Magnificent Delusions (45 page)

Chapter Six

Denial and Double Game

O
n May 14, 1992, I received a phone call from a diplomat serving at the US embassy in Islamabad. He was requesting an urgent meeting at my office in the prime minister's secretariat. US Ambassador Nicholas Platt had met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif earlier in the day and delivered an important letter from Secretary of State James Baker. “Sharif did not read the letter in the ambassador's presence and seemed uninterested in its contents,” said the caller.

He wanted to brief me on the letter's contents in my capacity as special assistant to the prime minister. I would then be able to draw attention to the US message so that it was fully understood within the Pakistani government.

Within an hour of the telephone conversation the diplomat arrived with copies of Baker's letter to Sharif and a summary of Platt's conversation with Sharif. The George H.W. Bush administration had been conveying their concerns about Pakistan's support for terrorism in Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir. Baker was now threatening that unless that support discontinued, the United States might declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism.

“We have information indicating that ISI and others intend to continue to provide material support to groups that have engaged in terrorism,” read the letter dated May 10. “I must take that information very seriously,” Baker noted but discounted Pakistani claims that support for the Kashmiri militants came from private groups
and Islamist parties and not from the government or its agencies. He appreciated Sharif's earlier promises that “Pakistan will take steps to distance itself from terrorist activities against India.”

According to Baker, US law required applying “an onerous package of sanctions” against “states found to be supporting acts of international terrorism and I have the responsibility of carrying out that legislation.”
¹
When he delivered the letter, Platt made it clear that the United States did not believe official Pakistani claims that the Islamists were acting on their own. His talking points, handed to the prime minister in writing for effect, said that the United States was “very confident” of its information. “Your intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, and elements of the Army, are supporting Kashmiri and Sikh militants who carry out acts of terrorism,” Platt affirmed. This support, he continued, comprised “providing weapons, training, and assistance in infiltration.” To remove all ambiguity, he insisted that “We're talking about direct, covert Government of Pakistan support.”

Platt went through a list of earlier Pakistani explanations and clarified that none of them applied. “This is not a case of Pakistani political parties, such as Jamaat-e-Islami, doing something independently but of organs of the Pakistani government controlled by the President, the Prime Minister and the Chief of Army Staff.” He anticipated the assertion that the United States' information may have come from the Indians and said that it was based exclusively on US intelligence and not on Indian sources. “Please consider the serious consequences to our relationship if this support continues,” the ambassador had pleaded, apparently to an uninterested Pakistani prime minister. The US did not want to take such a drastic step as to place Pakistan on the American government's state sponsors of terrorism list but could not ignore the requirements of the law. “You must take concrete steps,” Platt exhorted Sharif, “to curtail assistance to militants and not allow their training camps to operate in Pakistan” or in Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir.
²

The scope of sanctions Pakistan would face as a state sponsor of terrorism was far wider than the ones that had been imposed over its nuclear program. US law forbade the slightest indirect assistance
to terrorist states. This meant shutting down funding from the IMF, the World Bank, and other international financial institutions as well as barriers to bilateral trade. Being designated as a state sponsor of terrorism would also have meant the end of export-import bank financing for projects in Pakistan.

After being briefed about the US warning, I went to Sharif and explained that he should not take it lightly. He retrieved Baker's letter, still unopened, from his drawer and asked me to coordinate a meeting of senior officials from his secretariat, the foreign office, and the armed forces. The original letter was immediately passed on to the foreign secretary, Shehryar Khan, who arranged for all concerned to assemble at the prime minister's house a few days later.

Sharif opened the meeting by asking me to read the letter out loud and to summarize its implications. Everyone, including the army chief, General Asif Nawaz, listened carefully. No one spoke while Sharif gave instructions to his staff regarding snacks he wanted served to all of us—Sharif often asked for specific food items during meetings, as if it helped him concentrate his mind. As plates of food were passed around, he asked if anyone had comments or suggestions. The ISI director-general, Lieutenant General Javed Nasir, was the first to speak.

Nasir, a tall man with a flowing beard, often flaunted his religious piety. He began by blaming the “Indo-Zionist lobby” in Washington for America's changed attitude toward Pakistan. Platt, he said, was a Jew and could not be trusted. He insisted that Pakistan demand evidence from the United States of its allegations. I gently pointed out that Platt came from a well-known New York Protestant family. Undeterred, Nasir continued with his argument that the Jihad in Kashmir was at a critical stage and could not be disrupted. “We have been covering our tracks so far and will cover them even better in the future,” Nasir said, “These are empty threats.” The United States could not declare Pakistan a terrorist state because of “our strategic importance.” The Saudis and Pakistan were America's only allies in the greater Middle East, he averred, so the United States needed Pakistan to deal with the changing situation in Muslim Central Asia after the Soviet Union collapsed. “All we need to do is to buy more time and
improve our diplomatic effort,” Nasir emphasized. “The focus should be on Indian atrocities in Kashmir, not on our support for the Kashmiri resistance.”
³

Sharif agreed with Nasir's assessment, which reflected the consensus of the meeting. Shehryar and I were the only ones who argued that Pakistan needed to reconsider Pakistani support for Kashmiri militants. It would undermine Pakistani diplomacy, get Pakistan labeled a terrorism sponsor, and was unlikely to result in a settlement of the Kashmir dispute. Shehryar said that Pakistan would “probably be more successful by focusing on diplomacy and political action” in favor of the Kashmiris instead of “setting off bombs.” Nasir's response was that “the Hindus do not understand any language other than force.”

