Why Do the Afghans Need Our Help?

Matt Yglesias writes over at Think Progress:

The other thing I wonder about is these incredibly long time horizons for getting the Afghan army up to speed. Why so long?

We’re not training these guys to mount an amphibious invasion of Japan or get into dogfights with the IDF. The idea is that they need to be able to fight the Taliban. And which superpower is funding, arming, and training the Taliban? Nobody! They’re making do with limited support from perhaps some elements in Pakistani intelligence and maybe some Gulf money.

Given Afghanistan’s long series of civil wars, there are experienced military commanders around on the non-Taliban side and plenty of veteran fighters throughout the country. It seems as if relatively small quantities of American support should decisively tilt the balance of power. And, indeed, in the winter of 2001-2002 they did decisively tilt the balance of power. Did the Northern Alliance troops suddenly forget how to fight? Did we forget how to help them?

Yglesias is essentially asking the question, why can’t the Afghans fight their own war?

Probably because we won’t let them. All the talk about the strategy for the war comes out of American mouths. We never hear the Afghans talk about how they hope to conduct the war or how they hope to defeat the Taliban. If the United States and the Coalition own the war, they will fight it their way.

But Yglesias raises good questions. I agree: Afghans have been fighting for centuries. What sort of training are they missing to fight their compatriots? It is basic war, light weapons, IEDs, and bribes, threats, and coercion being used to win over friends and foes. Who knows the social terrain better? The Afghans or us?

We also need to pay attention to the demographics of the Afghan forces, to ensure that the representation of the various ethnic groups is not distorted in favor of one or the other group. And we must eschew employing Northern Alliance forces in the South, as Yglesias seems to suggest. That feeds the view that this is an anti-Pashtun war.  If anything, this creates a backlash. Pashtuns have been fighting each other in the Frontier region of Pakistan for centuries.  They will readily do so again, if we let them.

Finally, are we training the Afghan forces to NATO standards? Yglesias implies that “we” have forgotten how to help them. But why not use Pakistani and Indian trainers to train them on basic tactics and weaponry in Afghanistan and in their own countries? Pakistani Pashtun officers and soldiers helped the mujahideen against the Soviets and then reportedly the Taliban, as effective advisors, in the Taliban’s drive toward Kabul in the 1990s. They could now work to build the Afghan forces against the same Taliban. This ought to speed up the flow of recruits, and at much less cost than it is for the US or the allies to do so.

Billeting Afghan forces in communities will help isolate the Taliban and protect the people. But they need to be kept under scrutiny so they remain honest. If they abuse their privileges, then we may accelerate the end of the war in favor of the Taliban.

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

Afghanistan Election Winner

No matter what the pundits and the election commission says after tomorrow’s elections in  Afghanistan, one thing seems clear : we know who has won. It is the people of Afghanistan. Rather than hurl rockets or grenades at each other, they have debated and traded arguments. Rather than picking up arms, they have clicked on to the computer and the TV screens to watch what the candidates were saying. And their disparate and distinct voices are being heard. The fact that we have an election taking place, despite all the constitutional and other difficulties and the threats from the Taliban is victory enough for the Afghan people. And, if the election goes to a second round, the victory will be even greater.

 

No, this is not Westminster democracy at work. But then this is not Westminister. This is Afghanistan, a land of freedom-loving people who resent anyone who constrains them. It is democracy when a person walks miles to vote, while facing death threats. It is democracy, when a candidate like Ramzan Bashardost or Ashraf Ghani can talk about issues and still get 10 per cent or 6 per cent of the votes. This did not happen in the recent US presidential elections for the any of the so-called minor candidates. It is democracy when President Hamid Karzai is brought out of his isolation chamber to participate in a nationally televised debate.

