Magnificent Delusions (48 page)

In March 1996 the
New York Times
reported that Bhutto's government was having second thoughts about supporting the Taliban even though Babar continued to support them in public.
³⁰
The ISI had moved its training facilities for Kashmiri Mujahideen into Afghanistan, where anti-American terrorists and Kashmiri Jihadists trained together.
³¹
The US State Department found that Harakat-ul-Ansar, a group active in Kashmir, was composed of “Afghan war veterans from Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan, Egypt, and other countries” and included between six to sixteen Americans.
³²

But the United States went along with Pakistan's insistence on distinguishing Kashmiri freedom fighters from global terrorists. While noting the ties between Harakat and Afghan war veteran Jalaluddin Haqqani, a US official observed that there was no indication that Harakat posed any threat to the United States “at this stage” or that it had “any plans to target the U.S. or any U.S. interests.”
³³

Later, however, the CIA expressed concern over Harakat's “recent increase in its use of terrorist tactics against western targets and civilians and its efforts to reach out to sponsors of international terrorism such as Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qadhafi.” The agency also cautioned that “they might undertake terrorist actions against civilian airliners.”
³⁴
According to the CIA's estimate, the ISI provided “at least $30,000—and possibly as much as $60,000—per month” to Harakat. At the US government's urging, the Bhutto government banned Harakat-ul-Ansar, but within days its leaders resurfaced at the head of a new organization called Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.

As America's interest in India grew, Pakistan's national security apparatus, particularly the ISI, became more hostile and defiant toward Washington. Conspiracy theories flourished. Media outlets closely linked to the ISI blamed even ethnic and sectarian violence in Pakistan on the CIA. In March 1995 two Americans working in the US consulate were killed as they drove from home to work.
³⁵
In an editorial the
Wall Street Journal
blamed the attack on a minority in Pakistan that wanted “to build an isolationist wall against a world that still needs American leadership and friendship.”
³⁶

The decision to sponsor Islamist groups for Jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir made it impossible to prevent the Jihadis from using Pakistan as a base of operations for coordinating Jihad against other countries. Americans learned of at least four thousand militants—including Pakistanis, Indians, Arabs from several countries, and a small number of Americans—being trained by just one Jihadi group in making bombs, throwing hand grenades, and shooting assault weapons. A different militant organization group proudly boasted that its members killed in Tajikistan, the Philippines, Bosnia, and Kashmir. “We'll fight in any part of the world where Muslims are being victimized whether by Hindus, Christians, Jews or communists,” declared the spokesman of yet another group.
³⁷

In response, a Western diplomat in Islamabad said, “The government at the highest levels is sufficiently frightened of these people, but its ability to crack down on them is very limited.”
³⁸
The Philippines government protested during Bhutto's visit to Manila that “Pakistanis were fighting alongside Muslim extremists battling for autonomy” in Mindanao, and Russia alleged that Pakistanis had been among Islamists fighting in Chechnya. Arab governments in Egypt, Algeria, and Jordan also identified their foes among those living in Pakistan since the anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad. But when the issue was raised in government meetings ISI and Interior Ministry officials dismissed the reports as “western propaganda.”

Then, in November 1996, Bhutto was dismissed from office once again and Zardari was put behind bars. Parliamentary elections three months later brought Sharif back as prime minister, this time as head of the Pakistan Muslim League. Now, instead of being seen only as the political successor of Zia, he sought to claim the mantle of Jinnah.

Soon after coming to office for a second time Sharif launched what he described as a campaign to free Pakistan of dependence on the United States and international financial institutions. He asked Pakistanis working overseas to contribute to a fund in hard currency that would enable Pakistan to pay off its foreign debt. “Pakistan must break the begging bowl,” he declared. Once Pakistan was free of debt, Sharif claimed, it could pursue its policies without fear of superpower pressure.

The “improve the nation by paying off its debt” campaign was launched amid great fanfare and patriotic zeal. National television showed women taking off their gold bangles and other jewelry to help Pakistan regain its independence. Parallels were drawn between the debt repayment campaign and the sacrifices of early Muslims who gave up worldly possessions to support Prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century. But in the end the government raised only $178.3 million against a national debt of $35 billion. Sharif learned that appealing to individual patriotism was no substitute for sound economic policies or pragmatic international relations.

Even in the face of this debacle, hard-liners continued to push for minimal ties with the United States and confrontation with India. At the ISI's urging, Pakistan recognized the Taliban regime in Kabul soon after Sharif's election as prime minister in March 1997 as the legal government of Afghanistan and allowed them to open an embassy in Islamabad. A few months earlier, in July 1996, Osama bin Laden had moved to Afghanistan under Taliban protection and was organizing Al-Qaeda as a global network of Islamist terrorists. The United States wanted Pakistan to exercise its influence over the Taliban to seek bin Laden's extradition for several acts of terrorism, especially the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Africa and the 2000 attack on the USS
Cole
.

Over time Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban became a persistent irritant to US-Pakistan diplomacy. Pakistan was the only country with a Taliban embassy, although Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had also recognized their regime. At the United Nations the United States participated in efforts by several nations to isolate and sanction the Taliban. But Pakistan provided oil, subsidized by Saudi Arabia, and wheat to the Taliban.
³⁹
Furthermore, the ISI engaged extensively with the Taliban, facilitating travel of their Jihadi allies from around the world through Pakistani airports.

