Lowering Expectations for China’s Pakistan Push

China’s President Xi Jinping arrived in Islamabad this week with promises of $46 billion in investment for Pakistani infrastructure. If all envisaged projects materialize, Pakistan would get a network of roads, railways and energy pipelines linking Pakistan’s port of Gwadar to China’s westernmost Xinjiang region. China would also build Pakistan’s half of a long-delayed natural-gas pipeline from Iran. This would be a shot in the arm for Pakistan’s faltering economy and consolidate a decades-old strategic partnership.

The U.S. has shown little apprehension over China taking the lead in helping Pakistan build critical infrastructure. The U.S. cannot inject billions of dollars into Pakistan, a difficult ally at the best of times. From Washington’s perspective, it makes sense to let China help stabilize Pakistan’s economy. The country’s productivity has been marred by power outages and, according to the World Bank, Pakistan loses up to 6% of gross domestic product every year due to energy shortages and poor transport facilities.

The Obama administration would also like China to induce Pakistan to abandon its role as a terrorist safe haven. China has been concerned by Pakistan-based jihadists operating in Xinjiang and U.S. officials hope Beijing can be successful in persuading Pakistan to clamp down on the various Islamist groups operating from its soil. But China’s economic reassurances could also reinforce Islamabad’s miscalculations about its regional clout and dangerous ambitions of keeping India strategically off-balance through subconventional means, including terrorism.

Just as Pakistan turned to the U.S. soon after independence in 1947 to seek weapons and economic assistance against India, Pakistan’s leaders today see China as a supporter in their bid to be India’s regional rival. The U.S. disappointed Islamabad by refusing to back its military confrontations with India even while selling Pakistan U.S. weapons (intended for other purposes). Now it might be China’s turn to be the object of unrealistic Pakistani expectations.

Unlike the U.S., China has refrained from lecturing Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders, creating an impression of consistency lacking in U.S.-Pakistan ties. China has been a major supplier of military equipment to Pakistan and was particularly helpful in Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons.

By supporting Pakistan militarily, China has ensured that a large part of India’s military remains tied down in South Asia and is unable to challenge China in the rest of Asia. But India remains the larger market and China’s willingness to use Pakistan as a secondary deterrent against India hasn’t meant abandoning ties with New Delhi. Chinese trade with India in 2013 was $65 billion, six times its trade with Pakistan. In Pakistan’s 1965 and 1971 wars with India, China disappointed Pakistan by not opening a second front against India.

None of this has affected the Pakistani perception of China as an all-weather friend. There is a huge gap in how Pakistanis view China and how the Chinese now view Pakistan. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center Global Attitudes survey, 78% of Pakistanis had a favorable view of China compared to only 30% of Chinese viewing Pakistan favorably—the same share of Chinese that had a favorable view of India.

Pakistan would benefit if all the billions in Chinese investment come through, but not all previous announcements of Chinese largesse have materialized in Pakistan or elsewhere. Despite announcing plans for more than $24 billion in investment into Indonesia since 2005, a decade later China has invested only $1.8 billion there.

China’s investment in Pakistan, and indeed investment from other sources, would materialize more easily if Pakistan put its house in order. Instead of exhausting itself in competing with an Indian neighbor six times its size, Pakistan needs to confront religious extremism, eliminate terrorism and pursue economic reforms that they talk about but do not implement. Pakistan’s elite needs to start paying taxes to overcome one of the worst tax-to-GDP ratios in the world. Defense spending needs to be rationalized and critical investments made in education to overcome a paucity of skilled manpower.

More likely, the promise of Chinese money will lead Pakistan’s leaders to think China will become their economic and military patron. Mr. Xi would do well not to let that happen, and instead to emphasize reform. He shouldn’t forget that money does not always buy Pakistan’s favor or encourage change in Pakistan’s policies. China may actually lose popularity in Pakistan once its companies arrive and demand primacy of economic considerations. Then China might find itself where Pakistan’s previous benefactor, the U.S., is today. After having provided $40 billion in aid to Pakistan since 1950, the U.S. is now viewed favorably by only 14% of Pakistanis.

Why Are We Sending This Attack Helicopter to Pakistan?

The Obama administration’s decision this month to sell almost $1 billion in U.S.-made attack helicopters, missiles and other equipment to Pakistan will fuel conflict in South Asia without fulfilling the objective of helping the country fight Islamist extremists. Pakistan’s failure to tackle its jihadist challenge is not the result of a lack of arms but reflects an absence of will. Unless Pakistan changes its worldview, American weapons will end up being used to fight or menace India and perceived domestic enemies instead of being deployed against jihadists.

Competition with India remains the overriding consideration in Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policies. By aiding Pakistan over the years—some $40 billion since 1950, according to the Congressional Research Service—the U.S. has fed Pakistan’s delusion of being India’s regional military equal. Seeking security against a much larger neighbor is a rational objective but seeking parity with it on a constant basis is not.

Instead of selling more military equipment to Pakistan, U.S. officials should convince Pakistan that its ambitions of rivaling India are akin to Belgium trying to rival France or Germany. India’s population is six times as large as Pakistan’s while India’s economy is 10 times bigger, and India’s $2 trillion economy has managed consistent growth whereas Pakistan’s $245 billion economy has grown sporadically and is undermined by jihadist terrorism and domestic political chaos. Pakistan also continues to depend on Islamist ideology—through its school curricula, propaganda and Islamic legislation—to maintain internal nationalist cohesion, which inevitably encourages extremism and religious intolerance.

Clearly, with the latest military package, the Obama administration expects to continue the same policies adopted by several of its predecessors—and somehow get different results. It’s a mystery why the president suddenly trusts Pakistan’s military—after mistrusting it at the time of the Navy SEAL operation in May 2011 that found and killed Osama bin Laden living safely until then in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.

