Despite differences over strategies and tactics in the fight against global jihadi terrorism, there has been a convergence of views between the previous administration of George Bush and the present administration of President Barack Obama as to what should be the ultimate objective of the US’ war against global terrorism. They are both agreed that the ultimate objective should be to prevent another 9/11 in the US homeland by Al Qaeda and an act of catastrophic terrorism involving either the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) material or devastating attacks on the critical infrastructure.
In their view, of all the terrorist organizations operating from Pakistani territory, only Al Qaeda has the capability for launching another 9/11 in the US homeland and for organizing an act of catastrophic terrorism. Hence, the first priority of the Bush administration was to the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, its ideological ally. This priority continues under Obama too. During the election campaign, Obama’s criticism of the policies of Bush was not because of the focus on the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but because of what he looked upon as the inadequacy of that focus as illustrated by the perceived failure of the Bush administration to have Osama bin Laden and his No.2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri killed or captured and the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal belt destroyed.
He said during the election campaign: “We are fighting on the wrong battlefield. The terrorists who attacked us and who continue to plot against us are resurgent in the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan”¦”
He attributed the inadequacy of that focus and the failure of the Bush Administration to destroy or even seriously weaken Al Qaeda to what he looked upon as the unnecessary US involvement in Iraq, which took resources and attention away from the war against Al Qaeda in the Pakistan–Afghanistan region. According to him, the real threat to the US homeland came from the Pakistan–Afghanistan region and not from Iraq and hence there should have been no diversion of the attention and resources from there. He said during the election campaign: “We are fighting on the wrong battlefield. The terrorists who attacked us and who continue to plot against us are resurgent in the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They should have been our focus then. They must be our focus now.” In a speech at the Wilson Centre in Washington DC on August 1, 2007, he said: “When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won…The first step must be getting off the wrong battlefield in Iraq, and taking the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Another point on which there has been a convergence between the views of the two is over the importance of Pakistan in the war against global terrorism. Both feel that the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban cannot be won without the co-operation of Pakistan, which essentially means the Pakistani Army. Obama said during the campaign: “Success in Afghanistan requires action in Pakistan. While Pakistan has made some contributions by bringing some Al Qaeda operatives to justice, the Pakistani Government has not done nearly enough to limit extremist activity in the country and to help stabilize Afghanistan. I have supported aid to Pakistan in the Senate and…I would continue substantial military aid if Pakistan takes action to root out the terrorists.” He also said when Pervez Musharraf was still the President: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will. I firmly believe that if we know the whereabouts of bin Laden and his deputies and we have exhausted all other options, we must take them out.”
No terrorist organization in Pakistan can exist without State complicity if not sponsorship, sanctuaries and funds. Not only Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but also the largely Punjabi terrorist organizations of Pakistan operating against India in Indian territory enjoy these three essential elements of survival in Pakistan.
His proclaimed determination to act unilaterally against high-value targets of Al Qaeda in Pakistani territory is no different from the policy pursued by the Bush Administration in the last year of his presidency. Unmanned Predator aircraft of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out over 30 strikes on suspected hide-outs of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistani territory during 2008 as against 10 in 2006 and 2007. These strikes were carried out despite protests by the Pakistan Government and Army and resulted in the deaths of eight middle-level Arab operatives of Al Qaeda. Since assuming office, Obama has stepped up the Predator attacks on suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban hide-outs in Pakistani territory.
However, Obama has avoided specific pronouncements on his willingness to order land-based strikes on the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistani territory. Under the Bush administration, the US special forces did try a land-based strike in South Waziristan in September, 2008, which was not successful. It did not launch any more land-based strikes following a furor in Pakistan. While the Asif Ali Zardari Government is avoiding any action to resist the Predator strikes despite its open condemnation of them, there seems to be a fear in Washington that if the US continues to undertake land-based strikes, public pressure could force the Pakistan Government and the Army to resist them resulting in an undesirable confrontation between the armies of the two countries.
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Obama faces the same dilemma as Bush faced. The sporadic successes of the Predator strikes alone will not be able to effectively destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistani territory. To be effective, land-based strikes would also be necessary. However, the political consequences of repeated land-based strikes would be unpredictable. There is already considerable anger in the tribal belt against the Pakistan army for co-operating — even half-heartedly — with the US in its war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. How to make up for this unsatisfactory co-operation by the Pakistan Army by stepping up unilateral US covert actions in the Pakistani territory without adding to the public anger against the Zardari Government is the main question. That was the question to which the advisers of George Bush were not able to come up with a satisfactory answer. Even the advisers of Barack Obama do not seem to have an answer to it so far.
