"Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding. Indeed, bin Laden had declared war against Pakistan as well, and ordered attacks against the Pakistani people."

With those words, President Barack Obama acknowledged Pakistan’s role in the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, a military cantonment, in a house that lay half a mile or so from the Pakistan Military Academy. It is unclear why, if Pakistani intelligence had the leads, it would not or could not follow up itself and do the job.

At a time when United States-Pakistan relations are going south in a hurry over aid, Afghanistan, and U.S. intelligence operations inside Pakistan, bin Laden’s death leaves more questions on the table than answers. How could four U.S. helicopters operate some 120 miles inside Pakistani territory and three of them exit without being detected? Were they allowed to do so? And by whom? Or was it Pakistan’s inability to intercept them that allowed the U.S. raid to proceed without a hitch? Clearly the civilian government was first informed when President Obama spoke with President Asif Ali Zardari after the operation was over. If Zardari’s military was in the know, and he was not, this speaks volumes about the internal distrust within Pakistan’s establishment. So far, it appears the United States kept the Pakistan military in the dark. What may be more troubling for the U.S. side is the likelihood that elements of the Pakistani establishment were aware of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad and kept it hidden. However remote a possibility this may seem, this question will be asked in Washington D.C. in the weeks to come.

American boots on the ground are much more serious in terms of invasion of Pakistan’s territory and disregard for its sovereignty than the remote drone attacks that have so angered Pakistani officials and politicians lately. The Pakistani military’s official reaction to the death of bin Laden will be telling. If this operation was carried out in close cooperation with the United States, then the trajectory of this declining relationship may be reversed. If not, then the velocity of the decline will increase at a time when the mood in Washington seems to be shifting to black toward Pakistan, on the Hill and also in parts of the Obama administration.

The Strategic Dialogue that was bringing the United States and Pakistan to the table to focus on common objectives has been suspended for now. Both sides are attempting to revive the relationship after the imbroglio over Raymond Davis and the C.I.A.’s operations inside Pakistan. The Pakistanis demand respect. So does the United States. Neither side should try to pull a fast one over the other. They are codependent in the fight against militancy and terror: the United States in trying to exit Afghanistan in an orderly fashion, Pakistan in trying to contain its internal insurgencies. The stakes may be higher for Pakistan since it remains captive of its geography and heavily tied to the U.S. aid program and the Coalition Support Funds that sustain its battles against the Pakistani Taliban. It may be a bad marriage, once again, but not one that affords an easy divorce. Perhaps a separation, followed by reconciliation?

Both Pakistan and the U.S. should be careful to keep the tone of public rhetoric down and continue the private dialogues that may yet yield agreement on common objectives. Pakistan needs U.S. help to create the stability inside Pakistan that will allow it to fight the immediate war on poverty and underdevelopment. Faced with a rising population and an ever present youth bulge, Pakistan needs to begin to govern itself better, think long term, and eschew factional politics. Its military needs the tools and the time to keep the militancy at bay but it also needs close cooperation with the civilian agencies to help it fight against terrorism in its multifarious forms inside Pakistan.

Osama bin Laden’s death may exacerbate the terrorist conditions inside Pakistan for the short run. Followers and sympathizers of al-Qaeda may well try to seek revenge against U.S. interests and the Pakistani state. But the death of al-Qaeda’s founder should not change the course that Pakistan is following to battle militancy at home and needs to follow in its neighborhood. Nor should the United States pack up and summarily exit the regional stage once more.

Shuja Nawaz is director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. This essay first appeared at Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel.

 

Shuja Nawaz, the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center director, participated in a panel discussion on “Who Controls Pakistan’s Security Forces?” at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP).

The discussion was moderated by Robert Perito, Director of USIP’s Center for Security Sector Governance, and also featured Moeed Yusuf, Adviser at USIP, and Hassan Abbas, Professor at Columbia University’s South Asia Institute.

Click here to view the entire discussion (Courtesy of C-SPAN)

Behind all the talk of a strategic dialogue and strategic partnership between the United States and Pakistan lurks the reality of a persistent transactional relationship, based on short-term objectives that intrude rudely into the limelight every time a drone attack kills civilians inside Pakistan or in the instance when an American “operative” is caught by the Pakistanis after killing two people on the streets of Lahore.

In “Paranoidistan,” as the historian Ayesha Jalal has called Pakistan, the public and the authorities are prepared to believe the worst. Conspiracy theories abound, involving the C.I.A., Israel and India, in various permutations.

