“Money Woes, Long Silences and a Zeal for Islam,” New York Times, May 5, 2010, p. A1; Andrea Elliott, “For Times Sq. Suspect, Long Roots of Discontent,” New York Times, May 15, 2010, p. A1.
6 “Taliban Video of Faisal Shahzad,” New York Times, September 29, 2010, http://video.nytimes
.com/video/2010/09/29/nyregion/1248069111343/taliban-video-of-faisal-shahzad.html.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Sussex Library, on 05 Mar 2019 at 17:31:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107053755.001
14
No Exit from Pakistan
be more effective and less likely to spark a violent revolt. The United States will
have great difficulty conducting these operations without some cooperation or
consent from their Pakistani counterparts.
This challenge is magnified and complicated by the fact that Pakistan’s own
state has a long history of supporting some of country’s most sophisticated
terrorist groups, envisioning them as proxy forces that advance Pakistan’s
interests in a hostile region. Since its founding in 1990, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)
has been favored by the army and Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) as
a group that brought terror to India, first inside Kashmir, then farther afield.
Even though Islamabad officially banned the group in 2002, LeT’s humani-
tarian wing operates openly throughout Pakistan and LeT’s founding leader,
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, taunts the United States before television cameras
and public rallies.7
LeT has won its greatest notoriety for attacking India, but its core ideology
and mission is much more global, similar to that of al-Qaeda. In November
2008, LeT launched a paralyzing strike on the Indian metropolis of Mumbai. In
a series of coordinated attacks across the city, young LeT commandos method-
ically gunned down innocent civilians in hotels, the train station, a trendy caf é,
and along the street, while other team members butchered a Jewish family on
specific orders from their Pakistani handlers. Six Americans were among those
murdered.
To be sure, LeT is no al-Qaeda. Not yet. Its complicated relationship with
the Pakistani state offers the organization a degree of protection, but it also
imposes constraints upon the group’s terrorist activities. If LeT goes too far
in attacking American interests, for instance, Islamabad would be unable to
protect it from an American reprisal. LeT has still managed to build a far-flung
network of sympathizers and operatives, including within the United States. It
was an American citizen, David Coleman Headley, born to a Pakistani father
and an American mother, who trained for months in Pakistani LeT camps and
conducted the surveillance of Mumbai in preparation for the 2008 attacks.
Headley also scoped out other sites in India and Europe for possible attacks.8
It is not hard to imagine a future in which LeT or a significant faction of the
organization decides to strike the United States directly. In an ironic twist, that
threat becomes more likely if, under American pressure, Islamabad were to take
an unmistakable but only partially effective turn against LeT. In that scenario,
the terrorist operatives would have every reason to wreak havoc inside Pakistan
7 Michael Georgy and Qasim Nauman, “With $10 mln Bounty on His Head, Hafiz Saeed Taunts U.S.,” Reuters, April 5, 2012, http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/04/05/pakistan-usa-hafiz-saeed-mumbai-attacks-idINDEE8330L520120405.
8 For details on Headley’s surveillance role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, see Stephen Tankel, Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), pp. 221–30, 248–51. For more on Headley’s surveillance of sites in India and in Denmark, including the offices of the Danish paper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, see Tankel, Storming the World Stage, pp. 249–51.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Sussex Library, on 05 Mar 2019 at 17:31:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107053755.001
No Exit
15
and activate their international network to strike the United States as well. LeT
will be a difficult knot to untangle, under any circumstances.
Unfortunately, Pakistan has taken too little action against groups like LeT
and their sympathizers over the past decade. Extreme ideologies have won more
adherents. Pakistan’s radical Islamists, like their counterparts in other parts of
the Muslim world, present themselves as alternatives to the corrupt, ineffective
not to mention the humanitarian missions it sponsors during times of national
crisis like Pakistan’s epic 2010 floods, win popular sympathy even if the group’s
austere interpretation of Islam holds much less appeal for average Pakistanis.
These groups will have no shortage of new recruits if, as anticipated, Pak-
istan’s broken educational system continues to produce millions of young men
and women unprepared to contribute to the global economy and millions more
who cannot find jobs even if they have skills and training. Frustrated with a
Pakistani system that has failed them, indoctrinated in a pervasive anti-Western
worldview that blames the United States for the better part of their miseries,
and encouraged to devote their energies to global jihad, this rising generation
of young radicals will pose a threat to U.S. security.