The pundits and the scholars will debate the legitimacy of the elections and its results. But Afghans appear to have found their freedom of discourse and the tools of modernity: TV and the internet, and the cell phones, that will make it impossible for whoever wins the nominal elections to rule them with an iron fist. The genie of popular participation pits all Afghans on one side and the Taliban disruptionists on the other. It cannot be put back into the old bottle again. That is the true power of the people that cannot be captured by the calculus of body counts and war. If President Barack Obama is looking for victory in Afghanistan, it has an Afghan face on it; indeed it has the millions of faces of Afghans that took their lives in their hands to cast their votes on August 20th.

A successful Afghan election in which more than 50 per cent of registered voters cast their votes may well have a positive Demonstration Effect in the neighborhood. Pakistan and Tajikistan pay heed. Let the people decide. Don’t decide for them. 

The fervor of these elections takes me back to my early days as a young TV journalist in Pakistan, covering the rise of a fiery Zuklfikar Ali Bhutto challenging his former mentor, strongman Field Marshal Ayub Khan in 1969. Bhutto rallied the underclasses and the peasants with his slogan of ‘Roti, Kapra, aur Makaan’ ((food, clothing and shelter). No one gave Bhutto a chance. But those poor peasants and workers walked miles to listen to his speeches and voted, despite the threats of their feudal  landlords and political bosses. And they upended Pakistan’s political system. Changing it forever.

Afghans have that opportunity on August 20th. I, for one, salute their victory in advance.

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

Pakistan Nukes Misfire

Few issues grab more attention on the global stage today than the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. The assumption in the West has always been that Pakistan cannot adequately safeguard these weapons and that radical Islamists will grab them, putting Western interests at risk in the region.

While the fears may be real, the stories that emerge are often not so real.

The latest version of the old “telephone game” seems to be the piece that Shaun Gregory wrote for the CTC Sentinel at West Point and that Peter Bergen blogged about recently. Bergen’s post pointing out Gregory’s claims on the AfPak Channel unleashed a virulent series of comments in the blogosphere and a slew of follow-on press reports. The gist of the message was that three attacks had been launched on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. Gregory wrote that “a series of attacks on [Pakistan’s] nuclear facilities has … occurred.”

The unstated assumption was that these attacks were coordinated and aimed to capture nuclear weapons or materials. Gregory is a scholar who is not wont to make claims without clear and verifiable evidence. Only he can clarify what his intent was. Bergen’s position of authority in the world of journalism gave the story a fresh life.

Unfortunately, the message published on the AfPak Channel was picked up worldwide with the speed of a brush fire and its assumptions are not supported by the facts about these three attacks. None of them was aimed at getting into or seeking control of nuclear assets.

Bear in mind the following:

The facility at Wah is a massive ordnance complex that is known to manufacture conventional weapons. It may or may not have nuclear weapons facilities inside its enormous perimeter. Gregory does not offer any evidence on its nuclear activity. The attack of  August 21,  2008, on one gate and another explosion in a bazaar near another gate of the Wah facility was acknowledged to the BBC by Pakistani Taliban spokesman Maulvi Umar as retaliation for the deaths of “innocent women and children” in the tribal territory of Bajaur. No mention of any intent to penetrate or capture nukes.

The attack of November 1, 2007, on the Pakistan Air Force bus carrying trainees near Sargodha in Central Punjab also was not an attack on a nuclear facility or storage site. It was a lone suicide bomber on a motorcycle who crashed into the bus carrying the airmen. Security experts saw this as retaliation for the air force attacks the previous months in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan.

Again, one may assume that the Sargodha air base might be used for loading or launching airborne nuclear weapons. But there was no indication that this was an attack aimed at the Pakistani nuclear facilities or capabilities. Sargodha lies on the road often used by Sunni Punjabi militant groups traveling to the Afghan border region where they support the Pakistani Taliban, and sometimes al Qaeda, as franchisees. This may well have been their bloody handiwork against a target of opportunity. But there’s no evidence of any attack on nuclear facilities here either.

The third attack on Kamra in December 2007 again does not provide any evidence of a plan to penetrate the aeronautical complex where military and civilian aircraft and spare parts are manufactured. The target was a bus carrying more than 30 children of Air Force personnel on their way to a school inside the complex. At least five of them were injured. Kamra produces, among other things, parts for the Boeing 777. There is no evidence offered by Gregory of any nuclear work being conducted at Kamra.

