A Featured Essay for the Autumn 2011 Quarterly Release
by Director Matthew Bishop (Ohio, U.S.A.) and Far East Asia Regional Director Baron Laudermilk (Beijing, China)
Edited by Director Matthew Bishop

ABSTRACT:
The 2012 Foreign Policy Action Plan covers grand strategy and particular policy suggestions for Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and also engages ideas for reforming global governing, judicial, and economic institutions.

BIO:
Matthew Bishop is the Founder and Director of World Report: The Student Journal for International Affairs, Managing Editor for this release and the chief author of this document. His concentration is in the rhetoric of social and political change. Baron Laudermilk is the Far East Regional Director and Chief Secretary of the journal and a regular staff researcher and writer. His focus is in Chinese government and economy.

11 JULY 2011 - MATTHEW BISHOP 
 
 A critical look into the US decision to pull back 800,000,000 USD in annual funding to Pakistan. This leaves roughly 1.2 billion USD in US aid to Pakistan per year.

This is a most precarious situation. If Pakistan is not already a failed state, it is very close to becoming one. The recent mob violence in Karachi, which claimed nearly a hundred lives this past weekend, is but one small testament. The greater testaments are the undeniable links between the ISI and Al Qaeda, between the government of Pakistan and the Taliban, and the fact that much of “Pakistan’s land” is not actually controlled, and in some cases not even monitored, by the Pakistani government—these include the most violent of territories in the north and west of the country. Construct upon this backdrop a party of Pakistani people who wish to bring the United States into closer and more harmonious relations, and you have the context for a civil war.

I had a professor of political science and counterterrorism tell me once that he has never seen a nation as close to civil war as Pakistan is now, and that is not a light or arbitrary statement. Much of Pakistan is not controlled by the Pakistani government. Much of Karachi is not even controlled by the government. People who need schools and hospitals regularly go without them, not even aware that there is some central government whose theoretical obligation is to provide those services. There are those in government who want to put more funding in these tribal areas, then there are those who would ignore them. There are those who would embrace the United States, then there are those who would push the US away. There is, almost unanimously, a feeling that United States is too heavily involved and must “back off”, and Pakistanis can unite behind this call. Yet behind this veil of unity there is division. The cutting of US funding brings all of these questions and more to the fore, and the United States would do well to reexamine them all in turn and to consider what they really mean.

We cannot expect that the military and the ISI will not be involved with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. They helped create the Taliban, surely as the United States did after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Yet their ties have remained friendly, while ours have evolved into a rivalry. Their cause, often, is one and the same. Meanwhile, there are ISI officers whose second job is that of a trainer at an Al Qaeda camp. We cannot possibly criticize them for “sympathizing” or “being soft” with Al Qaeda when they themselves help train Al Qaeda militants—it does not even begin to make sense. The United States has attempted to thrust a foreign ideology upon Pakistan, and it has been repulsed time and time again.

The United States and Pakistan are enemies operating under the veneer of an alliance. This alliance exists for a reason—it has been maintained, at the great cost of our own US statesmen and at the enormous cost of Pakistan’s President Zardari, so that Pakistan does not devolve into civil war and does not become a failed state. It is critical that this relationship continues, for all of the reasons listed above, and for one more: nuclear weapons.

The closest things to a failed nuclear state that the world currently has are the old satellite states of the Soviet Union. They have seen more Highly Enriched Uranium and Petroleum stolen from their warehouses than any other location on earth. They have the weakest guards for their nuclear storehouses—and this applies to Russia itself as well—oftentimes employing simple security guards at slightly more than minimum wage. Pakistan’s premiere nuclear scientists have sold blueprints in the past to a large number of states, Iran among them. It is the belief of many such scientists that nuclear weapons knowledge belongs to the Dar-al-Islam, the concept of an Islamic world united on some level by culture, religion, and tradition. As such, nuclear weapons are not the property of Pakistan, but the property of Islam.

It was pressure from the United States and other nations which eventually put a halt to this pattern and forced a number of nuclear scientists to resign after selling plans to other nations. Should this occur again, and the United States find itself out of any favor in Pakistan and without the benefit of supplying large quantities of cash on an annual basis, the United States will not have the leverage necessary to demand that this stops. It is not a latent threat—Pakistan’s nuclear program is still very alive and the belief that such knowledge belongs to the entire Islamic world is a common one.

