Foreign Policy In Focus

(Pictured: An uneasy alliance.)

In the wake of the U.S. attack on the bin Laden compound, four-star General Ashfaq Kayani, successor to Pervez Musharraf as the Pakistan army's chief of staff and called by the New York Times "the most powerful man in the country," finds himself between a rock and a hard place.

The rock, according to the Times

[Gen. Kayani] faces such intense discontent over what is seen as his cozy relationship with the United States that a colonels’ coup, while unlikely, was not out of the question. . . . The Pakistani Army is essentially run by consensus among 11 top commanders, known as the Corps Commanders, and almost all of them, if not all, were demanding that General Kayani get much tougher with the Americans, even edging toward a break, Pakistanis who follow the army closely said.

And the hard place . . .

Washington, with its own hard line against Pakistan, had pushed General Kayani into a defensive crouch

In response

. . . to rally support among his rank-and-file troops, who are almost uniformly anti-American. . . . General Kayani made an extraordinary tour of more than a dozen garrisons, mess halls and other institutions in the six weeks since the May 2 raid that killed Bin Laden.

Meanwhile

General Kayani had already become a more obstinate partner [with the United States], standing ever more firm with each high-level American delegation that has visited since the raid.

While not clear what part Kayani played, a possible example of this is the arrest by the ISI (which Kayani once headed) of five informants who helped the Central Intelligence Agency with the Bin Laden raid. The Times also reports

Apart of his survival mechanism, General Kayani could well order the Americans to stop the drone program completely.

In which case you can kiss much of the United States' military aid goodbye. In any event, if Kayani doesn't survive as army chief, good luck to the next guy who tries to walk that tightrope.

Schools in which religious fundamentalism are central to the curriculum have always existed. In the United States today, the education of Christian fundamentalists' children is devalued by the teaching of "subjects" such as creationism. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the religious schools known as madrassas focus on teaching the Koran to the exclusion of preparing children for the modern world. But that's the least of it. In a recent post at Focal Points, Michael Busch explains.

It’s hardly a secret that rich Saudi Arabians, including those running the government, have used their considerable oil wealth to spread political and ideological influence throughout the world. . . . In an astonishing [WikiLeaks] cable published by the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, however, it would seem that significant sums of Saudi money are fostering religious radicalism in previously moderate regions of Pakistan. . . . Bryan Hunt, then-principal officer at the US consulate in Lahore, reported a string of troubling findings on his forays into southern Punjab, where he “was repeatedly told that a sophisticated jihadi recruitment network had been developed.”

The network reportedly exploited worsening poverty in these areas of the province to recruit children into the divisions’ growing . . . madrassa network from which they were indoctrinated into jihadi philosophy, deployed to regional training/indoctrination centers, and ultimately sent to terrorist training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). . . .

These madrassas are generally in isolated areas and are kept small enough (under 100 students) so as not to draw significant attention. At these madrassas, children are denied contact with the outside world and taught sectarian extremism, hatred for non-Muslims, and anti-Western/anti-Pakistan government philosophy. . . . From there, “graduates” of the madrassas are supposedly either retained as teachers for the next generation of recruits, or are sent to a sort-of postgraduate school for jihadi training.

That includes "martyrdom," a.k.a., becoming a suicide bomber.

Meanwhile, it may surprise you to know that Israel has its own form of madrassa. At Foreign Affairs, Daniel Levy of the New America Foundation writes that:

. . . the Haredi [ultra-orthodox] population has grown . . .  from 3 percent of the population in 1990 to over 10 percent today. . . . One notable phenomenon in the past decade and a half has been the rapid expansion of the state-funded but independent education system established by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. . . . In many provincial Israeli towns and neighborhoods, Shas schools have come to trump the state-school system in the provision of certain services, such as transportation and hot meals. . . .  Over the past 20 years, the number of Jewish primary school students enrolled at ultra-Orthodox schools has grown from just over seven percent to more than 28 percent.

This trend has great implications for Israeli society and its economy: the Shas system and other ultra-Orthodox schools teach a narrowly religious curriculum that is less geared to providing pupils the skills necessary to compete in a modern economy.

At least they can claim that they're not producing suicide bombers. In the end, though when the state fails to provide a good education or other services, theocrats rush in where the state no longer treads.

