Brookings: Topics - Pakistan

The Week After Pakistan's General Election

Madiha Afzal — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:07:00 -0400

The week after May 11, all Pakistanis can stand tall and be proud of what they have accomplished. We have shown that we are among the bravest citizens of any country in the world, participating in massive rallies leading up to the election, and turning out to vote on election day in record numbers, despite the Taliban threats and violence. We were also decisive, handing the PML-N a landslide victory, yielding the PPP a massive blow and giving third-party status to the PTI.

While a small number of results may turn out to be affected by vote rigging and irregularities, these election results truly reflect the voice of the Pakistani people. My research using election results and development funds data from the 1990s shows that Pakistani voters are not irrational: they will vote for the candidate or party, who provides them the most benefits, and against those they see as having wronged them. For its resounding victory, the PML-N deserves nothing but congratulations, genuine goodwill and support for tackling the monumental tasks it faces. Nawaz Sharif has shown maturity in his last five years in the opposition and exudes determination going forward. These characteristics will serve him well in office.

Imran Khan deserves accolades for energising Pakistan’s vocal urban youth, as well as many older, educated, and previously politically unengaged urbanites in turning out to vote. As such, the increase in voter turnout to around 60 per cent must, at least, partly be attributed to his efforts. The PTI is now a formidable third party in Pakistan, fundamentally changing the structure of the Pakistani party system and democracy as we know it. According to my calculations based on data from the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) website (as of May 16), of Punjab’s 138 National Assembly constituencies where the PTI was not the winner (it won eight National Assembly seats in Punjab) and where results were not withheld, the second runner-up candidate belonged to the PTI in 48 constituencies. That is an impressive achievement, one which the PTI and Mr Khan must be very proud of. It demonstrates that the PTI has made considerable inroads in Punjab.

The passion of Mr Khan’s followers in documenting and protesting vote-rigging, ballot stuffing and other illegal activities at polling stations over the last week also deserves commendation and heralds the arrival of a Naya Pakistan, one in which citizens speak up when they are wronged, a Pakistan which demands fairness and justice.

The passion of Mr Khan’s followers in documenting and protesting vote-rigging, ballot stuffing and other illegal activities at polling stations over the last week also deserves commendation and heralds the arrival of a Naya Pakistan, one in which citizens speak up when they are wronged, a Pakistan which demands fairness and justice. Mr Khan’s appeal to the ECP to look into vote-rigging in 25 constituencies should be taken very seriously, whether it changes the results of the election in his favour or not. Regardless of whether ballot-stuffing happened in four constituencies or 40, it is illegal, and a truly fair electoral system should tolerate no instance of it.

But let’s talk for a minute about where the PTI did very well — Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Mr Khan’s party won 17 out of its 27 National Assembly seats there, and a plurality in the K-P provincial assembly, winning 35 seats out of 99. Mr Khan’s supporters on social media have hailed the Pashtuns as visionaries, as being more progressive than the rest of Pakistan. Photographs of a modern Peshawar skyline in 2018 as the outcome of five years of a provincial PTI government are doing the rounds. But are the Pashtuns really the idealists they are being made out to be, the path-breakers to a Naya Pakistan? What about the role of the Taliban in all this?

The truth is a lot less romantic than the PTI stalwarts would proclaim. We know that the PTI is the only party that was able to effectively campaign in K-P given the Taliban’s brutal and unrelenting assault on the ANP. True, the ANP faced a disadvantage as the incumbent provincial government, which supervised over a terrible five years in K-P. Nevertheless, it is astounding that it got no sympathy for the bullets and the bombs it took for Pakistani democracy. Not from the voters of K-P, and not from the active PTI protesters who were out at Teen Talwar and Lalik Chowk protesting alleged election fraud in Karachi and Lahore. What do these newly mobilised youth think of the fact that the Taliban essentially handed the K-P to the PTI?