Should Pakistan fall into the full-fledged status of a failed state, its nuclear arms will be up for grabs. That is not just to say that its scientists, programs, resources, and abilities will be up for sale—but to say that the weapons themselves will be just as vulnerable. It is a ridiculous thing to imagine that someone would ever use a fully armed nuclear warhead in this modern age, when they are so devastating and can kill so many. But ridiculous things have occurred before, and only a fool dismisses this as impossible.

The threat of nuclear arms is only one part of the greater equation, into which government-mob, tribal-government, intertribal, and military/ISI-civilian government tensions are constantly tested to near breaking. The United States, like it or not, has played and will continue to play a role in this volatile situation. It will be responsible for the actions it chooses to take—such as withdrawing 800 million USD in annual aid—and answerable to the consequences of those actions. The United States and Pakistan have never been “true” allies, as surely as the United States has never counted Saudi Arabia among its real and more reliable friends. But the very idea of an alliance is something worth maintaining—it is something strong in a country that faces weakness.

When we consider aid to Pakistan, it is usually in terms of military aid for a military alliance. Unfortunately, the military and ISI and among the factions in Pakistani society most hateful toward the United States, and their grip on power cannot bring Pakistan up from the status of a dangerous and failed state, no matter how hard those factions may try. In a series of polls conducted by third-party agencies and documented by terrorism and counterterrorism policy experts (See Gottileb’s Debating Terrorism and Counterterrorism, and also TerrorFreeTomorrow.org) researchers found several things that the people of Pakistan said would make them see the US as a favorable ally: More humanitarian aid, for schools and hospitals, was foremost among those criteria. Many parts of Pakistan receive no aid from their government. If the US intends to curry Pakistan as an ally, the US must first realize that Pakistan, as we think of it, does not exist in many tribal areas. These areas, dangerous in the context of a failed state and requiring only relatively simple investments that do not begin to reach the two billion dollar mark, demand our attention and our aid. They will make much greater use of our tax dollars than the ISI or the military, to be sure—although for stability’s sake we must also continue to help fund the military.

There were other demands from the people of Pakistan: Free trade policies between the US and Pakistan which would allow their economy to grow, easier access to United States visas, and a shift in policy away from Israel and in favor of Palestine. Undeniably, these three changes are in fact changes that our government should make. The hypocritical trade policies of the United States have dire consequences for poorer nations like Pakistan, and bringing those policies to justice in favor of real free trade would go a very long way in US-Pakistani relations (although it would raise an outcry from other nations, who face a similar dilemma when it comes to US relations). Reversing our policy in regards to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine is an unavoidable necessity which would not only revolutionize our relations with Pakistan, but with all of the Dar-al Islam, the entire Middle Eastern world, Indonesia, and the Maghreb. Easier access to visas is a common complaint from many nations, but Pakistani people in particular face enormous challenges in obtaining visas.

In short, to prevent Pakistan from becoming (or remaining?) a failed state, and to play the best part we can in preventing civil war, we must appeal to the real Pakistan, which exists far outside of the government’s reach, while at the same time appealing to the government and continuing to fund the military. It may make us cringe and feel uneasy, as this alliance is not a “natural” alliance, and it seems clear to many that rivalry should exist between us. But if we are to prevent chaos, we must remain calm, and if we are to prevent war, we must act as if we are at peace. The people of Pakistan have their own interests which are openly divergent from the interests of US politicians and strategists, but for the greater interest and the long-term stability of the United States, of Pakistan, and in fact of the world, we must maintain this unnatural alliance even when it seems clear that open rivalry is the only option available.

MATTHEW BISHOP
MAY 20 2011

An Interview with Professor of Terrorism Dr. Marc Scarcelli

The views expressed here are mostly those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Dr. Scarcelli unless explicitly stated.

I. Structural and Strategic Look into Al Qaeda and the Information from Bin Laden's Compound

Despite finding of plans to sabotage US railways and the discovery of large amounts of intelligence, including nine hard drives, in Bin Laden's compound, there is a prevailing view that Bin Laden was not active in commanding Al Qaeda from his home north of Islamabad. Proponents of this second view cite facts like Bin Laden's courier coming and going only once every two months. Dr. Scarcelli shares this views. Bin Laden, Scarcelli proclaims, was essentially "in retirement". Symbolically, he was important-- but that was his greatest role. Yet he did play a role in reducing infighting among the Tehreek-e-Taliban, and with Bin Laden gone an increase in infighting is possible. In any case, operationally, says Dr. Scarcelli, Al Qaeda will be more focused in Yemen, Algeria, and Somalia in the years to come.