(Pictured: Syed Saleem Shahzad with Taliban fighters.)

Some initial impressions on the murder by beating -- torture -- and gunshot of Asia Times Online reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad. Something of a legend in his own time, his access to al Qaeda and Taliban was light years beyond that of any other journalist.

The central irony of his death is that he was even once detained by the Taliban for a week, but in the end it looks like it was Pakistan's largest intelligence apparatus, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence Service) that did him in. Or as Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema, who, as Ron Moreau of the Daily Beast reports, was abducted last September and beaten by individuals he believe were the ISI, said:

But if it's not the ISI then they [the ISI] need to locate the people who did this, because they certainly can.

Moreau adds: 

But the ISI has been in a defensive crouch ever since the discovery of Osama bin Laden living comfortably just down the street from the country's military academy. Pakistani journalists on Shahzad's difficult and dangerous beat fear that the ISI may have made an example of him in order to scare them off of criticizing the directorate. 

I'm sure I speak for many who follow events in Pakistan and Afghanistan when I say this one hurts, as if he were a member of our family. At Pakistan's Dawn, Adnan Rehmat writes:

From the tribal areas in the mountainous northwest to the coastal areas in the sandy southeast, Pakistani journalists have been hounded and killed for reporting the brutalities of a war that has claimed the lives of over 30,000 in Pakistan over the last 10 years. While over 70 have been killed, a staggering 2,000-plus have been injured, arrested or kidnapped. . . . The fact that the killers of not even one Pakistani journalist killed has been found, prosecuted and punished has meant the media has been an easy target.

But . . .

Saleem's death is not ordinary even among the long list of journalists killed in Pakistan in recent years. 

In fact, writes Abbas Nasir, also at Dawn

This wasn't a journalist who'd merely irritated the spooks or someone like that. This was a person who'd be seen as someone who knew too much. His investigative reports on the PNS Mehran attack are not the only example.

What follows may have been among the key words that got Shahzad killed. From one of the reports that Nasir mentions:

Several weeks ago, naval intelligence traced an al-Qaida cell operating inside several navy bases in Karachi. "Islamic sentiments are common in the armed forces," a senior navy official told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Though I followed Shahzad at Asia Times Online, you can find his work archived on his own website (his family and friends are no doubt in such a state of shock that they have yet to update his site with news of his death). Also, Shahzad's new book Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 was just released on May 20 by Pluto Press.

Such was his stature that his death has elicited reactions like these: Though Shahzad didn't work for Dawn, his death prompted its editor to question the wisdom of continuing to put his reporters in harm's way. Second:

Pakistani journalists have been given permission to carry weapons after the killing of [Shahzad. Interior Minister] Rehman Malik told reporters that orders had been approved to permit journalists to carry small arms with them for self-protection.

First, needless to say, Shahzad, should he have consented to carry a handgun, would have been forced to surrender it to talk to militants. Second, a handgun would have been just as much needed as defense against representatives of the ISI -- one handgun against the full force of Pakistan's intelligence apparatus? Besides, as Afzal Butt, the head of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, said in the same article, "It's the responsibility of the government to protect us. . . . We are reporters, not soldiers."

Finally, Abbas Nasir again: 

I am filled with despair, deep, helpless despair. 

It's bad enough that Pakistan couldn't have developed a nuclear-weapons program without the help of the nuclear black market and that its program exists outside the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it never signed. It may now possess even more nuclear weapons than the supposed raison d'être for its nuclear-weapons program -- India. But, in an article for Zurich's ISN (International Relations and Security Network), Yogesh Joshi explains that deterring India from attacking it with nuclear weapons isn't the only reason for Pakistan's build-up.

[It's] clear that nuclear weapons have become Pakistan's chief currency of recognition in a world where international prestige is increasingly being measured in terms of . . . development. After national security via deterrence, prestige is generally accepted as one of the secondary rationales states use to justify developing nuclear weapons.

More to the point, though, Joshi writes

Increasing Pakistan's nuclear capabilities would allow it to make economic . . . gains. In the future, if the agenda for disarmament gains momentum, the larger a state's nuclear inventory, the better its bargaining position.

