DOUBLE DEALING IN THE LAND OF THE PURE
Pakistan is not a rogue regime in the traditional sense. Shortly after its creation in 1947, it became an American ally. As India drifted closer to the Soviet Union, Pakistan gained an ever more important position in U.S. strategic calculations. Between 1954 and 1965, Pakistan received more than $1 billion in arms sales and defense assistance, a huge amount for the time.1 Military exchanges between the United States and Pakistan were common. Cooperation only increased after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It was not long until Pakistan became the third largest U.S. aid recipient, after Israel and Egypt.2
What makes the decades-long U.S.-Pakistani engagement noteworthy is that despite the close alliance and high-level cooperation, the two countries seldom share the same perception of strategic threats, national interest, or goals. Washington’s relationship with Islamabad is marked by a distrust more often reserved for rogue regimes than for partners, and the population’s attitude toward Americans is little better. Decades of war in Afghanistan have brought the relationship to the breaking point.
Upon the 1947 partition of India, U.S. policymakers wanted to engage both India and Pakistan in order to create a bulwark against communism. The Cold War may have been the paramount U.S. concern, but for Pakistan, unresolved issues with India loomed larger. India successfully pushed Pakistani “volunteers” out of much of Kashmir, a majority Muslim province claimed by Pakistan but ruled by a Hindu who elected to remain part of India.
President Harry S. Truman officially sought to maintain neutrality between the two countries, although Pakistan—not without reason—believed he tilted to India. On October 30, 1947, the State Department rejected Pakistan’s request for $2 billion in financial and military aid, which the Pakistani government said was necessary to guard against Soviet designs.3 Pakistani leaders also felt slighted when, in October 1949, Truman invited Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to visit Washington without offering a similar invitation to Pakistan’s leader.
From Washington’s perspective, the Pakistani desire for equal treatment was not realistic. India was four times Pakistan’s size in both area and population. It enjoyed stable democratic institutions. Its victory over Pakistan in the 1947–1948 war reinforced its importance in the Cold War context. Americans hailed Mohandas Gandhi and Nehru as pioneers of freedom. Pakistan, in contrast, struggled with domestic strife. On September 11, 1948, its leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah died suddenly, leaving a leadership vacuum. Not only did India challenge its security, but so too did Afghanistan, which disputed Pakistani sovereignty over the North-West Frontier Province. U.S. officials were not blind to the anti-Americanism that many Pakistani intellectuals embraced.4 In September 1947, one junior Pakistani official commented, “Now we have cleaned out the Hindus, we are going to clean out you Americans.”5 Truman’s support for Israel’s independence exacerbated animosity toward the United States. Moulvi Tamizuddin Khan, the deputy president of the Pakistani parliament, blustered, “Well-trained, fully-equipped Pakistani crusaders will soon be sent to the Palestine front to fight the Zionist aggressors.”6
The upper reaches of the Pakistani government, however, sought alliance with the United States. They understood that Pakistan was between a rock and a hard place. Pakistan had essentially three foreign policy choices upon independence: It could follow a nonaligned policy like India, align itself with the Soviet bloc, or seek partnership with the West.7 Because Pakistan had border disputes with India and Afghanistan, Pakistani officials concluded that an alliance was necessary to protect Pakistan from external aggression and to help it economically.8 The old adage about an enemy’s enemy being a friend also came into play. As Soviet authorities cultivated India, Pakistan drifted away from the socialist camp.
After Truman failed to win India’s support in his anticommunist efforts, Washington pivoted toward Pakistan. Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan became the first Pakistani leader to visit Washington on May 3, 1950.9
Relations between the United States and Pakistan warmed considerably during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency.10 John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, denounced India’s “neutralism” as “immoral.”11 On February 25, 1954, Eisenhower announced a large-scale military aid program to Pakistan.12 Three months later, the United States and Pakistan signed a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement over protests from both the Soviet Union and India.13 The United States also provided Pakistan with its first nuclear reactor under Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program. In 1954, Pakistan joined the U.S.-led Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and the following year it joined the Baghdad Pact, soon to be renamed the Central Treaty Organization.14 Finally, on March 6, 1959, the Pakistani government defied Soviet threats and signed an Agreement of Cooperation with the United States in which Washington committed to the “preservation of the independence and integrity of Pakistan” and agreed to take “appropriate action, including the use of armed forces . . . in order to assist the Government of Pakistan at its request.”
This agreement was to become symbolic of the misunderstandings that would plague U.S.-Pakistani relations. The Pakistani government assumed that it had a solid U.S. guarantee to support Pakistan against future Indian aggression. Mohammad Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s first native commander in chief and its second president, quipped that Pakistan had become “America’s most allied ally in Asia.”15 The U.S. government, however, looked at the agreement only through its Cold War lens. When war between Pakistan and India erupted in 1965, the U.S. government not only refused to side with Pakistan, but also imposed an arms embargo on both sides.16 Washington may have seen its actions as neutral, but the Pakistani view was quite otherwise. After all, India was larger and already had greater resources.17 Therefore, penalizing Pakistan the same as India amounted to betrayal.