So, it is not surprising that the Raymond Davis case has left mistrust in its wake. Unanswered questions abound: What was he doing driving alone in an unmarked car in the heart of Lahore’s bazaar district? Why did he shoot to kill two youths, and then step outside his car to finish them off, and photograph them again? And why was he photographing religious seminaries and bunkers, as leaked Pakistani information indicates?

Apart from allowing the extremist Pakistani right-wingers to capture the public space with their anti-American propaganda, this case left the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate embarrassed and angry. And it has sent friends of the United States into sullen silence. Then, as soon as Davis was released in a shadowy deal involving “blood money,” came the drone attack on Datta Khel in the border region of Pakistan that killed some 40 people.

Senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials maintain this was a “normal” jirga of peaceful tribesmen. U.S. officials say that it was designed to fool the C.I.A. and that the real purpose of the open-air gathering was to conduct business harmful to the coalition’s interests in Afghanistan. Regardless, the Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, cut whole categories of U.S. military personnel based in Pakistan and privately warned the U.S. that he will “react” if the attacks continue. His intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, recently in Washington to discuss the issue with his C.I.A. counterpart, echoed that hard line. Hence, the report of a senior military official raising the possibility of shooting down the drones.

The Pakistani military and government do cooperate with the C.I.A. and U.S. military in the border region, but they will not acknowledge this openly. Both countries need to address their concerns frankly and in detail rather than continue a charade that misinforms their own people about what they are doing and why.

The United States needs to stop paying the Pakistan army with coalition support funds to fight in the border region and instead provide it adequate military aid in kind, as part of a carefully structured cooperative program to build its mobility and firepower against the militants.

Money cannot buy love. It is more likely to generate contempt among the rank and file of the Pakistani military. If the ultimate objective is to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan, then economic and peaceful political means, and talks with the militants to bring them into the fold of normal political discourse, are also needed. Not drone attacks. Nor trigger-happy cowboys in the heartland of Pakistan.

Shuja Nawaz is director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. This essay is part of the New York Times "Room for Debate" on "When Pakistan Says No to the CIA," and includes pieces by C. Christine Fair, Bruce Riedel, Mark Quarterman, Cyril Almeida, Reza Nasim Jan, and Reuel Marc Gerecht.

Shuja Nawaz, director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, appeared on PBS NewsHour to discuss the issue of strained U.S.-Pakistan relations. Tensions between the two countries have escalated following the release of a CIA contractor charged with killing two Pakistanis, which was immediately followed by U.S. drone strikes that killed 40 civilians.

The show’s transcript and video can be found below and on the PBS NewsHour site.

Transcript:

GWEN IFILL: Two old allies are at potentially dangerous loggerheads as Pakistan, a key partner in the fight against terrorism, openly demands the U.S. limit covert activities on the ground.

The concerns come in the wake of a U.S. drone attack that killed 40 Pakistani civilians and uproar over the release of a CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore. The tensions apparently came to a head yesterday at a meeting between CIA Director Leon Panetta and Pakistan’s intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha.

For more, we turn to Shuja Nawaz, the director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council and the author of “Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within.”

Welcome.

You were recently in Pakistan. Does this represent a new break or a continuation of the building tensions?

SHUJA NAWAZ, The Atlantic Council: I think this is a very sharp escalation of the war of words between the United States and Pakistan. And it really reflects the very deep-seated anger that I could feel in my conversations with senior military and intelligence officials in Pakistan at what they thought was a very striking use of tactical weapons inside Pakistan, which risked damaging the strategic alliance between the two countries.

GWEN IFILL: Now, this is not new, this unhappiness about the use of drones. Is there something — was it the CIA contractor, the Raymond Davis case that sparked it? Why the meeting yesterday here in Washington?

SHUJA NAWAZ: I think it’s a culmination of a number of things. The Raymond Davis case was merely a symptom of this difficult relationship.

There has been building over time a feeling inside Pakistan that they felt they didn’t get the trust that — and the respect that they deserve from their U.S. counterparts. The U.S., of course, feels that the Pakistanis haven’t done enough for them in return, particularly in the battle against the Afghan Taliban that have sanctuary in Pakistan.

But there is a co-dependency between these two strategic partners. And I think that was being lost in the tactical moves that were evident.