North Korea is an example of a state that uses the components of its nuclear-weapons program as chips to be bargained for economic aid. As for Pakistan, at the Diplomat, Manpreet Sethi wrote in March that its

. . . ability to use its nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip — for conventional weaponry, for financial support from other Muslim nations, for evading sanctions over nuclear proliferation . . . has been proven time and again. No wonder nuclear weapons are seen as the most important strategic asset of the Pakistani military establishment.

But another reason exists to provide economic aid to a state with an illegal nuclear-weapons program and Pakistan is an all-too-perfect example. Joshi again.

The threat of economic collapse in a state that holds substantial nuclear weapons capabilities could make the international community more likely to come to the [financial] rescue. One of the reasons behind the US' continued financial aid to Pakistan is the necessity of keeping a nuclear armed state functioning as a viable political entity.

In other words, the United States apparently needs to continue providing Pakistan with economic aid, not, at this point, to bargain away its nuclear programs, but just to keep Pakistan politically solvent. When the Soviet Union dissolved and much of its enriched uranium went unprotected, Russia and the other former Soviet states lucked out. Not only were terrorists such as Chechnyan or Islamist extremists, for the most part, asleep at the switch, but the United States, via the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Program, jumped into the void to help secure the former Soviet Union's nuclear weapons and material. Should another country with a nuclear-weapons program become a failed state, don't count on fortune to smile on us again.

You would think that for a state technologically sophisticated enough to develop nuclear weapons, the wherewithal to secure them would be a fait accompli. In fact, the threat to Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program is less about physical security than it's about infiltration of its nuclear security forces by Islamist extremists, despite efforts by the Pakistan military to exclude them from nuclear security.

Faith in the Pakistan military took a serious hit with its lack of awareness and resistance to the U.S. attack on bin Laden's compound. A sample headline read: "Pakistan humiliated by Bin Laden revenge attack." It was further undermined by the May 22 attack on  the Mehran naval base in Karachi by Pakistan's Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban -- the  TTP) that lasted for 17 hours and killed 10 security personnel. According to Pakistan's Dawn, the TTP

. . . knew the location of their targets, both men and material, and displayed utter contempt for the naval personnel through their astonishing speed and firepower. No disrespect is meant for the navy, some of whose men paid the ultimate price in the line of duty, but the incident raises quite a few questions about the state of preparedness of our defence forces in general and the navy in particular.

Humiliation would be the least of Pakistan's worries if the TTP or al Qaeda got ahold of any of its nuclear weapons. Ostensibly because "Pakistan is the only Muslim nuclear-power state," a spokesman for the TTP spokesman claimed that the organization has no plans to attack Pakistan's nuclear-weapons arsenal. Inspiring even less confidence was another spokesman, this one for the U.S. State Department, who said to journalists of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, "I would just say that our understanding is that they're -- they are safeguarded." Our "understanding"? Whatever happened to knowledge gained via intelligence?

While North Korea -- ever the tease -- dangles its nuclear-weapons program before the West, it's arguably less savvy than Pakistan, which leverages funds from the United States without, at the moment anyway, drawing down its nuclear-weapons program as a condition. But when even the most sober of observers, such as NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, entertains doubts about the security of its nuclear program, it's obvious that Pakistan is enjoying fewer of the perks of possessing nuclear weapons than North Korea.

Of course, the United States must also guard against domestic threats to its nuclear-weapons program. What -- from white-power militias? Of course not: obviously, the physical security of the U.S. nuclear-weapons program isn't at risk. Like Pakistan's, however, turns out it might be vulnerable to infiltration by extremists. As George Will remarked to Christiane Amanpour on ABC News's This Week

The threshold question, not usually asked, but it's in everyone's mind in a presidential election. 'Should we give this person nuclear weapons?' And the answer [in Palin's case], answers itself.

We're honored to have Michael Busch dissecting the latest WikiLeaks document dump for Focal Points. This is the fifty-sixth in the series.

It’s hardly a secret that rich Saudi Arabians, including those running the government, have used their considerable oil wealth to spread political and ideological influence throughout the world. One need look no further than the close-knit relationship between the House of Saud and the Bush family to understand Saudi’s powerful reach across the globe. In Muslim countries, though, its presence is more pointed and explicitly ideological. Indeed, following the 9/11 it has become increasingly clear that Saudi money frequently makes its way into the hands of Islamic extremists. 

