Why Do They Hate Us?
103
anti-Americanism to new heights. And that would take U.S.-Pakistan relations
to new lows.
lessons of history
Even before the George W. Bush administration threw its weight behind Presi-
dent Musharraf’s undemocratic regime or launched its war in Afghanistan,
before President Obama accelerated the use of drones in Pakistan’s Federally
Administered Tribal Areas or sent Navy SEALs to kill Osama bin Laden, the
Pakistani public had deep misgivings about the United States. Pakistani anti-
Americanism in the post-9/11 period has its roots in the tortured history of
U.S.-Pakistan relations from the early stages of the Cold War.
As new Pakistani grievances against the United States pile up, they tend to
look like variations on existing themes. Different segments of the Pakistani
public have had different misgivings about the United States. Some liberal
Pakistanis, like Aitzaz Ahsan, saw the American tendency to back military
dictators as its greatest flaw. Others, rabid nationalists like A. Q. Khan, felt
that Pakistan could not trust America when the chips were down, particularly
when it came to dealing with arch-nemesis India. And still others, jihadists
like Hafiz Saeed, have been indoctrinated in a worldview that places hos-
tility toward the United States, India, and Israel at its core. Together, these
three strands of anti-Americanism define the vast majority of Pakistani public
opinion.
History also shows the essential continuity in American and Pakistani strate-
gies over time. Pakistan has, through thick and thin, perceived its relationship
with Washington as a means to deal with India. After 9/11, this was again the
case. As President Musharraf explains in his 2006 memoir, Pakistan chose to
partner with America out of fear that Washington and New Delhi might unite
against Pakistan, not because Islamabad felt a genuine compulsion to assist
after the 9/11 tragedies or a sense of shared interest in confronting Islamist
terrorism.106 For its part, Washington has also held true to its historical pat-
tern of using Pakistan to serve other regional and international goals. If not for
9/11, it is a safe bet that U.S.-Pakistan relations would have continued along
the downward spiral of the late 1990s.
America can learn from its history with Pakistan. Future U.S. policies would
be improved if they take seriously the problems, so well appreciated by Pak-
istan’s liberals, of Pakistan’s civil-military imbalance. If not, Washington will
again find itself tipping the political scales in the army’s favor. Similarly, know-
ing that Pakistan’s nationalists anticipate another American “abandonment,”
Washington would do well to consider how its relations with Pakistan fit with –
or contradict – U.S. plans for Afghanistan and for the wider Asia-Pacific region,
especially with India. Finally, U.S. policy would be more enlightened if it
106 Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 202.
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No Exit from Pakistan
includes a realistic plan that begins to address the socioeconomic and espe-
cially the political trends that have given strength to Pakistan’s jihadists.107
Otherwise, Pakistan’s terrorists will silence the liberals and co-opt the nation-
alists.
Let there be no mistake, however, Pakistanis do not hate America sim-
ply because the United States has sinned against them. Anti-Americanism in
Pakistan is a by-product of the interaction between U.S. policy and Pakistan’s
own national decisions and internal dynamics. Each nation has pursued its
interests, as it perceived them at the time. Washington is guilty of placing other
goals, from anti-communism and nonproliferation to counterterrorism, over
its commitment to Pakistan per se. For its part, Islamabad is guilty of misrep-
resenting its commitment to American goals in order to extract the material
benefits of partnership with a superpower.
107 On the complicated interaction between politics, socioeconomic status, and education as drivers for Pakistani support of Islamist militancy, see Jacob N. Shapiro and C. Christine Fair, “Understanding Support for Islamist Militancy in Pakistan,” International Security, 34, no. 3 (Winter 2009/2010), pp. 79–118.
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4
U-Turn to Drift
U.S.-Pakistan Relations during the Musharraf Era
Almost exactly ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Admiral Michael Mullen,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the U.S. Congress that
the Haqqani network – a branch of the Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan’s
tribal areas – operated as a “veritable arm” of the Pakistani state.1 The chair-
man’s claim came in the aftermath of several high-profile Haqqani-orchestrated
attacks inside Afghanistan, including one in which armed gunmen briefly man-
aged to fire into the U.S. Embassy grounds from a nearby Kabul construction
site.2
None of these attacks threatened to dislodge NATO’s International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) from Afghanistan in a military sense. Even so, such
violence in the heart of heavily fortified Kabul cast new doubts about whether
the United States had any serious prospect of winning the war. Public skepticism
was already on the rise. By late October 2011, 63 percent of Americans opposed
the U.S. war in Afghanistan.3
By his testimony, Mullen essentially accused Pakistan of being a state spon-
sor of terrorism. Given its ties to the Haqqanis, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelli-
gence directorate (ISI) had American blood on its hands. The senior-most U.S.
military officer spoke before Congress sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the sec-
retary of defense, Leon Panetta. Although Mullen had made similar remarks to
the Pakistani media months earlier, the formal Capitol Hill testimony carried
1 Thanks to K. Alan Kronstadt at the Congressional Research Service for sharing detailed chronologies of the period covered in this chapter and the next.
