A Conversation on the Current State of US-Pakistan Relations

Trump is actually a new face, not a new factor on US outlook on Pakistan

From Dawn by Peerzada Salman. Two eminent speakers on Thursday shed light on the current state of Pak-US relations at The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA). The first speaker was Najmuddin Sheikh, former foreign secretary of Pakistan. He started his talk by mentioning a few myths that prevailed. He said there was the myth that Pakistan and the United States had mutual interests. It had never been the case. The ties were of a transactional nature from the beginning and the commonalities were contrived. We did not have a common aversion to the Soviet Union. During the Afghan jihad we were genuinely concerned about the Soviet Union consolidating its position in Afghanistan, the old idea that it was looking for warm waters, but the Americans had a different idea; they said they would do to the Soviet Union what it did to them in Vietnam. The only commonality was the war against terror.

Mr Sheikh then pointed out the errors that the US committed. He said: “Why did the US allow Osama bin Laden get shifted from Sudan to Afghanistan?” He [Osama] travelled by a C130 from Sudan to Afghanistan. In Sudan he was a relatively unknown figure whereas in Afghanistan he was a hero of the Afghan jihad. Two years later an American general sitting in the office of our chief of army staff said they were firing missiles across our air space but they were not meant for us; they were trying to hit a camp in Afghanistan where they believed Osama bin Laden was. Mr Sheikh said the current situation was that President Trump’s New Year tweet generated a lot of speculation and he [Sheikh] thought there was a more rational explanation for it.

Dr. Muhammad Reza Kazimi: U.S. – Pakistan Relations: The Downside

Schoolgirls and women are coming out to throw stones. The Kashmir situation has never been so bad …

Since Washington has started an inter-agency review of U.S. funding and support to Pakistan, as stated by the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson¹, it is about time that a Pakistani re-appraisal takes place. Since Pakistan doesn’t have a Foreign Minister, perforce our appraisal shall also have to be inter-agency. To begin that process, it is necessary to set the record straight. In the latest development, an Indo-U.S. Joint Statement has designated Kashmiri freedom-fighter Syed Salahuddin, a global terrorist.² So once again there are three main issues between the United States and Pakistan: (1) Kashmir, (2) Terror and (3) Nuclear Proliferation. All three are underpinned by the presence of 2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. First, let’s come to terror. In the House Foreign Affairs Committee addressed by the Secretary of State, Congressman Dona Rohrabacher said: “Pakistan is acknowledged by most of the people I’ve dealt with, as the source of terrorism in that part of the world.”³

We cannot determine the source of terrorism, without fixing the origin of terrorism, Hilary Clinton, while Secretary of State, had admitted to the role her country had played by stating: “The problems we face now, to some extent we have to take responsibility for having contributed to it….the people we are fighting today, we funded them twenty-five years ago.”⁴ What Hilary Clinton was referring to was the U.S. resistance to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The U.S. needed Pakistan as a front- line state, in order to combat the U.S.S.R. troops using the Afghan refugees in the first instance to commit acts of terror in the invaded country. Pakistan was adjacent to Afghanistan India the apple of the U.S. Congress’ eye was not. This was a strategic consideration.

M.A. Shiwani: Of Wars and Contractors

Deploying mercenaries in Afghanistan will not only roll back the progress that has been made over the past decade, but it will also severely threaten future prospects for peace …

As the Trump Administration moves closer to releasing its policy review on Afghanistan, it has recruited Eric Prince, founder of Blackwater (now Academi) and Stephen Feinberg, owner of DynCorp International to assist the Pentagon in strategy formulation. DynCorp and Blackwater are both Private Military Companies (PMCs). In other words they are mercenaries. In accordance with its manifesto, the administration wishes to curtail the deployment of additional US troops in Afghanistan. In response, Prince and Feinberg have, rather unsurprisingly, presented a proposal that substitutes US troops with personnel provided by PMCs. Even though the Pentagon was recently given permission to deploy more troops into Afghanistan, Trump aides are adamant not to use the same policies that failed under the last two presidents and are thus seriously considering the proposal put forward by Prince and Feinberg.

Let us briefly go through the shadowy history of the United States’ use of private armies and military contractors. After the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, it was tasked with rebuilding the Afghan National Police (ANP) to fight the Taliban. Since Iraq and the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was slowly moving up the national security agenda, the US wanted to exit Afghanistan as quickly as possible while also using the bare minimum amount of resources required. It thus decided to employ DynCorp International to train the ANP, with the State Department giving DynCorp $24 million to set up training camps across Afghanistan.