Pakistan appealed the U.S. decision, but Washington hunkered down. On April 12, 1967, the Pentagon announced that it would end both the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group in Pakistan and the U.S. Military Supply Mission in India. In retaliation, President Ayub Khan rejected President Lyndon Johnson’s request for a lease extension on an airbase in Peshawar. “I concede that this facility is valuable to your country but by its very nature, it lays us open to the hostility and retaliation of powerful neighbours,” Ayub wrote Johnson.18 Evicting Americans from Peshawar, however, only diminished Pakistan’s importance. In 1977, two years before he would be killed in Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, deputy assistant secretary of state, said, “Direct U.S. security interests in South Asia are limited. We have no military bases on the subcontinent and we seek no bases.”19
Richard Nixon entered office sympathetic to Pakistan. He had toured the globe after his 1960 and 1962 election defeats, and India treated him poorly. “The Nehrus treated him not only like a defeated governor of California, but also like one who had lost an election for dog catcher,” recounted Senator Charles Percy. Pakistan, on the other hand, laid out the red carpet.20
Bilateral tension increased, however, after the United States tightened sanctions on both Pakistan and India after the 1971 war over East Pakistan, a conflict which culminated in Bangladesh’s independence.21 While some historians speak of Nixon’s tenure as representing the nadir of U.S.-India relations, Pakistanis, with aggrievement so engrained, sometimes suspect that Nixon was actually sympathetic to New Delhi.22 Indeed, India’s military procurement between 1965 and 1971 was four times that of Pakistan. The United States also delivered $4.2 billion in economic assistance to India over the course of those six years, whereas Pakistan received less than a third of that.
It was during this period that Pakistani leaders made a decision that still reverberates, and from which they cannot turn back: they redoubled their efforts to Islamize the society. Pakistan was founded upon Islamic identity, although what that meant in practice was never clear. Initially, Pakistanis were hardly radical. The new country’s leaders had grown up in a diverse India, knew non-Muslims intimately, and were aware of the difficulty of any attempt to impose homogeneity upon society. The Pakistani people, for their part, were just as likely to embrace ethnic identity as religion. But the birth of Bangladesh was a humiliating defeat, and Pakistan’s leaders concluded that ethnic identity could tear their country apart. They resolved to intensify the political and ideological embrace of Islam in order to unite the state. The number of madrasas teaching a radical brand of Islam exploded.23 If in Turkey the military traditionally served as a bulwark against political Islam, in Pakistan the military became its catalyst.
In 1975, a Cold War calculus led the United States to reconsider its embargo. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called the embargo “morally, politically, and symbolically improper” because the Soviet Union continued to arm India, causing Pakistan to fall further behind.24 The damage was done, however; Pakistani resentment toward the United States now ran deep. While Washington saw everything through a Cold War lens, Pakistan judged its relations with the United States through a comparison with how the White House treated India. Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto complained that the U.S. Congress was hampering Pakistan’s right of self-defense.25
From a Pakistani standpoint, U.S. policy was cynical and inconsistent. The United States “showed no hesitation in promoting her own self-interest at critical moments even when such actions went to the gross disadvantage of Pakistan,” recalled General Khalid Mahmud Arif, a key aide to President Zia ul-Haq.26 Washington was interested in engagement only when it needed something from Pakistan; when it did not, it would simply dismiss Pakistani concerns. Despite the Cold War equation, the State Department saw Pakistan as a strategic backwater until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Just a month before that invasion, relations between Washington and Islamabad had reached their nadir when a Pakistani mob burned the U.S. embassy in Islamabad and set fire to U.S. cultural centers in Lahore and Rawalpindi. The violence came after Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s revolutionary leader, accused the United States and Israel of involvement in the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca on November 20, 1979.27 The embassy attack should have been a wake-up call to the growing attitude gap between the Pakistani government and its people.
The White House was willing to forget everything when Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor, and Warren Christopher, deputy secretary of state, offered $400 million in immediate assistance. The Pakistanis held out for more. Meanwhile, two presidential envoys flew to New Delhi on the same day to make the case for India to take a stand against the Soviet invasion, but they were rebuffed.28 India’s decision made the Americans dependent on Pakistan, a reality which Pakistan would exploit. Because Afghanistan was landlocked, Pakistan was in the catbird’s seat. With Iran in revolutionary turmoil, Pakistan was the only route through which aid could flow to Afghanistan. Islamabad was not shy about setting its conditions: Pakistan would accept as much aid and weaponry as the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other countries could provide, but insisted on monopolizing the distribution. The result was that money flowed to the so-called Peshawar Seven, a loose coalition of mujahideen groups for whom Islamism trumped or at least colored Afghan nationalism. Starved of supplies, more moderate and liberal Afghan nationalist groups faded away, and Afghanistan’s political culture changed permanently. Only with hindsight was the Pakistani strategy’s impact on Pakistan’s own political culture apparent.
Atoms and Afghanistan
Prior to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan in 2001, much of the tension in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship revolved around Pakistan’s nuclear program. Pakistan saw Cold War interests as largely irrelevant to its program. Containing Soviet expansion may have been the consistent U.S. goal, but for Pakistan the chief nemesis lay to the east, where Pakistani forces stared down their Indian counterparts. Pakistani distrust of America did not compare to its suspicion of India.29
Pakistan initiated its nuclear program in 1955.30 A decade later, Pakistan inaugurated its first nuclear reactor with U.S. assistance. Pakistani leaders were already determined to acquire a nuclear weapon. In 1965, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto declared, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass and live, can even go hungry. But we will get one for our own. We have no alternative.”31 Pakistan’s defeat in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 strengthened Bhutto’s resolve. On January 20, 1972, he launched Project 706 to develop an atom bomb, even as Pakistani leaders assured U.S. officials that they did not seek such a capacity.32 Denials continued even after India’s nuclear test in 1974. While the Pakistani foreign minister, Aziz Ahmed, called India’s test a “new threat to our security,” he also said, “We will not use those facilities for what India has done.”33
Pakistan’s chief concern was strategic parity with India, but it was willing to engage America in order to seek advantage. Ahmed called for a U.S. “protective guarantee” against any Indian attack. No such guarantee was forthcoming; India and Pakistan had already fought three wars, and the United States was just extracting itself from Vietnam. Pakistani leaders then asked for weapons. Bhutto said that the resumption of American arms shipments would “blunt his nation’s yearning to develop a nuclear device.” A poor nation such as Pakistan, he said, did not “want to squander away limited resources” to develop a nuclear bomb. “If we are satisfied with our security requirements in conventional armaments, we would not hazard our economic future and promote an economic and social upheaval by diverting vast resources for a nuclear program,” Bhutto claimed.34
Meanwhile, Pakistani officials pursued their nuclear aims without intermission. In March 1976, Pakistan signed an agreement with France for supply of a nuclear reprocessing plant.35 The United States raised objections, but failed initially to persuade France to annul the deal. Thus Kissinger traveled to Pakistan in August 1976 with a tough message to Pakistani leaders to cancel the reprocessing plant deal. But neither Kissinger’s warning nor his offer of A-7 aircraft convinced Bhutto to stop the reprocessing plant.36
Pakistani ambitions increased diplomatic tension. After Fred Iklé, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, told the Senate’s Subcommittee on Arms Control that Pakistan’s nuclear program aimed for building a nuclear weapon against India,37 Bhutto angrily responded that “No individual or State had a right to dictate [to] another sovereign and independent state like Pakistan.”38
President Jimmy Carter’s emphasis on nonproliferation caused the diplomatic quarrel to go public. Carter saw nuclear proliferation as one of the greatest dangers to global security. Pakistan’s assessment was the opposite. It viewed the acquisition of a nuclear weapon as essential for its security. Pakistani leaders also believed that acquiring a nuclear weapon would deter any Indian aggression. Congress, however, moved to ban economic and military assistance to Pakistan.39 It was U.S. self-interest rather than principle that changed matters. Two days after the Red Army entered Afghanistan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor, wrote to Carter arguing that the Soviet action would necessitate a “review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.”40 Carter agreed.
