Analysis

US and Pakistan: Past, Present, and Future

For Real Alliance or National Interests?

Pakistan played host to one hundred thousand jihadists recruited and trained by the US in Pakistan’s tribal belt.

Clearly, the Islamic polity shared extensively the values of modern civilization, so this commonalty together with the heritage of the British colonial rule brought Pakistan closer to the Commonwealth of Nations and the United States of America at a time when the monolithic Soviet Union suppressed dissent and fundamental freedoms.

In addition to this ideological incompatibility between Pakistan and the Soviet Union, the internal dynamics of the former, the landed aristocracy and the bureaucracy with colonial mind-set, propelled the nascent state into the direction of the western bloc, which culminated in a cobweb of entangling anti-communist military alliances ranging from the Mutual Assistance pact of May 1954 to SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) of September 1904, Baghdad pact of 1955 and Mutual Security Pact of March 1959.

Pakistan was eventually sucked into the maelstrom of the cold war, further estranging it from the Soviet-led Communist  bloc and the India-led neutralist Afro-Asian grouping which includes, especially the Arab nationalist and non-Arab Muslim states, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, which chose to stay outside the anti-communist SEATO.

The Pakistani ruler learned the hard way that rather than giving security to Pakistan, these alliances had exposed it to the threat of Soviet air strikes. Then there were other setbacks to Pakistan’s national interest resulting from its alignment with the US.

First the Soviet Union, which hitherto had maintained a neutral stance on Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, thereby enabling the passage of the historic resolution at the Security Council that is calling for demilitarization and the holding of referendum under the UN auspices, vetoed it in 1957, 1962 and again and again.

On the other hand, when hostilities broke out between India and Pakistan in September 1965, the SEATO Secretary General declared that the alliance had guaranteed protection to Pakistan against communist and not Indian attack because India was not a communist country.

A similar stance was adopted by Cento which went to the extent of forbidding its fellow members, Turkey and Iran, to go to the rescue of Pakistan. And therefor they didn’t.
Moreover, the US stopped supply of military hardware to Islamabad under the alliances.
The history was to repeat itself again during the secessionist uprising in the former East Pakistan compounded by the Indian invasion: once again Pakistan was abandoned by its protector, the US, which itself was split on the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war.

The Congress was in sympathy with the separatist Bengalis while president Nixon wanted a face-saving settlement of the civil war with Islamabad conceding the secession of its former eastern province.

But Nixon could not succeed in his endeavors due to Indira Ghandi's obduracy backed by Soviet veto against the implementation of the UN General Assembly resolution calling for the cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of all armed forces in preparation to a reconciliation process.

Though Pakistanis are bitter against the US whom they still blame for deserting them in their hour of need, the fact is that during the 1965 and 71 wars, the US was under constraints imposed by bipolarism, a feature that had characterized the world politics. Yet despite all this, US President Nixon went out of the way to tell the then President of Soviet Union, Lenoid Brazhnev, to restrain the Indian prime Minister from attacking the West Pakistan.

And Brezhnev listened to him and stopped Indira Ghandi from carrying out the plan of occupying the remaining part of Pakistan.

These episodes of 1965 and 71 wars taught Pakistan an important lesson in power politics: For a military alliance to be effective, it should be based on the common threat perception of the allies, and be between equals. Strangely enough in these two wars, neither the fellow Muslim states nor the western allies of Pakistan came to its rescue. On the contrary, it was the godless communist China, against which Pakistan had signed the SEATO pact that made a threatening noise against Indian invasion.

In 1965, the People’s Republic of China was not a member of the UN but in 1971 it was. In the security council, China blocked the admission of Bangladesh by the use of veto until it reached an accord with Pakistan for the release of ninety thousand prisoners of war.

In fact, it was the foresight of Pakistani rulers that despite their commitment to anti-communist alliances, they cultivated good neighborly relations with their great neighbor by concluding the March 3, 1963 border agreement, thus opening the door to multiple relations with China. For this Islamabad had to pay a price in terms of the US embargo on military and economic assistance.

The landmark Pak-China border agreement was the turning point in Pakistan’s foreign policy, which had so far been lop-sided. The year of 1971 witnessed the détente between the west and the Soviet Union on the one hand, and rapprochement between US and China on the other. The borders between Germany and Poland, and Poland and Soviet Russia were settled and the NATO and Warsaw pact decided to proportionately slim down the bloated nuclear arsenal by a series of SALT and START accords and the institutionalization of East-West co-operation in trade, economy, disarmament, human rights etc. in the form of 1975 Helsinki Act.

This process could not extend to Asia river by ancient border disputes between Soviet Union and China, the disputed vale of Kashmir, occupied Palestine, the Korean divide. It is in the central, southwestern and the Pacific regions that hostilities backed by super powers erupted.

In this backdrop the US and Chinese policies began to converge as manifested in the Sino-US overt and convert support to the Afghan insurgency against the presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

The Mujahedeen were fighting for the liberation of Afghanistan from what they perceived as Russian occupation. Now they are engaged in a similar war of liberation against the US and NATO occupation. They see no difference between the two evils. Pakistan was the American proxy then and remains as so, yet this time against its own people.

In both cases, Islamabad’s over-embrace with the US brought the Afghan insurgency into mainland Pakistan. The wave of violence is the spill-over of the Pakhtoon’s struggle for the liberation of their motherland from foreign occupation. It will end only when the foreign occupation comes to an end. It is high time that Islamabad disengage itself from the US war on terror which is in fact a futile witch-hunt. Pakistan can effectively counter extremism by political as opposed to military action. Pakistan’s political parties are capable of containing militancy and extremism.

The future of Pakistan’s foreign policy will depend on whether a genuine democracy would replace the military-dominated politics of the country. Even so, given Pakistan’s indebtedness to the US-controlled financial institutions, no future government can break with America. However, a truly democratic government may be able to somewhat limit the naked American intervention in Pakistan’s internal and external policies.

To achieve independence of action, Pakistan must try to lighten its debt burden by increasing its export earning meaning it has to increase its agricultural and industrial production. For that it should step up efforts to reduce its petroleum bills by diversifying its source of energy and improve its infrastructure. Equally important it is for the future government to reduce its non-development expenditure and ensure a clean administration.

These are some of the challenges that Pakistan’s policy-makers will have to face. Already there is growing realization among the people that unless they take initiative, the government alone cannot do the needful. Hopefully any future policy of independent development postulates improvement of ties with European Union and Russian Federation in order to balance its relations with the US.

Shameem Akhtar is a professor of international relations, and a senior analyst & writer.  He was the dean of faculty of management, Baluchistan university, and former chairman of International Relations Department, Karachi university.