M.A. Shiwani: The Islamic State, 2.0?

It is very clear that state-building and strategic development is no more a priority for the Trump Administration.

After a nine-month-long military campaign and a resultant refugee crisis that has affected more than half a million people, Mosul, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, has finally been “liberated” from the hold of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). What is left behind, however, seems indifferentiable from the ancient, obliterated walls of Troy. This, the prime minister claims, is still a “great victory for all of Iraq and Iraqis”. For anyone remotely familiar with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, such claims are traumatizingly similar to those made by the United States of America following its, ‘success’ in the war. It seems as if the result of Iraq’s previous, ‘liberation’, whereby Saddam Hussein was hanged and then Iraq was left for dead — much like a beast disposes of a carcass after it is done clawing on its flesh— have been forgotten.

Here, it is important to note that the situation in Iraq after the war of 2003 was worse than the pre-war situation, with 70,000 people cumulatively losing their lives under Saddam Hussein but more than 100,000 Iraqis being killed only in 2013. Is it, then, not alarming that the, ‘successes’ of 2017 are strikingly similar to the, ‘successes’ of 2003? Indian Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri — a former chairman of the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee, in his book, Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos presents a, ‘viscous cycle of perilous interventions’, where he proves that one military intervention for ‘liberation’ is usually cause for a subsequent military intervention, also for, ‘liberation’.

‘A German Perspective on Pakistan and its Big Neighbours’: A Talk by Professor Conrad Schetter

‘Power depends on economics and not on military forces’ – Watch Video

Professor Conrad Schetter, Associated Member of the Center for Development Research (ZEF), Directorate of the University of Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany recently addressed the members of The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) on A German Perspective on Pakistan and Its Big Neighbours. He is a notable scholar and some of his coauthored publications include Local Security-Making in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (2016), Security: What Is It? What Does It Do? (2016) and Protected Rather Than Protracted: Strengthening Displaced Persons in Peace Processes (2015). His key expertise concerns the civil-military nexus, the politics of interventions and local politics. Professor Schetter is also involved in numerous ongoing projects including On the phenomenon of so-called Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan and Protected rather than protracted – Strengthening refugees and peace.

In his talk on 13 December 2016 chaired by Dr Masuma Hasan, he emphasised Germany’s strong relationship with Pakistan pointing out in that regard that the name of Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan’s national poet, is very significant because he studied in Germany and was awarded his PhD from Munich University. He also highlighted that it is high time for Pakistan to realign its tactics in its own neighbourhood because in today’s global politics, economic power is more important than military or strategic power.

‘The Future of Afghanistan’: A Talk by Professor Marvin Weinbaum

Unfortunately Afghanistan’s future is rather bleak – Watch Video

Events in Afghanistan influence politics on the international stage. Pakistan has an uneasy relationship with the Afghans and India, in the form of premier Narendra Modi, has sought to gain political mileage by exploiting the historic misunderstandings across the so-called Durand Line. In rather interesting times, Marvin Weinbaum, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and currently a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, delivered a lecture on The Future of Afghanistan at The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs  (PIIA) on 18 November 2016. He has worked for US Department of State Bureau of Intelligence Research for four years (1999-2003). PIIA Chairperson Dr Masuma Hasan moderated the lecture. Professor Weinbaum was clear that Afghanistan’s future is unfortunately not very bright because one-third of its territory – mainly the rural areas – is effectively controlled by the Taliban and other extremist groups.

These gains are not attributable to the Taliban’s reorganisation or rise in popularity. Rather they are bound up with the failure of the Kabul government to meet the expectation of the Afghan people. Our most learned and distinguished guest was clear that Pakistan influence on Taliban has receded significantly and he was of the view that Pakistan never was able to dictate to the Taliban even when they were in Kabul. He attacked Washington’s policy

Ahmed Rashid: Continuing Search for Stability: Pakistan and Afghanistan

The West has endorsed two rigged elections in Afghanistan and the military situation has never been worse than it is now. Using proxies encourages neighbours to follow suit. Watch Introduction, Main Lecture and Q&A.