One explanation is that selling helicopters and missiles is easier than thinking of alternative strategies to compel an errant ally to change its behavior. This is a pattern in U.S.-Pakistan relations going back to the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1969, the U.S. gave $4.5 billion in aid to Pakistan partly in the hope of using Pakistani troops in anticommunist wars, according to declassified U.S. government documents. Pakistan did not contribute a single soldier for the wars in Korea or Vietnam but went to war with India over the disputed border state of Kashmir instead in 1965.

During the 1980s, Pakistan served as the staging ground for the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and received another $4.5 billion in aid, as reported by the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations to Congress. Pakistan diverted U.S. assistance again toward its obsessive rivalry with India, and trained insurgents to fight in the Indian part of Kashmir as well as in India’s Punjab state. It also violated promises to the U.S. and its own public statements not to acquire nuclear weapons, which it first tested openly in 1998—arguing that it could not afford to remain nonnuclear while India’s nuclear program surged ahead.

Since the 1990s, Pakistan has supported various jihadist groups, including the Afghan Taliban. After 9/11, the country’s military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, promised to end support for the Islamic radicals. Based on that promise, Pakistan received $15.1 billion in civil and military aid from the U.S. until 2009. In February, Gen. Musharraf admitted in an interview with the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper that he continued to support the Afghan Taliban even after 9/11 because of concerns over close relations between Afghanistan and India. Thus the U.S. was effectively arming a country that was, in turn, arming insurgents fighting and killing American troops in Afghanistan.

After the Dec. 16, 2014, attack on a Peshawar school, where the Taliban massacred 160 people, including many schoolchildren, Pakistan claimed it had changed its policy toward terrorist groups and would no longer distinguish between “good” and “bad” Taliban. The Pakistani military has since sped up military action against terrorist groups responsible for mayhem inside Pakistan. But the destruction, demobilization, disarmament or dismantling of Afghan Taliban and other radical groups is clearly not on the Pakistani state’s agenda. There has been no move against Kashmir-oriented jihadist groups.

Given Pakistan’s history, it is likely that the 15 AH-1Z Viper helicopters and 1,000 Hellfire missiles—as well as communications and training equipment being offered to it—will be used against secular insurgents in southwest Baluchistan province, bordering Iran, and along the disputed border in Kashmir rather than against the jihadists in the northwest bordering Afghanistan.

If the Obama administration believes Pakistan’s military has really changed its priorities, it should consider leasing helicopters to Pakistan and verify where they are deployed before going through with outright sales.

With nuclear weapons, Pakistan no longer has any reason to feel insecure about being overrun by a larger Indian conventional force. For the U.S. to continue supplying a Pakistani military that is much larger than the country can afford will only invigorate Pakistani militancy and militarism at the expense of its 200 million people, one-third of whom continue to live at less than a dollar a day per household.

National Interest and Sentiment

NATIONS, like individuals, can often be swayed by emotion in defining their self-interest. Soon after independence, Pakistan’s leaders determined that the country’s military and economic needs would be better served with a Cold War alliance with the West. But the national sentiment favoured pursuing the dream of pan-Islamism. Religious passions, always easy to arouse, have held the country hostage since its inception and their intensity has only risen over time.

Prime Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, from Bengal, came under fire for suggesting that an alliance of Islamic countries would not enhance Pakistan’s security needs because “zero plus zero is equal to zero”. Several national leaders, beginning with Suhrawardy, have been castigated for advising Pakistanis against confrontation with India.

It is easy to reject ideas, however reasonable, on grounds that they do not conform to Pakistan’s Islamic ideology or because they would detract from the country’s raison d’être. This allows influential groups to exploit popular emotions to maintain policies that favour their vested interests. Militarism and militancy have dominated Pakistan’s choices even as they brought no advantage in enhancing national security or prosperity.

A major consequence of the preoccupation with ideology has been to create the dichotomy of increased dependence on the very donors whom Pakistanis love to hate but whose assistance is crucial in maintaining an expansive national security state.

Pakistan is, of course, not the only nation where rhetoric trumps cold calculation of national interest. Only recently Greece elected a government which reflected the nation’s anger against European demands for austerity and restraint. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made defiant statements against Germany at a time when his country most needed German support in getting out of a debt crisis.

As one observer pointed out, his poll ratings rose as a result of the grandstanding even though bank deposits in Greece fell, further aggravating the country’s economic crisis. Defiant statements won Tsipras applause from his fellow countrymen but the net impact of these statements on the national economy was negative.

Compare such emotion-based decision-making with the conduct of East Asian nations including China and South Korea. After years of describing the United States as the centre of global imperialism, the Chinese Communist Party had no qualms about partnering with the Americans to modernise and expand China’s economy. The South Koreans built a self-sustaining economy with a cumulative aid input from the US of only $15 billion since 1950 by avoiding confrontation with America and by cooperating with erstwhile enemy Japan.

Pakistan received $40bn in bilateral US aid over the same period. Instead of utilising aid as a catalyst for indigenous growth, Pakistan has ended up becoming dependent on it. Donor funding serves as a substitute for revenue generation while wars and terrorism have deterred investment.

On the one hand, Pakistanis are motivated by the notion of national honour in refusing to trade with India until the Kashmir dispute is resolved. On the other, we remain dependent on others to pay our bills. Government officials celebrate whenever one of Pakistan’s foreign benefactors approves a loan instead of regretting the fact of having to borrow so much so often.

Securing Kashmir, balancing India and dominating Afghanistan are Pakistan’s ideological obsessions even though pragmatic considerations necessitate a course correction. For instance, Pakistan could adopt an approach to Kashmir similar to that of China over Taiwan. It doesn’t need to give up its claim, but it could move on other issues with India first. Chinese president Jiang Zemin suggested as much in his address to Pakistan’s Senate in December 1996. Opening trade with India could bolster Pakistan’s economy while buying electricity from across the border could alleviate power shortages.