Regionalism and provincialism, already reflected in the election results, have become even more pronounced in this past week as blame is assigned for not embracing Mr Khan’s vision, and class fissures have opened up. The Punjabis are being maligned by PTI supporters outside Punjab for being misguided, and rural Punjabis denigrated by urban Punjabis for being irrational. No one is thinking of Balochistan at all, where turnout was dismal amid security concerns. The truth is that the PTI energised and engaged a minority, the urban young, who did not, in the end, garner it significant voting power in parliament.

This is not to discount by any means the notable performance of the PTI candidates as runners-up in Punjab’s constituencies. But the irony is that those who got the PTI over the finish line are the residents of K-P, a very different segment from the elite Lahore and Karachi base, who consider themselves the PTI’s face. In the end, the illusion generated by massive rallies in Lahore and Islamabad belied the truth that the PTI represented but a minority of Pakistan’s population. Mr Khan led an extraordinary campaign, and over the next five years, he can make significant inroads where he does not yet have a base: in rural Punjab and in Sindh and Balochistan.

Authors

Madiha Afzal

Publication: Tribune

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s Comeback Kid

Bruce Riedel — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:12:00 -0400

Nawaz Sharif is the comeback kid of Pakistani politics. With his party’s electoral victory, he is poised to become prime minister for an unprecedented third time. The Sharif odyssey has been remarkable—but now we will see if he can convert his victory into a new beginning for his deeply troubled country and our own tortured relations with it.

The 63-year-old Nawaz Sharif was born into money as the scion of a very wealthy family in Lahore. He entered politics to protect the family’s industry from nationalization. In the 1980s he became a protégé of Pakistan’s third military dictator, Zia ul Huq, and became the dominant politician in the country’s richest and most populous province, the Punjab. In 1990 Sharif was elected prime minister after his great rival, Benazir Bhutto, was booted out by the military.

I first got to know Sharif when I was President George Bush’s Director for South Asia and Persian Gulf Affairs in the White House in the early 1990s. Sharif was America’s partner in trying to wind down the decade-old war in Afghanistan against the Soviet-backed communist government that had outlived the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in 1988, and was still clinging to power in Kabul. Unfortunately, when the communist government finally did collapse in 1992, it only ushered in a vicious civil war among the victorious mujahedin. Pakistan was left to deal with the consequences on its own as America abandoned Afghanistan to its fate. And Sharif lost power in 1993 to Benazir Bhutto.

He was elected back to a second term as prime minister in 1997. A year later he tested Pakistan’s nuclear weapons after India tested its first. As President Clinton’s Special Assistant for Near East and South Asia Affairs, I tried to persuade Sharif not to follow India’s path, but to no avail. In 1999 Sharif’s hand-picked Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Musharraf, exploded a détente Sharif had arranged with India by starting a war in Kashmir. Normally very shy, Sharif invited himself to the White House on July 4, 1999, to find a way out, and wisely agreed to Clinton’s demand that Pakistan unilaterally abandon the war Musharraf had orchestrated. Sharif’s decision averted a wider—and very possibly nuclear—war.

Sharif fired Musharraf on October 12, 1999, while the general was visiting Sri Lanka. The general refused to step down and instead orchestrated a coup and arrested Sharif. A military court was summoned to try Sharif for treason. Only in Pakistan could a legitimately-elected prime minister be labeled a traitor for firing the country’s top general—a general who Sharif had selected for the job in the first place. Many expected Musharraf to have Sharif executed, just as Zia ul Huq had executed Benazir Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar Bhutto.

Clinton tasked me with saving Sharif’s life. The president believed Sharif did not deserve death, and that it would be a disaster for Pakistan to execute another elected leader after a military coup. I spent a great deal of time arguing for clemency with the Pakistani ambassador in Washington. The ambassador was sympathetic to the argument—but I needed more help. The Saudi ambassador to Washington at the time, Prince Bandar, provided the heavy lifting.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also did not want a repeat of the Zia-Zulfi nightmare. Then Crown Prince Abdallah used the Kingdom’s considerable influence in Pakistan to save Sharif. Saudi Arabia is Pakistan’s closest ally, and has given more financial aid to Pakistan than to any other country in the world. Abdallah asked Musharraf to let Sharif go into exile in Saudi Arabia. As Musharraf later wrote in his memoirs, it was an offer he could not refuse. After 14 months in prison, Sharif went into exile in the Kingdom in December 2000. Few expected him to ever return home.