The blogosphere has now picked up this story and no doubt it will become part of the hyperbolic record on Pakistan’s nuclear safeguards. Unless it is retracted or clarified by the source: Shaun Gregory.

There is no perfect security for any nuclear system. Even the United States cannot account for all its nuclear assets or materials nor stop someone from flying a nuclear armed bomber across the country. But Pakistan appears to be very serious about securing its nuclear assets. Its nuclear safeguards are “robust” according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies of London. Indeed, Gregory too uses the same word to describe Pakistan’s nuclear safeguards.

This latest story on Pakistan may be gripping but when not supported by facts; it creates more noise than substance.

Shuja Nawaz is the director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.  This essay was also published on ForeignPolicy.com’s AfPak Channel

Pakistan and the Taliban: After the Death of Baitullah Mehsud

Highlight - Nawaz

Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, published an op-ed in the newly-launched AfPak Channel at Foreign Policy.  The essay, entitled “Pakistan and the Taliban: Leaders Caught Betwixt and Between,” discusses the aftermath in Pakistan of the death of Baitullah Mehsud from a reported U.S. drone attack. 

The full article can be read at the New Atlanticist.

Pakistan and the Taliban: Leaders Caught Betwixt and Between

Following the reported death of Baitullah Mehsud from an American drone attack, Pakistan faces a number of challenges. Will it be able to take an offensive against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as it faces disarray? Will it be able to resist the US pressure to “do more” against the Afghan Taliban now that the United States has done Pakistan a big favor by removing Mehsud from the scene? Will it muster the troop strength and the resolve to move against the TTP in South Waziristan, or try using local surrogates again to do the job for it?

How the ruling troika of the president, prime Minister, and army chief resolve these issues will indicate the path of political development in Pakistan in the next fateful year. Each faces major hurdles. President Asif Ali Zardari can rightly take credit for cooperating with the U.S. in its drone attacks on targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. But will he do so publicly? And risk further depleting his dwindling support among the masses? A Gallup Pakistan and Al Jazeera poll released last week indicates his popularity at only 11 percent inside Pakistan. Yet, persistent complaints about the drone attacks by Pakistani officials fuel public anger against the United States. Some 59 percent of those polled consider the United States to be Pakistan’s major threat today, according to the same survey.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani appears to be increasingly asserting the position of his office and of parliament, as opposed to the de facto presidential system that Zardari inherited from former President Pervez Musharraf. But Gilani is not ready for prime time. At least not until he gets the nod from the army high command or unequivocal support from former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif is holding back since he does not wish to upset the fledgling political system, allowing the army to step in again.

Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani continues to be the key to Pakistan’s political future for the time being. His every conversation and public appearance, including his recent meeting with politico and legal wizard Aitzaz Ahsan, is read by avid political observers with all the fervor of Kremlinologists examining photos of Soviet Union May Day parades. Yet, he too faces a deadline of sorts: In November he completes the second year of his three-year term. During his final year, the jockeying will begin for his succession and deals may be offered to him or to others in the higher command by the current appointing authority, the president. History indicates that each time an army chief has been given an extension or “promoted” to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in addition to being army chief, or a junior officer has been elevated to the highest rank in the army, the government has faced a coup d’etat in short order. Will Kayani buck history? The Gallup poll indicates only 8 percent support military rule. But army headquarters rarely follows polls. And only rarely do they follow the dictates of the United States.

The Army will be reluctant to open a front against the Afghan Taliban, who have been obtaining sanctuary inside FATA while avoiding conflict with the army. It will be equally reluctant to mount a large ground offensive in South Waziristan at a time when it is still mopping up in Swat and Malakand. The infighting among TTP factions may allow the army to use local rivals to neutralize the TTP to some extent.