In any case, realism demands recognition of the fact that Pakistan no longer enjoys the support of the international community on the Kashmir issue. Last year, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was the only head of government to mention Kashmir among 193 that spoke at the United Nations General Assembly. Yet, our leaders refuse to budge from their stance that Kashmir is the core issue in India-Pakistan relations. Ideology and pride come in the way of charting a sensible course.

Similarly, Pakistan could befriend the government in Kabul to ensure that Afghan territory is not used to support ethnic insurgents against Pakistan instead of insisting on demanding a say in who rules Afghanistan. But Pakistani officials remained suspicious of former president Hamid Karzai and refuse to shut down the Afghan Taliban even after the recent bonhomie with President Ashraf Ghani.

Terrorism has cast a long shadow on India-Pakistan relations since 1989 and also jeopardises Pakistan’s relations with the West. But Pakistan’s establishment refuses to completely give up the option of sub-conventional warfare, which it sees as a force multiplier and influence enhancer. To give up jihad is anathema to the noisy Islamists who can be counted on to launch fatwas against anyone who suggests that the national interest requires focusing on economic growth rather than settling disputes with neighbours by force.

It is true that the Peshawar school attack has prompted Pakistan’s military to speed up action against terrorist groups responsible for mayhem inside the country. The military’s Operation Zarb-i-Azb has destroyed the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan safe haven in North Waziristan, which has also disrupted some external jihadi groups that shared that safe haven. But there has been no move whatsoever against Kashmir-oriented jihadi groups.

It seems that changing Pakistan’s discourse is a prerequisite for changing its course. Pakistan views itself as an ideological state in a state of permanent conflict with India — a vision that enhances the military’s dominance, keeps Islamists politically assertive and enables certain economic interests to prevail. Someone must now lead Pakistan into visualising itself as a pragmatic territorial state that focuses on the security and prosperity of its people.

Pakistan Must Visualise Itself as a Pragmatic Territorial State while Focusing on Security of its People

After last year’s attack on a Peshawar school, where 160 people including schoolchildren were massacred by Taliban, Pakistan announced a major shift in its policy towards terrorists. Civilian and military leaders simultaneously spoke of no longer distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban. But three months later, it’s clear that distinctions remain between Jihadi groups perceived as useful in establishing external influence and ones that now threaten the internal security.

That distinctions still exist between terrorists who attack abroad and those who strike at home was confirmed by the Islamabad High Court’s decision to set free Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the 26/11. Although the Pakistan government moved to continue Lakhvi’s detention, the court’s argument for setting him free was disingenuous. According to the High Court, evidence collected by India against Lakhvi could not be used to describe him as terrorist.

For decades, Pakistan’s establishment has argued that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. The argument was framed primarily to favour Jihadis trained to fight in Kashmir. Former military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, admitted his government’s support for Afghan Taliban after 9/11 in a recent interview with the Guardian. He justified it on grounds of protecting Pakistan’s national interest in Afghanistan against India.

Ironically, Musharraf ’s admission of support for the Afghan Taliban even after 9/11 came after years of denial. By his new account, Pakistan received billions of dollars in US aid to help fight the Taliban while using those resources to help the Taliban fight (and kill) American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. By Musharraf ’s logic, Pakistan’s contest with India for influence over Afghanistan justified the blatant hypocrisy.

There is an ideological obsession with India that serves as the overarching framework for Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policies. It is manifested in Musharraf ’s argument that helping the Afghan Taliban against Pakistan’s ostensible ally and benefactor, the US, was needed to contain India’s growing regional influence.

It is also visible in the reasoning of a Pakistani High Court that evidence against an international terrorist (Lakhvi) should not be admitted because it was collected by India. How can Pakistan trust India, the argument goes, and in any case someone who attacked India could not be deemed as evil as other terrorists? Terrorism has cast a long shadow on India-Pakistan relations since 1989 and also jeopardises Pakistan’s relations with the West. But Pakistan’s establishment refuses to completely give up the option of subconventional warfare, which it sees as a force multiplier and influence enhancer.

There is no evidence that the fundamental thinking has changed in Islamabad (the Pakistani capital) or Rawalpindi (the location of Pakistan’s military headquarters).

It’s true that the Peshawar attack has prompted Pakistan’s military to speed up action against terrorist groups responsible for mayhem inside the country. The military’s ‘Operation Zarb-e-Azb’ has destroyed the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) safe haven in North Waziristan, which has also disrupted some external Jihadi groups that shared that safe haven. But ISI is still trying hard to persuade the US and Afghan governments to talk to its strategic assets, the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Omar and the Haqqani Network.

Destruction, demobilisation, disarmament of these Afghan groups is clearly not the Pakistani state’s agenda. There has been no move whatsoever against Kashmir-oriented Jihadi groups. The recent para-military operation against the secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan’s fourth largest political party that controls Karachi, also reflects the military’s entrenched attitude on the issue of terrorism.

The Punjabi-dominated army has never liked the MQM, which is seen as opposing the ideology of Pakistan and speaking of the country as a federation of ethnicities rather than a citadel of Islam. Little seems to have changed since the 1990s, when Jihadi groups were nurtured by Pakistan for Afghanistan and Kashmir. Instead of going after the TTP or other Jihadi groups operating out of Karachi, the army is content to repeat its previous exercise of reducing the clout of a partiallyarmed urban political movement representing the Muhajir ethnic group.

The tolerance and support of militancy has made Pakistan a soft state but that does not deter the civil-military establishment from persisting with the old paradigm. Securing Kashmir, balancing India and dominating Afghanistan are Pakistan’s ideological obsession even though pragmatic considerations necessitate a course correction.