It was a view that Ronald Reagan took to heart. “I just don’t think it’s any of our business,” he said when asked about Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions.41 He wanted nothing to interfere with the overriding objective to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. In December 1981, Congress waived antiproliferation sanctions in order to pave the way for a multibillion-dollar assistance package to Pakistan, including four hundred advanced F-16 fighter jets, which could be used against India, but would not have much use in Afghanistan.42
With the United States turning a blind eye to its behavior, Pakistan pushed ahead in its nuclear program. “We were allying with the United States in the Afghan war. The aid was coming,” the rogue nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan recounted. “We asked General Zia and his team to go ahead with the test. . . . They argued that, since the United States had to overlook our nuclear program due to our support in the Afghan war, it was an opportunity for us to further develop the program. They said the tests could be conducted any time later.”43
The Pakistani government was willing to tell American officials what they wanted to hear. “Pakistan will neither acquire nor produce a nuclear bomb,” Zia ul-Haq asserted. But then he added, “Pakistan will never give up its right to acquire nuclear technology.”44 Indeed, the formula he enunciated—technology but no bomb—became the standard mantra for North Korea, Iran, and other regimes developing covert programs. In reality, however, Pakistan’s quest for a nuclear bomb was proceeding apace. By 1984, Pakistan was nuclear-weapons capable.45
The United States toughened its stance on Pakistan only when the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. In October 1990, George H. W. Bush concluded that he could not certify to the Congress, as required by the 1985 Pressler Amendment, that “Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device, is not developing a nuclear device, and is not acquiring goods to make such a device.”46 On October 1, 1990, Washington cut off its economic and military assistance to Pakistan over the nuclear issue.
Pakistan expressed dismay at the U.S. decision, but remained defiant. The chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Munir Ahmed Khan, told a news conference that Pakistan “would never compromise its nuclear program for the sake of American aid.” He vowed, “Aid or no aid, there will be no change in our nuclear program,” and continued with the fiction that Pakistan was not at work on a bomb. Then he voiced publicly what nearly all Pakistani officials say privately: in the absence of a threat in Afghanistan, Washington considered Pakistan expendable.47
U.S. sanctions remained in place through the 1990s, as efforts to encourage Islamabad to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty fell on deaf ears. On October 2, 1996, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told the UN General Assembly that Pakistan was “prepared to sign any and all nuclear treaties if India simultaneously signs with us,” but warned that Pakistan would escalate its program in step with India’s.48
Whereas American officials in the past were blunt in their warnings to Pakistan about its nuclear program, Clinton’s team took a more conciliatory approach. After Bill Richardson traveled to Islamabad, the Pakistani media noted that “The team did not exhibit the same ‘sound and fury’ that has commonly remained a part and parcel of every US official or delegation visiting this part of the world.”49 Richardson emphasized commonalities rather than differences. The gentle approach may have avoided confrontation, but it also led to confusion, as Pakistanis concluded that the nuclear issue was no longer a top U.S. priority.50
Nothing was further from the truth. Between May 11 and 13, 1998, India tested five nuclear devices. Madeleine Albright pleaded for Pakistani restraint.51 On May 28, Islamabad announced that it too had successfully tested five nuclear devices. Two days later, Pakistan conducted an additional test, and the United States slapped on new sanctions.52 The nuclear blasts sent U.S.-Pakistani relations to a new nadir.53 “The U.S. decision . . . is regrettable and without any justification,” Pakistan’s foreign minister said.54 Ahmad Kamal, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, blasted the sanctions as “discriminatory.”55 A commentary in Jang, Pakistan’s largest-circulation Urdu-language daily, subsequently accused the United States of “double standard and hypocrisy” because Washington had not taken action against India’s import of missile technology from Russia, a sentiment echoed by A. Q. Khan, who added Israel to the double standard.56
International condemnation infuriated Pakistanis, who contrasted it with the muted reaction to India’s 1974 test. “While asking us to exercise restraint, powerful voices urged acceptance of the Indian weaponization as a fait accompli,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said indignantly.57 Pervez Musharraf, president from 2001 to 2008, speculated that the fierce condemnation of Pakistan’s nuclear program might be rooted in anti-Islam bias.58 “The much stronger condemnation by the world in 1998 was surely because Pakistan was the first Muslim state to go nuclear,” he asserted. “This is perceived in Pakistan as very unfair. Surely any state whose chief rival has the bomb would want to do what we did. After all, we knew we could not count on American protection alone.”59 Many Western diplomats see their Pakistani counterparts as relatively secular; after all, Pakistani diplomats have traditionally been effete, and they also stock the best whiskey. Religion shapes culture, however, all the more so in a country founded solely on religious identity.