Ayman al-Zawahiri cannot become the symbol that Osama Bin Laden was, but he can replace him as the figurehead of Al Qaeda, and probably will. Dr. Scarcelli says, however, that it is probable that the information gained from Bin Laden's compound will lead to Zawahiri's capture or death. In light of the recent attempt on Awlaki's life, it seems plausible to me that the information from Bin Laden's compound did at least lead to a link pointing at Awlaki.

As far as recruitment goes, the death of Bin Laden could be a positive or negative factor-- recruits could join honoring Bin Laden as a martyr, or they could abstain from joining, seeing as Bin Laden was in fact caught and killed by the United States. That is much the same pattern for states-- that is, states may be more reluctant to harbor terrorists, they may resist with more energy, knowing that the United States is willing to violate their sovereignty and is capable of executing quick military missions inside that country. Conversely, a nation could consider that the United States has apparently no regard for state sovereignty and takes ten years to track down its worst enemies, and so hold the United States in lower esteem and in effect be more receptive to terrorists coming in and coopering with the state.

Yet if we throw patterns of state cooperation and recruitment into context, we have to ask how much of an audience Al Qaeda actually enjoys in an age where activists across the Middle East are demanding more moderate and representative governments. Many people have expressed concern that Al Qaeda could "hijack" a revolution-- this concern is perhaps most vivid in Libya-- but the fact remains that the majority of uprisings are directed against the sort of tyranny which Al Qaeda would institute were it to ever assume power as an actual state. The democratic revolutions, in short, are not receptive to Al Qaeda-- and Al Qaeda is not receptive to the revolutions, having recently reiterated its position of being decidedly anti-democratic and against democratic uprisings. Given recent events there is an emerging line of thought stating that if Al Qaeda cannot appeal to a newer, younger, more democratic generation, then they have no future. Yet the political agenda of Al Qaeda cannot be dismissed, at least not the part of its agenda which is in common with the agendas of organizations like Hamas and Hizbollah-- the complaints of these groups should be addressed in conjunction with US support for nonviolent democratic movements which are right now still gaining popularity across the Middle East.

II. Foreign Policy: Palestine

Hamas does not want to enfranchise Al Qaeda. Their mourning of Bin Laden's death was symbolic, and not actual, in that Hamas is still decidedly separate from, unaffiliated with, and at times in open rivalry against Al Qaeda. The issues statements in praise of Bin Laden, Dr. Scarcelli asserts, could, furthermore, actually distance the more Al Qaeda-leaning individuals and thrust more moderate individuals within Hamas into the fore of the political arena. Perhaps inadvertently, Hamas has opened the door to letting their more moderate members gain more clout, and by idolizing Bin Laden has created a separation within themselves. Regardless of to what extent this separation may exist, or of how profound it may be, this is an opportune time for the United States to cater to more moderate individuals within Hamas, to play up the mutual US-Hamas dislike of Al Qaeda, and, furthermore, to support the nonviolent democratic movement within Palestine while at the same time condemning joint Israeli-Palestinian crackdowns of joint Israeli-Palestinian protests, thereby strengthening the political constituency which will be most in favor of an also-strengthened newly-moderate Hamas.

Realistically, Dr. Scarcelli asserts, a U.S. politician cannot criticize Israel and expect to win reelection, even when that criticism is necessary to create a more stable and peaceful environment in the Levant. Yet in light of the recently bridged gaps between Hamas and Fatah, in light of the coming proposed UNSC Resolution this September, and in light of a world which is increasingly aware of the human rights violations committed by Israel and of a moderate Palestinian youth whose protests are nonviolent and aimed at legitimate reform, it seems to me that regardless of "American ignorance", as some have called it, it is time for politicians across the board to step up-- against the lobbyists and the media-- and proclaim their support for measures which will lead to legitimate, peaceful, and lasting reform. The events which have occurred in recent history, during this past year, and in the wake of Bin Laden's death, I think, make this an opportune time to switch gears.