It seems that changing Pakistan’s discourse is a prerequisite for changing its course. Pakistan views itself as an ideological state in a state of permanent conflict with India. Someone must now lead Pakistan into visualising itself as a pragmatic territorial state that focuses on the security and prosperity of its people.

Pakistan’s Elusive Quest for Parity

President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi carefully omitted mentioning Pakistan during the U.S. President’s recent visit to India. But that did not stop Pakistani politicians and media from “warning” America against trying to “establish India’s dominance” in South Asia. Amid talk of Pakistan expanding security ties with China and Russia, its Foreign Office issued an official statement complaining that an India-U.S. partnership would alter South Asia’s “balance of power” and create a “regional imbalance.”

In reality, the Pakistani reaction reflects the Pakistani security establishment clinging to the notion of parity with India. For years, Pakistan has ignored changes in the global environment and accepted the heavy price of internal weakness to project itself as India’s equal. Islamabad also insists on resolution of the Kashmir dispute as the essential prerequisite for normal ties with its much larger neighbour.

Equality and parity

The parity doctrine as well as the emphasis on Kashmir are rooted in ideology and the two-nation theory that was the basis of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan. For a country to base its foreign policy for over 60 years on the same assumptions is unusual. As the world around us changes, so must a nation’s foreign policy. But Pakistan has yet to embrace pragmatism as the basis of its foreign and national security policies.

Pakistanis such as me realise that seeking security in relation to a much larger neighbour is not the same thing as insisting on parity with it. All nations are equal in international law but sovereign equality is not synonymous with parity.

In any case, Pakistan is India’s rival in real terms only as much as Belgium could rival France or Germany and Vietnam could hope to be on a par with China. India’s population is six times larger than Pakistan’s while its economy is 10 times the size of the Pakistani economy. Notwithstanding internal problems, India’s $2 trillion economy has managed consistent growth whereas Pakistan’s $245 billion economy has grown sporadically and is undermined by jihadi terrorism and domestic political chaos.

Country comparisons

India is expanding by most measures of national power while Pakistan has been able to keep pace with it only in manufacturing nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Pakistanis are often not told of the widening gap between the two countries in most fields.

For example, 94 per cent of India’s children between five and 15 complete primary school compared with 54 per cent in Pakistan. Every year, 8,900 Indians get a PhD in the sciences compared with the 8,142 doctorates awarded by Pakistan’s universities since Independence. The total number of books published in any language on any subject in Pakistan in 2013, including religious titles and children’s books, stood at 2,581, against 90,000 in India.

The parity doctrine also requires Pakistanis to see India as an existential enemy. Textbooks still tell Pakistani children that Hindu India threatens Islamic Pakistan and seeks to terminate its existence. Hardly anyone outside of Pakistan believes that to be true.

Nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction usually freeze conflicts and pave the way for détente as they did between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. But little has changed in the Pakistani ideology after the induction of nuclear weapons on the subcontinent. There is little recognition that with nuclear weapons, Pakistan no longer has any reason to feel insecure about being overrun by a larger Indian conventional force.

Kashmir issue

The notion of an existential threat to Pakistan is now only psycho-political and ideological. Pakistan has already fought four wars with India and lost half its territory in the process — the erstwhile East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971.

As for Jammu and Kashmir, one need not deny Pakistan’s initial claims to recognise that it might not be an issue that can be resolved in the foreseeable future. Jihadi militancy, since 1989, has failed to wrest Kashmir for Pakistan from India as has war and military confrontation.

Islamabad should also evaluate realistically its hope of internationalising the Kashmir issue. The last effective UN resolution on Kashmir was passed by the Security Council in 1957, when the United Nations had 82 members. Last year, with 193 members, Pakistan’s Prime Minister was the only world leader who mentioned Jammu and Kashmir at the UN General Assembly.

In the U.S.‘s calculations

U.S. economic and military aid ($40 billion to date since 1950) encouraged the perpetuation of Pakistan’s doctrine of parity with India. Pakistanis thought that with the support of external allies, Pakistan could compensate for its inherent disadvantage in size against India. But now Washington sees India as America’s longer-term ally and partner.

The size of India’s market and potential for greater trade, investment and defence sales are important elements in recent U.S. calculations. But even immediately after Independence, India and not Pakistan was deemed to be America’s natural ally. A 1949 Pentagon report described India as “the natural political and economic center of South Asia” and the country with which the U.S. had greater congruence of interests.

India’s decision to stay non-aligned in the stand-off between the West and the Soviet bloc, benefited Pakistan in its formative years. India argued that it needed to benefit from both sides in the Cold War. Pakistan, a new state unsure of its future and searching for aid to bolster its economy and security, stepped in to become a part of U.S.-led military alliances.

Pakistan’s old school diplomats, politicians and military thinkers are now upset that they cannot count on the U.S. as the equaliser in their quest for equivalence with India. China is already a close ally of Pakistan and cannot tip the balance in Pakistan’s favour on its own. In any case, it is unlikely that China, with its growing Uyghur problem, will remain unaffected by the global perception of Pakistan as an epicentre of Islamist terrorism.

Voicing frustration with the major powers over their redefinition of their national interest will not help Pakistan advance its national interests. Just as it has belatedly started acknowledging its terrorist problem, my country would benefit more by giving up the quest for parity with India. We should seek security and prosperity in the context of our size for a territorial state, rather than an ideological one. The process could begin with efforts to address Pakistan’s institutional weaknesses, eliminate terrorism, improve infrastructure and modernise its economy.

Our Jihad Addiction

It shook Pakistan and stunned the world. But the carnage on Dec. 16 at the Army Public School, Peshawar, marked only an escalation in the brutality of Pakistani militants, not its beginning.