“What matters is that we are now a nuclear weapons state and we have lived to tell the tale,” a senior Pakistani diplomat said defiantly.60 The consensus within the U.S. government, regardless of administration, was that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons undermined regional security. This was not simply because Pakistan is a Muslim country; American policymakers feared that Kashmir could become a flashpoint to nuclear war. Pakistani proliferation of nuclear technology also worried Washington. The Pakistani government not surprisingly came to a different conclusion about the value of a nuclear deterrent. Musharraf would credit Pakistan’s nuclear capability for bringing quiet, if not peace. “We have mobilized significant forces twice, in 1999 and 2002,” he later wrote, and suggested, “it may be that our mutual deterrent has stopped us from plunging into full-scale war.”61 But when discussions turned to conventional weaponry, at no time did Islamabad recognize that India, facing a threat from China, needed a larger arsenal.62
With the United States and Pakistan on such radically different pages, relations were strained through the remainder of Clinton’s administration. The two countries were allies in name only. In April 2000, the head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed, visited Washington. The number-three diplomat at the State Department, Thomas Pickering, told him bluntly, “The Taliban were harboring terrorists who killed Americans. People who do that are our enemies, and people who support those people will be treated as our enemies.”63 To Americans, such an observation might be a statement of fact. To Pakistanis, it was a humiliating chastisement.64
The Post-9/11 Embrace
After the 9/11 attacks, the White House needed Pakistan, and desperately. On September 22, 2001, Bush waived the 1998 sanctions and declared Pakistan to be “America’s closest non-NATO ally” in the war on terror. This waiver was not without consequence. It sent a damaging message to other nations aspiring to nuclear power: the West will reconcile itself to your nuclear ambitions when they need you. Pakistani officials, meanwhile, saw through the cynicism of it. Shamshad Ahmad, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations at the time, later wrote, “It has been our experience that as soon as the US achieves its objectives vis-à-vis Pakistan it loses interest in cooperating with us. . . . This sequence of ‘highs and lows’ turned into a love-hate relationship between the two countries. Every US ‘engagement’ with Pakistan was issue-specific and not based on any shared perspectives.”65
Musharraf pledged to extend “unstinted cooperation” to the United States in the fight against terrorism.66 Colin Powell remarked that Musharraf “abruptly turned our stalled relationship around.”67 Wendy Chamberlain, the American ambassador in Islamabad, also underscored Pakistan’s about-face. “This is a spectacular transformation in Pakistan’s diplomatic position. Just two months ago, Pakistan was internationally isolated and burdened with sanctions. Relations with the United States were often strained,” she told two visiting senators. “That changed almost overnight with President Musharraf’s decision to support wholeheartedly the war on terrorism, despite considerable domestic costs.”68
The public posture may have changed, but the shift was not wholehearted. Musharraf’s government maintained its close ties to the Taliban.69 There was no convergence of interests in the new partnership with the United States.70 An editorial in the Nation, Pakistan’s largest English-language daily, highlighted the belief among many Pakistanis that U.S. and Pakistani interests were diametrically opposed, and called any cooperation with the United States “a virtual surrender.”71 The ISI, for its part, sought to avert regime change in Afghanistan and instead force the Taliban to extradite Bin Laden and his top associates, and to close terror training camps—the same demands that the Taliban had consistently defied in their five-year engagement with the State Department.72 U.S. patience had run out, though. “Our willingness to continue discussions ended September 11,” the State Department said, while General Mahmud Ahmed, the ISI head, pleaded for negotiations—anything to preserve the Taliban regime.73
Eliminating the Taliban was not a Pakistani objective, and Islamabad was agnostic at best on al-Qaeda. Musharraf partnered with the United States for four reasons: security, economic revival, safety of nuclear and missile assets, and the Kashmir cause.74 When Bush addressed a joint session of Congress, however, he was unequivocal. “Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al Qaeda who hide in your land,” Bush warned the Taliban, or “share in their fate.”75 While Bush did not mention Pakistan directly, it was clearly on notice as the Taliban’s chief foreign patron. Years later, Musharraf complained that Richard Armitage, the number two in the State Department, had told the ISI director that if Pakistan did not cooperate, it should “Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.”76 While the famously bombastic Armitage denied making any such statement, the accusation alone suggests just how far the gap between the two countries had grown.
