Pakistan: The Kayani Strategy

by Firdaus Ahmed

Washington Post informs: ‘US efforts fail to convince Pakistan’s top general to target Taliban’ (December 31, 2010). It writes that ‘In October, Administration officials choreographed a White House meeting for Kayani at which Obama could directly deliver his message of urgency. The Army Chief heard him out, then provided a 13-page document updating Pakistan’s strategic perspective and noting the gap between short-term US concerns and Pakistan’s long-term interests, according to US officials.’ Since the document’s contents are privileged information, they can at best be surmised. This article attempts doing that.

Strategy is usually thought of as being externally focused. However, there is a considerable role of internal factors, particularly in regimes politically beset. Strategy or priori-tisation of ‘ends, ways, means’ choices is not necessarily a rational exercise to meet external and internal ‘threats’. Strategic theory has it that strategic elites deploy strategy to also preserve their dominance in internal power structures. In the process, and secondarily, in case of insecure regimes, if external strategic ends are met then that would be ‘successful’ strategy. In short, strategy’s external dimension is at best a rationalisation. This is the case with regimes of uncertain legitimacy. Pakistan provides the best case study for this.

It is likely that the strategy paper Kayani handed Obama has this rationalisation. The paper perhaps reflects Kayani’s earlier utterances on the India-centricity of Pakistan and its Army. It explicates why Pakistan cannot act against the Taliban, citing reasons of lack of public support and of troops. Troops are required to deter India. Public disaffection with religious extremism is not of the order that the regime can take on the extremist forces head on. Pakistan’s internal security and political stability being uncertain, it cannot open another front and hope to win. While US support would be behind Pakistan in any such action, the support itself could prove a liability by making the Islamist counter-attack more potent.

The mysterious strategy paper is unlikely to have dwelt on the internal political angle. The strategy document, meant for US eyes, can be expected to present Pakistan’s Army as the ‘last bastion’. This way continuing largesse can be ensured, even if it comes with greater strictures and supervision of its use. The Pakistan Army can then remain at the apex. This would be unacknowledged, not for reasons of deception, as much as Kayani himself being unconscious to the internal compulsions behind strategy.

Understanding Pakistan is seemingly easy. The Pakistan Army wants to remain atop the power structure and therefore has manufacture the Indian ‘bogey’ and is milking the threat of an Islamist take over of a nuclear armed state for its corporate purposes. This explanation hides a more disturbing reality, brought to the foreg-round by two assassinations—one of Benazir Bhutto earlier and this month of Punjab’s Governor, Salman Taseer.

The less visible, but more significant, dimension of internal politics in Pakistan is dominance of the elite with a narrow feudal base. It has in its ranks the higher echelons of bureaucracy and the industrial elite. It has, through the medium of promotions into the elite nucleus of the Pakistan Army, coopted the top brass. The privileges that this brings the Generals, makes the Pakistan Army protective of the power structure. The discourse on Pakistan, in its concentration on praetorianism of its Army, misses the fact that this is a consequence of the very social structure of Pakistan. In other words, it is not so much the Army that keeps the Pakistani state retarded in its structures and processes, it is this deeper power arrangement. The assassinations have done more to reveal the elite-mass divide than social science.

The assumption that changing the Army’s hold on power would be adequate may prove wrong. The deeper social structure, rather than merely the ‘deep state’, requires change. The elite, both unwilling to forego its advantages and, equally, not knowing how to do so without upheaval, has only the security template as answer to the Islamist challenge. This has reluctant support of apprehensive allies, interested more in stability than uncertainties of social transformation.

•

THE preferred route is of democratisation; of expanding middle classes through increased education and economic opportunity. The programme, being long term, amounts to slow suicide for the elites. It is no wonder that it has not been put in place since Independence. The result is that the masses are left with little political recourse than weigh on the side of a political opposition carrying the ‘Islamic’ mantle.

Since elites will not, and if past record is guide, cannot, be the vehicle of change, a ‘strong man’ could prove useful. The problem is with the Musharraf episode proving that there is no guarantee of a Kemal Pasha. The authoritarian regimes littered across the political landscape from Pamirs to the Atlantic testify to the intellectual vacuity of the strong-man route to change.

External (read ‘Western’) support is only self-interested. Authoritarian regimes are backed for energy security, geostrategic and homeland security related reasons. This support makes for a more energetic backlash against the regimes in place and greater supportive angst on the street. Such regimes leave little chance for a democratic opposition to substitute for the Islamist opposition. States end up tethering on civil war, making the external supporters more supportive of the status quo.

It is arguable that the regime of Ayatullahs has not necessarily been worse than that of the Shah. The Algerian case of the early nineties and Palestinian experiment last decade indicate that democracy will in the short term at least yield up deeply conservative, if not radical, parties. Therefore, there is a case for rethink of such uncritical opposition to Islamist challengers. Such opposition should not be armed in any case, since it militarises the political space, leaving revolution as the only answer. At a minimum, it reduces the possibility of bloodletting accompanying change.

Pakistan is not an authoritarian state in the same mould as others. It has a functioning democracy, albeit one scarred by military intervention. It has a growing middle class. The lawyers of this class ensured the exit of its last military strong man. It is nuclear armed and, on that account, ‘cannot be allowed to “fail’’’. The support of the people enabled the Army to ‘go after’ obscurantists in the Swat, after the video that surfaced of the lashing of a girl, resulted in a turn in public opinion. It has the potential for change over the long term, though its short term is considerably fraught with dangers.

At a minimum, Pakistan must persist along the long, hard route. And its supporters must not push it into a civil war. That the US is alive to this danger is helpful. It is supporting long term change in terms of funding civilian side, as the Kerry-Lugar Bill suggests. General Petraeus is not insisting that the Pakistan Army carry out operations that could lead to destabilisation through a vertical divide in the society and the military. He is instead relying on drone attacks in Pakistan and special forces operations in Afghanistan. The US strategy, informed by the strategy paper handed over by Kayani, is a reasonable guide for others, such as India.

What does this mean for India? India needs to tie in its strategy with that of the US in keeping Pakistan steady. There are advocates for taking advantage of the Pakistani predicament. At a minimum such pressure is to yield up Indian aims in regard to terrorism and Kashmir and at a maximum helping push Pakistan over the brim. This line of thinking is not centre-stage and India’s strategic elite must keep it marginalised. The initiative unfolding beginning with the meeting of the Foreign Secretaries in Thimphu next month must be taken this time round to the logical conclusion of resumption of the peace process. The more Pakistan ends up resembling India, the more the dividend of democratic peace. India’s strategy must have this as aim.

What Pakistan needs is to remain on even keel. The Kayani strategy, handed over to Obama, suggests a way.

If its record on the precipice of the ‘failed state’ status is any indicator, it may yet manage to evade the status, with a little help from friends, and eventually emerge with a changed internal character as a model for the remainder of the Muslim world.

Firdaus Ahmed, a freelance writer on security issues, is a columnist for indiatogether.org and contributes to ipcs.org.