Now the tables have turned. Sharif has won a massive electoral victory and his long time tormentor, Musharraf, is under arrest in Pakistan after returning from his own exile to run in the elections. Musharraf was ousted by popular pressure in 2008, became a billionaire in exile in London, and then foolishly decided he was Pakistan’s savior this winter and decided to go home to be swept back into power by the people. He miscalculated badly. No one in Pakistan wanted the self-appointed savior, and he is now under house arrest. He faces a number of charges and could be tried for the coup he orchestrated against Sharif. The irony is rich.

But Sharif faces a real challenge over what to do with Musharraf. The general has few supporters even in the army, but the officer corps will be very uncomfortable with the prospect of one of its own serving prison time, or worse. Since many of the senior commanders in the army today, including Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, are former Musharraf protégés who rose with him to power, the question of what to do with Musharraf now is a dangerous challenge. The courts will decide his fate but the next prime minister’s voice will matter.

Deciding how to handle the Musharraf affair is only one of Sharif’s huge challenges. The country is under siege by some of the extremists it nurtured during the wars in Afghanistan. Some 45,000 Pakistanis have died in extremist terrorism since 2001, and violence wracked the election. Sharif has urged a political process to try to end the terror, and has been widely accused of being too soft on the Pakistani Taliban. He has long coddled Pakistan’s most dangerous terrorist group, Lashkar e Tayyiba, which carried out the Mumbai massacre in 2008 and which has its headquarters in Sharif’s home city of Lahore. LeT retains very close links to the army and the intelligence service, the ISI.

Nonetheless, Sharif has also promised to turn a page in Pakistan’s relations with India and has invited Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to his inauguration. As an industrialist billionaire, Sharif knows the Pakistani economy desperately needs more trade and investment from its far more vibrant Indian neighbor. Pakistan’s economy is in shambles, and half the people in the country are under 15 with little hope for a decent education or a good job. Sharif is not obsessed with rivalry with India like his generals; his vision of Pakistan is more about building highways and mass transit than an arms race Pakistan cannot win. In the campaign, he promised that he will build a fast bullet train line linking the port city of Karachi to the northern city of Peshawar. When last in the prime minister’s office, he built a modern highway to link Lahore to Islamabad.

America’s relations with Pakistan are at an all-time low, yet Washington provides huge quantities of military and economic aid to Pakistan: over $25 billion since 2001. We are on opposite sides of the war in Afghanistan where Pakistan and the ISI are the Afghan Taliban’s key ally, even as we depend on Pakistan for the vital supply line that allows us to withdraw our heavy equipment from Afghanistan as we transition out of the country by 2014. Inside Pakistan, our drones fly daily missions looking for al Qaeda— missions Sharif promised to try to halt during the campaign. He did not endorse his rival Imran Khan’s call to shoot down American drones (probably with American-supplied F-16s) but he will face much popular demand to end the drone war.

Two presidents, Bush and Clinton, worked with Sharif with mixed results during his two previous tours as prime minister. Now that the comeback kid of Pakistani politics is on the verge of his third time in the top office, President Barack Obama will need to partner with Sharif. It’s an opportunity Obama needs to make a success.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: © Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

Can Imran Khan Ride to Victory?

Madiha Afzal — Thu, 09 May 2013 17:27:00 -0400

With election day almost upon us, and with Imran Khan certainly enjoying momentum, the outcome of the May 11 election is anybody’s guess. Will Pakistan’s next government be led by the PML-N, by a PPP-led coalition, or a PTI-led coalition? Why do we have no idea what to expect? The main reason is that election campaigns are short and frenzied in Pakistan, with little time for polling (in contrast, the US presidential campaign, for example, lasts nearly two years, including the primaries). In addition, surveys are conducted at the national level, and are, therefore, largely meaningless in predicting outcomes in Pakistan’s parliamentary democracy. Surveys in Pakistan need to be undertaken at the electoral constituency level in order to have predictive power.