GWEN IFILL: So, what does the U.S. do at this point? Are there concessions that they are prepared to make? And are there concessions that the Pakistanis are prepared to make for this co-dependency to continue?

SHUJA NAWAZ: I think it’s critical that they get together and agree on the strategic objectives, yet again, to reaffirm those, and to make sure that any of the tactical moves that do occur don’t undermine those.

Without that, there will be targets of opportunity for the CIA drone attacks. But now I guess the CIA will be much better prepared to share information with the ISI, because if it doesn’t, then we’re going to see a repeat of this unhappiness.

What I heard was that the army chief in his private message to the United States threatened that, if he were pushed, he would react. And another senior military official has been quoted as saying that they might even shoot down the drones. I think this is probably rhetoric, but there is some basis for it, and that, that, one needs to be careful about.

GWEN IFILL: It sounds like all the parties in this dispute aren’t necessarily on the same page. ISA — ISI, which is Pakistani intelligence, obviously is at loggerheads or at least there’s some friction with the CIA. And the U.S. Embassy on the ground isn’t necessarily speaking the same language that maybe the Pakistani military is.

SHUJA NAWAZ: I think the embassy on the ground is now much more aware of what’s happening inside Pakistan. The difference is probably in the relationship between the CIA and the ISI. And this visit of yesterday will certainly have helped clarify some of those issues.

GWEN IFILL: The potential of them shooting our drones from the sky, is — how much of that is trying to send a domestic message inside of Pakistan, and how much of that is a real threat which you can imagine ever coming true?

SHUJA NAWAZ: I think they are very aware of the domestic pressures on them. In fact, after this attack that killed reportedly 41 people at a place called Datta Khel in North Waziristan, it was quite clear that the Pakistanis were being blamed for not protecting the borders.

A number of tribal elders sent a message saying, we hold the army chief, General Kayani, and the head of the ISI, Gen. Shuja Pasha, responsible for those deaths. And I think the army is very cognizant of public opinion in Pakistan.

GWEN IFILL: Is there still a common agreement about what the goal is along the border there? Or is this — and from the U.S. point of view, obviously, to stop the seepage that would create tensions in Afghanistan, but is there a common agreement about what you do about that?

SHUJA NAWAZ: I think there’s common agreement about the ultimate goal, which is stability in Afghanistan and stability in Pakistan.

But short of that, how you get there is still a work in progress. The Pakistanis, for instance, are very confused by what they see as military actions in Afghanistan, as well as talks of reconciliation and reintegration. They want to know what the U.S. and the coalition prefers, because that will guide them in what they do in the border region against the Afghan Taliban.

GWEN IFILL: Shuja Nawaz, thank you, as always.

SHUJA NAWAZ: Thank you.

Shuja Nawaz, director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, and Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, appeared on a podcast with Jayshree Bajoria, Senior Staff Writer for CFR.org, to discuss the recent difficulties for cooperation between Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the CIA, following the arrest of purported CIA contractor Raymond Davis.

The article and audio can be found here on CFR’s website. 

Event Media – Audio (.mp3, 6:11)

On February 28, the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center hosted J Alexander Thier, Assistant to the Administrator and Director of the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for a discussion on USAID’s goals and activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including long term strategies.

Addressing key social, economic, and political development needs in Afghanistan and Pakistan are vital to achieving stability and growth in the region. With the situation in Afghanistan remaining tense, and U.S.-Pakistan relations continuing to fray, an effective strategy for providing U.S. development assistance is especially critical. 
 
J Alexander Thier is currently Assistant to the Administrator and Director of the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, DC.  He received a B.A. from Brown University, a Master’s in Law and Diplomacy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a JD from Stanford Law School. Thier’s experience in Afghanistan goes back to the 1993 to 1996 civil war when he worked for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan.  From 2002 to 2004, he was legal adviser to Afghanistan’s Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions in Kabul, where he assisted in the drafting of the Afghan constitution.  From 2005 until June 2010, he worked at the United States Institute of Peace as a senior adviser in the Rule of Law Center for Innovation, as well as director of a project on constitution making, peacebuilding, and national reconciliation and expert group lead for the Genocide Prevention Task Force.

Featuring

J Alexander Thier
Assistant to the Administrator and Director, Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

Moderated by

Shuja Nawaz
Director, South Asia Center, Atlantic Council

Diplomatic tensions are on the rise between the US and Pakistan as the CIA contractor accused of shooting two men is on trial for murder. South Asia Center director Shuja Nawaz appeared on the Australia Broadcasting Company’s show Lateline to discuss the ramifications of the Obama Administration’s handling of the ordeal.