US officials worried about Pakistan as the transit point for global terrorists. Liberal Pakistanis warned against blowback from Pakistan's continuing Afghan adventure. Taking the cue from Afghanistan, religious extremists in parts of Pakistan pushed for Sharia rule in their regions. As a result, violence spread in various parts of the country, especially in the port city of Karachi. When a Pakistani was convicted
in a US court for terrorist killings outside CIA headquarters, in Karachi four Americans working for the Union Texas Oil Company were shot to death in retaliation.
⁴⁰

In March 1998 the US embassy's deputy chief of mission, Alan Eastham, met with senior Pakistani diplomat Iftikhar Murshed to express concern over Osama bin Laden's fatwā declaring war on the United States. Among the fatwā's signatories was Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a leader of Harakat-ul-Ansar, which had close ties to the ISI. Murshed insisted that although Pakistan provided support to the Taliban, it had little if any control over their actions. “If Pakistan held up wheat consignments to the Taliban,” said the Pakistani diplomat, “the Taliban would say ‘what the hell! We can smuggle enough wheat into Afghanistan to feed ourselves'.”
⁴¹

Murshed was effectively saying that Pakistan was no longer in control of its border with Afghanistan. In reality, however, it had made a conscious decision to keep the border open. Although the Durand Line ran through 1,640 miles of difficult mountainous terrain, there were only forty or so points where heavy vehicles could cross over. If Pakistan wanted to get serious, it could monitor these major routes, thereby making large-scale movement of arms, oil, or foodstuff impossible.

The Pakistani military had openly embraced the concept of “Strategic Depth,” the notion that Pakistan's security against India lay in virtual control over Afghanistan. The Taliban could be obscurantist supporters of global terrorism who posed a threat to Pakistan, but as long as they refused an Indian presence, they helped assure Pakistan's national security. The United States, however, did not agree with Pakistan's reasons or actions in relation to Afghanistan; but Washington was not willing to apply more direct pressure on Pakistan to effectively blockade the Taliban.

In April 1998 Pakistan tested its nuclear-capable Ghauri missile. In response, the United States mulled over sanctions under US laws relating to proliferation of missile technology. Acquisition of the missile and related equipment and technology from foreign sources would trigger the sanctions.
⁴²
Once again Pakistan was offered insufficient carrots and no sticks to induce it to cap its nuclear program.

An offer of thirty-eight F-16 fighter bombers that had been withheld in the past convinced Pakistani officials that they, not the Americans, held the stronger cards in the game. “If great quantities of arms did not dissuade Pakistan from developing nuclear arms despite its assurance that it would refrain,” asked Harvard academic Nathan Glazer writing in the
New York Times
, “why would anyone believe that lesser quantities—delivered when we have less leverage over all—would have a different effect?”
⁴³

The nuclear issue took an entirely different turn when India tested its nuclear weapons on May 11 and 13, 1998, thereby declaring itself a nuclear power. Pakistani public opinion overwhelmingly favored Pakistan conducting its own tests.
⁴⁴
Clinton then made an attempt to forestall Pakistan's tests by promising “economic, political and security benefits” if Pakistan showed restraint.
⁴⁵
He telephoned and offered “planes, huge amounts of financial aid, and a prize certain to appeal to Sharif—an invitation for him to make an official visit to Washington.”

But, as Talbott later noted, the lure of money, praise, and gratitude from around the world was far less powerful than Pakistan's fear of India, having been instilled in Pakistanis for five decades. India had “ratcheted up its fifty-year-old campaign to humiliate, intimidate, and perhaps even eradicate” Pakistan, Talbott observed. It would have been impossible for any Pakistani leader to refuse to test at this point.
⁴⁶
Sharif could not pass up the chance to become a national hero. Nuclear weapons would bring Pakistan—and Sharif—enormous prestige, as Pakistani public opinion overwhelmingly supported the tests.

On May 13 the State Department informed the White House that Pakistan was ready to conduct its own tests. “Islamabad which has accused Washington of ‘complicity' in allowing the Indian nuclear tests is increasingly less likely to heed US calls for restraint,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told National Security Adviser Sandy Berger.
⁴⁷
No one in United States even considered the alternative of talking to both India and Pakistan and welcoming them in the nuclear club.

Pakistanis also lacked imagination. They did not link their tests with an offer to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)
and to act more responsibly as a nation by shutting down terrorism; instead in their meetings with the Americans, Pakistani officials railed against India. When Talbott traveled to Islamabad with the US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander, General Anthony Zinni, he found his meetings “a bracing experience.” According to Talbott, Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub (son of Ayub Khan, the military dictator) “fidgeted” during his opening courtesies and then “unleashed a broadside that went on for nearly half an hour.”

Pakistan was on the verge of becoming a declared nuclear weapons power, but its leaders were demonstrating that they were only a frenzied mob. Ayub gave Talbott “a history lesson featuring the perfidy of India going back to 1947.” He called India a “habitual aggressor and hegemon” and described the United States as “a fair-weather friend.” When Talbott spoke, Ayub and Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad “rolled their eyes, mumbled imprecations under their breath, and constantly interrupted.”
⁴⁸

Ayub accused the Clinton administration of being “more enamored than ever” with India and told the Americans that “you don't understand the Indian psyche.” When Talbott tried to speak, Ahmad cut him off and said that “the NPT was dead. So was the CTBT. Those treaties had been sick before—now India had ‘murdered' them.” Ayub, therefore, rejected the offer of carrots. “Those rotting and virtually obsolete airplanes,” he said, were “shoddy rugs you've tried to sell us before.” The Pakistani people, he added, “would mock us if we accepted your offer. They will take to the streets in protest.” Talbott calmly replied that Pakistanis were more likely to protest if they didn't have jobs.

“Mark my words,” said Gohar Ayub, his lips pursed and his fists clenched, “now that India has barged its way into becoming the world's sixth nuclear power, it will not stop there. It will force itself into permanent membership of the UN Security Council.” The Pakistani officials said that the international outrage over Indian nuclear tests would soon subside, implying that they expected Pakistan to be quickly forgiven as well, after its tests.