Op-Ed: Why the US Is Failing to Win Pakistani Hearts and Minds
Published: October 4, 2009
A version of this commentary appeared in the News-Gazette
A spike in American troop casualties in Afghanistan and the recent negative strategic assessment by General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander there, have heightened concerns that U.S. efforts to defeat violent extremists in Afghanistan may ultimately fail. Prospects also remain grim in neighboring Pakistan, which President Barack Obama recognized as equally critical in the fight against Al Qaeda when he announced a new strategy towards the region in March.
One metric for success in Pakistan-public perception-is telling. A Gallup Pakistan/Al Jazeera poll released in August asked Pakistanis to name the "biggest threat" to their country. Eleven percent of respondents identified the Taliban, 18 percent fingered India, and 59 percent named the United States.
Such results might at first seem counter-intuitive. After all, the Taliban have destabilized Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas and are currently engaged in a fierce insurgency against the Pakistani government and army. They have allegedly assassinated major political figures, most notably former Prime Minister and then election front-runner Benazir Bhutto on the eve of the 2008 polls. And Taliban-linked militants have launched hundreds of attacks in cities throughout Pakistan since 2003, killing nearly 7,000 civilians and over 2,500 security force personnel, according to data compiled by the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi.
India, for its part, fought wars with Pakistan in 1947, 1965, and 1971, with another significant conflict in the Kargil District of Kashmir in 1999 arising from the two nations' long-standing territorial dispute. Experts estimate that India has between 45 and 100 nuclear warheads, which it can deliver to Pakistan's major cities within four minutes, causing millions of casualties. In the aftermath of the 2001 attack by Pakistani militants on the Indian Parliament, India mobilized its million-man army in Kashmir along the Line of Control and international border between India and Pakistan. And with each crisis between the countries—most recently after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks—the threat of a nuclear standoff or ground invasion re-surfaces.
Meanwhile, the United States, some 7,000 miles away, was Pakistan's formal strategic ally from the 1950s through much of the cold war through mutual defense pacts like the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization. The United States gave billions of aid dollars to Pakistan during that period. It provided $10 billion more in economic assistance from 2001-2008. Currently the United States is poised to pledge another $7.5 billion over five years to Pakistan, following recent approval by the Senate and then House of a bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN).
Given these apparent disparities in Pakistan's relationships with the Taliban, India, and the United States, why do Pakistanis feel most threatened by America?
In part, the high level of mistrust has developed over decades. Historically, Pakistan provided critical assists to U.S. pursuit of its primary strategic objectives on several occasions. In return, the United States is perceived by Pakistanis to have been fickle.
In the early 1970s, when President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger sought to accelerate the Sino-Soviet split through rapprochement with China, it was Pakistan that facilitated communications and the eventual meetings. Pakistan served as a "frontline state" in U.S. efforts to combat the Soviets in the 1980s after their invasion of Afghanistan. And following the September 11 attacks, Pakistan has again played a key role by supporting U.S. efforts to conduct its "Global War on Terror."
Yet, time and again, Pakistan has seen the security compact it made with the U.S. trumped by other interests. Each surge in U.S. aid has been offset by periods of withdrawal of funding or even economic sanctions. Granted, halts in U.S. economic assistance typically followed key developments in Pakistan's nuclear weapons complex. But try telling that to Pakistanis, who protest that they were merely countering an "existential threat" from India, whose "peaceful nuclear explosion" in 1974 occurred some 24 years before Pakistan's own nuclear tests.
More recently, Pakistanis blame the United States for bringing previously unseen violence to their country. Suicide attacks used to be unheard of. Now, after the United States chased the Taliban leadership out of Afghanistan, such attacks occur regularly in Pakistan, on average more than once per week since the start of 2007. Moreover, say Pakistanis, the United States has compelled them to fight a war "not their own," and periodically criticized Pakistan's commitment and conduct of operations to boot.
Pakistanis also wonder why the United States made its nuclear deal with their rival, India, while not offering a similar package to them—a discrepancy which in their view will serve to weaken Pakistan's deterrence capabilities (U.S. and international concerns about Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan's black market proliferation network aside).
During Pakistan's 2007 political crisis, the United States supported Pervez Musharraf, a drowning military autocrat who first sacked the Supreme Court justices poised to rule him constitutionally ineligible to remain head of state, then declared a state of emergency to retain power. Meanwhile, the popular tide flowed overwhelmingly towards civilian elected officials and the restoration of democracy.
The largest ongoing contributing factor to Pakistani mistrust of the United States comes in the form of missile strikes on Pakistani soil from unmanned aerial vehicles. Although U.S. Predator drone attacks may have succeeded in snuffing out a dozen or more high-level Al Qaeda and Taliban targets, including top Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud in early August, by some media estimates they have also killed 700 innocent civilians in the last year alone.
In sum, no other actor shares the overall U.S. capacity to influence the balance of power in the region, alter the internal political landscape in Pakistan, and inflict damage on its citizens.
The United States and the government of Pakistan need the support of Pakistani civil society if the counterinsurgency against Al Qaeda and the Taliban is to succeed there in the long run. Unfortunately, additional troops in Afghanistan and five more years of generous aid to Pakistan may not be enough to change public perception. Only a sustained, constructive effort could have a chance at winning the trust of Pakistanis, and that may take a generation or more of sacrifice and commitment by American troops and taxpayers alike.
Matthew A. Rosenstein, Ph.D., is Associate Director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS) at the University of Illinois.