In an astonishing cable published by the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, however, it would seem that significant sums of Saudi money are fostering religious radicalism in previously moderate regions of Pakistan.

The cable, dating from late 2008, paints an unsettling picture of wealth’s powerful influence in those underdeveloped areas of Central Asia in need of the most attention. Bryan Hunt, then-principal officer at the US consulate in Lahore, reported a string of troubling findings on his forays into southern Punjab, where he “was repeatedly told that a sophisticated jihadi recruitment network had been developed in the Multan, Bahawalpur, and Dera Ghazi Khan Divisions.”

The network reportedly exploited worsening poverty in these areas of the province to recruit children into the divisions’ growing Deobandi and Ahl-e Hadith madrassa network from which they were indoctrinated into jihadi philosophy, deployed to regional training/indoctrination centers, and ultimately sent to terrorist training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Locals believed that charitable activities being carried out by Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith organizations, including Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Al-Khidmat Foundation, and Jaish-e-Mohammad were further strengthening reliance on extremist groups and minimizing the importance of traditionally moderate Sufi religious leaders in these communities.

The cable reports that Hunt’s discussions with civil society, political and religious figures were “dominated” by concerns that “recruitment activities by extremist religious organizations, particularly among young men between the ages of 8 and 15, had increased dramatically over the last year.” The exponential spread of recruitment efforts was chalked up by locals to the efforts of “pseudo-religious organizations” who had appeared suddenly, along with countless other aid organizations, in response to the devastating earthquake that hit Pakistan in 2005.

Hunt noted the widespread belief amongst locals that significant sums of foreign aid donations were

siphoned to Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith clerics in southern and western Punjab in order to expand these sects’ presence in a traditionally hostile, but potentially fruitful, recruiting ground. The initial success of establishing madrassas and mosques in these areas led to subsequent annual “donations” to these same clerics, originating in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

While exact totals of money pouring into these projects were unavailable, the staggering estimates of “most interlocutors” put the total “in the region of $100 million annually.”

The cable describes ways in which recruiters

generally exploit families with multiple children, particularly those facing severe financial difficulties in light of inflation, poor crop yields, and growing unemployment in both urban and rural areas in the southern and western Punjab. Oftentimes, these families are identified and initially approached/assisted by ostensibly “charitable” organizations including Jamaat-ud-Dawa (a front for designated foreign terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Tayyaba), the Al-Khidmat Foundation (linked to religious political party Jamaat-e-Islami), or Jaish-e-Mohammad (a charitable front for the designated foreign terrorist organization of the same name).

If true, the narrative of exploitation by recruiters of the local population is revolting. Locals claim that the

Deobandi or Ahl-e-Hadith maulana will generally be introduced to the family through these organizations. He will work to convince the parents that their poverty is a direct result of their family’s deviation from “the true path of Islam” through “idolatrous” worship at local Sufi shrines and/or with local Sufi Peers. The maulana suggests that the quickest way to return to “favor” would be to devote the lives of one or two of their sons to Islam. The maulana will offer to educate these children at his madrassa and to find them employment in the service of Islam. The concept of “martyrdom” is often discussed and the family is promised that if their sons are “martyred” both the sons and the family will attain “salvation” and the family will obtain God’s favor in this life, as well. An immediate cash payment is finally made to the parents to compensate the family for its “sacrifice” to Islam.

In exchange, families receive upwards of $6,500 per son. While some clerics were reportedly recruiting young girls as well, it is not known how much families receive in exchange for their daughters.

The cable goes on to explain that

the path following recruitment depends upon the age of the child involved. Younger children (between 8 and 12) seem to be favored. These children are sent to a comparatively small, extremist Deobandi or Ahl-e-Hadith madrassa in southern or western Punjab generally several hours from their family home.

While Hunt was unable to ascertain roughly how many of these madrassas were currently in operations, he estimated from his various discussions that it was likely in the neighborhood of a couple hundred. 

These madrassas are generally in isolated areas and are kept small enough (under 100 students) so as not to draw significant attention. At these madrassas, children are denied contact with the outside world and taught sectarian extremism, hatred for non-Muslims, and anti-Western/anti-Pakistan government philosophy. Contact between students and families is forbidden, although the recruiting maulana periodically visits the families with reports full of praise for their sons’ progress.