As Pakistani leaders realized that it was impossible to save the Taliban’s regime in the face of the U.S. onslaught, they aimed to influence a post-Taliban government. Islamabad’s worst fear was that the Northern Alliance, a coalition consisting largely of non-Pashtun ethnic Afghans hostile to Pakistan and friendly to India, would consolidate control.77 The irony, of course, was that American diplomats spent so much time talking to the Taliban directly and to Pakistan about the Taliban that many other countries assumed the United States was party to the Pakistan-Taliban shell game.78
Pakistani leaders hoped that, just as during the 1980s, the United States might defer formation of the new government to them. General Mahmud Ahmed, who was in Washington on 9/11, pleaded with George Tenet not to depend on the Northern Alliance.79 The CIA director ignored his request. When the Pentagon launched the air assault against the Taliban on October 7, the Northern Alliance conducted operations on the ground, sparking an outcry in Pakistan.80
Addressing Pakistan a day after the U.S. began military operations in Afghanistan, Musharraf acknowledged his government’s failure to broker negotiations between the United States and the Taliban. He promised that the U.S. military campaign would be “short,” “targeted,” and without collateral damage, and he warned both Bush and Blair against allowing the Northern Alliance to take control of Kabul after the Taliban’s defeat.81
But as U.S. forces and the Northern Alliance advanced, even those who backed Musharraf’s decision to join the United States in the war on terrorism reconsidered their decisions. General Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief and the Taliban’s chief patron, had, for practical reasons, initially endorsed Musharraf’s support for the United States in the war against terror, but as the Northern Alliance swept into Kabul, he changed his tune and endorsed “jihad against U.S. aggression.” He began to spin wild conspiracy theories about U.S. motivations and argued that Israel, not al-Qaeda, had struck the Twin Towers.82
Powell traveled to Islamabad on October 15 to ease Pakistan’s concern about post-Taliban governance. He promised Musharraf that “the U.S. supports the formation of a broadbased government in Afghanistan, friendly to its neighbors.”83 To the Pakistanis, this required the Taliban’s inclusion. Indeed, the ISI welcomed the Taliban’s foreign minister to Islamabad the same day as Powell visited.84 Powell’s acquiescence to Pakistan’s suggestion that “moderate Taliban” be included in Afghanistan’s government, however, sparked outrage in the United States.85 Albright criticized the idea, saying, “I would be very wary of what kind of Taliban I would include in a coalition government.”86 Others called “moderate Taliban” an “oxymoron.”87
Appeasing Pakistan antagonized America’s Afghan allies as well. “There is no place for the Taliban in the future Afghan government,” said Abdul Vadud Kudus, a Northern Alliance official based in Tajikistan.88 Abdullah Abdullah, the Northern Alliance foreign minister, echoed this view.89 According to Gul Agha Shirzai, a Pashtun leader and the last pre-Taliban governor of Kandahar, “Powell is a good military person, but he doesn’t understand politics.”90
Rogues will read into diplomacy what they want. Pakistan took Powell’s comments as a green light to help “moderate” Taliban assume power. General Ehsanul Haq met the Taliban’s foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, to urge him to seek a settlement with the United States.91 The White House rejected his request for a ceasefire, saying, “There will be no negotiations. The president . . . does not think it would be constructive.”92 The 9/11 attacks convinced policymakers, at least temporarily, that diplomacy was no panacea.
As the Northern Alliance advanced on Kabul, Pakistani leaders scrambled to create a new Pashtun alliance as a counterbalance.93 When Musharraf met Bush after the UN General Assembly in November 2001, the Pakistani leader called the Northern Alliance “a bunch of tribal thugs.” Bush said he understood Pakistan’s concern and said he would urge Northern Alliance leaders to remain outside Kabul. The meeting, however, accentuated the divergence between U.S. and Pakistani strategic outlooks. Musharraf’s concern was Afghan and ethnic nationalism; he pushed for guarantees that Bush would prevent Northern Alliance consolidation across Afghanistan.94 For Washington, on the other hand, the fight against radical Islam was priority number one.
When the Northern Alliance captured Kabul on November 13, Musharraf was frustrated and called for a multinational force led by Muslim countries to intervene. A Bush administration official called the proposal a nonstarter.95 A Pakistani newspaper called the capture of Kabul “a strategic debacle” and quoted ISI officials as saying that “Pakistan’s worst nightmare has come true.”96 According to Ahmed Rashid, a well-connected Pakistani journalist, the ISI told Pakistani media contacts that Bush had double-crossed them, that Mohammad Qasim Fahim and other Northern Alliance leaders were actually Indian agents, and that, in effect, India controlled Kabul.97 Rawan Farhadi, the Northern Alliance’s envoy to the United Nations, told a Pakistani newspaper on November 18 that the alliance had entered Kabul with U.S. support and advice—adding to the Pakistanis’ anger at the Bush administration’s “double-dealing.”98
The Pakistanis did not have a monopoly on aggrievement at perceived double-dealing. When Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto visited Pyongyang in December 1993, Pakistani officials denied that her trip included any nuclear deal. In July 2002, however, U.S. spy satellites tracked a Pakistani military aircraft landing at a North Korean airport carrying a payload of ballistic missile parts. The incident caused fear in Washington about Pakistan’s proliferation to North Korea. The plane used for transport, ironically, was American-built and had been provided to Pakistan to help it hunt down al-Qaeda members—indicating a diversion of resources intended for the fight against terrorism.99 The American reaction was muted because Washington needed Islamabad’s cooperation, but the incident shook U.S. confidence in Pakistan at senior levels. When word leaked of Pakistan supplying nuclear technology to Pyongyang, there was an extensive debate in Washington on how to act. “There was a lot of pressure not to embarrass Musharraf,” one senior administration official recalled.100 Powell made clear his displeasure to Musharraf, saying that Pakistan’s dealings with North Korea were “improper, inappropriate and would have consequences.”101 Musharraf responded with a “400 percent assurance that Pakistan has not supplied any nuclear know-how to North Korea.”102
Musharraf’s assurance was worth considerably less than 400 percent, however. The United States imposed sanctions on Pakistan’s Khan Research Laboratories, highlighting Pakistan’s culpability in North Korea’s nuclear program. Musharraf, oddly, acted aggrieved at Washington’s failure to alert him to Pakistani cheating. “If they knew it earlier, they should have told us,” he said. “Maybe a lot of things would not have happened.”103 Rogue regimes deny responsibility for their actions, and Musharraf’s complaint fit the pattern. U.S. diplomacy, with its emphasis on cultural sensitivity and appeasing rogues, indirectly encourages the strategy of denial.
