Pakistan

The Pakistani Conundrum

If one goes by official American statements, Pakistan is proving itself a crucial ally in the Afghanistan campaign, helping with its Army to block possible exit through the passes into Pakistan by fleeing Al-Qa‘ida leaders, providing crucial bases and support, and otherwise doing everything which General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has promised to do. But if one listens instead to some anti-Taliban Afghanis, or reads the (obviously rather biased) Indian press, one gets a different picture: former Pakistani Intelligence chief Hamid Gul is moving about preaching anti-Americanism, Pakistani nuclear scientists may have helped Usama bin Ladin, and Pakistan may have evacuated (with unexplained American connivance) several senior Pakistani generals from besieged Kunduz, where they had been serving with the Taliban.

In part, the conflicting images reflect the schism within the Pakistani body politic and, even more, within the body martial: the Pakistani Army's operational unit officers tend to be more pro-Western while, despite recent purges, there is still a substantial radical Islamist element in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and among some Pakistani nuclear scientists. Part of the confusion no doubt also stems from the extreme sensitivity of Pakistan's position. The last thing the United States wants at the moment is a coup against Musharraf. The last thing Musharraf needs is a great deal of attention being paid to Pakistan's cooperation and support to the United States. And some of the stranger reports may involve special operations or covert actions which cannot be explained publicly at this time.

Still, any analysis of the geopolitics of this war demands an understanding of what is happening in Pakistan. There are those who argue that Pakistan is actually something of a fifth column in this war, the likeliest route for Usama bin Ladin to escape from Afghanistan, the likeliest source of nuclear materials for his followers. There are those who see Pakistan as the essential ally, the sine qua non of this campaign. And there is a degree to which both opinions may be true at the same time.

ISI and the October 7 Purge
Despite regular Pakistani denials, there is little doubt that Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI, helped create the Taliban, or perhaps more accurately, found a small, malleable movement and channeled it in a desired direction. Nor is there any doubt that onetime ISI head Hamid Gul is today one of the strongest advocates of jihad against the West. But Gul has not headed ISI in years, and while he and his successors a recruited a great many Islamists, many of the Pashtun, into the ISI, successive Pakistani governments have sought to soften the ISI's commitment to the Taliban.

After September 11, once President Musharraf chose to support the United States position, he retired the most recentDirector-General of ISI, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, who had been considered a hardliner and supporter of both the Taliban and of Kashmiri operations in India. He was replaced by a non-ISI officer, Lt. Gen. Ehsanul Haque, who had been Corps Commander at Peshawar and is an ethnic Pashtun but a moderate. At the same time Musharraf carried out a more general mini-purge of senior leadership, moving out the Vice Army Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, and Chief of Army General Staff, and also reshuffling Corps commands in Peshawar, Quetta, and Lahore, key border commands with Afghanistan and Kashmir. That October 7 reshuffle (for more details, see Defense Briefs in The Estimate for October 19, 2001) was clearly intended to neutralize the ISI and forestall any anti-Musharraf coups, even though a number of the generals replaced had been strong supporters of Musharraf's 1999 coup.

It is less clear, however, how far down through the officer corps, especially among ISI officers, the purge actually extended. Are junior officers, especially those who worked closely with the Taliban, really cooperating with Western intelligence? To note one frequently expressed suspicion: did someone in the Pakistani military tip off the Taliban, allowing them to capture and execute anti-Taliban Pashtun leader ‘Abdul Hamid on October 17? (See The Estimate for November 2, 2001.)

Despite all these questions, several things need to be remembered about Pakistan. The governing elite, including many in the non-ISI parts of the military, tend to be Westernized, and tend to be urban Punjabis or Sindhis, not Pashtuns. The ultra-Islamist religious parties never won more than a handful of seats in Parliamentary elections. The pro-Taliban religious madrasas which have been Bin Ladin's recruiting ground are mostly concentrated in Pashtun areas of the North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, especially in tribal areas; they tend to adhere to the rigorous Deobandi school of Islam, one which is a minority in Pakistan and little known outside the Subcontinent.

Islamists seem to have become concentrated in two areas of senior Pakistani leadership, however, the ISI since Hamid Gul's day and, for reasons not entirely clear, the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. The original emphasis on building an "Islamic bomb" and resentment against the US for sanctions against Pakistan's nuclear program (at a time when India's was more discreet, before the 1998 tests by both countries) may have helped draw radicals into the nuclear program. Clearly that remains a cause for concern, as senior Pakistani scientists have been interrogated by the government over their visits to Afghanistan.

But even during the years when Pakistan was openly or covertly supporting the Taliban, it was also willing to cooperate with the United States on antiterrorist issues, cooperating in the arrest of Ramzi Yousef and of those who attacked US Embassy personnel; and allowing the US to bring home for trial Mir Aimal Kasi, who had opened fire at CIA headquarters and then fled to Baluchistan. The US has said that intelligence exchanges are proceeding; Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet visited Pakistan at the beginning of December; and US aircraft have clearly operated from Pakistani air bases. The US has continued to praise Pakistani cooperation publicly.

The Strange Reports from Kunduz
Much of the speculation about what is and what is not going on in Pakistan has been focused on a wave of reports during the final days of the siege of Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan in late November. Early reports from several Northern Alliance figures said that Pakistani aircraft had been allowed to land and take out Taliban or others from Kunduz. Indian press reports said that the Pakistanis had chartered some Antonov transports from the Russians and flown into Kunduz to take out Pakistani officers and trainers who had been trapped in Kunduz with the Taliban. Other reports suggested helicopters might have been used. The problem is, given complete American air supremacy at the time, and a blanket of airborne intelligence assets, such an event could not have occurred without US permission.

The Pakistanis denied it categorically; US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that "According to my information, neither Pakistan nor any other country flew any planes into Afghanistan to evacuate anybody," and the denials would have seemed to be absolute, except that the reports persisted. Even The Wall Street Journal, not usually prone to repeat wild rumors, ran a piece on November 28 called "Rescuing the Enemy: Yes, Pakistan Evacuated Men from Kunduz: Why'd the US Let Them?"; the column was by Tunku Varadarajan, an Indian-American, and claimed that Pakistani helicopters and aircraft had evacuated some 200 men. All these reports implied that the US stood by and let it happen, implying some reason for looking the other way.

That raises the possibility that something else entirely was going on. During Desert Storm, there were reports that an Iraqi helicopter had defected and landed in Saudi Arabia; after initial reports nothing more was heard, and after the war it was learned that in fact it was a US Special Operations team in a helicopter painted in Iraqi colors, returning from a covert mission. If the US has remained silent, there may be sound reason for not looking too closely to why aircraft with Pakistani markings flew into Kunduz, if indeed any did.

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