Click here to view the video (.asx file)

A transcript of the segment can be found below and at ABC’s website

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: The stakes are getting higher in a diplomatic standoff between the US and Pakistan over the deadly shooting of two men by a CIA contractor.

The circumstances surrounding the case are murky, but the man who the US calls a diplomat is now on trial for murder.

Raymond Davis is due to appear in a Pakistan court again tomorrow.

North America correspondent Lisa Millar reports.

LISA MILLAR, REPORTER: Raymond Davis says he was driving through the crowded streets of Lahore when two men tried to rob him. He pulled a gun and killed them in self-defence.

But four weeks later the 36-year-old American remains in jail with Pakistan questioning why he was there in the first place.

(Police interview excerpt)

POLICE: It’s not written that you are a diplomat.

RAYMOND DAVIS: OK. Do you have my passport?

POLICE: Yes.

RAYMOND DAVIS: Can I see it? Very front page: diplomatic passport.

POLICE: (Inaudible).

RAYMOND DAVIS: I’m not answering questions. I’m going back to my room.

(End of police interview excerpt).

LISA MILLAR: The US has been adamant Raymond Davis has diplomatic immunity and must be released and he’s had support from the very top of the Obama administration.

BARACK OBAMA, US PRESIDENT: And the reason this is an important principle is if it starts being fair game on our ambassadors around the world, including in dangerous places where we may have differences with those governments, … they start being vulnerable to prosecution locally, that’s untenable. It means they can’t do their job.

LISA MILLAR: But what job was Raymond Davis doing? Reports now suggest he was a CIA contractor who once worked for the company formerly known as Blackwater and he was part of a covert operation investigating militant groups in Pakistan.

JOURNALIST: How exactly do you describe him? I mean, is he a contractor, is he a consulate employee?

PJ CROWLEY, US STATE DEPARTMENT: He is a US diplomat in Pakistan currently incarcerated in Pakistan who has diplomatic immunity and should be released.

JOURNALIST: And what exactly was his job?

PJ CROWLEY: Ah, he has, you know – technical, provides technical services to the – a member of the administrative and technical staff of the US embassy in Islamabad. I’m not going to go any further.

LISA MILLAR: The protests have been growing in Pakistan, so too the anti-American sentiment. In another twist, the widow of one of the men killed used rat poison to attempt suicide.

SHUMAILA FAHEEM, WIDOW (voiceover translation): 11 days has passed and nobody has done anything. I want justice.

LISA MILLAR: The US sent Senator John Kerry to plead Raymond Davis’ case.

JOHN KERRY, FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Let’s work together, as two countries who have a huge common interest, who are working towards the same goal.

LISA MILLAR: As he left Pakistan, he was confident the agent would be released within days, but that never happened.

Pakistan’s Government officials are wary of bearing the brunt of the public fury, tossing the decision back to the courts.

While talk of diplomatic immunity and the violation of international treaties is driving the public debate, behind the scenes the biggest fear is what this might be doing to the already troubled relationship between the US and Pakistan. They might be allies, but this incident is set to have major ramifications.

Shuja Nawaz is the director of the South Asia Centre at the Atlantic Council.

SHUJA NAWAZ, ATLANTIC COUNCIL: I think there will now be support for those in the Pakistan Government that will say we cannot trust the United States.

LISA MILLAR: Were you surprised that president Obama came out so strongly in support of him, and it was days before he was outed as a possible CIA agent?

SHUJA NAWAZ: I think the United States may have overplayed its biggest hand, which was the president’s statement of a few days ago when he was out in public, before it was publicly known that Raymond Davis had affiliations with the CIA when he called him a diplomat.

It gives very little room for resiling from that position or for negotiations, and I think that’s going to create a hurdle at some point before this thing is resolved.

LISA MILLAR: When that might happen is unclear. Raymond Davis is due back in court, while the US will continue fighting for his release.

Lisa Millar, Lateline.

South Asia Center director Shuja Nawaz appeared on FOXNews.com’s “DEFCON 3,” hosted by KT McFarland, to discuss the issue of multiculturalism in the U.S. and Europe.

Click here to view the segment on FOXNews.com

The recent assassination of governor Salman Taseer of Punjab in Pakistan has highlighted the ongoing and often violent battle for the future of the country. Taseer had spoken out in favour of reviewing and amending the nation’s blasphemy law to make it less susceptible to abuse, especially against minorities, and to reduce punishments by eliminating the death penalty.

