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Pakistan Was a Bad Idea

By Patrick L. Lang on November 5, 2007 at 9:17 PM in Pakistan

By Patrick L. Lang (Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2007)

Yahoo News: “Let’s not be delusional about the U.S. government’s influence. This is a huge, complex country, and most everything is going to happen outside of our play,” said Rick Barton, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But we can be a leader here.”

By putting military rule ahead of the rights of his people, Musharraf has presented Bush with a test of sincerity of his freedom agenda, Barton said.

“Let’s just accept that Musharraf’s probably going to go down,” he said. “Let’s just do the right thing, and be seen by the Pakistanis as holding true to our own values and principles. Musharraf has clearly moved from being a force of moderation to being somebody who’s more of a self-serving leader.”

Another hopeful scenario in the U.S. view is that Pakistan’s emergency states ends fast — a setback, but not a devastating one. Democracy is still the path that Pakistanis want, Johndroe said. “This is a slight detour,” he said. “But I think they will get back on it. And we will strongly encourage them to do so.”

Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear security expert and senior fellow for the liberal Center for American Progress, said there are few good American policy options in Pakistan. He said Pakistan is the world’s most dangerous country — an unstable place of strong Islamic fundamentalist influences and a nuclear arsenal.

“If the government falls, if the Army splits, who gets the weapons?” Cirincione said. “Who gets the material for the weapons? Who gets the scientists who know how to build the weapons? Pakistan could go overnight from a major non-NATO ally to our worst nuclear nightmare.” BEN FELLER

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Pakistan was always a bad idea. It is an artificial state created out of the flanks of the equally artificial British Indian empire, a state summoned into being on the basis of Muslim aversion to a shared existence with the Hindu kuffar. British weariness and exhaustion after the trauma and bleeding of the two world wars set the stage for the creation of a country based on an IDEAL of religious communal exclusivity. The place once had two halves but revolt in East Pakistan (Bangla Desh) severed that relationship long ago and left the remnant of Pakistan to simmer in a broth of communal hatred directed toward India, a country which still has a huge Muslim population, a functioning democracy (no military governments there) and an economy that is one of the world’s marvels.

Pakistan is prone to religious fanaticism, tribal unrest and the rule of warriors? What a surprise! This is the traditional pattern of government throughout the Islamic World. There are places where this pattern does not exist; Jordan, Morocco. the UAE, Oman and a few more. The crowd will roar but I would include Egypt in this group. Strong, traditional rulers who govern with a modicum of common sense are the pattern in such places. Do we applaud their methods in such states? No! We Westerners typically seek to undermine them because they are not what we think they should be. What is that? Exactly like us, that is what we think they should be. For all our talk about the “blossoming” of freedom in locally acceptable forms, we Americans (and a lot of others) do not believe in that for a minute. We want people to be exactly like us.

In places like Pakistan where the veneer of Tom Friedman’s flat world is mighty thin, meddling in the local social order carries a high risk of de-stabilizing society and releasing forces that we have no ability to manage.

Our pressure for “Democracy” in Pakistan has been incompatible with our willingness to engage an already Islamist state like Pakistan as an ally. We have wrecked the status quo in Pakistan. Now we will all pay a price. pl

  • Thinker

    I cannot add anything to this, Larry other than saying that if Lang is a oracle, I think the ‘planners’ would have seen it coming long ago. Therefore, if one of the plausible outcomes might have been an Islamic leadership with an itchy nuclear trigger finger, why have events unfolded in the way they have?

    Just a question. No answers right now. Perhaps I should wait for those that join the dots better than me ;)

  • PrchrLady

    Thank you Col once again for your input and analysis. I have learned a great deal from your writings. How, in the middle of all of this can a postive solution be found? With the current state of our intelligence losses in the ME after the treasonous outing of Valerie Plame, how or what CAN be done, and how do we go about getting the powers that be to listen and act. I pray that you continue to speak out. Even when it seems to be just crying in the wilderness. Thank you, Marlene

  • Montag

    The same thing happened when Hamas unexpectedly won the Palestinian Elections. This was the first time Hamas had run in the elections which was a major concession by them. And they were clearly the choice of the Palestinian People over the corrupt, quisling Fatah. Yet the U.S. refused to engage with them unless they accomplished 6 impossible things before breakfast. The U.S. acted like a spoiled child who didn’t get the overly expensive Christmas present he had demanded, and so tried to smash what he’d been given in frustration–even though it was clearly more useful than what he’d wanted.

  • Pingback: Pakistan Was a Bad Idea « Rochester Liberal

  • http://thumbsnap.com/v/78mn2yFc.jpg 1Watt

    The Bush Legacy: 1984+Catch 22+Duck Soup.

  • http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

    If I may, I’d like to encourage all of you to add a new viewing habit … it’s on one hour before Keith Olbermann’s program — at 4PM PT — and it is on BBC America.

    BBC World News America

    This is a new newshour, offered for American audiences, produced by BBC World News. It began on October 1. Today’s hour included at least 15-20 minutes on the crisis in Pakistan, and a lot of footage I’ve not seen on any American cable news. There were far more interviews of various Pakistani officials, and tough but fair questioning.

    It also includes a great deal of world news from countries and regions about which we Americans ever hear very little.

    Since it is for American consumption, it also includes American news stories, which are done more thoughtfully and objectively than one can say about most U.S. television news.

    There’s a current series on how families live around the world. Today’s story was about a family in China whose father only sees his wife and children once or twice a year because he works off in Shanghai as a laborer, earning $250/month so that his children can get an education and not have to be a laborer all their lives as he has to be. His wife runs the little farm six hours away in the countryside. Future family stories will feature a family in a desert region of Jordan and a family in the Midwest of the U.S.

