AS an inauguration present for the newly elected prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, the White House in early September cancelled US$300 million (RM1.24 billion) in suspended military aid.
United States President Donald Trump has shown flashes of foreign policy brilliance during his time in office, none more so than his historic June summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un that significantly dialled down tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
In Pakistan’s case, however, he means to keep going down the pot-holed road paved by his predecessors. And that, is a big mistake.
Washington says Pakistan’s unwavering support for the Haqqani network, a faction of the Taliban that routinely carries out high-stakes attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan, makes the payout pointless and the funds are better spent on “urgent priorities”.
Earlier, in August 2017, Trump didn’t pull his punches in a policy review speech on the Afghanistan war. He attacked Pakistan for perpetually double-dealing with Washington, i.e. taking billions in US money yet allowing Taliban militants to pitch camp on its soil and waltz across the porous border to hit civilian and state targets.
The tone and tenor of Trump’s speech were nearly identical to US presidents past, who had similarly tried to bully Pakistan into immediately ceasing support for the Taliban without fully appreciating the finer contours of its foreign policy.
And this is why the US is doomed to keep failing in Afghanistan even with the additional 4,000 troops Trump has ordered back into the war zone.
In this piece, I will not touch on the complex ethno-religious dimensions of Afghanistan that make a US military victory near impossible, but instead focus on the object of Trump’s ire: Pakistan.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Washington conveniently skirts the fact that flawed US foreign policy is why Pakistan remains a thorn in its side toward a complete military drawdown from Afghanistan.
How? By time and again empowering the Pakistan army to take on a role far beyond its constitutional boundaries. And this in turn created the so-called “deep state”— a powerful military-led shadow government that allegedly runs Pakistan from behind puppet politicians.
Back in the 1980s, Washington secretly backed Afghan “mujahideen” to neutralise the Soviet Union’s expansionist ambitions, and in the process legitimised the repressive military regime of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq. It also flushed the country full of cash to drown out dissent.
Fast-forward two decades and we see a virtual replay courtesy of former US president George W. Bush blessing another Pakistani dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks to gain his unconditional cooperation in the global war against terrorism.
And again, the US pumped billions into Pakistan to avert a popular uprising even as soldiers and civilians kept dying in revenge attacks by the Taliban.
Gen. Zia had hanged a sitting prime minister while Gen. Musharraf jailed another after toppling his government at gunpoint. Indeed, the American high horse of human rights and democracy seemed to go missing every time it approached an intersection labelled “national interest”.
At these crossroads in Pakistan’s history, the facade of civilian rule quickly faded, not least because the political mainstays (that is, Sharifs and Bhuttos) were repeatedly exposed for corruption and massive abuses of power.
Taming the Afghan Taliban hence, necessitates an understanding of what the Pakistan army wants. For one, it loathes a “two-front dilemma” where India can threaten its troops from both sides.
In Afghanistan, the army claims state actors in cahoots with Indian saboteurs seek to inflict maximum human and material losses on Pakistan, while also damaging its international reputation.
This is why the 2016 arrest of Indian spy Kulbushan Jadhav turned into a huge media circus — the army wanted Washington to know that India had been instrumental in destabilising the Baluchistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
Going by this logic, surely the deep state desires peace with India so Pakistan can refocus its resources on development programmes?
The answer seems to be no. Former premier Nawaz Sharif, in fact, made a habit of ticking off the generals by proactively seeking peace with India, and getting booted from office prematurely as a result.
As various Pakistan experts have noted over the years, the army has evolved from territorial guardian to a sprawling conglomerate with interests in real estate, industry and agriculture. And, some of these holdings were allegedly acquired through land grabs or strong-arming civilian rulers.
Also, the current defence allocation is around a fifth of the annual budget, not including pensions and a major army upgrade programme. Even with one of the largest standing armies in the world, that is a significant sum for a developing country like Pakistan that forever teeters on the brink of financial collapse.
So if Pakistan and India were to ever negotiate an honest armistice, this amount would likely suffer steep cuts. And the army doesn’t want that. Who would?
This makes India the perfect bogey, especially the incumbent Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that includes fringe politicians who periodically threaten to destroy Pakistan and massacre all Indian Muslims.
Likewise, regional geopolitics is also to the deep state’s advantage. China, and to a degree Russia would happily plug the budget deficit just to spite Trump should the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lay harsh preconditions when Pakistan reaches out for a new loan.
Also, given the army’s solid counter-terrorism record, there is a growing market in the Middle East for its services. A case in point is the Saudi appointment of former chief Raheel Sharif as supreme commander of the kingdom’s Islamic coalition to fight extremism.
Consequently, the million dollar question for Trump is how to salvage some pride in America’s longest-running war with the few bargaining chips he has left, since asking India to move more military resources to Afghanis-tan to help fight the Taliban will only invite more bloodshed.
Still, without first brokering a truce between India and Pakistan that immediately ceases cross-border sabotage and espionage activities, “mission accomplished” in Afghanistan may remain “mission impossible” for Trump and future US presidents.
The writer is an Ipoh-based independent journalist.