Magnificent Delusions (51 page)

As one of the conditions of his visit, Clinton had insisted that he be allowed to make a televised address to the people of Pakistan. In that speech he tried to rebut the Pakistani narrative of America's relationship with their country. Clinton appealed to the Pakistani people to turn away from terror and nuclear weapons and turn toward a dialogue with India on Kashmir, to embrace the test ban treaty, and to invest in education, health, and development rather than arms.

Clinton described himself “as a friend of Pakistan and the Muslim world,” quoted Jinnah, and spoke of the “real obstacles” that were “holding Pakistan back from achieving its full potential.” He asked
difficult questions, such as: “Are you really more secure today than you were before you tested nuclear weapons? Will these weapons make war with India less likely or simply more deadly? Will a costly arms race help you to achieve any economic development? Will it bring you closer to your friends around the world, closer to the partnerships you need to build your dreams?”

He said he understood Pakistani concerns about Kashmir but highlighted the “stark truth” that “there is no military solution to Kashmir.” Clinton posed other questions to Pakistanis: “Will endless, costly struggle build good schools for your children? Will it make your cities safer? Will it bring clean water and better health care? Will it narrow the gaps between those who have and those who have nothing? Will it hasten the day when Pakistan's energy and wealth are invested in building its future?”

The speech was an attempt to deprive Pakistani leaders and diplomats of their constant argument that public opinion restrained them. Clinton was demonstrating that putting forward different arguments can change public opinion. He warned of the danger that Pakistan may grow even more isolated. He laid out an alternative vision for Pakistan “rooted in tomorrow's promise, not yesterday's pain, rooted in dialog, not destruction.” Then he concluded by saying, “If you choose that future, the United States will walk with you. I hope you will make that choice.”
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In their private meeting Musharraf stuck to the traditional Pakistani script, nor did the Pakistani media follow Clinton's public appeal with similar messages aimed at altering the Pakistani narrative. As soon as Clinton left the country, Pakistan's media reverted to its usual pattern. The United States was accused of siding with India, ignoring the just Kashmir cause, and acting as an imperial power. Moreover, Pakistani officials continued to flatly deny allegations of Pakistani support for the Taliban and the Kashmiri Mujahideen.

Clinton did succeed, however, in saving Sharif's life. Under a deal guaranteed by Saudi Arabia, Musharraf allowed the former prime minister to move to the kingdom with his family. Sharif promised to stay out of Pakistani politics for ten years in return for a full pardon in the cases that had been initiated against him.

In September 2000 the State Department noted an increase in direct Pakistani involvement in Taliban military operations. “While Pakistani support for the Taliban has been long-standing,” said a cable from Washington sharing intelligence with the US embassy in Islamabad, “the magnitude of recent support is unprecedented.” Pakistan was apparently providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance, and military advisers. Large numbers of Pakistani nationals had moved into Afghanistan “to fight for the Taliban,” ostensibly with the tacit acquiescence of the Pakistani government.
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Secretary of State Madeleine Albright advised the US ambassador to Pakistan to remind the Pakistanis that “We will not accept a Taliban victory and do not believe others will either.” She was still appealing to reason, not realizing that passion dictated decisions in Islamabad. Albright pointed out that Taliban victory would bring not peace and stability but rather further unrest. The only mildly threatening remark she made referred to “further measures in the Security Council” that would “not serve Pakistan's interest.”
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Under-Secretary of State Thomas Pickering followed up on Albright's warning. He told a Pakistani official in November of US disappointment with Pakistan's failure to help with capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. He warned of an arms embargo on the Taliban and asked for Pakistan's help. The United States, he said, “would always act to protect U.S. interests at a time and place of its own choice.”
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Pakistan's generals had heard threats before, however, and this was not particularly menacing. In any case, the United States was mired in controversy over its presidential election, and, as in the past, Pakistan's leaders were willing to take their chances with the new administration.

I
SLAMABAD WELCOMED
the inauguration of George W. Bush as president of the United States. After all, during his campaign, Bush had spoken little about South Asia. Although in one speech he spoke of “the arrival of India, the world's largest democracy, as a power of
global significance,”
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on other occasions he had expressed confidence that military rule might stabilize Pakistan. From Musharraf's point of view that was a positive sign.

The incoming national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, believed that the United States needed Pakistan's cooperation in order to succeed in replacing the Taliban with a broad-based government in Afghanistan. But like the Clinton administration, the Bush team just did not know how to get Pakistan to shift from supporting the Taliban. Afghan-born academic Zalmay Khalilzad, who had dealt with Pakistan during the Reagan administration, was brought in to lead that effort.
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Vice President Dick Cheney worried about Musharraf's tenuous hold on power.
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Others were also concerned about Islamist radicals seizing power in Pakistan and gaining access to its nuclear arsenal.

There was clearly a huge gap in the Bush administration's knowledge about Pakistan. Rice was surprised when Russian President Vladimir Putin brought up the subject of Pakistan during his meeting with Bush at the G-8 Summit meeting in Genoa in July 2001. “He excoriated the Pervez Musharraf regime for its support of extremists and for the connections of the Pakistani army and intelligence services to the Taliban and al Qaeda,” she wrote in her memoir. Putin said that the extremists “were all being funded by Saudi Arabia” and that it was only a matter of time until it resulted in a major catastrophe.