Over the years, Pakistan’s homegrown terrorists have bombed the places of worship of the Shia, the Sunni, Ahmadis, Christians and Hindus. Since 2009, the Taliban have attacked over a thousand schools, mainly in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. They have targeted ISI offices in several cities, Navy and Air Force bases, garrison mosques, the Karachi Airport, and even the Army’s General Headquarters. If this breadth of attrition has not cured Pakistan of its jihadist addiction, can the deaths of 134 innocent children and the burning alive of their teachers in Peshawar result in a fundamental change of heart?

The jihadist worldview is as stubborn as it is toxic. Soon after Peshawar, Maulana Abdul Aziz of Islamabad’s infamous Lal Masjid refused to condemn the Taliban’s heinous attack, and Hafiz Saeed of Jamat-ud-Dawah (née Lashkar-e-Taiba) went on television to blame New Delhi for the school attack and vowed revenge inside India.

The security establishment’s obsession with India, in which jihadism is rooted, goes back to Partition, the Two Nation theory, and the abiding fear that external powers want the dismemberment of Pakistan. The breakup of Pakistan in 1971 only reinforced the national paranoia instead of convincing the country’s Punjabi elite of the need to come to terms with Pakistan’s size and power and to seek security within the parameters of reality.

Pakistan’s constructed identity emphasizes religion and ideology at the expense of ethnic, linguistic, and sectarian diversity of a complex society. As a result, the country’s approach to national security has been driven by ideological rather than pragmatic considerations. Although Pakistan’s military and civil bureaucracy both originated from institutions created under the British, their approach and attitudes have progressively been driven more by the ‘ideology of Pakistan’ than the professionalism that they often project to outsiders.

The relationship between Pakistan and jihadism cannot be understood without understanding the country’s ideological dimension, the fact that it was created as the result of an idea. Pakistan has a national narrative, a national milieu, and a national identity—all built around Islam. For the first 30 years of Pakistan’s existence, the clamor was for religiosity within and Pan-Islamism in foreign policy. For the next 30 years, global jihadism was the overarching security and foreign policy idea that advanced the ‘ideology of Pakistan.’

Even though three successive commanders of the Pakistan Army—Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and now Gen. Raheel Sharif—have sought to curtail the jihadists’ influence within Pakistan, including through military operations, their efforts have always fallen short because of the nation’s ideological compulsions. The ‘ideology of Pakistan,’ and the falsified historic narrative taught in schools to justify it, produces sympathy in society for Shariah rule, for an Islamic caliphate and an Islamic state. This works in favor of more than 33 militant groups that operate out of Pakistan. Pakistan’s strategic planners may see no difficulty in eliminating global terrorists and fighting local jihadists while supporting regional ones. But the public is conflicted in its attitude toward jihadist groups. Unfortunately for those who want to stop the Pakistani Taliban, their rhetoric about Shariah and against Western values resonates with supporters of other, ostensibly ‘more palatable’ jihadist groups even if their methods are abhorred by Pakistanis.

For most countries, nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantee against invasion or territorial extinction. But to the disciples of the ‘ideology of Pakistan,’ security is not enough. Built in into the Two Nation theory is the notion of parity between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. The events of the last 67 years may have rendered the Two Nation theory redundant. The number of Muslims living in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh is now roughly equal and there are more Muslims in the subcontinent that live outside Pakistan than in it. But the ideological conception of Pakistan requires that it claim the mantle of Muslim nationhood and pursue equivalence to India in status, power and international standing.

Pakistan’s size and economy do not allow it to be on a par with much larger and increasingly wealthier India. The machinations of the Cold War that enabled Pakistani leaders to punch beyond their weight through alliance with the West, especially the United States, are also over. That leaves asymmetric warfare through jihadists as the only strategic option for Pakistan’s ideologues. The other course, that of pursuing security and prosperity of geographic Pakistan and its people without insisting on the ‘ideology of Pakistan,’ has simply not found sufficient resonance among Islamabad’s powerful quarters.

The case made by Pakistan’s ideologues is appealing to Pakistanis even as it drags the country down the road of tragedies similar to the recent one in Peshawar. In 1947, the country inherited few resources and feared strangulation at birth. The Partition riots and the exclusion of Jammu and Kashmir scarred Pakistan’s founding generation. The country survived because of its people’s resilience and its leaders’ adept Cold War alliances.

As early as 1948, Pakistan’s first military foray into Kashmir involved lashkars from the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. The irregular fighter added to the Pakistani military’s muscle. Engaging the tribesmen in jihad across the Indus, in Kashmir, preempted the possibility of their becoming involved in schemes for “Pashtunistan,” the land of the Pashtuns—advocated at the time by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the government of Afghanistan. Thus began Pakistan’s tolerance and support for nonstate actors tied by ideological nationalism to the strategic vision of Pakistan’s military establishment.

In the 1980s, Pakistan’s policy received a shot in the arm with the U.S. decision to support the mujahideen in Afghanistan in order to combat the Soviet Union. As substantial amounts of money, weapons and fighters flowed in, Pakistan’s security establishment began setting up camps to not only train fighters to battle in Afghanistan, but also in Jammu and Kashmir. Today, a wide array of militant organizations operates in Pakistan with safe havens in urban and rural areas. Some of these include sectarian organizations that target religious minorities and Muslim sects (Sipah-e-Sahaba), anti-India outfits (Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed), anti-Afghanistan groups (Mullah Omar’s Taliban and the Haqqani network), and militants waging war against the Pakistani military (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan).

The 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan was the first turning point in the nature of militancy in Pakistan. General Musharraf was quick to sever ties with the Taliban government in Kabul and supported American operations in Afghanistan. To give the peace process with India some traction, he put a temporary halt on militant flow into Jammu and Kashmir. In April 1999, Musharraf had told a group of retired military officers that the “Taliban are my strategic reserve and I can unleash them in tens of thousands against India when I want.” By 2002, he had changed his tune, nominally banning groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba. But the banned organizations and their leadership were allowed to operate under new names.