In this election, two additional factors have compounded the usual electoral uncertainty. The first is the emergence of the PTI as a serious third-party contender in a country where politics has hitherto been dominated by only two parties, effectively changing the landscape as we know it. Imran Khan has energised a disenchanted voting population, and voter turnout is expected to be higher than in previous elections. The second factor is demographic: specifically, the youth vote. There are 35 million new voters on the rolls in this election, most of them between the ages of 18 and 25.

Having mentioned the unknowns, it is worth better understanding what we do know. It is widely understood that there is a national-level incumbency disadvantage in Pakistani politics, with the PPP and the PML-N’s alternating stints in power in the 1990s. A national level incumbency disadvantage is to be expected this year, with approximately 91 per cent of the population dissatisfied with the way things are currently going in the country. The constituency-level roots of this national effect are not well-known. During the course of my work, using constituency-level election results data from 1988 to 1997, I show that incumbent MNAs who were elected by relatively small margins face a large incumbency disadvantage i.e., they are much less likely to be elected in the next election than candidates who previously lost by a small margin.

What does this empirical fact mean for the 2013 election? The biggest implication is that Mr Khan’s party may have a chance on May 11, since, all else equal, people are really voting against two incumbent parties this year i.e., against the national-level government of the PPP, and against the provincial Punjab government of the PML-N. Discussions with PTI supporters certainly bear out this hypothesis — their vote is as much a vote for Imran as a vote against the other parties. In addition, Mr Khan’s party platform and campaign of a Naya Pakistan is, in a word (or two), anti-status quo. His campaign has also effectively used some pages from US President Barack Obama’s social media strategy during his first electoral campaign, championing ‘change’.

What about the high-ranking and powerful PML-N and PPP candidates, those who are long-standing politicians? They are unlikely to be replaced by a PTI newcomer. On the other hand, any relatively weak candidates from these parties need to be very worried. But, one may counter, Imran Khan’s appeal need not translate to each candidate his party has fielded for election across Pakistan’s electoral constituencies. I would argue that in these constituencies, if the vote is truly a vote against the PPP and the PML-N candidates and a vote for the PTI, candidate identities largely will not matter. This is not unthinkable in a country where party trumps candidate identity at important points (such as when candidates cross party lines to move away from the unpopular incumbent party).

In a country rife with ethnic, sectarian, provincial, class and political conflicts and on a downward spiral, Mr Khan represents the one source of passionate unity for the country — cricket — and a true source of national pride: the leader of the 1992 cricket World Cup victory. Given this, he has truly picked an ingenious party symbol with the bat. He has also run a tireless campaign, culminating in his chilling fall on May 7. Whether or not his efforts will pan out, we will know soon.

There is hope for an Imran Khan victory, and with it, a renewal of lost confidence regarding the power of the vote. There is a palpable energy in the air, similar to Benazir Bhutto’s election to power in 1988. But let’s not forget that a violent and bloody campaign led to this historic election. The attacks against the ANP and the MQM have reshaped the electoral map and restricted the field of candidacy. In fact, we have seen disqualification of candidates similar to the 2002 election with the laws limiting candidacy instituted by General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, except this time, instead of Musharraf, the Taliban are (literally) calling the shots. This is a situation far from ideal and hardly represents a flourishing democracy. But a strong vote for Mr Khan will reassure many that a Naya Pakistan may yet be possible.

It is ironic that the very existence of an incumbency disadvantage that Mr Khan may ride to a victory has harmful consequences. For legislators on the margin, who know they will be voted out in the next election, an incumbency disadvantage is likely to create incentives for extraction and corruption. But this all rides on the politician’s expectation of being voted out. That may no longer exist if Pakistan sees a political sea-change in the election of the PTI.

