The US Code of Silence on Pakistan

The US Code of Silence on Pakistan Dr. SUBODH ATAL The Saudi connection, touched upon by John Kerry in his acceptance speech in Boston, is not the only potentially unsavory mystery of the Bush administration. Since 9/11, top administration officials appear to have observed a "code of silence" on Pakistan, despite countless reports on its links to terror, Taliban and nuclear prolifertion. While invading and occupying Iraq for what has now turned out to be no WMDs and possibly no links to Al Qaeda at all, the United States has gone in the other direction with Pakistan, declaring it a "non-NATO ally", and supplying it liberally with money and arms.

The Bush administration has, at least in public, shown practically zero curioisity about a series of events in Pakistan that should have been huge red flags after 9/11. Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, head of ISI during 9/11, has been reportedly linked to the funding of those terror attacks, and turned out to be an informal advisor to the Taliban. But he was allowed to quietly go into retirement, and in fact is now reported to be the head of a corporation that is connnected to the Pakistani military. Ahmed is also reported to be part of an oligarchy, which includes such pro-jihadi stalwarts such as Hamid Gul, that has significant influence over the Pakistani regime. This may explain why Pakistani support as the "front-line ally in the war on terror" has always been spotty and grudging.

Under intense pressure (usually and suspiciously coincident with the Bush administration's need to produce results for the domestic audience), Pakistan produces a high value target (HVT) or two. After the Daniel Pearl killing, when the spotlight was on the ISI's links to Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaidah was captured. In the run up to the Iraq invasion, when questions were being raised on whether the Afghanistan-Pakistan phase had been sufficiently resolved, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was snared. The New Republic, reported a few weeks ago that Pakistan was being pressured to produce some HVTs to coincide with John Kerry's acceptance at the Boston Democratic convention. As if on cue, an Al Qaeda suspect was reported captured by Pakistan just hours before Kerry spoke.

Does the Bush administration stay mum on Pakistan because it can produce, almost at will, HVTs? That is what the major media sources believe, often appending to their stories on this topic a phrase such as "... the United States needs Pakistan's help in the war on terror...". But given the speed with which the US could march into Iraq, and find nearly all the HVTs including Saddam Hussein himself, the argument that the American military could not, and does not want to, do the same in the den of those who perpetrated 9/11, defies any logic. After all the most dangerous sequence of WMD proliferation has come out of Pakistan, and may still not be shut down entirely.

Far more likely is another potential explanation, one that is considerably more complex than the standard single phrase rationale offered in the media. Two agendas converged in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, both of which required guaranteeing that the rug would not be pulled from under Pakistan. One was the neo-conservative agenda to remake the Middle East. For this Iraq needed to be attacked, with subsequent steps in other Middle Eastern nations. If any top administration official even said one sentence about the unreliability of Pakistan, the entire media establishment, Congress, and others would have followed the lead, and questioned the logic for the Iraq invasion.

The other agenda is not unique to the neo-conservatives, it has been an unspoken policy since the end of the Cold War - balancing India with Pakistan. This policy is even more relevant now, when the US grand strategy openly calls for slowing down the rise of regional powers. After all Pakistan has kept hundreds of thousands of Indian troops tied down in Kashmir for more than a decade. Unmasking Pakistan's links to Al Qaeda and an open inquiry into its nuclear proliferation activities would at the very least likely result in international action to remove its nuclear weapons, leaving India the uncontested power in the subcontinent, and one that could accelerate expansion of its military strength. Indeed, the kid gloves treatment of Pakistan by the US State Department's annual reports of global terrorism suggest that this policy of protecting this strategic asset was in place during the 1990s.

If the United States enhances its national security as a result of these apparently convoluted maneuvers in protecting Pakistan, then such a strategy is understandable and defensible. But has sufficient attention been given to the cost-benefit implications? Has sufficient attention been accorded to risk likelihood's? What if the Middle East strategy turns out to be a pipe dream and only results in a near unanimous anti-US sentiment in that region, which seems to be happening now? What if the jehadi supporters in the Pakistani military and ISI are playing a waiting game, looking for a suitable opportunity to strike against the west? What if the Pakistani nuclear proliferation network, which remains incompletely understood, is willing to offer nuclear weapons to terrorist groups? There are so many known unknowns, and unknown unknowns (as Donald Rumsfeld is fond of saying), that the cost of slowing down India's rise as an emerging competitor to the US, and cost of the neo-con Middle East dream, may be far more than what the US may be willing to pay.