Under Musharraf, Pakistan began differentiating between jihadist groups. While foreign terrorists with links to Al Qaeda were handed over to the U.S., local and regional militants (sectarian, anti-India and anti-Afghan groups) were left alone. Some militants built capacity to challenge the writ of the state right under the nose of Pakistani security forces. They have inflicted huge casualties on security forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the years. Other groups such as the Haqqani network were allegedly ‘managed’ by intelligence agencies in a bid to exert influence on events in Afghanistan.

The current Pakistani problem of increasing terrorism at home is the result of that policy. While the state might differentiate among terrorists, the jihadists often tend to be sympathetic and supportive toward one another. The jihadists supported by the establishment end up supporting terrorists attacking Pakistan’s Army and civilians. As is often the case with ideologically motivated militants, ideology takes precedence over strategy. Even jihadists accepting or extracting state support see the value of some fighters using force to Islamize Pakistan further, even at the cost of undermining the country’s stability.

Pakistan’s adherence to an ideological nationalism based on Islam has allowed radical groups to propagate their message and raise large sums of money without much hindrance. Further, while the coercive military and intelligence apparatus has been strong, the local police have never been provided the political support, resources and skills required to be able to combat these radical outfits. Faced with a poorly trained and demoralized police force, some groups run extortion and kidnapping rackets in urban centers. They also raise money through narcotics trafficking and trade of smuggled goods. So the militant organizations have a sophisticated system of fundraising to support their activities. This would enable them to operate even after the Pakistani state has made a final decision to cut them off.

For years, Pakistan has been living in denial. For years, Pakistan denied support for the Afghan Taliban or the existence of Kashmiri jihadist training camps. The presence of Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, was attributed to the inadvertent consequences of Pakistan’s involvement in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s. But denial does not offer a way forward. Pakistan’s Islamo-nationalism has bred radicalism, diminished economic growth and weakened its international standing. Also unknown is the extent of ideological radicalization within Pakistan’s military, which remains the country’s dominant institution.

There have been numerous instances of military officers, noncommissioned officers and enlisted men cooperating with jihadists or deserting their service to join jihadist ranks. But the Pakistani military tends to hold back information on the matter, making an assessment of the extent of this problem difficult. The PNS Mehran attack in 2011, the attack on the Air Force’s Kamra base in 2012, and the foiled attempt last September by Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent to take over a Navy frigate in Karachi harbor all point to the persistence of jihadist influence within the ranks of the Armed Forces.

It is unlikely that the Pakistani establishment would want to give up its decades-long pursuit of paramountcy over Afghanistan. Faced with international pressure as well as growing threats from the Pakistani Taliban, Pakistan has cleared out known jihadist sanctuaries in North Waziristan. This has deprived Afghan groups such as the Haqqani network of their former headquarters. But Pakistan has neither acted against nor militarily confronted the Afghan Taliban; and the Haqqani network is believed to have relocated to other parts of the federally administered tribal areas.

Pakistan’s policy in the immediate future would likely be to engage with Afghanistan and the U.S. to find a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. At the same time Pakistan could continue to try and militarily change the ground situation in Afghanistan to force the world to deal with de facto Taliban control of parts of Afghanistan as fait accompli. In Islamabad’s view, this would enable it to determine the final terms of an Afghan settlement, resulting in India’s exclusion from Afghanistan and the northwestern neighbor being acknowledged as Pakistan’s sphere of influence.

But are fantasies of parity with India and paramountcy over Afghanistan realistic policies? For 67 years, Pakistan has developed one element of national power—the military one—at the cost of all others. The country’s institutions, ranging from schools and universities to the judiciary, are in a state of general decline. The economy’s stuttering growth is dependent largely on the flow of concessional flows of external resources. Pakistan’s GDP stands at $245 billion in absolute terms and $845 billion in purchasing price parity—the smallest economy of any country that has so far tested nuclear weapons.

Almost half of Pakistan is very poor. Pakistan’s literacy rate is 57 percent, and a staggering 38 percent of Pakistanis between the school-going ages of 5 and 15 are out of school. The low literacy rate and inadequate investment in education have led to a decline in Pakistan’s technological base, hampering economic modernization. With one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world, at around 9 percent, a GDP growth rate of 1.7 to 2.4 percent and population growth rate of 1.5 percent, Pakistan needs foreign as well as domestic investments in addition to drastic changes in local laws, all of which need broad political consensus and stability, both of which are lacking. With almost 40 percent of its population urbanized, the Pakistani government spends around 2.6 percent on public healthcare. As a result, social services are also in a state of decline. On the other hand, Pakistan spends almost 6 percent of its GDP on defense and is still unable to match the conventional forces of India, which outspends Pakistan 3 to 1 while allocating less than 3 percent of GDP to military spending.

Over the decades, Pakistan has managed to evade crises and failure status primarily because the international community has bailed it out. But now the rest of the world sees Pakistan as Jihad Central. Camps nestled in the tribal areas have trained and equipped militants who have gone on to fight in the name of Allah in different regions of the world. Foreign fighters trained in Pakistan have reportedly been in action in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Mali, Nigeria and China’s Xinjiang region. It is no longer possible to keep Pakistani jihadists as a strategic reserve “only to cause damage to India.”

Instead of securing parity with India and paramountcy over Afghanistan, jihadists have only caused crisis and disruption within Pakistan, which must recognize the heavy cost being exacted by its pursuit of regional influence through asymmetric warfare. Fighting some jihadists while embracing others is self-defeating. Thirty years of escalated jihadism have caused erosion of the writ of the Pakistani state and decline in the capacity of state institutions, especially its coercive apparatus.