From there, “graduates” of the madrassas are supposedly either retained as teachers for the next generation of recruits, or are sent to a sort-of postgraduate school for jihadi training. “Teachers at the madrassa appear to make the decision,” of where the students go next, “based on their read of the child’s willingness to engage in violence and acceptance of jihadi culture versus his utility as an effective proponent of Deobandi or Ahl-e-Hadith ideology/recruiter.”

While the number and locations of the madrassas were largely a matter of speculation, most everyone Hunt spoke with agreed that the jihadist camps were easily identifiable.

Locals identified three centers reportedly used for this purpose. The most prominent of these is a large complex that ostensibly has been built at Khitarjee (sp?)…The second complex is a newly built “madrassa” on the outskirts of Bahawalpur…The third complex is an Ahl-e-Hadith site on the outskirts of Dera Ghazi Khan city about which very limited information was available. Locals…claimed that following several months of indoctrination at these centers youth were generally sent on to more established training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and then on to jihad either in FATA, NWFP, or as suicide bombers in settled areas.

Despite the apparently widespread-knowledge of militant activities in the region, the cable clearly registers local dissatisfaction with the government’s inadequate response. “Interlocutors repeatedly chastised the government for its failure to act decisively against indoctrination centers, extremist madrassas, or known prominent leaders.”

Government inaction reflects both Islamabad’s inability and unwillingness to tackle the challenges of rising extremism within its borders, a persistent theme in many of the embassy cables originating in the country. On the one hand, noted a member of the provincial assembly, “direct confrontation was considered ‘too dangerous,’” by the government. On the other, “Federal Minister for Relgious Affairs, and a noted Brailvi/Sufi scholar in his own right, Allama Qasmi blamed government intransigence on a culture that rewarded political deals with religious extremists. He stressed that even if political will could be found, the bureaucracy… repeatedly blocked…efforts to push policy in a different direction.”

Faced with deficits in political will and capacity to fight the corrosive influence of local exploitation by religious radicals, Hunt reports that locals “repeatedly requested USG assistance for the southern and western Punjab, believing that an influx of western funds could counter the influence of Deobandi/Ahl-e-Hadith clerics.” Because Wahhabi extremism is historically alien to the Punjabi heartland, its “increasing prominence was directly attributed” by locals “to poverty and external funding.” Civil society leaders pressed the importance of recognizing “that socio-economic development programs, particularly in education, agriculture, and employment generation, would have a direct, long-term impact in minimizing receptivity to extremist movements.”

Hunt agreed.

“In post’s view short-term,” he concluded, “quick impact programs are required which focus on: (1) immediate relief in the form of food aid and microcredit, (2) cash for work and community-based, quick-impact infrastructure development programs focusing on irrigation systems, schools, and other critical infrastructure, and (3) strategic communication programs designed to educate on the dangers of the terrorist recruiting networks and to support counter-terrorist, counter-extremist messages.

In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s assassination, however, bipartisan calls for cutting aid to Pakistan, not increasing it, reflect the national mood. Just last Tuesday, Senate Armed Services Chair Carl Levin (D-MI) stated publicly that “there is a real problem with continuing financial support with Pakistan” when they fail to tackle head-on groups associated with the Taliban. And thus, the apparent paradox of Pakistani politics. If the United States continues to provide financial aid flows to Islamabad, it will be recognized as acceptance of the untenable status quo allowing militant Islamists to flourish in Pakistan’s northwestern frontier. But if the United States turns the money tap off, it’s clear that Pakistani territory will be increasingly ceded to these same antagonistic elements. 

But then again, perhaps the paradox is not as impossibly puzzling as we’ve been led to believe. As the Center for Global Development’s Nancy Birdsall has recently pointed out, the question does not present a zero-sum game. “US aid to Pakistan is not a reward for good behavior,” she argued recently in favor of the very targeted programs outlined by Hunt. “We have to think about aid as an investment in the future of U.S. security. If you keep in mind the proposed $1.5 billion a year represents less than what we spend in Afghanistan in a week, than you get the point.”