Authors

Madiha Afzal

Publication: The Express Tribune

Image Source: © Zohra Bensemra / Reuters

Counterinsurgency, Counternarcotics, and Illicit Economies in Afghanistan: Lessons for State-Building

Vanda Felbab-Brown — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:30:00 -0400

Editor's note: The following excerpt introduces a book chapter produced by Vanda Felbab-Brown for the Center for Complex Operations volume, Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Security in the Age of Globalization, published in April 2013. In this chapter, Felbab-Brown analyzes U.S. counternarcotics policies in Afghanistan since 2001, how the Obama administration broke with the dominant counternarcotics framework, and the potentially problematic side effects of counternarcotics success.

Since 2001, Afghanistan has become synonymous with the narco-state and the spread of crime and illegality. In 2007 and 2008, the Afghan drug economy reached levels unprecedented since at least World War II. Although the drug economy has declined since, the decrease has largely been driven by the saturation of the global drug market and by poppy crop disease rather than the policies of the international community and the Afghan government. Although several other illicit economies thrive in Afghanistan including the smuggling of legal goods, narcotics receive by far the most attention because they generate the largest profits and the greatest international opprobrium.

Narcotics production and counternarcotics policies in Afghanistan are of critical importance not only for drug control there and worldwide, but also for security, reconstruction, and rule-of-law efforts in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, many of the counternarcotics policies adopted after 9/11 not only failed to reduce the size and scope of the illicit economy in Afghanistan but also had serious counterproductive effects on peace, state-building, and economic reconstruction.

In 2009, the Obama administration wisely decided to scale back eradication efforts in Afghanistan, courageously breaking with 30 years of counternarcotics policies that focused on ineffective forced eradication of illicit crops as a way to reduce the supply of drugs and to bankrupt belligerents. But the effectiveness of its counternarcotics policies there—interdiction focused on Taliban-linked traffickers and alternative livelihoods efforts—has been challenged by implementation difficulties and is ultimately dependent on major progress in improving the security situation and governance in Afghanistan. As of fall 2011, governance in Afghanistan had been steadily deteriorating, with corruption and ethnic tensions rising and political patronage networks becoming more exclusionary, while any security improvements following the 2010 U.S. military surge remain extremely fragile. A civil war post-2014 remains a very likely outcome, with the corollary thriving of the drug trade.

This chapter first details the evolution of U.S. counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan since 2001, situating the changes in the policy within two conceptual frameworks. Next, it describes how the Obama administration broke with the dominant counternarcotics framework in an attempt to synchronize counternarcotics policies with its counterinsurgency efforts. That section also analyzes the implementation challenges President Barack Obama’s counternarcotics strategy encountered—from the side effects of its interdiction focus, to poor governance and the inability to decide whether and how to combat broader corruption in Afghanistan, to defining alternative livelihoods efforts as narrow buying support programs rather than long-term sustainable development. Next, the chapter considers the likely security and political conditions in Afghanistan after a reduction in U.S. combat forces there in 2014. Subsequently, it explores two oft-ignored but potentially problematic side effects of any future counternarcotics success in Afghanistan: what illegal economy may replace the opium poppy economy if it is reduced, and where the opium poppy economy is likely to shift. In conclusion, the chapter offers broader lessons for dealing with illicit economies in the context of counterinsurgency and state-building.

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Authors

Vanda Felbab-Brown

Publication: Center for Complex Operations

Quiet Progress for Education in Pakistan

Rebecca Winthrop, Elena Matsui and Baela Raza Jamil — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0400

The issue of education in Pakistan rocketed to front page news after the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old girl who was targeted by Taliban assassins last October. Unfortunately, violence and attacks against education persist. At the end of March, Shahnaz Nazli, a 41-year-old teacher, was killed on her way to work at a girls’ school near the town of Jamrud in the Khyber tribal district. Five teachers were killed in January near the town of Swabi in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Acts of violence like these undermine an already weak education system where an estimated 30 to 40 percent of school-aged children are out of school. These enormous challenges are compounded by political uncertainties given the upcoming elections and denouement of the war in Afghanistan.