    • Shirin

      While we are encouraging viewing habits, for those who have satellite TV, may I recommend Link TV in general (sorry, I don’t remember channel numbers), and specifically the program Mosaic, which is on a few times a day. This program features news from a variety of Arabic channels, which is shown as it came to the viewers, and translated into English. This provides Americans with a small window into what Arabic-speaking viewers are seeing and hearing from their various media across the Arab world.

      It really is too bad that it is almost impossible to receive Al Jazeera English in the United States (what are they afraid of?). Although it is completely different from the Arabic channel, it would definitely be worthwhile as an information source.

      • Cee

        Israel is going to carry al-Jazeera in place of CNN yet we still can’t get it in the US!!

        I don’t have satellite TV any longer but I can watch Mosaic on Link TV here

        http://www.linktv.org/mosaic/streamsArchive/

  • Mr.Murder

    “All You Need to Know About Pakistan
    http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/

    “It was Benazier Bhutto’s goverment that unleashed the Taliban, backed by the Pakistan army commando units, in an attempt to take Kabul. The United States, fearful of Iranian influence in the region, had backed the decision.”

    “One of the most virulent of the [Islamic] groups is a creation of the ISI. Its political wing, Ahle-Hadis, wants the Saudi mode implanted in Pakistan, but without the monarchy…The armed wing, Lashkar-i-Tayyaba could not exist without the patronage of the army.”

    “Many people in Pakistan had assumed that Musharraf would disarm the Islamists and restore a semblance of law and order in the cities. [However] if, as is widely agreed, between 25 and 30 percent of the army are Islamists, its reluctance to act against the jihadis is understandable: it is nervous of provoking a civil war. Musharraf has a serious problem.”

    From The Clash of Fundamentalisms, Tariq Ali, Verso, London, 2002.

    posted by Nur-al-Cubicle”

    Interesting perspective. We basically used them to embolden a buffer state. Emerging from the spine of our little regional monster, made to outmonster Iran and Russia nearby…
    we helped to develop the infrastructure bones that would flesh out a hard line coup.

    Now that coup is reaping its own Karma.

    Which hard line element takes over?
    The same one protecting AQ Khan.

    • Shirin

      I have a lot of respect for Nur Al Cubicle’s judgment, and Tariq `Ali is difficult to refute, particularly when it comes to matters Pakistani.

    • Cee

      When I saw photos of the people arrested by Musharaff I thought of the photo of Dr. Al-Zawahari in an Egyptian prison.
      History is repeating itself and we’re making the same mistakes.
      We need to give up the idea that we’re going to “lead” Muslims anywhere ever again.
      We better learn how to negotiate with them and co-exist with who they chose to lead themselves.
      Btw, I don’t trust daughter Bhutto either. Are we supposed to forget that she was run out of the country with millions of dollars?
      Someone called her a Kleptocrat in Hermes.

  • Bill Keyes

    “In places like Pakistan where the veneer of Tom Friedman’s flat world is mighty thin, meddling in the local social order carries a high risk of de-stabilizing society and releasing forces that we have no ability to manage.”

    I believe the above quote is one of the truest statements I have read recently.

    If you change it like this….

    “In places like ____ where the veneer of Tom Friedman’s flat world is mighty thin, meddling in the local social order carries a high risk of de-stabilizing society and releasing forces that we have no ability to manage.”

    Just fill in the blank of any nation you choose and you will always get the same results.

    Unfortunately Empire builders throughout history never learned this lesson and so history which always repeats it self continues on,,,same old death and destruction, just a new empire.

  • GSD

    The fruits of the neo-con Muddled East foreign policy are finally ripening.

    The entire region is engulfed by turmoil that I can’t recall in my lifetime.

    It will only take a small spark to light this lake of fire.

    Then we’ll see the rapid succession of actions that are recoiled and waiting to spring into action.

    Heckuva job. Heckuva job.

    -GSD

  • mudkitty

    When you believe government is the problem, you set out to prove it.

  • http://www.computerproblemssolvedcheap.com Richard Steven Hack

    Even if Musharraf manages to defuse the current crisis by restoring civilian government – which is extremely unlikely – the cat is out of the bag. The Islamists are moving outside their traditional territory elsewhere into Pakistani society. Sooner or later, the country will fall into civil war between the Islamists – who are generally supported – or at least not considered bad – by either an equal or larger segment of the population – or it will fall completely into Islamist hands.

    Whenever a country ends up in a conflict between two extremist elements, one of them will win – and the middle of the road population will be stuck with the winner.

    This can all be directly laid at the feet of George Bush. It was a mistake to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan – who were irrelevant to the task of getting bin Laden or dealing with Al Qaeda. What that accomplished was to drive the Taliban into Pakistan where they were then able to radicalize and gain influence over the local tribes.

    This led to conflict with the government. This led to Musharraf being forced to try to retain his power. This led to conflict with the democratic forces in Pakistan. This led to the US attempting to restore Bhutto to put a democratic face on the dictatorship. This, of course, threatened Musharraf’s hold on power even more – which led to this latest coup.

    And that in turn will destabilize the situation even more.

    Meanwhile, nothing is being done – and it is not sure whether anything can be done – about the Islamists. As someone pointed out, the US has no policy about “Islamism”, as opposed to “Jihadism”, so the US has no means of reacting to the rise of Islamism in strategic countries.

    I predict that Pakistan’s central government will either collapse into civil war or be taken over by Islamists within the next two to five years.

    • Thinker

      Thanks Richard. Sane commentary even if not the best news.

  • mudkitty

    Aw come on folks, Packistan’s “government” collapses on a regular basis. This is nothing new. It’s just that cable news likes to think their on-it this time.