U.S. pressure catalyzed a backlash in Pakistan, where anti-Americanism increased sharply after 9/11. In 1999, 23 percent of Pakistanis had a favorable view of the United States; by 2003, only 13 percent did.104 Shamshad Ahmad, a former Pakistani foreign minister, theorized that one reason for the decline was the fact that, in the wake of 9/11, the Pentagon and the CIA had supplanted the State Department as the face of American diplomacy in Pakistan.105
On March 14, 2003, Bush waived sanctions that had been in place since Musharraf’s 1999 military coup, in order to shore up support for Musharraf and to win Pakistan’s backing in the Security Council for the war in Iraq. Waiving sanctions allowed almost $250 million in U.S. aid money to flow to Pakistan. Islamabad welcomed the move. If diplomatic pronouncements are to be believed, it set everything right. “We welcome this decision, and it shows the warm relations between Pakistan and America,” said the information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad.106 But reaction was different among the Pakistani opposition. On March 16, thirty religious parties called on the government to reject the U.S. aid. They reminded Musharraf that Zia ul-Haq had called $500 million in aid “mere peanuts,” and they urged the government to reject the offer and instead to mimic North Korea’s defiant stance.107
Pakistani promises were often meaningless. A. Q. Khan reportedly admitted that Musharraf knew about the technology transfers as they were occurring.108 In February 2004, Iranian officials admitted that they too had received Pakistani assistance in uranium enrichment.109
Bush and Musharraf again conferred on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The meeting lasted an hour and was followed by another meeting in which George Tenet, the CIA director, gave Musharraf irrefutable evidence that Khan was selling nuclear technology to other states. Musharraf later described discovering Khan’s role as the “most embarrassing” moment of his life and perhaps his “biggest challenge.” Almost two weeks later, Armitage met Musharraf in Islamabad and requested both independent verification of Khan’s subterfuge and punishment for the guilty scientists.110 To emphasize the issue’s importance, the CENTCOM commander John Abizaid traveled to Pakistan to repeat the demand. The decision to have parallel civilian and military delegations underlines the military’s increasingly important diplomatic role.
It took another four months for the Pakistani authorities to arrest Khan, a period during which Pakistan’s proliferation activities continued full steam. In November 2003, Musharraf traveled to China in an unsuccessful attempt to finalize a deal for building a new nuclear power plant in Pakistan. “The past belongs to Europe, the present belongs to the United States and the future belongs to Asia,” Musharraf declared.111 Only when the deal fell through did Islamabad begin to take action. If Pakistan was America’s ally of last resort, the opposite was also true.
On December 10, Pakistani security forces arrested several nuclear scientists for transferring nuclear technology to Tehran. Politicians and the press attacked Musharraf for “obeying” the United States at the expense of Pakistan’s national interest. Khurshid Ahmad Khan, a senator from a religious coalition, told reporters, “The rulers are pleasing Vajpayee [the Indian prime minister] and acting upon American dictates.”112 Islamabad and Washington might be talking directly, but they were hearing radically different things. For the Americans, the chief concern was nonproliferation, while for many Pakistani politicians, national pride and the rivalry with India stood paramount.
Toward the end of January 2004, Powell called Musharraf and said, “We are now going to talk general to general.” Powell explained that Bush was going to make a speech about Libya and that the U.S. government could no longer hide A. Q. Khan’s involvement in the transfer of nuclear technology. “You may want to—and I strongly recommend that you do—act,” Powell told Pakistan’s leader.113 Musharraf complied. “We are carrying out a thorough investigation of any proliferation that may have been done by any individual for their personal financial gain,” he announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “We will deal with them as anti-state elements.”114
Just over a week later, Musharraf placed Khan, a popular hero, under house arrest. The rogue scientist confessed in a private meeting with Musharraf, but warned that he would “expose everyone and everything if he was made a scapegoat.”115 Khan reportedly said he had the approval of Mirza Aslan Beg, chief of the army, to assist Iran and claimed he had the support of two other former army chiefs in his North Korean deals.116
Musharraf struck a deal with Khan. In exchange for a public confession and acceptance of sole responsibility, Musharraf would grant a presidential pardon. Khan took the deal. In Pakistan’s conspiratorial society, however, the belief took root that the entire episode was a U.S. plot to weaken Pakistan and threaten its nuclear capability. Senior government officials accepted the conspiracy as fact. “I fear Americans will demand joint custody of Pakistan’s nuclear assets. Or they may say Pakistan will have to roll back,” Hamid Gul said.117 Thousands took to the streets to voice support for Khan. Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the leader of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, demanded that Musharraf step down for humiliating Khan. The rogue scientist’s supporters began an effective domestic campaign to prevent any extradition.
The conspiracies metastasized. When Powell stopped in India on his way to Pakistan in March 2004, Pakistani politicians and press speculated that India had delivered dictates to Powell to implement upon arrival in Pakistan. A commentary in the nationalist Urdu daily Nawa-i-Waqt read, “It has been proved during the last few years that the United States, Israel and India together form a troika, whose targets, besides China, are Pakistan in particular and the Islamic world in general. It is for this very reason that Powell is visiting India first. There he will decide the agenda and then come to Pakistan for its implementation.”118
Yousaf Raza Gilani, an important politician in the Pakistan Peoples Party, suggested that the United States was using proliferation concerns to justify attacking Iran and other countries, and argued that Islamabad should not tolerate any crackdown on Pakistani scientists. “The present government policies are absolutely against the Muslim world, Pakistan’s security and dignity. . . . In Pakistan, the heroes of nuclear program are being humiliated.”119 Gilani’s views were mainstream. In 2008, he became the prime minister. Within a year, his government had not only released A. Q. Khan, but also enabled him to hold a triumphant news conference.120
Loose Nukes
Through the Cold War, Pakistan was America’s default ally. Pakistan’s support for the Taliban and its nuclear subterfuge led American policymakers to reconsider. On July 18, 2005, Bush and the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, released a joint statement declaring the end of the three-decade U.S. moratorium on nuclear trade with India, and announcing U.S. assistance to India’s civilian nuclear program and the expansion of U.S.-Indian cooperation in energy and satellite technology. Congress quickly approved the deal. Pakistanis reacted angrily, especially as Washington offered no such deal to Islamabad.121
When the U.S. Congress approved the India deal less than three months later, Gilani sought a similar agreement.122 The United States refused to extend Pakistan any nuclear cooperation not linked to greater security for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Amidst assassination attempts, coups, and Pakistan’s radicalization, fear permeated the United States that Pakistan might become the world’s first nuclear state to fail, and that loose nuclear weapons could find their way into the hands of Islamist terrorists.