But the death of Mehsud may open new fissures inside Pakistan, and between it and the United States, as Pakistani power politics take center stage once more. The scene is set for Grand Tactics yet again, leaving aside the strategic issues that Pakistan needs to be facing in the longer term.

One such issue is the economic challenge of a growing population, and exploding unemployment. The “youth dividend” that former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz used to talk about as benefitting Pakistan’s economy may become the ball and chain, dragging down the country if the youth bulge of Pakistan’s population cannot be educated nor given jobs. Pakistan’s government desperately needs to address these issues, especially in central and Southern Punjab where the militant Sunni franchisees of Al Qaeda and the TTP have their base and from where they have been recruiting jihadist militants with ease. Otherwise, the wave of fanaticism will be more than Pakistan’s overstretched army could handle.

What can the United States do? It must proceed to deliver rapidly and directly on its promised aid package and ensure that the benefits are spread throughout Pakistan. Aid aimed just at FATA would be seen as only serving US interests in Afghanistan. Nationwide distribution of US assistance will help the United States address the antagonism of the majority of Pakistanis. And it must seriously find a way to include Pakistan in the targeting decisions for the drone attacks. Or this will continue to be seen as America’s war and drag down Pakistan’s political leaders who side with the United States.

There are no easy choices. Nor any quick fixes. Pakistani politics will be in a state of turmoil in the months ahead, and come January the U.S. will be in a new election cycle. Despite his desire to think long term, President Obama then may be forced to make short-term compromises, including perhaps a deviation from Pakistan’s path toward democracy. The time to act is this summer, before the problems become too overwhelming and restrict the choices available to U.S. and Pakistani leaders.

Shuja Nawaz is the director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council.  This was the inaugural essay in ForeignPolicy.com’s Afpak Channel. 

At War with Pakistan’s Taliban

After years of self-denial, Pakistani society and its government now face the reality of a dangerous – nay, existential – threat to their polity from a home-grown variant of the Afghan Taliban, a movement that was spawned by the U. S. invasion of Afghanistan and grew into a potent political force in the past three years.

The Islamist movement is headed by Baitullah Mehsud, a youthful third-tier Mehsud tribal leader at one time, and now the avowed leader of a regional rebellion against the Pakistani state. He has also declared war against the U. S. forces in Afghanistan, but in the main remains focused on asserting control over Pakistan’s largely autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and, through surrogates, over the nearby North West Frontier Province. The fear inside Pakistan and among Western allies is that, after consolidating control over these border areas, he may want to launch a takeover of the Pakistani state itself, along with its nuclear assets – a true nightmare scenario.

What makes this Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan (TTP) especially dangerous is that it has managed to pull together a congeries of disparate tribal and regional malcontents, brigands, religious leaders and even the militant Sunni Punjabi groups that once were trained by the Inter-Services Intelligence Service of Pakistan (ISI) for use against India in Kashmir. The TTP and some of its components also have franchise arrangements with al-Qaeda. Indeed, suicide bombings, an import into the region by al-Qaeda’s Arab contingent, has become the hallmark of many attacks launched by the TTP.

Pakistan’s first instinct was to ignore the TTP. It tried the old British tactic of making deals with militants in the area of South Waziristan, bending even to garland rebel leaders and going to their territory to make peace: a sign of weakness in tribal culture. Such deals did not last long. Yet the government persisted. And even when a civilian government led by the Pakistan People’s Party replaced that of president Pervez Musharraf, this method of dealing with the Pakistani Taliban continued – with the same disastrous results. Some 14 deals have been made and broken over the past three years. It seems that the government has no other arrows in its quiver – except the military.

The Pakistani army recently entered into the FATA in force, with close to 120,000 troops of the regular army (since increased to over 150,000) and the paramilitary Frontier Force, trying to control the 3.5 million population of the FATA and the limited number of militants embedded within them. This was the first time since independence in 1947 that the Pakistan army entered FATA.