III. Pakistan: Foreign Policy and a Look at Internal Dynamics

Dr. Scarcelli is sure that the ISI and perhaps the military was at very least complicit in Bin Laden's hiding. Many analysts, knowing the circumstances and the evidence surrounding Bin Laden's death, are of the same opinion. The ISI and Pakistani military have been allied with the Taliban for decades. There are, in fact, certain officers within the ISI who also operate as trainers at Al Qaeda camps. As one of the sharpest intelligence networks in the world, it is almost inconceivable that the ISI did not know of Bin Laden's whereabouts.

Of course, that does not mean that the government-- or the president for that matter-- were aware of this. The ISI has the capacity to operate independently of the Pakistani civilian government and could have held this information from them. Given the fact that Bin Laden lived so close to a military school and compound, this is actually a reasonable proposal. It is not unlikely that someone in the government knew, but to suspect that the entire government knew-- and to suspect that the president knew, for that matter-- may be presuming too much. The death of Bin Laden may bring to the surface old rivalries between the military/ISI factions and the civilian government. Pakistan, already a country divided, has become even more heated in light of Bin Laden's death, and more divided than they already were.

For the United States, there are not a lot of options available. It is obvious that letting nuclear Pakistan become a failed state is not a plausible option-- funding cannot be terminated. It would only make bad problems worse. Yet the ISI is unlikely to drastically alter its allegiances. Most recently, Pakistan allegedly released the name of a supposed CIA operative who was directing CIA operation in Pakistan-- and so presumably oversaw the SEALS operation. That, Dr. Scarcelli says, was Pakistan's way of getting back the United States, however meaningless it may be in comparison. Yet for the United States, Dr. Scarcelli agrees, there is little one can do-- except avoid being naive about the issues surrounding Pakistan. The ISI and many military factions may be decidedly anti-United States; yet that does not mean that the US does not have any audience inside the Pakistani government. It does suggest, in any case, that as suspicious as we were before this incident, we should be more suspicious after it. At the same time we should try to ensure that the divisiveness inside Pakistan does not disintegrate into civil war-- we cannot, therefore, marginalize any large sector of the military or ISI.

Dr. Scarcelli also brings up that fact that it seems almost impossible that Pakistan is uninvolved with the Afghanistan drug trade, the prosperity of which is in part due to the lengthy conflict in that country. In a sense, one might conclude, the longer violence reigns in Afghanistan, the longer Pakistan will have an economic incentive to be complicit in that violence-- and again there are factions loyal to the Taliban and factions loyal to Al Qaeda. Violence in Afghanistan, however, cannot simply be solved with an influx or a withdrawal of troops.

IV. Conclusions

The optimists are hailing Bin Laden's death as the end of Al Qaeda. The decentralized network, now without its most central figurehead and in the midst of the Arab Spring, will be unable to sustain itself and largely disabled. Dr. Scarcelli, along with a great many scholars, refutes this. Al Qaeda does not require the nod from Bin Laden-- Al Qaeda is a network of cells trained with the capacity to operate independently. Furthermore, Al Qaeda does not even require a central command-- the influence of Al Qaeda is enough to gain recruits who sometimes will act on their own, without even having been trained. Bin Laden's death, in the most real view, is perhaps entirely symbolic-- in which case we must consider that symbolic acts can have real and lasting effects. Yet the events and circumstances surrounding his death merit our attention, in that on many stages they have the capacity to change the way we do act-- or change the way we should act-- toward certain actors around the globe. Now is not the time to dismiss the legitimate political demands of terrorist groups aiming to enfranchise themselves in a larger, more stable political process, and to proclaim unilaterally the death of terrorism. Now is the time to continue the crackdown on Al Qaeda while working to trim down their base of support and their capacity to recruit by seriously reconsidering the way we act on the international stage-- that is an effort which will not only lead (hopefully) to the demise of Al Qaeda, but also to a peaceful and stable environment in Palestine.

Concerning Pakistan, however, it is not entirely possible to bridge the gaps, nor is it necessarily plausible to even talk of such things, until a large variety of internal factors work themselves out, and that is another discussion entirely. As for Pakistan, the most that the United States can do is to continue funding (while monitoring the appropriation and application of that funding) in support of stability, and to address the issues of Afghanistan and Pakistan as inter-related and at times conjoined.