“We, of course, knew of the connections between Pakistan and the Taliban and had been hammering Islamabad,” observed Rice. “But I was taken aback by Putin's alarm and vehemence and chalked it up to Russian bitterness toward Pakistan for supporting the Afghan Mujahideen, who had defeated the Soviet Union in the 1980s.” Only later did Rice realize that Putin was right. “Pakistan's relationship with the extremists would become one of our gravest problems,” she noted. “Putin never let us forget it, recalling that conversation time and time again.”
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Pakistani officials lied with impunity to visiting US officials. On August 30 Foreign Office officials in Islamabad told a team of congressional staffers that Pakistan did not support the Taliban; it only
interacted with them. They denied that “the ISI or any part of the government,” armed or otherwise, assisted the Taliban militarily. Pakistan was “a conscientious member of the U.N.,” committed to support the UN sanctions against the Taliban, they claimed.

The Pakistani officials said they found “many Taliban policies against women personally distasteful” but insisted that they reflected “more a medieval Afghan mentality prevalent in Afghan society than mainstream Islam.” The officials advised that the United States engage with the Taliban, with one Pakistani diplomat stating, “Change comes slowly. Doing business with people promotes change; corrupt the Taliban with aid and a reborn economy,” he suggested.
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The Bush administration's ambivalence toward Pakistan ended on September 11, 2001, with the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Pentagon and on New York's World Trade Center, in which more than three thousand people were killed. The United States reacted strongly against what most onlookers saw as an act of war on US homeland. American intelligence immediately identified the terrorists who had hijacked the planes before ramming them into symbols of American power. Given Al-Qaeda's involvement, US military action against Afghanistan was inevitable.

The head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed, was in Washington at the time. He was summoned to the State Department the next morning for a short meeting with Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, who delivered a terse message: “Pakistan must either stand with the U.S. in its fight against terrorism or stand against us. There was no maneuvering room.” Armitage said that “the right choice by Pakistan” could lead to lifting of sanctions and a positive relationship with the United States. Mahmud assured him of Pakistan's “unqualified support” and said that he spoke on Musharraf's behalf.
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Two days after the 9/11 attacks, Wendy Chamberlin presented her credentials to Musharraf as the new US ambassador to Pakistan. In a forty-minute meeting following the presentation of credentials, Musharraf told the ambassador that Pakistan was “with you in an action plan for Afghanistan.” He emphasized repeatedly that Pakistan “had been a frontline state in the past and would be a frontline state
again.” Chamberlin said bluntly that the September 11 attacks had changed the fundamentals of the debate. Pakistan needed to “act with the US—not to urge dialog but to act.” Musharraf declared that “we are together in this.”
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Musharraf later received a phone call from Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to Musharraf's account of Mahmud's conversation with Armitage and his own with Powell, the two US officials had threatened Pakistan. The Pakistani dictator understood their message as: “we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age” if they did not comply with American demands. He wrote later that he “war-gamed the United States as an adversary” and decided to switch alliance from the Taliban to the United States.
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The list of nonnegotiable demands that Powell presented to Musharraf included unequivocal condemnation of the 9/11 attacks, denying Al-Qaeda safe haven in Pakistan, sharing intelligence, granting over-flight rights, and breaking diplomatic relations with the Taliban.
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There were also several specific requests for logistical support. Although Musharraf had agreed to submit to the US demands, the ISI was not willing to give up on its decades-long investment in Afghanistan. There was considerable debate within the Pakistan military about the extent to which Pakistan should support the United States.

Musharraf announced his decision in an address to the Pakistani people. He alluded to the US threat and suggested that India would benefit if Pakistan did not cooperate with the Americans. “Our critical concerns, our important concerns can come under threat,” he said. “When I say critical concerns, I mean our strategic assets and the cause of Kashmir. If these come under threat it would be a worse situation for us.”
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He was implying that he was making a sacrifice on the Afghan front so that the Kashmir front could remain alive. The obligatory anti-American demonstrations and media hype soon followed the speech. Although the Americans thought they had won Musharraf over, Musharraf had made a tactical choice, not a strategic one.

Mahmud made two trips to Kandahar to meet Taliban leader Mullah Omar. He told Chamberlin that Omar wanted to pursue “a negotiated solution” and advised the Americans “not to act in anger,”
saying that “real victory will come in negotiations.” According to the ISI chief, America's strategic objectives of getting Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda would best be accomplished by coercing the Taliban to do it themselves. “If the Taliban are eliminated,” he said, “Afghanistan will revert to warlordism.”
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The ISI did not want the Taliban defeated militarily. Mahmud said he wanted Pakistan to avoid the “fallout” from a US attack on its neighbor.
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But the United States had already aligned itself with the Taliban's foes, the Northern Alliance, whereas the ISI had always seen the Northern Alliance as closer to India, Iran, and Russia. Musharraf replaced Mahmud with Lieutenant General Ehsan-ul-Haq so as to convince Americans that the ISI would not impede their military operations in Afghanistan. As the United States commenced bombing Afghanistan, hundreds of Pakistani military advisers and ISI operatives assisting the Taliban were evacuated.