It soon felt itself as an alien force and was so regarded by the locals, with its predominantly Punjabi force structure unable to communicate with the local Pashto-speaking tribesmen. Moreover, a conventional force, trained for battles against India, found itself having to re-learn frontier warfare. The result was heavy losses: some 140 killed and many more wounded, and embarrassing surrenders to tribal fighters who took advantage of the hilly terrain to ambush unguarded convoys.

Pakistan’s government and army were slow to realize that the military was capable of addressing only the symptoms of the insurgency. The heart of the insurgency has been an attempt to impose a convoluted view of Islam in the name of shariah. The government has made no attempt to fight back using the language of Islam and thereby expose the invalidity of the horrific actions of the insurgents against their opponents, including attacks on girls’ schools and mosques and beheadings.

Nor has the new civilian government made an attempt to try to bring FATA into Pakistan’s political system or to upgrade the 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulations that imposed fines on whole tribes for individuals’ actions. Neither did it try to improve the justice system – until forced by the Taliban in the Swat region to press for a new Islamic system of justice, a step that led to the creation of an anachronistic system within Pakistani law.

What must be done?

Pakistan needs to stop making deals and ceding space to the Taliban. It needs to begin addressing the political and economic grievances of the people of the region by allowing greater autonomy for them and involving them in economic development decisions. It can physically and economically connect FATA to Pakistan proper with a network of east-west roads and start major infrastructure projects, including building river embankments and small dams and installing tube wells.

If Pakistan creates some 300,000 jobs, it will mop up the entire 17% “youth bulge” that currently characterizes FATA’s population profile. If this is done, the entire recruitment pool of the TTP will be eliminated.

As for the army, it must be used only for clearing the militants, and then must be supported by a paramilitary and local police force embedded in the community. The army is not equipped nor trained to hold areas besieged by local insurgents. Experience from around the world indicates that good governance, justice and strong police forces, not military, are best able to defeat such insurgencies.

The danger of keeping the army continuously involved has been proven by Pakistan’s own fractured history. Discontent among the military rank and file permeates the force, and as it reaches the upper levels often produces military coups d’etat.

Pakistan does not deserve another coup. Its civilian politicians must understand that this is not time for business as usual. They need to stop thinking for the short term and think about the future of Pakistan’s polity and its very existence as a state. Time is running out on them. And the Taliban are at the gates.

Shuja Nawaz is director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council.  This essay was previously published in Canada’s National Post.

Shuja Nawaz: Congressional Testimony on U.S.-Pakistan Relations

Shuja Nawaz

Shuja Nawaz, director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security.

  His remarks, “From Strategy to Implementation: Strengthening U.S.-Pakistan Relations,” outlined practical steps forward for U.S. security assistance to Pakistan.

Video:

 

Video courtesy of the U.S. Senate.

Testimony:

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Senator McCain, members of the subcommittee: I am honored to appear before you today to share my thoughts with you on what works and what could work in Pakistan, and how we can make the United States a better partner in building Pakistan safer and stronger. I speak as a Pakistani but also as someone who has lived and worked in the United States since 1972.

While the situation in Pakistan may appear bleak, it is not hopeless. I remain optimistic. Yet there is cause for concern. As a friend of mine reminds me often: a pessimist is simply an optimist with experience.

Pakistan is a complex country, struggling nearly 62 years since independence to define its nationhood. Repeated military and autocratic rule, both civil and military, have left its key institutions stunted. The limitations of its military rulers have been matched by the incompetence and short-sightedness of its civil leadership. Most political parties are run as personal fiefdoms and family businesses, or on feudal patterns. Rarely do they allow internal democratic systems to emerge. Ironically, only the major religious party, the Jamaat i Islami, actually holds elections at various levels and routinely elects new leaders from the rank and file.

I welcome President Obama’s and the US Congress’ moves to change the relationship with Pakistan to focus on a longer-term commitment to the people of Pakistan, not an alliance with any single person, party, or institution.  In this season of bipartisan support for help to rebuild Pakistan and reshape US policy, I offer below some information and suggestions.