The sporadic successes of the Predator strikes alone will not be able to effectively destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistani territory. To be effective, land-based strikes would also be necessary.
No terrorist organization in Pakistan can exist without State complicity if not sponsorship, sanctuaries and funds. Not only Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but also the largely Punjabi terrorist organizations of Pakistan operating against India in Indian territory enjoy these three essential elements of survival in Pakistan. A ground reality not realized in Washington DC is that all the jihadi terrorist organizations based in Pakistan make available to each other the use of their hide-outs, sanctuaries and training centres. One recently saw the instance of Rashid Rauf of the JeM being killed in a Predator strike on an Al Qaeda hide-out. There have been reports in the Pakistan media of two Punjabi terrorists belonging to what they have described as the Punjabi Taliban being killed in a Predator attack on an Al Qaeda vehicle in South Waziristan on January 1, 2009. The Predator strike targeted and killed Osama al-Kini alias Fahid Mohammad Ally Masalam, described as responsible for Al Qaeda operations in Pakistan, including the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on September 21, 2008, and his No. 2 Sheik Ahmed Salim Swedan. Both were Kenyan nationals. In addition to the two of them, the Predator strike also reportedly killed two members of the JeM, who were also in the same vehicle. One would recall that in March, 2002, Abu Zubaidah, the Palestinian member of Al Qaeda, was caught in a hide-out of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) in Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab.
From such instances, it should be clear that one cannot make a distinction between sanctuaries of Al Qaeda, those of the Taliban and those of the anti-India organizations. All sanctuaries have to be attacked and destroyed irrespective of to which organization they belonged. The Bush Administration was not prepared to follow such a clear-cut policy and tried to make an operational distinction between anti-US terrorism and anti-Indian terrorism. Pakistan fully exploited this ambivalence.
From the various statements of Obama and his advisers, there is not much reason for India to hope that this ambivalence would disappear under him. The double standards vis-a-vis anti-US and anti-India terrorism, which have been the defining characteristics of US counter-terrorism policies since 1981, will continue to come to the rescue of Pakistan. It would be futile for India to expect any major change under Obama.
President Barack Obama’s new comprehensive Af–Pak strategy unveiled on March 27, 2009, to deal with a mix of cancerous problems might impress and enthuse the new Internet generation with which Obama feels comfortable, but not Indian professionals in terrorism with their feet firmly on the ground in this region. These problems arise from the continuing old Islamic insurgency of the 1980s vintage in Afghanistan, the new post-Lal Masjid raid Islamic insurgency in Pakistan, the continuing jihadi terrorism with many faces — anti-West, anti-Indian, anti-Afghan, anti-Israeli, anti-Russian, anti-Chinese, anti-infidels and anti-apostates — from sanctuaries and breeding grounds in Pakistan and the continuing spread of radical ideas justifying the use of terrorism from the madrasas of Pakistan.
Obama and his advisers suffer from the same prescriptive deficiency as their predecessors. This deficiency arises from their tendency to mix facts with illusions. The facts were as clear to Bush and his advisers as they are now to Obama and his advisers. These are the existence in the Pakistani territory of the sanctuaries of Al Qaeda, the Pashtun Taliban and the Punjabi Taliban organizations with the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in the forefront and the role of the Pakistan Army and its ISI in nursing them to serve what they perceive as Pakistan’s strategic interests.
Obamas strategy “” like the one of his predecessor “” is marked by a fear of punishing Pakistan if it does not change its policy of using terrorists to advance its own strategic agenda.
The prescriptive part of Obama’s strategy is as full of illusions as the strategy of Bush was. There is a common root cause for the illusions of the two Administrations. The root cause is their inability to understand that the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment has convinced itself that Pakistan, which had lost its strategic relevance in the immediate aftermath of the end of the cold war, has acquired a new strategic importance. This is thanks to the terrorists of various hues operating from its territory and its nuclear arsenal. The continued existence of these terrorists is in its interest. Action against terrorism when unavoidable, support for terrorism when possible. That is its policy. It has been using its nuclear arsenal not only in an attempt to intimidate India and deter it from retaliating for terrorist strikes in Indian territory, but also to deter the US and the rest of the West from exercising too much pressure on it to deal with the terrorist sanctuaries in its territory.