Between 2001 and 2007, the Bush administration provided Pakistan almost $100 million to secure its nuclear weapons.123 Pakistan responded not by heightening security, but by building a new reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for forty to fifty nuclear weapons a year, representing a twenty-fold increase in capability, and by augmenting its arsenal’s quality as well.124 Pakistan refused to document its spending, to reveal weapon locations, or to detail its weapons and enrichment program. “This is an extremely sensitive matter in Pakistan,” Musharraf explained. “We don’t allow any foreign intrusion in our facilities.”125 Pakistanis believed the United States was aiming to dismantle their nuclear arsenal.126 Pakistani officials, meanwhile, complained about American reports casting doubts on Pakistan’s stewardship of its nuclear weapons.127
The Bush administration responded from the traditional American playbook. On one hand, it aimed to build a multilateral coalition to convince the Pakistanis of the error of their ways. On the other hand, it tried to offer money as an incentive. Strategies of this kind might have influenced Americans, but when applied to Pakistan they backfired. Gul scorned the idea of bringing international opinion to bear. “What is the international community?” he asked. “The one that I can see is a mafia in the service of the United States.”128
Jamaat-e-Islami urged Gilani to refuse American aid if it came with strings attached to Pakistan’s nuclear program.129 He needed no such encouragement. Pakistan bluntly rebuffed an American request to return highly enriched uranium from a reactor that the Eisenhower administration had provided to Pakistan.130 The Islamic parties lashed out at the U.S. offer of aid, arguing that it was a pretext to get hold of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Maulana Fazlur Rahman, chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, accused the United States of using a “strategy of politics of fear” when it questioned the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear assets.131
The Pakistanis responded with defiance and aggrievement. The foreign ministry suggested that the West was targeting Pakistan because it was a Muslim state with nuclear weapons.132 Fazlur Rahman charged that Pakistan had become an “American colony” and that its “sovereignty and independence was sold cheaply.”133 The lesson should have been clear to Washington: throwing money at proliferators seldom constrains their arsenal or changes their anti-American attitudes.
The Relationship Unravels
Pakistanis resent their colonial era. Decades of British control instilled a complex that leads Pakistanis to interpret anything short of equality as an affront to their sovereignty. It was a political third rail that American policy often touched.
In the first eight years of war in Afghanistan, the United States paid Pakistan almost $9 billion for its military and logistical support, on top of $3 billion to support development, education, and health.134 Rather than assuage Pakistani feelings, the money antagonized them. By the end of the Bush years, resentment was boiling over. “From the way the armed U.S. personnel have been wandering freely on our streets and towns, it appears as if Pakistan has become a U.S. colony,” a columnist in a Lahore paper lamented.135
President Obama entered office convinced he would turn a new page. His aides assumed diplomatic problems to be more the fault of Bush than Pakistan. In October 2009, for example, Secretary Hillary Clinton assured a group of Pakistani students that there was “a huge difference” between Obama and Bush. “I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him,” she bragged. “So to me, it’s like daylight and dark.”136 Alas, while the Pakistani students applauded her indictment of Bush, they were not partisan so much as anti-American.
On October 15, 2009, Obama signed the Kerry-Lugar Act into law as the cornerstone for a new Pakistan strategy, emphasizing civilian aid and development. The bill was generous. It would provide $7.5 billion to Pakistan for development but only on the condition that Pakistan would allow U.S. investigators direct access to Pakistani nationals involved in proliferation and ensure civilian authority over military promotions. Each year, the secretary of state would need to certify Pakistani counterterror cooperation.
Rather than welcome the cash, Pakistani politicians and the public reacted with fury. Less than one-sixth of Pakistanis supported accepting the aid because the strings attached would infringe on Pakistani sovereignty.137 When Clinton called the Pakistani reaction “insulting” and “shocking,” one Pakistani newspaper editor explained the “cultural gap”: “When you’re dealing with countries like Pakistan which are very sensitive about their own identity, which take a lot of pride in their so-called sovereignty, there needs to be some cultural sensitivity involved when you word your legislation, when you word your statements, when you word your interactions with our people, with our government.”138 Clinton, however, may have made matters worse when she appointed Richard Holbrooke, whom Pakistanis said often acted like a viceroy, to be her special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan.139
Juxtaposing the cases of Aafia Siddiqui and Raymond Davis exacerbated both distrust and resentment. In July 2008, U.S. forces in Afghanistan arrested Siddiqui—a Pakistani national who was a U.S.-educated neuroscientist and wife of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad’s nephew—on charges of terrorism. She was wounded during her interrogation after she allegedly grabbed an unattended rifle, and was subsequently extradited to New York, where she was sentenced to eighty-six years in prison.
In Pakistan, Siddiqui became a cause célèbre.140 Pakistan’s president, prime minister, and foreign minister all brought up her case with their American counterparts, and the Pakistani senate called on the United States to release her.141 While the news of Siddiqui’s arrest passed with little notice in the United States, her conviction led to widespread anti-American demonstrations, and to demands that Pakistani authorities suspend the delivery of supplies for the war effort in Afghanistan.142 Her incarceration occupied headlines in Pakistan for months.