  • First, we must recognize the emerging demographic shape of Pakistan: over 60 per cent of its population is below 30 years. Most of its youth are disenfranchised, disconnected with the economy and polity, and unemployed. They are disaffected and vulnerable to the blandishments of their radical co-religionists, who have used a convoluted interpretation of Islam to attract Pakistani youth to their side.
  • Yet, Pakistani society has strong sinews: when given the chance, its people work hard and do well. They have helped build Britain’s textile factories and help run the economies of the Gulf States and the Arabian Peninsula. They remit about $6 billion a year to their homeland. A recent World Bank study showed that over 1980-2007, Pakistan ranked second only to China’s 9.9 per cent average GDP growth rate with its 5.8 per cent. All this, I maintain, in spite of government. Today Pakistan has a Middle Class of some 30 million with an average per capita income of $10,000 per year on a purchasing power parity basis.
  • How do we engage this complex Pakistan so we can leverage its strengths and build a long lasting relationship with the United States?  Not by threats or coercion, for Pakistanis are a proud people and do not respond well to the carrots and sticks approach. In any case, such an approach is not employed by most of us in our personal friendships. Why would we use it with another country? Rather, we need to build trust on the basis of understanding. A glance at the roller coaster history of US-Pakistan relations will prove this point. Whenever the US has pushed Pakistan to change without creating the environment inside Pakistan to favor change, the reaction has been negative and detrimental to friendship. Sanctions have not worked to deter Pakistan away from working on its nuclear capability, for example.
  • Pakistan’s military now appears to have recognized that the internal threats are more immediate than the looming presence of a powerful India to the east. But it does not have the full training or the equipment to fight an insurgency. When the US talks of Counterinsurgency training it sounds to the Pakistanis that they must abandon conventional defense. We must clarify that this is not the case. Till Pakistan’s threat perceptions change, we must be prepared to support its military in creating a hybrid force ranging across a spectrum of capabilities. This will allow them to shift from COIN to conventional, as needed. Pakistan badly needs support that will allow it to move troops rapidly on either of its eastern or western borders and between them. It operates on the basis of the capability of India to the east to inflict damage, if it chooses. Yet, it cannot match India’s military might in numbers. Pakistan’s security demands the maintenance of a conventional force with a concurrent capability to fight an internal insurgency. But the latter needs to be accelerated to help it regain territory in the North Western part of the country.

How can the US become more effective?