Some Pakistanis suggest that today’s anti-Americanism and violence inside
Pakistan is a product of current U.S. policy: the war in Afghanistan and the
covert counterterror methods, from drones to Navy SEALs. One of Pakistan’s
most popular politicians, the charismatic former cricket star Imran Khan, rou-
tinely argues that if the United States would simply remove its forces from
Afghanistan, the region would settle down and the few remaining terrorists
could be more easily targeted.
Reclining behind his office desk on a hot afternoon in May 2012, comfort-
able in a traditional white cotton tunic, baggy trousers, and sandals, Khan held
forth on the terrible mistake Pakistan’s President Musharraf made by choosing
to side with Washington after 9/11. That error, Khan claimed, was only com-
pounded in 2004 when Musharraf sent the army into Pakistan’s tribal areas to
root out international terrorists. These moves were the original sins that led to
so many of Pakistan’s subsequent security troubles.9
Khan’s arguments, however neatly articulated, put the cart before the horse.
The violent extremism and terroristic methods of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and
LeT were spreading inside Pakistan well before 9/11. These trends had their
origins in Washington’s support for the Afghan mujahedeen during the anti-
Soviet war of the 1980s, but to draw a straight line between the 1980s and 2001
would be to skip a critical decade. Throughout the 1990s, Pakistan actively
and passively supported al-Qaeda’s Taliban hosts, thereby promoting the rise
of international terrorism in Afghanistan. The existence of terrorist sanctuaries
in Afghanistan prompted America’s military intervention in the region after
2001, not vice versa.
9 Author interview with Imran Khan, May 15, 2012.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Sussex Library, on 05 Mar 2019 at 17:31:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107053755.001
16
No Exit from Pakistan
There is no doubting that for an ailing country like Pakistan, the post-
9/11 U.S. military intervention in neighboring Afghanistan and Islamabad’s
public alignment with Washington against al-Qaeda and its affiliates have
been painful. Worse, the treatment has been only partially effective. Al-Qaeda
may be nearly beaten. Other groups, however, such as LeT and various Punjab-
based terrorist groups, have extended their reach.
Imran Khan and his fellow travelers suffer from wishful thinking when
they suggest that an American military withdrawal from the region would in
itself bring a quick end to Pakistan’s security troubles. Pakistan’s immediate
pain might dissipate, but so might any serious hope of treating the underlying
disease.
America’s withdrawal would eliminate the stated raisons d’etre for some of
the fighters in the region, but it would almost certainly embolden others. Many
tribal militias in Afghanistan and along Pakistan’s border are undoubtedly ani-
mated by the defensive desire to kick out any foreign invaders. If outside forces
leave, some militants would probably be content to go back to their parochial
feuds and leave the world alone. Other terrorist groups operating in the region
are driven by global visions of jihad. They would be more likely to declare
victory, consolidate gains, and rededicate themselves to a wider struggle.
One part of the trouble in U.S.-Pakistan relations has been that the two
sides often disagree over the type of threat they face. Islamabad has tended
to emphasize the role of local “miscreants” where Washington has been more
inclined to see international terrorists. In the early post-9/11 period, it was
marginally easier to identify local militant organizations with defensive, rather
than global, objectives. Yet even then Islamabad too often whistled past the
graveyard, believing it could live and let live or harness such militant groups
to suit its purposes. Now, after over a decade of war, many of the regional
militants that started with only parochial interests have picked up increas-
ingly sophisticated tactics and jihadist rhetoric. U.S. officials are right not to
underestimate the long-term consequences of that transformation.
The United States will have various options for dealing with its own vul-
nerability to Pakistan-based terrorism. America’s choices will depend in large
part on the decisions Pakistanis make, above all whether and how they choose
to confront the terrorists themselves. Bearing that in mind, Washington might
opt to address the threat narrowly, through defensive measures; aggressively,
through a persistent and expanded counterterror campaign inside Pakistan;
holistically, by attempting to address the underlying grievances that are believed
to fuel violent extremism in the first place; or by some combination of all these
approaches. Even under the best of circumstances, however, the problem of
Pakistan-based terrorism is likely to linger for years, possibly decades, to come.
the vital threat: nuclear weapons
If Pakistan were a distant country riddled with terrorists, the United States
would have cause for concern, as it does with far smaller states like Yemen and
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Sussex Library, on 05 Mar 2019 at 17:31:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107053755.001
No Exit
17
Somalia. But Pakistan is no Yemen: it is far larger and more developed, and
it possesses a nuclear arsenal, putting it in the company of only a handful of
other states, including its much larger neighbors India and China.