Pakistani umbrage increased after Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor, gunned down two Pakistanis he alleged were trying to rob him in January 2011. When Pakistani police arrested Davis—who did not have a diplomatic passport—the Americans demanded his release. According to a Pakistani monthly, “The tone adopted in the first statements from the US Embassy, and later on even the State Department, was not just insensitive. It had the touch of imperial Rome about it. The regret was muffled; the arrogance shone through: release our man or there will be consequences.”143
The Davis case symbolized Pakistan’s sensitivity to the inequality of its relationship with the United States. Newspapers contrasted the treatment Davis was receiving in prison with that of Pakistanis incarcerated in the same facility.144 The leaders of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Punjab described Davis’s punishment as “a question of the honor of the nation,”145 while their clerics demanded his execution.146 Other Pakistanis congratulated the ISI on so masterfully exploiting the Davis arrest in order to put the United States on the defensive and to renegotiate the terms of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship.147
When a Pakistani court freed Davis, and American officials whisked him out of the country, Pakistan erupted in demonstrations.148 One Pakistan senator wrote, “The true face of the rulers has been unmasked before the entire world. Finally, the United States secured the release of its citizen, who is a criminal, while the Pakistani rulers fear even talking about their innocent national Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.”149 Mufti Muhammad Saifuddin, chairman of the Pakistan Shari’at Council in Islamabad, said that “Davis’ release had slurred Pakistan’s prestige and lowered heads of Muslims across the world.”150 Pakistani officials questioned why Pakistan had not traded Davis for Siddiqui.151
It was not only Pakistanis who resented the relationship, no matter how lucrative it might be. As the Taliban insurgency grew in Afghanistan, Washington’s focus turned once again to Pakistan’s support for the militants. Musharraf acknowledged that Islamabad did not share Washington’s assessment of the Taliban. He drew a sharp distinction between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which he alleged had popular support and recruitment driven by occupation.152 Even relatively pro-American figures like Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief of staff, suggested that the Taliban were a reality that needed to be accommodated.153
When the Pakistanis arrested senior Taliban leaders, they frustrated their American partners by breaking their promise to extradite them.154 Nor did the arrests themselves show true Pakistani cooperation. When Pakistani security forces detained Taliban shadow governors, they exclusively went after those who were primarily Afghan nationalists and the least reliable in following Pakistani orders. Without exception, the ISI then installed Taliban replacements more loyal to Pakistani paymasters.
Behind the scenes, the Pakistani government reacted with umbrage to questions about its activity. When a congressional delegation questioned Musharraf on the ISI’s role in Afghanistan, he rejoined, “We are not a banana republic and the ISI is not a rogue agency,” adding that the ISI follows his orders.155 If the ISI did subordinate itself to the presidency, that raised troubling questions about its involvement in terrorism, such as the July 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.156 Likewise, the Haqqani network, a client of the ISI, was complicit in killing American troops.157 And, as became apparent after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011, the ISI had been protecting the al-Qaeda fugitive in Abbottabad, the Pakistani equivalent of West Point.
Given the widespread suspicion that the Pakistani government subverted American goals in Afghanistan, the natural inclination of the U.S. embassy in Pakistan was to compromise. “We should ask what kind of government Islamabad can accept in Kabul,” Ambassador Anne Patterson wrote in 2009, as the United States undertook its strategic review.158
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Is Pakistan an ally? More than sixty years after Pakistan gained independence, there remains little institutionalized basis for the relationship, and decades of diplomacy have failed to repair it. There is a pervading awareness across the Pakistani political spectrum that Pakistan is an ally of last resort. “It is a fact that the more the United States engages with our government the angrier people get,” the columnist Cyril Almeida observed after Clinton’s visit to Islamabad.159 Neither side trusts its partnership or the alliance. Each sees the other as guilty of betrayal. Part of the reason for this is that the United States traditionally views the relationship from a global perspective, while Pakistan’s focus is regional. When engagement occurs, it is tentative and for limited duration.
The power differential defines the relationship. “The Americans are well aware of our weakness and they are taking advantage of the situation. This is what international diplomacy is all about,” explained Abdul Sattar, a former Pakistani foreign minister.160 According to Asaf Durrani, a former ISI chief, Musharraf’s pledge to assist Bush in the wake of 9/11 was a tactical blunder. “We lost the bargaining power to defend Pakistani interests,” he said. “Pakistan should have negotiated tougher. That’s realism.” It was perhaps following this logic that Pakistan decided in September 2010 to halt U.S. supply convoys to Afghanistan amidst a dispute over drone attacks in Pakistani territory.161
By any objective standard, Pakistan is a rogue regime. It sponsors terrorism, it maintains a secret nuclear program, and it promotes radical ideology antithetical to American interests. Even during periods of rapprochement, the United States and Pakistan act at cross-purposes. When the Pakistani government cooperates with U.S. objectives, it is more often due to pressure than to mutual objectives.162
American diplomacy with Pakistan ignites a volatile mix of insecurity and pride.163 Pakistani figures resent American questions about Pakistan’s terror sponsorship. While still ambassador to the United States, the liberal-minded Husain Haqqani sought to address U.S. suspicions about Pakistan. “Since the return of democracy in 2008, Pakistan has paid a terrible price for its commitment to fight terrorism. More Pakistanis have been killed by terrorism in the last two years than the number of civilians who died in New York’s Twin Towers,” he argued, adding, “Over the past nine years more Pakistanis than NATO troops have lost their lives fighting the Taliban.”164 This, of course, is like a bomb maker seeking sympathy for losing a finger in an explosion. Hamid Gul was blunter. “The Pakistani Army is engaged today in fighting against its own people on behalf of US interests,” he lamented.165 Haqqani dismissed accusations about Gul’s complicity in terrorism, arguing, “This is a man who hasn’t held any position within Pakistani intelligence or the military for more than 20 years.”166
It is in the nature of rogue regimes that often the most powerful figures hold no position in government, enabling the state to maintain plausible deniability for its actions. If diplomats look at Pakistan as it appears on paper, it might seem to be an ordinary country with an ordinary government. But behind the window dressing, the ISI is in charge, pursuing policies at odds with Pakistani diplomatic pronouncements and with international norms. As the ISI has consolidated power, it has lodged Pakistan firmly in the camp of rogues.