  1. USAID is broken badly by years of neglect. It must be rebuilt, empowered; given the staff to strategize and manage its projects, develop relationships inside Pakistan, and effectively deliver aid where it is needed. USAID is aptly named: most of its aid money stays in the United States. This must stop. USAID needs to stop being a contract management agency and become again a powerful partner of US diplomacy, working directly with local counterparts to solve local problems. The model of the Office of Transition Initiatives, involving working with recipients of aid on the ground and crafting projects that meet urgent needs in a manner that empowers the locals seems to be working. USAID as a whole might want to move faster toward that model. In Pakistan OTI has had successful pilot projects as has the Narcotics Assistance Section of the US Embassy there. It is not a question of absence of information or experience. Congress should try to move USAID away from wholesale outsourcing of its work to a select few Washington-based organizations with political clout to aid recipients and local NGOs.
  2. We must also find better ways to coordinate assistance, so DOD, State, Treasury, Commerce, USTR, DOE and other agencies work together rather than autonomously or at cross purposes.  Congress needs to support the Special Envoy’s work in this regard.
  3. Trade can be a huge supplement to aid. Politically difficult moves such as a Free Trade Agreement and removal of quotas on textiles imports would allow Pakistan to help itself. A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics of Pakistan’s textile trade with the United States supports this idea. But, we must encourage Pakistan to move up the value-added ladder toward manufactures, if it is to stay ahead of the population growth curve.
  4. A related issue is the Reconstruction Opportunity Zones. These can be useful as a temporary though subsidized salve, not a permanent solution. China’s experience indicates that ROZs need to be near major population centers and communications hubs. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA are too remote a location to give the ROZs long-term viability. There is also the danger of carpetbaggers from other provinces coming in to take advantage of tax holidays and leaving when those facilities disappear.
  5. There is a better and faster way to create jobs immediately in FATA. A calculation by ex-World Bank economist Khalid Ikram, melds with my own thinking on this topic. We can employ the young males in the 17 per cent youth bulge in FATA’s 3.5 million population by launching major infrastructure projects: major roads linking FATA to Pakistan, small dams and tube-wells to help irrigate cash crops, would help mop up the roughly 300,000 Pakhtun youth who are now the target of Taliban recruitment efforts. Detailed recommendations along these lines were recently made by us in the Atlantic Council’s Task Force Report on Pakistan and in my paper for the CSIS on FATA. In my own meeting with 23 Maliks in North Waziristan last year, they were looking for help in building the irrigation infrastructure so they could produce cash crops and process them for export to the Gulf. Locals also appreciated greatly a boat bridge over the Tochi River that reduced travel times by hours. Such civil works would create immediate employment for youth in FATA. And roads linked to Pakistan proper would produce their own spin-off benefits, as tea houses, hotels, repair shops etc. would create an informal sector for more employment of locals.
  6. On retraining the military, we must recognize that the Pakistan army also needs help in keeping up its conventional force, even while we build up its mobility and ability to fight militants in rough terrain on its western borders. Mr. Chairman, four helicopters will not do the trick. The US can and should divert larger numbers of helicopters and other COIN-oriented equipment to Pakistan, as it replaces the fleets of European allies, for example. Pakistan badly needs heli-lift capability to fight a mobile militant force in its mountainous north. For its eastern border as well, it needs to be able to move troops rapidly to meet any Indian threat. Mobility would also help reduce a large standing and immobile army and over time reduce the strain on the budget.
  7. We must also replace the Coalition Support Funds with regular foreign military funding, with milestones and benchmarks proposed by Pakistan’s military and agreed to by the United States. This will help transform the current patronage relationship from an army for hire to an army fighting Pakistan’s own war. In my conversations with army officers in FATA I found great resentment up and down the ranks for the payment of monies by the US to compensate Pakistan for sending troops into FATA. Even more galling were the requests for detailed accounting of all expenses, especially when over time a larger proportion of those expenses were challenged or denied in succeeding years. This has not won any friends inside the Pakistan army. Direct military aid with agreed benchmarks would be a better way to handle this situation. And coupled with enhancing Pakistan’s capacity to track expenditures, would allow Pakistan to make better use of these monies while meeting Congress’ desire for accountability.

How do we track aid monies and make their use transparent?

I believe in accountability and responsible use of domestic and foreign funds. Pakistan does not have the ability to track its civil or military expenditures effectively. We must help Pakistan create these systems so it can better manage its resources. A comprehensive financial tracking system in the Ministries of Finance and Defence should help not only management but also improve civilian control of military spending, while increasing transparency. It is in Pakistan’s interest to set up strong management of aid programs and independent monitoring entities to prevent misuse of aid by bloated bureaucracies. The Pakistani Diaspora can provide the backbone for such efforts. On its part the US government must make transparent all its aid and defense contract awards so both the US and Pakistani populace can track the use of aid monies.

Mr. Chairman, I return to the complexity of Pakistan, its strategic choices and external and domestic challenges. Understanding its regional insecurities, the US must work behind the scenes to understand Pakistan’s security concerns and to alleviate them. India is a key player in the region. Fro the first time in years, a strong central government has been elected in India. The US must use its new influence with India to show, in the words of my friend Peter Jones, “Strategic altruism”. Confidence building measures need to be picked up and the Track II channels that brought the two countries close to solutions of at last three of their major four issues of contention two years ago need to be revived. Both India and Pakistan must leap frog the hurdles of historical distrust and conflicts to fight the common enemies of poverty, terror, and religious extremism. There is no acceptable alternative to this direction.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.