2 Alissa J. Rubin, Ray Rivera, and Jack Healy, “U.S. Embassy and NATO Headquarters Attacked in Kabul,” New York Times, September 13, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/world/
asia/14afghanistan.html? r=1.
3 “CNN Poll: Support for Afghanistan War at All Time Low,” CNN, October 28, 2011, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/28/cnn-poll-support-for-afghanistan-war-at-all-time-low/.
105
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No Exit from Pakistan
greater political weight in Washington and Islamabad.4 In both instances, his
damning conclusion came as a shock to
many Pakistanis who had considered
Mullen a “pro-Pakistani” voice among Obama’s top officials. Mullen earned
this distinction from spending long hours cultivating ties with Pakistan’s army
chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. Like many officers, Mullen placed a great deal
of stock in the notion that personal connections with foreign officers build
more effective state-to-state relationships. If Pakistan’s generals had a friend in
Washington, he was it.5
The normally mild-mannered admiral’s blunt characterization of ISI-
Haqqani links also surprised many outside observers. Other American officials
had made similar accusations, but Mullen’s tone, setting, and timing suggested
the potential for a deeper policy shift within the administration. For several
days, it was difficult to determine just what Mullen’s testimony really meant.
Even inside the U.S. State Department and parts of the National Security Coun-
cil, officials scrambled to figure out how Mullen’s statement – which apparently
had not been blessed in detail by a full interagency consensus – would affect
U.S. policy.6 In the end, the White House and State Department tried to sweep
the entire incident under the carpet. They downplayed the direct connections
between the ISI and attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.7 But Mullen’s
remarks were a part of the indelible historical record, and on Capitol Hill they
carried more weight than the disclaimers that followed.
Whatever the logic of Mullen’s outburst, Pakistanis were quick to grasp
that if the admiral had soured on them, Washington’s sympathy was pretty
well exhausted. Such a public rebuke by a senior official was rare. In Pakistan a
few weeks after his testimony, I found widespread concern that Mullen’s state-
ment might be a precursor to war with America. Hard-line Pakistani pundits
and politicians stoked these fears on television. They announced that Pakistan
would resist American pressure and that the nation was prepared to go to war if
necessary. In a conversation with a small group of young Pakistani profession-
als in Karachi, I observed that I could not rule out a deeper rupture in relations
between Pakistan and the United States. In response, one earnest young man
4 Baqir Sajjad Syed, “Mullen Launches Diatribe against ISI,” Dawn, April 21, 2011, http://dawn
.com/2011/04/21/pakistans-isi-links-with-haqqani-militants-us/.
5 It is widely rumored that Mullen took a lead role in advocating a three-year extension for Kayani at the army’s helm. Without it, Kayani would have retired in mid-2010. See Riedel, Deadly Embrace (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2011), p. 121. For his part, Mullen denies the rumors. See
“Mullen Denies Involvement in General Kayani’s Extension,” Canadian Asian News, February 2012, http://www.canadianasiannews.com/images/e-issues/Canadian%20Asian%20News%20
(%20Febuary%2015–28%202012).pdf.
6 Author conversations with State Department and National Security Council staff, September 2011.
7 Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung, “Adm. Mullen’s Words on Pakistan Come under Scrutiny,”
Washington Post, September 27, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-securi ty/adm-mullens-words-on-pakistan-come-under-scrutiny/2011/09/27/gIQAHPJB3K_story.html.
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U-Turn to Drift
107
ruefully commented, “you must understand, your words have made all our
hearts pound faster – we are frightened of what the future might hold.”
Over the fall, tensions ebbed slightly, but on November 26, 2011, NATO
forces killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border, believing
them to be insurgents. The news briefly made headlines in the United States but
garnered nonstop media coverage in Pakistan. Some of the details of the case,
including who fired first, remain disputed. There is no doubt, however, that
one of the worst blunders of the incident came when NATO misinformed a
Pakistani liaison officer about the location of a ground attack. The coordinates
he shared were wrong by nine miles.
