Introduction: Pakistan''s Challenges Beyond 2014 C. Christine Fair and Sarah J. Watson Pakistan on 9/11: From Pariah to Paladin On September 10, 2001, Pakistan was virtually a pariah state. It was encumbered by layers of sanctions meant to punish it for, inter alia, nuclear and missile proliferation, its May 1998 nuclear tests (conducted immediately after those of India), and the 1999 bloodless coup in which Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The U.S. Department of State had even considered placing Pakistan on its list of countries that support terrorism. While Pakistan narrowly escaped designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, it did in fact support a vast fleet of Islamist militants waging a terror campaign throughout India, particularly in Indian-administered Kashmir, and it was providing key military, political, diplomatic, and other support to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
When then U.S. President Bill Clinton visited the subcontinent in 2000, he spent several days in India, but in contrast, only a few hours in Pakistan. He took the opportunity to lecture Pakistani leaders on their reckless policies and even refused to shake the hand of General Musharraf, the country''s fourth military dictator. Prior to 9/11, the George W. Bush administration had embarked on a serious effort to reconfigure its relations with India and Pakistan. Whereas the United States sought to engage India in a significant strategic partnership, it was trying to prepare Pakistan to accept its unequal position in South Asia and diminished importance to the United States (Fair 2004; Tellis 2001: 88; Tellis 2008). The tragic events of September 11, 2001, afforded Pakistan the opportunity to regain its standing among the community of nations and to force the United States to modify its plans to forge an entirely new policy in South Asia, one predicated upon moving boldly forward with India while helping Pakistan to accept its unequal and indeed inferior position in South Asia.
Almost immediately, the United States had to find some way of releasing Pakistan from its burden of sanctions, both in order to secure the necessary Pakistani political will to support the looming war effort in Afghanistan and also to arm Pakistan, which would--once again--become a frontline state in an American war. Virtually overnight, President Musharraf was transformed from yet another "mango republic" dictator into a much-feted partner of the free world and an intrepid cobelligerent in what became known as "the war on terror." Pakistan''s assistance was critical to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, launched on October 7, 2001, under the name "Operation Enduring Freedom." Pakistan provided the United States with unprecedented access to ports, military bases, airspace, and ground lines of control, and Pakistani security forces also provided highly necessary security for U.S. assets positioned in Pakistan (Fair 2004).
As the United States and NATO developed the Afghan theater, they freed themselves somewhat from their dependence on Pakistan. But Pakistan remained a crucial player in the war effort because the United States was unable to find a cost-effective alternative to trucking supplies into Afghanistan over Pakistani territory. Goods were off-loaded at the Karachi port and then transferred onto thousands of privately owned local transport trucks for the trip into Afghanistan, either through the pass at Chaman (in Baluchistan) or through Torkham (in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). As the war in Afghanistan drew on, Pakistan also became an indispensable partner in the drone program, which targeted al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and (ostensibly) "allied forces" in Pakistan and Afghanistan. President Musharraf benefited politically from his role in the war effort. Even as he became a greater and greater liability for the Pakistan army and as his policies vexed and alienated ever more Pakistanis, the United States redoubled its commitment to securing his place in Pakistan''s politics (Markey 2007). In order to keep him on as president while quieting critics of U.S.
hypocrisy, the United States, working with the United Kingdom, helped broker a deal in 2007 that would allow Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan. The legislation that came about, the National Reconciliation Ordinance, offered her and her associates amnesty for any crimes committed during their previous spells in power, thus allowing them to contest elections. Musharraf would remain the president, with Benazir Bhutto as prime minister. The deal faltered when Bhutto was tragically assassinated in late 2007. Musharraf''s career could not be resuscitated, and by the end of 2008, he had resigned from the position of the presidency and from the military (Wright and Kessler 2007; Sehbai 2011). Even though the 2008 elections ushered in a civilian government led by the Pakistan Peoples Party, the United States focused instead on Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Musharraf''s successor as chief of army staff. For the first five or six years of the war, Washington was relatively pleased with Pakistan''s cooperation. President Bush would frequently cite the various al-Qaeda operatives who had been captured with Pakistani help as proof of Musharraf''s dedication to the war.