Even with sporadic military operations, Pakistan’s tribal areas will remain host for some time to a wide range of militant organizations with local, regional and global agendas. Punjab is now the main recruitment ground not only for the Pakistani Army but also for assorted jihadist groups. The growing presence of jihadists in south Punjab and northern Sindh and even in Pakistan’s financial hub, Karachi, does not augur well for the economy.

Pakistan’s jihadists are already exercising virtual veto over Pakistan’s relations with India. The Mumbai attack proved Lashkar-e-Taiba’s ability to undermine the initiatives of a civilian government for normalization of India-Pakistan relations. They could, in future, force the Pakistani military’s hand in a similar manner. Pakistan needs to get out of denial that there are any jihadist groups that can be trusted or considered allies of the state. However useful they might have been for external purposes, nonstate actors will always be a danger for the state internally. Instead of increasing Pakistan’s strategic options, as they were designed to do, the jihadists are now limiting Pakistan’s foreign policy choices.

Instead of doubling down on its jihadist misadventures, Pakistan can plot its course out of the disaster. To do so, it would have to change the defensive national narrative about Pakistan’s creation, raison d’être and prospects of survival. So far, any discussion of the nation’s origins that does not conform to the ‘ideology of Pakistan’ has been treated not as history but as an attack on the country’s foundation.

After mobilizing support for the demand for Pakistan, and establishing it as an independent country, successive Pakistani leaders have chosen to keep alive the divisive frenzy that led to Partition. If Pakistan was attained with the slogan ‘Islam in danger,’ it has been built on the slogan ‘Pakistan in danger,’ creating a constant sense of insecurity among its people, especially in relation to India and internal demands for ethnic identity or pluralism.

Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy had opposed the conjuring of this ‘ideology of Pakistan.’ He had told Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly in March 1948 against building Pakistani nationalism around the notion of Islam being under threat. According to him, the rhetoric used to mobilize Muslims for the creation of Pakistan was no longer needed after Independence. “You are raising the cry,” he said, “of ‘Pakistan in danger’ for the purpose of arousing Muslim sentiments and binding them together in order to maintain you in power.” Suhrawardy warned against transforming Pakistan into a state “founded on sentiments, namely that of ‘Islam in danger’ or of ‘Pakistan in danger.’” He declared that, “a state which will be held together by raising the bogey of attacks” and “friction” with enemies “will be full of alarms and excursions.”

Suhrawardy’s words seem almost prophetic today. He said, “You think that you will get away with it but in that state there will be no commerce, no business and no trade. There will be lawlessness and those lawless elements that may be turned today against non-Muslims will be turned later on, once those fratricidal tendencies have been aroused, against the Muslim gentry and I want you to be warned in time.” He also defined the two key issues for the new country. The “fundamental aspect of the foundations of Pakistan,” he asserted, should be “the goodwill of the people and of the citizens of Pakistan within the state” and “the mutual relationship between the Dominion of Pakistan and the sister dominion, Indian Union.”

If Peshawar has indeed changed Pakistan, it will heed Suhrawardy’s advice.

ISIS: What Comes Next?

Hudson senior fellows Husain Haqqani and Nina Shea discuss the future of ISIS and the Middle East with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on January 13, 2015.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=qdCEddLPbE8

Muslims Must Shed Their Narrative of Grievance

Soon after the terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Islamist sympathisers on social media unleashed familiar rhetoric using Arabic language hashtags such as “our revenge for the messenger (Muhammad)”; “Paris is Burning”; and “Paris under Fire.”

One self-styled Jihadi declared on Twitter: “This is the first reaction. You’ll not live in safety again.” Another said: “This proves that the Islamic State can strike deep in Europe whenever it wishes.” Reuters quoted an Isil fighter named Abu Mussab as saying: “The lions of Islam have avenged our prophet. Let these crusaders be scared because they should be.”

Such bombast reflects the emptiness of the Islamist dream. The killing of 12 unarmed cartoonists and journalists is hardly an act of courage. Paris did not, in fact, burn and this latest act of terrorism mobilised the French against the Jihadis just as terrorist attacks in New York, London and Mumbai had united people against them in the past.

More important, terrorism is unlikely to dissuade anyone so inclined to refrain from insulting Islam, its Prophet or Muslims. Like followers of any other religion, Muslims do not like insults to their faith or to their prophet. But threats and actual attacks of the type witnessed in Paris last week have been limited to Islamists.

Contrary to the assertion of some, such violence has nothing to do with recent wars or the policies of great powers in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria. A man named Alam Din from Lahore was proclaimed a “ghazi” – or warrior – for killing a Hindu publisher of a book insulting Prophet Muhammad in 1929. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses prompted fatwas and provoked violent protests 50 years later, in 1989. These incidents cannot be attributed, for example, as reaction to US military intervention.

Of course, not all of the world’s more than one billion Muslims react to real or perceived insults to their religion in the same manner. Believers in different deities and prophets have often slandered each other’s faiths. Islam has endured its share of criticism and abuse over the centuries, especially from Christians, against whom they fought for control of the Levant and the southern corners of Europe during the Crusades and the Ottoman wars.

But in earlier times, Muslims responded to religious affronts by pointing out the flaws in other religions and outlining their own perfect faith. Muslim armies were violent but then so were the armies of others. The association of extremism and terrorism with Muslims is a phenomenon mostly of the modern era.

When Muslim emperors ruled over large non-Muslim populations, Muslim preachers and Sufi mystics worked to proselytise and win converts to Islam. There is no record in those days of mob violence or targeted attacks against foreign envoys or traders in retaliation for blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad or Islam allegedly committed by Islam’s enemies in distant lands.