Just because a country has nuclear weapons does not necessarily make it a
concern to the United States. Britain and France, for instance, pose no threat.
The goals of the nuclear state are nearly as important as the arsenal itself.
Unlike Iran or North Korea, at least for the time being, Pakistan is far less
likely to use its nuclear weapons against the United States or its treaty allies.
Moreover, in spite of many sensationalistic essays to the contrary, Pakistan’s
arsenal is not so heedlessly guarded as to make it an easy target for terrorists
or other potential thieves.10 Nuclear weapons are not all that easy to pilfer,
and they are usually even harder to detonate without authorization. Moreover,
Pakistan has taken pains to improve the security of its entire nuclear program –
weapons, labs, and storage facilities – as it has grown larger and more compli-
cated.
Over 20,000 personnel serve to protect that program in one way or another,
and all Pakistanis who have contact with nuclear facilities are screened and
monitored to reduce the chance of an insider threat.11 Starting in the early
2000s, the United States also provided the Pakistani nuclear establishment
with selective training, limited funds, and technological recommendations to
enhance security, and by extension, to open lines of communication with the
aim of building confidence on both sides. All of this helps to explain why U.S.
officials, including President Obama, have expressed some degree of confidence
in the security of Pakistan’s nuclear program.12
Even so, Americans have good reasons to consider Pakistan’s nuclear
weapons a vital threat, one that rates among the top U.S. security concerns in
the world. Why? Leaving aside real but lesser American concerns about a poten-
tial arms race or nuclear crisis between Pakistan and India, the answer has to do
with the shadow of Pakistan’s alarming past and the nation’s uncertain future.
Pakistan’s nuclear past is often summarized in one name: Dr. A. Q. Khan.
Khan won fame in Pakistan for playing a leading role in the national nuclear
program. He won global notoriety for being the world’s most successful nuclear
proliferator. In 2004, the Pakistani government dismissed Khan from his official
position and placed him under house arrest.
Officers inside Pakistan’s nuclear establishment today consider Khan ancient
history, but Washington will not soon forget or forgive his involvement in
10 See, for instance, Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder, “The Ally from Hell,” The Atlantic (December 2011), http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-ally-from-hell/
8730/.
11 This section is based in part on the author’s conversation with Lt. General (retired) Khalid Kidwai, Director General of the Strategic Plans Division, Rawalpindi, May 18, 2012.
12 When pressed by the media in April 2009, Obama stated, “I feel confident that nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands, okay?” See Barack Obama, “The First 100 Days Press Conference,” Washington, DC, April 29, 2009, http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/
04.29.09.html.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Sussex Library, on 05 M
ar 2019 at 17:31:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107053755.001
18
No Exit from Pakistan
selling nuclear technologies to the anti-American regimes of Iran, North Korea,
and Libya. Despite numerous assurances from the Pakistani military at the time
and since, most of official Washington still doubts that Khan’s operation could
have grown so large and persisted so long without clearance from the very
highest ranks.
The scarring experience also raises American doubts about whether Pak-
istan can ever be trusted, whether its nuclear establishment might again be
compromised by an insider, or even whether the state of Pakistan will perceive
a vital interest in limiting future nuclear transfers to countries like North Korea,
which pose no direct threat to Pakistan but are dangerous to the United States
and its allies.
This takes us to the heart of the matter: the main reason for Washington’s
concern about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is uncertainty about the future charac-
ter and intentions of Pakistan’s leadership. If Pakistan had a firmly entrenched,
moderate, and democratic government in control of its nuclear program, per-
haps some of those fears would be mitigated. Unfortunately, Pakistan has never
in its history been a stable democracy and its recent civilian leaders have no
real say over the nuclear program or its management. Short of the democratic
ideal, as long as Pakistan’s military remains disciplined, unthreatening, and in
firm command of the nuclear arsenal, America will have reasons for confidence,
even if nuclear weapons are by their nature risky and dangerous things.
Yet, even the motives, discipline, and capacity of the Pakistani army –
undoubtedly the nation’s most powerful and professional institution – cannot
be taken for granted as we peer into the gloom of Pakistan’s future. Pakistan’s
foxes could take over the henhouse. A country that is riven by a range of inter-
nal conflicts, suffers from ever-greater bouts of internal violence, and could
well adopt a far more hostile anti-Americanism as its official posture is hardly