Nasir and others dismissed these concerns and focused on the need for “better management of relations with the U.S.” Sharif said that as long as Pakistan could be useful to the United States, the United States would remain favorably disposed toward Pakistan. The subsequent discussion shed some light on the views of various participants and institutions about dealing with the United States.

The ISI chief said the CIA needed the ISI. According to him the US intelligence community did not want to disrupt the relationship built during the Afghan Jihad. “We know how to take care of the CIA,” he said, adding, “We know what they need and we give it to them in bits and pieces to keep them happy.” Sharif said that it was important to talk to Americans nicely while “doing whatever you have to.” There were always enough disagreements among American policy makers that “anyone can find someone who supports them,” he contended.

According to Sharif, Pakistan could deal with allegations of sponsoring terrorism by reaching out to the American media and Congress. He would allocate $2 million “as the first step” for that purpose and announced at the meeting that I would be in charge of this expanded lobbying effort. He did not allow me to speak, and I had to wait until the next day to turn down the assignment.

The final word came from the army chief. Nawaz said that it was not in Pakistan's interest to get into a confrontation with the United
States, but “We cannot shut down military operations against India either.” The army chief suggested that Pakistan get off the hook with the United States by making some changes in its pattern of support for Kashmiri militancy without shutting down the entire clandestine operation—and that is precisely the policy Pakistan adopted over the next few years.

The following day I informed the prime minister's principal secretary that the response to the American demarche alarmed me and that I wanted to resign. Sharif came back with the suggestion that instead of resigning and, thus, creating a negative political story, I should go as Pakistan's ambassador to Sri Lanka. This provided a decent interval for both of us without causing embarrassment or speculation. By the time I returned from Sri Lanka in May 1993, General Nawaz had died from a heart attack and Sharif was on the verge of being removed from office in a palace coup.

On November 1992 Americans had elected Bill Clinton as their new president. The new US administration did not follow up on its predecessor's threat of declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. Then, the election of a new government in Pakistan after Sharif's removal from office further wiped the slate clean. Pakistan's clandestine support for Kashmiri militants increased, and within a couple of years the ISI helped create and bring to power the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Within the Pakistani government the ISI's belief was reinforced that Pakistan did not need to fear crippling sanctions from the United States, even after intimidating warnings. Now, in addition to having nuclear weapons, Pakistan was home to groups that Americans considered terrorists.

A
LTHOUGH THE DEATH
of General Zia-ul-Haq in August 1988 changed Pakistan's politics, the army and ISI made sure that the country's policies remained the same. Instead of imposing martial law, the new army chief, General Aslam Beg, allowed the civilian chairman of the Senate, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, to ascend to the presidency
as provided in the constitution. As a career civil servant, Ishaq had served in senior positions with all of Pakistan's military rulers and was especially close to Zia. The army trusted him to carry on with Pakistan's secret nuclear program in addition to promoting Islamist rule in Afghanistan and confrontation with India.

Ishaq and Beg scheduled parliamentary elections for November, knowing that these would most likely be won by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), led by Benazir Bhutto. After executing Bhutto's father, Zia had violently repressed the party. For eleven years Pakistan's soldiers had been told to view the party as “the enemy.” Because of this, Beg viewed the thirty-five-year-old Benazir as eager to reduce the army's influence, develop ties with India, and end the war in Afghanistan without insisting on installing there a government of Pakistan's choice.

Beg also considered Bhutto too close to the Americans for comfort. Like all Pakistanis, she was unlikely to bring Pakistan's nuclear program to an end. But Beg thought she might accept international inspections that could preempt his own plans for leveraging nuclear capability.

Beg had told me while Zia was alive that “Pakistan needs to show its spine” to the United States. He believed that a nuclear Pakistan could tie up with Iran and China in order to create a third pole in a multipolar world.

The head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, shared Beg's vision of Pakistan as a major power and his paranoia about American influence. He had grand designs for projecting Pakistan's power into Afghanistan and onward into Central Asia as well as for breaking up India after liberating Kashmir. According to Gul, the ISI could wage covert wars throughout the region and change Pakistan's fortunes. He shared these views openly with Pakistanis and created a massive network of local politicians and journalists to build national consensus around these beliefs.

Gul's dream had one fatal weakness, however. Pakistan's Afghan operation had benefited from vast inputs of American and Saudi money. The United States would not likely continue funding the ISI in projects that did not advance American interests. But like all
dreamers, Gul was undeterred. Instead of realizing that a great power cannot be built through other nations' money, he determined that his grandiose plans could be implemented if the ISI controlled an elected civilian government. Elected civilians would somehow raise the money for the ISI to spend on its inflated covert operations.