The phenomenon of violent outrage and killing over insults to Islam and its final prophet seems to have started during Western colonial rule, with Muslim politicians seeking issues to mobilise their constituents. Contemporary Jihadism seems to have grown out of the slogan “Islam in Danger,” which has been periodically invoked as a rallying cry for Islamist politics.

Ironically, it is the Islamists who draw attention to otherwise obscure attacks on Islam and then use those attacks to muster popular support. The reaction makes more people aware of a book like Rushdie’s, a YouTube film such as The Innocence of Muhammad or cartoons in small circulation satirical magazines. Charlie Hebdo usually published only 45,000 copies; now it will be read by hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

The violence over “Islam’s honour” is a function of the collective Muslim narrative of grievance. Decline, weakness, impotence, and helplessness are phrases most frequently repeated in the speeches and writings of today’s Muslim leaders. The view is shared by Islamists – who consider Islam a political ideology – and other Muslims who don’t. The terrorists are just the most extreme element among the Islamists.

As a community, Muslims are obsessed with their past pre-eminence, which stands in stark contrast to their current weakness. The bravado of beheading “blasphemers” and thinking that a terrorist attack can change the global order are ways of reclaiming a glory that is vividly recalled but has not been seen by Muslims in recent centuries.

Like all national and community narratives, the current Muslim narrative has some elements of truth. But it is equally true that Muslims have made practically no serious effort to understand the causes and remedies of their decline over the past 300 years. Outrage, resentment and violence — and the conspiracy theories that inform them — serve as palliatives for an Ummah (or global Muslim community) that reads little, writes even less, has not invented much in recent centuries, is economically less productive than comparable peoples and wields little political or military power in the contemporary world. Dealing with the causes of Muslim decline, not random or orchestrated acts of terrorism, would be the real way forward in saving Muslims from dishonour.

Terror Attacks Cannot Save Islam’s ‘Honour’

Soon after the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, Islamist sympathizers on social media unleashed familiar rhetoric. AlQaida and ISIS supporters used Arabic language hashtags like “our revenge for the messenger (Muhammad)”, “Paris is the messenger (Muhammad)”, “Paris is Burning”, “Paris under Fire” and “Lions of Tawheed (monotheism)”. One self-styled jihadi tweeted, “This is the first reaction. You’ll not live in safety again.” Another said: “This proves that the Islamic State can strike deep in Europe whenever it wishes.” Someone styling himself as Abu Sari alIraqi put up a graphic of the Islamic State’s black flag on the Eiffel Tower, with the slogan in French: “We are everywhere.”

Such bombast reflects the emptiness of the Islamist dream. The killing of unarmed cartoonists and journalists is hardly an act of courage. Paris did not, in fact, burn and this latest act of terrorism mobilized the French against the jihadis just as terrorist attacks in New York, London and Mumbai had united people against them in the past.

More important, terrorism is unlikely to dissuade anyone so inclined to refrain from insulting Islam, its prophet or Muslims. Like followers of any other religion, Muslims do not like insults to their faith or to their prophet. But threats and actual attacks of the type witnessed in Paris last week have been limited to Islamists.

Contrary to the assertion of some, such violence has nothing to do with recent wars or the policies of great powers in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria. A man named Alam Din from Lahore was proclaimed a ‘ghazi’ for killing a Hindu publisher of a book insulting Prophet Muhammad in 1929.Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ prompted fatwas and violent protests 50 years later. These incidents cannot be attributed as reaction to US military intervention.

Of course, not all of the world’s over one billion Muslims react to real or perceived insults to their religion in the same manner. Believers in different deities and prophets have often slandered each other’s faiths. Islam has endured its share of criticism and abuse over the centuries, especially from Christians, against whom they fought the Crusades and the Ottoman wars.

But in earlier times, Muslims responded to religious affronts by pointing out flaws in other religions and outlining their own perfect faith. Their armies were violent but so were the armies of others. When Muslim emperors ruled over large non-Muslim populations, preachers and Sufi mystics worked to win converts to Islam. There is no record in those days of targeted attacks in retaliation for blasphemy against the prophet or Islam in distant lands.

The phenomenon of violent outrage over insults to Islam seems to have started during western colonial rule, with Muslim politicians seeking issues to mobilize their constituents. Contemporary jihadism seems to have grown out of the slogan ‘Islam in Danger’, which has been periodically invoked as a rallying cry for Islamist politics.

Ironically, it is the Islamists who draw attention to otherwise obscure attacks on Islam and then use those to muster popular support. The reaction makes more people aware of a book like Rushdie’s or a film like ‘The Innocence of Muhammad’. Charlie Hebdo regularly published only 45,000 copies but will likely be read by hundreds of thousands now.

The violence over ‘Islam’s honour’ is a function of the collective Muslim narrative of grievance. Decline, weakness, impotence, and helplessness are phrases most frequently repeated in the speeches and writings of today’s Muslim leaders. The view is shared by Islamists, who consider Islam a political ideology , and other Muslims who don’t. The terrorists are just the most extreme element among the Islamists. As a community, Muslims are obsessed with their past pre-eminence, which stands in stark contrast with their current weakness. The bravado of beheading blasphemers and thinking a terrorist attack can change the global order are ways of reclaiming a glory that is vividly recalled but not seen by Muslims in recent centuries.

Like all national and community narratives, this one has elements of truth. But it is equally true that Muslims have made no serious effort to understand the causes and remedies of their decline over the past 300 years. Outrage, resentment and violence -and the conspiracy theories that inform them -serve as palliatives for an Ummah that reads little, writes even less, hasn’t invented much in recent centuries, and wields little political or military power in the contemporary world. Dealing with the causes of Muslim decline, not random or orchestrated acts of terrorism, would be the real way forward in saving Muslims from dishonour.