When al-Qaeda began targeting President Musharraf in 2004 for this very cooperation, Washington worked even harder to support him and his army (Vandehei and Lancaster 2006). Between fiscal years 2002 and 2008, the United States provided Pakistan some $2.2 billion in security-related assistance and $3.2 billion in economic aid. These figures paled, however, in comparison to the $6.7 billion that the United States transferred to Pakistan under the Coalition Support Funds (CSF) program, under which the United States reimbursed Pakistan for its expenditures on the war on terror in the same period (Congressional Research Service 2014). The terms of reimbursement under this program were absurdly favorable and subject to very little oversight (GAO 2008a). By 2007, tensions between the two countries were apparent.
The Bush administration had slowly come to the realization that, while Pakistan had aided the U.S. war on al-Qaeda, it had also continued supporting its clients in Afghanistan, most importantly Mullah Omar''s Taliban and the North Waziristan-based network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani. This realization was all the more troubling because the United States and its NATO partners were finally convinced that they were fighting an insurgency in Afghanistan, led by the very same groups patronized by Pakistan. Prior to 2007, the international community had assumed that the military operations in Afghanistan would soon begin winding down, as the Taliban had long been vanquished and even al-Qaeda no longer operated in Afghanistan (Jones 2007a; Jones 2007b). From Pakistan''s perspective, on the other hand, the United States had fallen short on many counts. First, in late 2001, the United States was unable to prevent the Northern Alliance from taking Kabul. The Northern Alliance was the only remaining source of resistance to the Taliban and it received assistance from India, as well as Iran, Russia, Tajikistan, and the United States, among others.
From the point of view of Pakistan''s military and intelligence agencies, the United States had handed the keys of Kabul to India''s proxy. Second, the December 2001 Bonn Conference, which excluded the Taliban, was a convention of the conquerors of a government long-sponsored by Pakistan. Third, India slowly rebuilt its presence in Afghanistan under the U.S./NATO security umbrella. Pakistan saw every Indian gain in Afghanistan as a direct threat to its own interests and believed that India--in connivance with the anti-Pakistan Afghan government--was using its strongholds in Afghanistan to support insurgency and terrorism in Pakistan. Worse yet, in 2005 the United States announced its support for a civilian nuclear program in India, explicitly embracing the objective of assisting India''s ability to develop nuclear weapons (Tellis 2005: 35-37). Additionally, Pakistan''s military support for the U.
S.-led coalition that routed the Taliban and destroyed al-Qaeda prompted a lethal rebellion among some of Pakistan''s erstwhile militant assets. By 2007, several militant commanders--all of whom were associated with the Deobandi interpretive tradition--had grouped themselves under the umbrella of the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban Movement, or TTP). These Deobandi commanders had long-standing connections to the Afghan Taliban through a shared architecture of Deobandi madrassas, mosques, ulema, and political leadership. Because of the colocation of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, many of these Pakistani groups also had ties to and sympathies with al-Qaeda. At first, Pakistan''s military, paramilitary, police, and intelligence agencies bore the brunt of the TTP''s onslaught. However, by 2008, the TTP began savagely attacking civilians far beyond the tribal areas and in Pakistan''s important cities of Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi, and Quetta, among others (Fair 2013). From the army''s point of view, this sequence of events was all the more troubling.
While the American and Pakistani publics routinely cited the ever-higher amounts of military assistance poured into the Pakistan army''s coffers, and while Americans increasingly complained that their government was not getting what it paid for, the Pakistan army had its own complaints. The monies that the United States gave to Pakistan did not go to the army directly but rather to the Ministry of Finance, and the Pakistan army claimed that it was not receiving the stipulated reimbursement. General Kayani, Pakistan''s army chief at the time, told American interlocutors that in fact only 40 percent of CSF funds went to the mil.