troops in Afghanistan would find themselves in a deadly trap. A Pakistan starved of economic and diplomatic aid could plunge into chaos, which would threaten to destabilize the entire region.

In a way, U.S.-Pakistani relations resemble the situation described by the Polish writer Henrik Sienkewicz when he wrote “złapał Kozak Tatarzyna, a Tatarzyn za łeb trzyma” (“A Cossack caught a Tatar, but the Tatar grabbed the Cossack’s head”). In his latest book, Bruce Riedel, a former adviser to Obama on South Asia, suggests that both sides are trapped in a “fatal embrace” from which they do not quite know how to disentangle themselves. Yet history has shown us that both partners have been able to extricate themselves from similar messes in the past.