Acclaimed author and journalist Mr Ahmed Rashid spoke at The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) on Friday, 11 March 2016. His lecture aimed to make sense of the spiralling trend towards violence and militancy in the region. He argued that Pakistan’s interference in Afghan matters using proxies has created widespread problems and cataclysmic failure. For him, claims that the Taliban are being beaten are wholly incorrect and amount to a “fallacy”. Rashid is the author of numerous books including the widely read publication Taliban. His other books include Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia and Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Disaster in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia and Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

His talk looked at the emerging trends in jihad and insurrection in the region and interlinked the Afghan situation to the wider issues of jihad as seen by the governments of countries such as Iran, Russia and the Central Asian Republics all of which were involved in backing different Taliban factions in Afghanistan. He also questioned the efficacy of Pakistan’s Zarb-e-Azb operation.

Afghanistan: A Second Iraq?

As the Obama administration decides whether or not to withdraw its remaining 9,800 troops in Afghanistan, ominous signs are hovering over the country because of the Taliban’s recent offensive in Kunduz and the reckless American airstrikes on 3 October – killing 12 innocent medical workers and 20 patients and injuring 37 others – for which the White House has finally apologised and which the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has quite rightly called a “war crime”. The capital of an Afghan province bearing the same name, the ethnically diverse city of Kunduz is a strategic transport hub for northern Afghanistan. In an extraordinary show of strength after 14 years of insurgency and insurrection, in late September a resurgent Taliban unexpectedly overran Afghanistan’s fifth largest city. By the hundreds, battle-hardended Taliban fighters stormed the city in the early hours of the morning of 28 September 2015 and quickly seized key buildings and advanced on the airport.

They took control of most areas and freed hundreds of prisoners from the local jail. Ensuing attempts to retake the city resulted in humanitarian disaster. Notably, in 2009 a US airstrike in the area killed over 90 civilians but it appears no lessons were learned from that tragedy. President Obama ultimately called MSF’s international president Joanne Liu to tender his apology for the deadly attack on the field hospital in Kunduz but it was too little too late and involved at least four shifts, in as many days, in the US narrative. From initially blaming their Afghan colleagues on the ground for calling in the airstrike and denying knowledge

Shaker Aamer’s Homecoming: Leaving Legal Limbo at Long Last?

The last British resident is being released from Guantánamo Bay after being detained there illegally for almost 14 years. American authorities reportedly informed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that US defence secretary Ashton Carter had authorised Aamer’s release on 25 September 2015. Shaker Aamer was never charged but was accused of terrorism. His lawyers maintain that he was never involved in any terrorism and was cleared of all wrongdoing eight years ago. Aamer is a 46-year-old Saudi Arabian national. He has indefinite leave to remain in the UK and is also married to a British citizen. Owing to his harsh predicament, he may be able to claim at least £1 million in compensation from the British authorities if he is able to prove that the UK was complicit with the US in his detention, rendition and mistreatment by US personnel.

Nevertheless, Carter reportedly sought assurances over security measures in relation to Aamer on his return to the UK despite Downing Street and the White House seeing eye-to-eye on the decision to release the Saudi. In 2001, Aamer and his wife Zin Siddique had moved from London to live in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. The couple have four children and Aamer has never met the youngest child. He claims that he was doing charity work and helping run a school but the Americans contend that he was a central figure in Tora Bora and that when Afghan militias captured him in Jalalabad in 2001

Drone Wars: Prospects, Proliferation and Emerging Challenges

As noted in our post The Iran Deal: Diplomacy Update, Islamabad’s nuclear weapons programme may be outpacing New Delhi’s. Toby Dalton and Michael Krepon’s study, A Normal Nuclear Pakistan, argues that our country has been producing 20 nuclear warheads annually in comparison to India’s five. (Presently, Islamabad has 120 warheads in comparison to New Delhi’s 100.) They estimate that at this rate Pakistan will, within a decade, join the ranks of Russia and the US in the league table of states possessing the largest nuclear arsenals. We also touched upon the copious use of drone strikes, by American and British forces, in Future Trends in Syria’s War and this post sheds further light on this important issue – one which chronically affects Pakistan. Emerging research suggests that apart from the US, Britain, Israel, China, and Iran – which have developed drones for military use – numerous Asian and European countries are pursuing drone programmes to reap the rewards of this unique class of weapon.

This post looks into the proliferation of drones and examines new trends emerging in this field. It has been reported that there have been 15 US strikes in Pakistan this year and only last week (6 September 2015) the Pakistan army confirmed that it killed three high profile militants in a first ever indigenous drone attack (by a UAV named “Burraq”) in the Shawal valley of the Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border. Such successes aside, one thing is for sure. The ethical, legal and tactical dilemmas thrown up by drone warfare will only intensify as their use becomes more and more widespread. Technically known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones have become the weapon of choice for carrying out clinical target killings