Taseer’s own Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which rules Pakistan, was itself not in favour of such a change, at least not publicly. Some religious parties termed Taseer himself a blasphemer and pronounced a death sentence on him that his own bodyguard carried out. Hundreds of lawyers in Pakistan have offered their services to defend the self-confessed assassin.

The Taseer assassination is a striking example of the battle between those who view with favour an emerging minority with a loud voice and even louder weapons – the Salafist and Takfiri (exclusionary) Islamists, influenced by extremist views born in Saudi Arabia – and the traditional syncretic and spiritual Muslims influenced by the moderate Barelvi school of thought of India, representing the largest single religious group in Pakistan.

But violence and its threat from the extremists have effectively silenced the majority. The extremists have successfully cowed politicians, intellectuals and opinion-makers alike, and steadily increased their hold over the public discourse. Even the majority religious leadership has been threatened. A case in point is Javed Ghamdi, one of Pakistan’s better-known moderate religious scholars with a large following among the urban elite and the middle class, who was recently forced to flee to Malaysia and to continue his commentaries from there.

The conflict between the extremist Islamists and moderate Pakistanis is coming to a head at a time that Pakistan is facing a serious economic crisis and its weak coalition government is being blackmailed by its own partners into conceding on key economic reforms. Pakistan’s internal struggles are likely to take a huge toll on its war against militancy on the western frontier with Afghanistan while also reducing the government’s ability to stop and reverse the economic meltdown that is occurring.

Against this background, the Pakistan army, the strongest and most disciplined institution in the country, is not ready to step into the political arena to change things even while it has won ground against the insurgency in the borderlands.

But its victories on the battleground could be, borrowing General David Petraeus’s recent words about Afghanistan, "fragile and reversible". Without a civilian government prepared to take over and administer the territories cleared by the military, it is quite possible that the army will be caught up in a neverending conflict. The combination of political uncertainty and economic distress will most certainly diminish national security, an outcome that Pakistan and the world at large can ill afford.

Meanwhile, the economy continues on a downward slide, creating conditions of disaffection and unrest that may force Pakistan over the edge in the very near future. A growth rate hovering at around 2 per cent – when 8-plus per cent is needed to provide sufficient jobs for the steadily growing young population – inflation running at nearly 25 per cent, and a fiscal deficit which could reach 8 per cent of GDP by June this year (against a budget target of 4.7 per cent) all point to a dire situation.

The good news is that the government has a strong economic team that has diagnosed the problems and identified the right solutions to a large extent. The bad news is that the political will to effect fundamental changes is missing. While Pakistan’s foreign friends and partners may be able to provide financial resources to stave off a total economic collapse, mainly because it is in their geopolitical interests to do so, unfortunately, political will cannot be imposed by the IMF.

The absence of political will among Pakistan’s leadership suggests that not only will the country face a dismal economic future but also a continuing rise of extremism – both of which would eventually tear the country apart.

Shuja Nawaz is Director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. Mohsin Khan is Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC. This article was originally published in The Australian. Photo credit: Getty Images.

Bestselling author, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow, and former CIA officer Bruce Riedel recommended the book Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army and the Wars Within by South Asia Center director Shuja Nawaz as one of his top five books on the subject of Pakistan’s recent political situation.

Riedel is interviewed by Daisy Banks of The Browser, and describes Nawaz’s book below:

[Q:] Your next book is Shuja Nawaz’s Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within, which looks at the role of Pakistan’s army and its relationship with the United States.

Shuja Nawaz’s book is a monumental study of the Pakistani army and its politics, and, since Pakistan is a country in which the army has always had an unusually large role in determining the political and economic future of the country, it is absolutely critical to understanding modern Pakistan. Shuja comes from a family that is part of the establishment. He knows the army from the inside and is able to tell the story of its development and how it played an increasingly important role in the country’s politics.

At the same time, he maintains the objectivity you need to have. So this is not the army’s story of its role in Pakistan but really an objective study of their role in Pakistan and in politics.

[Q:] And what does he think needs to happen with the army?

To sum it up, the army needs to stay in the barracks as a professional military force and stay out of politics.

Nawaz followed up the book’s research in “Learning by Doing: The Pakistan Army’s Experience with Counterinsurgency,” published February 1.