No matter the specifics of the incident, the toxicity of the U.S.-Pakistan
relationship made it impossible to resolve matters quickly or easily. Even if
Pakistan’s army had wanted to absolve Washington of blame – which it clearly
did not – Islamabad as a whole saw far greater political advantage in venting
its anger. Politicians, including members of the left-leaning Pakistan People’s
Party (PPP) government, followed the army’s lead. The PPP was already under
intense pressure owing to an ongoing scandal (dubbed “memogate” by the
hyperbolic media) that painted its leaders as pro-American, anti-army stooges.
In an attempt not to be outdone by howling Islamists and nationalists, Pak-
istan’s prime minister accused Washington of having launched a premeditated
strike on Pakistani forces.
As compared to the past, when smaller friendly fire incidents had also
claimed Pakistani lives along the Afghan border, Islamabad was no longer
willing to seek a quiet accommodation with Washington or to chalk the latest
deaths up to the tragedy of war. Pakistani officials demanded a full and public
apology from Washington. The White House refused.8 The U.S. embassy in
to assuage Pakistani anger.
Islamabad closed its border crossings to Afghanistan, stemming the flow of
NATO war supplies. Those crossings were not reopened until July 3, 2012.9
Under Pakistani pressure, Washington also agreed to shut down its “secret”
Shamsi airbase located in a barren valley of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
Pakistan had originally leased the facility to the United Arab Emirates so that
its royals could go on traditional hunting expeditions for bustards, the species
of large birds that nest in the region.10 After 9/11, Shamsi’s airstrips were
upgraded and subleased to the United States for emergency landings and a very
8 Adam Entous, Siobhan Gorman, and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. Agonizes over Apology to Pakistan,” Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230
3505504577406151609731364.html.
9 Eric Schmitt, “Clinton’s ‘Sorry’ to Pakistan Ends Barrier to NATO,” New York Times, July 3, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/world/asia/pakistan-opens-afghan-routes-to-nato-after-us-apology.html?pagewanted=all.
10 “UAE mounts pressure to get airbase decision reversed,” Dawn, November 29, 2011, http://
www.dawn.com/2011/11/29/uae-mounts-pressure-to-get-airbase-decision-reversed.html.
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No Exit from Pakistan
different sort of hunting. Armed U.S. drones took off from Shamsi to fly over
Pakistan’s nearby tribal areas, their missiles loaded by contractors, presumably
to reduce the official U.S. footprint there. Within weeks, the facility was
emptied and ret
urned to Pakistani authority.11 Pakistan’s leaders declared that
they planned to reevaluate all remaining forms of cooperation with the United
States.
Both the Mullen and Salala incidents demonstrated the significance of pub-
lic, as compared to private, diplomacy between Washington and Islamabad.
Mullen’s testimony set off political explosions in Pakistan in ways that tough
messages delivered in private never had. Similarly, the White House’s initial
refusal to apologize for Salala carried outsized political repercussions. In some
ways, this was an unfamiliar dynamic; in a new era of intense Pakistani media
scrutiny, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship was becoming more politicized and less
amenable to behind-the-scenes management.
At the same time, past American policymakers had often appreciated that
criticism delivered in public would be hard for their Pakistani counterparts to
swallow, and should therefore be used sparingly and with purpose.12 Unfor-
tunately, neither the Mullen testimony nor the Salala non-apology were put
to constructive ends. Washington’s unwillingness to harness Mullen’s verbal
firepower as coercive leverage turned his parting shots into nothing more than
disruptive irritants. Likewise, if the White House had made timely use of the
“s-word” (sorry) after Salala, it is possible that months might have been shaved
off the time taken to reopen NATO supply routes to Afghanistan.
america’s missed opportunities
All told, ten years after 9/11, relations between Washington and Islamabad
looked at least as bad as they did before Musharraf was drafted into Bush’s
war on terror. Fresh wounds were inflicted atop the deep bruises of the past.
The United States had fought a prolonged battle against al-Qaeda in ways that
succeeded in killing most of its top leaders, but it never brought Americans and
Pakistanis together in a common understanding of the terrorist threat. In the
Afghan war, Washington suffered from distraction, setbacks, and stalemate,
all the while failing to resolve fundamental differences with Islamabad over
how to fight the war or how to end it. And despite extensive diplomacy,
public outreach, and tens of billions of dollars in aid, the United States never