Unless the mind of the Pakistani military and intelligence officers is disabused of this belief and they are made to co-operate with the international community in destroying the terrorist infrastructure in its territory, no strategy is going to work in ending jihadi terrorism bred in Pakistan. The major deficiency in the prescriptive analysis of Obama arises from his naive assumption that Pakistan can be made to co-operate more effectively against terrorism through a basket of incentives — more military and economic assistance, more training, an emphasis on the continuing importance of Pakistan even after the war on terrorism is over, etc.
Even though the strategy projects Al Qaeda and its associates operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan as posing a threat to the world as a whole, its objective is limited to preventing another 9/11 in US territory mounted from this region. It does not pay equal attention to the concerns of India and other countries.
Bush too hailed Pakistan as a frontline ally in the war against terrorism and provided it with various lollipops — over US$ 10 billion in military and economic aid since 9/11, dual-use weapons and equipment which could be used against the terrorists as well as against India and a willingness to close the eyes to Pakistan’s sins of commission and omission against India so long as it acted against terrorism directed at the US. These lollipops failed to make the regime of Pervez Musharraf co-operate sincerely against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. These incentives could not prevent the Neo Taliban of Afghanistan from staging a spectacular come-back from sanctuaries in Pakistan and Al Qaeda and its associates from organizing acts of terrorism in different parts of the world.
The lessons from the failure of Bush’s strategy were: Firstly, a policy based only on incentives will not work in the case of an insincere state such as Pakistan. Secondly, a policy which makes a distinction between terrorism directed against the US and terrorism directed against India and the rest of the world will be ineffective. Thirdly, the fear of exercising too much pressure on Pakistan lest the State collapse and its nuclear arsenal fall into jihadi hands is exploited by Pakistan to prevent the ultimate success of the war against terrorism.
One was hoping — on the basis of the statements by him during his election campaign — that Obama would have factored these lessons into the formulation of his new strategy. Surprisingly, he has not. The same old policy of incentives and nothing but incentives is sought to be pursued under the garb of a so-called new strategy. The only new feature is the emphasis on the benchmarks of implementation which will determine the continued availability of the incentives to Pakistan at every stage. The only disincentive with which Pakistan has been confronted is the risk of the incentives drying up if it is seen as dragging its feet in its co-operation in the fight against terrorism.
A failed Pakistan may be a disaster for the people of Pakistan, but not necessarily for the rest of the world.
Obama’s strategy — like the one of his predecessor — is marked by a fear of punishing Pakistan if it does not change its policy of using terrorists to advance its own strategic agenda. The reluctance to punish Pakistan if it continues to be insincere in dealing with terrorism originating from its territory arises from the fear that too much pressure on Pakistan and a policy of punitive measures might push Pakistan into the arms of the jihadis or might result in a collapse of the Pakistani State with unpredictable consequences. The US must rid itself of this fear and make it clear to Pakistan that, if the worst comes to the worst, the world is prepared to face the eventuality of a failed Pakistan. A failed Pakistan may be a disaster for the people of Pakistan, but not necessarily for the rest of the world.
It is important to constitute a contact group to work out alternative strategies with incentives as well as disincentives, with rewards as well as punishments. Such a contact group must be only of the victims of terrorism. A contact group, which seeks to bring together the victims of terrorism as well as the perpetrator, will be a non-starter.
Obama’s strategy has three components — a counter-insurgency component for Afghanistan, a counter-terrorism component for use in Pakistan and a counter-radicalization component for use in the entire Af–Pak region. It is a mix of military and political measures. While the military measures will be largely implemented by the US and other NATO powers plus Australia, the regional role of countries such as India, China and Iran is sought to be restricted to the political component. They will have no say in the way the military measures are implemented.
The US expectations that the international community will co-operate in implementing the unilaterally worked out US strategy can be belied because the strategy offers no end in sight to the wave of terrorism of Pakistani origin faced by them. This is particularly true of India. Even though the strategy projects Al Qaeda and its associates operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan as posing a threat to the world as a whole, its objective is limited to preventing another 9/11 in US territory mounted from this region. It does not pay equal attention to the concerns of India and other countries. The strategy is, therefore, unlikely to excite professionals in India.
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