The contradictions and confusions in U.S. policy in South Asia were on full display during Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s recent visit to India. U.S. support for India, which centers on making money, selling weapons, and turning a blind eye to the country’s nuclear weapons, is fatally at odds with U.S. policy and concerns about Pakistan.
Pakistan has one of the largest, most sophisticated militaries on the planet. Its army is as large as the U.S. Army. It’s among the top 25 largest military spenders in the world. On top of the billions of dollars of weapons provided to Pervez Musharraf’s authoritarian regime, Washington is promising another $3 billion a year in military assistance over the next five years. And, to top it off, Islamabad has nuclear weapons.
On the surface, it appears that Pakistan’s greatest internal threats stem from the dangerously autonomous Swat Valley and Southern Waziristan. Look deeper and you’ll see that the country’s ailment is rooted in a crisis of national identity.
If the bucolic Swat valley, tucked into the Himalayas less than 100 miles from the capital city of Islamabad, is a bellwether for Pakistan’s war against the Pakistani Taliban, the war is going badly. The Swat District — an integrated part of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) as opposed to the autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) — has been beyond government control since 2007. In this period the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Mohammaden Islamic Law), a militant Pakistani Taliban group, thoroughly destroyed the threadbare state institutions that existed in the area. Most notably they targeted schools and the police force. Rebuilding these will take years.
This is part of a strategic dialogue on Pakistan and counterterrorism. See Fouad Pervez’s initial argument here and Sharad Joshi’s argument here.
This is part of a strategic dialogue on Pakistan and counterterrorism. See Fouad Pervez’s opposing argument here, and their respective responses here.
This is part of a strategic dialogue on Pakistan and counterterrorism. See Sharad Joshi’s opposing argument here, and their respective responses here.
There was much fanfare as President Barack Obama announced the eagerly anticipated "AfPak" policy review, what the White House terms is "a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." Many have argued, however, that the new AfPak policy is very much a continuation of the old policy with a few tactical grafts from the occupation of Iraq.
Sometimes, it’s the everyday things, the ones that fly below the radar, that matter.
The government of Pakistan released A.Q. Khan from house arrest earlier this month. The former head of the country’s nuclear weapons uranium enrichment program had been detained since 2004, following revelations of his decades-long role as part of a nuclear black market selling nuclear technology, materials, and even nuclear weapon designs.