However, in the shadow of these difficult circumstances, progress is quietly being made in thousands of schools located in Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province. A recent report, The Good News From Pakistan, shows positive results emerging from a program that instituted a number of reforms to the education sector in over 60,000 government schools. Based on global evidence of what works in school system reform, the Punjab Education Reform Roadmap targets access, equity and quality, and uses an innovative monitoring tool that can be used to support and encourage policy dialogue. Over the past two years there have been increases in student enrollment, teacher presence and the availability of functioning facilities in the regions where the program has been implemented.

Student learning levels in Punjab have also improved. An independent, citizen-led household-based study, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), assessed over 60,000 children from all 36 districts in Punjab and profiled almost 2,000 public and private schools in the region. It reveals significant gains in learning outcomes for literacy and numeracy. Grade 4 English language learning levels have improved 12 percent since 2011; Arithmetic levels in Grades 4 and 5 have increased 10 percent. Perhaps even more remarkable, the study indicates that gaps between public and private education are closing. Whereas private schools have historically performed better in terms of teacher attendance rates and learning outcomes, now public and private school attendance rates for children (86 percent) and teachers (87 percent) are on par. Public school facilities are also improving. There are more functioning toilets and available drinking water in government schools, which has further reduced discrepancies in relation to private schools.

Something is definitely working. A critical component of the Punjab Education Reform Roadmap includes strengthening district administration by involving, incentivizing and holding officials accountable for progress or failure, as well as acknowledging them publicly. In addition, a culture of evidence-based tracking and accountability is growing throughout the Punjab districts. In particular, monthly monitoring and ranking based on a number of key indicators around governance and quality has helped to bolster the attendance rates in public schools.

The engagement of policymakers as well as citizens is essential to the success of any large scale public sector education reform. While the Punjab Education Reform Roadmap is involving high-level officials and community leaders, Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Pakistan is doing its part to include citizens in the dialogue. Every year, 9,000 volunteers from across Pakistan work to collect ASER data that is then shared with the government, civil society organizations, media, bilateral and multilateral agencies and other stakeholders working in the education sector. This process supports the Right to Education (RTE) campaign that has collected almost 2 million signatures from in-school and out-of-school children in an effort to pressure the Pakistani government to implement free and compulsory education for all children aged five to sixteen. United Nations special envoy for Global Education and former prime minster, Gordon Brown, presented 1 million signatures from the RTE campaign to the president of Pakistan on Malala Day, November 10^th, 2012, which lead to the ratification of the first RTE bill in Pakistan. Following the death of Shahnaz Nazli, Malala started a new petition in honor of the slain teacher, which continues to put pressure on the Pakistani government to end the killings and violence that deny children their right to an education–especially for girls.

These advances are important for the people of Pakistan and the 5.1 million children out of school throughout the country. But these efforts also offer lessons for the international community. The Punjab Education Reform Roadmap as well as the work of ASER Pakistan and courageous individuals like Malala and Shahnaz Nazli show that even in the face of daunting challenges and an uncertain future, ambitious goal setting, collaboration and the effective use of evidence can deliver impressive results in a relatively short amount of time. Governments and partners working to improve education systems everywhere should take note.

Authors

Rebecca Winthrop
Elena Matsui
Baela Raza Jamil

Image Source: © Zohra Bensemra / Reuters

America's Care in the Use of Force (and Use of Drones)

Michael E. O'Hanlon — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:36:00 -0400

American University professor Akbar Ahmed’s new book, The Thistle and the Drone, is elegant and erudite in many ways. He demonstrates a rich historical and anthropological understanding not only of his native Pakistan but of other tribal societies around the world relevant in the broader “war against terrorism.” He cautions wisely about the geostrategic dangers that can result if Washington is seen as using force disproportionately or carelessly in ways that hurt innocent people in these areas. Ahmed is right to question whether the United States needs to reassess its approaches in these matters.

