The truth of the US’ Pakistan clinch

“Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you.” – Mohsin Hamid, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’

The opening lines of Mohsin Hamid’s tense and ambiguous novel, spoken by a bearded Pakistani to a barrel-chested American, could just as well be Islamabad addressing Washington. Ever since General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former military ruler, pledged his country as a pivotal ally in the war on terror after the attacks of September 11 2001, the US and Pakistan have been locked in a strange and ambivalent embrace. Pakistan has been of assistance. The US has been alternately grateful and alarmed.

Evidence that the joint war is not going smoothly – as if any were needed – came again this week when suicide bombers drove a truck of explosives into the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar, north-west Pakistan, killing at least 15 and injuring more than 60. It was merely the latest barbarity. Last week 40 died when suicide bombers targeted a mosque; the week before, militants drove a bomb-laden van into a police station in Lahore, killing 35 and injuring 300.

The latest round of suicide slaughter comes in response to a military offensive on Taliban forces. Until April, the Taliban had been running affairs in the picturesque valley of Swat, 100 miles from Islamabad, causing Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, to make her oft-quoted comment about the “existential threat” facing Pakistan.

The Pakistani state has responded. It claims, in just four weeks, to have killed 2,000 Taliban and to have all but retaken Swat. Some 2.5m people have fled the valley in the biggest human exodus since the Rwandan genocide 15 years ago. The offensive has also ignited a wave of what Pakistanis call “blowback”, as jihadi militants turn on the state that once gave them succour.

Pakistan’s troubles with blowback date back to at least 1980 when, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA teamed up with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency to begin its biggest ever covert operation. Together, they trained mujahideen fighters and sent them across the Afghan border to kill the communist invaders. The jihadis, many poor and illiterate, were intentionally radicalised, taught that they were defending Islam against godless usurpers. They included fighters from all over the Arab world, including Osama bin Laden, who was later to take his holy war to New York and Washington.

The joint US-Pakistan flirtation with militant Islam continued into the 1990s. According to Zahid Hussain, author of Frontline Pakistan, US diplomats stationed in Islamabad championed another radical group, the Taliban, which they thought could restore order to a lawless Afghanistan. Pakistan’s military has also found the hydra- headed jihadi useful at times: militant fighters have provided Islamabad with what is known as “strategic depth” in Afghanistan and, more importantly, kept hundreds of thousands of Indian troops on their toes in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Now the US has a new anti-terrorism strategy, Afpak. It wants to treat Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single theatre of war, based on the fact that militants cross the long, empty border between the two countries almost at will. Neat on paper, probably sensible, the Afpak strategy comes with huge problems.

First, US troops are not allowed inside Pakistan. If they drive militants to the border, they cannot pursue them far into the “Pak” bit of Afpak. Once inside, militants can hide in the mountains of Waziristan, a badland region only nominally controlled by Islamabad, or melt into the cities of Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, where their madrassa-trained sympathisers are many.

Second, Pakistan has a brand new civilian government and a judiciary that has boldly defended its independence. Both should be to Washington’s liking. But the civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari does not have convincing control over a military and intelligence service that may – even now – include those who maintain friendly ties with some militant groups.

Nor can the courts be relied upon to tackle militancy as Washington might wish. Last week the Lahore High Court, lacking specific evidence, released the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the organisation suspected of masterminding last November’s Mumbai attacks. Some Pakistani lawyers have also, quite reasonably, questioned the legality of US drone attacks (secretly supported by Islamabad) that have killed scores of civilians and inflamed anti-US opinion inside Pakistan.

Finally, there is the question of Kashmir, another crucible of jihad. Barack Obama sensed, correctly, that any genuine effort to tackle militancy in Afghanistan must involve the resolution of problems not only in Pakistan but also in Kashmir. India quickly warned the US president that he was “barking up the wrong tree” if he intended to broker a Kashmir deal. Yet without resolution of that festering sore, Pakistan will continue to be a jihadi factory and to harbour sympathy for some of the militants in its midst.

Mohsin Hamid’s novel ends when one of the two main characters appears to reach for a gun. It is never clear whether it is the American or the Pakistani who faces greater danger. The same holds true for the countries’ joint war on terror.

david.pilling@ft.com
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