However, as someone who has followed these same issues myself, albeit from a somewhat different vantage point as a national security scholar with close ties to the U.S. military and intelligence community, I have a different perspective on several of the issues Ahmed raises. In some of his specific arguments, Professor Ahmed is not fully fair, accurate, or up to date.

He makes insufficient effort to understand trends in drone warfare including the huge progress that the United States has made in minimizing civilian casualties. While mistakes are sometimes still made, I believe after following the use of drones closely for years that the United States Armed Forces take a great deal of care in their use of force. It is dangerous for Ahmed to suggest otherwise, since in doing so he can fuel the very fires of hatred and distrust that he decries.

For example, in Afghanistan, ISAF forces have made extraordinary efforts to reduce their use of firepower, and accidental or inadvertent strikes now account for less than 10 percent of all civilian fatalities there according to UN figures. This is still far too many—a few hundred a year—but it is incredibly precise by the standards of warfare. Indeed, under General McChrystal three years ago, some NATO troops felt they were even being asked to accept greater personal risk to themselves and their fellow troopers when engaged in firefights so as to ensure maximum safety for Afghans. NATO troops do not fire on Afghan homes or other buildings unless in dire peril, and their care has produced a huge improvement in our track record.

In Pakistan, U.S. forces have had essentially a zero-casualty policy for at least three years. Attacks are not made if there is any realistic risk to civilians—with only a partial exception if al Qaeda’s top two or three leaders might be in the crosshairs. Yes, mistakes have been made. But these have been extremely rare. Peter Bergen tallies the number of accidental deaths of innocents as well under 10 percent of the total in recent times. To be sure, critiques are warranted, and we can afford to scale back our use of force now that bin Laden is dead, top al Qaeda leadership in general is decimated, and some key Haqqani leaders are out of the picture (we have already reduced the pace of attacks substantially, as Bergen’s data repeated at www.brookings.edu/afghanistanindex show). But the insinuations that we have not been extremely careful and have not tried to learn further lessons along are simply incorrect.

Ahmed goes further. On p. 39 of his book, he even says that "There appears to be a deliberate attempt by official agencies in the war on terror to obfuscate and distort." This is a big charge that he makes without substantiation or specificity.

There are a few other specific matters where dissent is warranted, as well. On p. 305 he suggests that many if not most American scholars blame Islam and its basic nature for terrorism. This is not accurate. Far more American scholars go out of their way to argue just the opposite in the last 12 years.

On p. 309 he actually suggests that a mainstream strand of American national security thinking wants to "eradicate Islam." This is, frankly, a preposterous and irresponsible allegation.

On p. 311 he suggests that it was a serious idea to carpet bomb Muslim villages with videos of Baywatch, and that Americans would take such nonsense seriously. Perhaps here Ahmed is being tongue in cheek, but in light of his other arguments, I couldn’t tell. I hope so!

On p. 313, he says that al Qaeda is now blamed for every outburst of violence around the world, and that Americans live on pins and needles because of fear of another attack. In fact, most Americans have moved on. They worry far more about the economy. In national security terms, recent policy has focused as much on the so-called rebalancing towards Asia, and the problems with North Korea. More than anything else, though, what typifies the current American public policy debate is less paranoia over al Qaeda than Americans' growing isolationism. Ahmed would have been more fair to criticize the country for its indifference towards the Syrian civil war than for hypervigilance towards militants.

Finally, on p. 319, Ahmed suggests that anthropologists were brought into U.S. foreign policy decisionmaking to help determine how to properly torture Muslim prisoners. This too is wrong.

Ahmed is a remarkable scholar who has made big contributions, but on the above matters, I simply disagree.

Authors

Michael E. O'Hanlon

Image Source: © Handout . / Reuters

Still Knee-Deep In Poppy: The Evolution of Counter-Narcotics Policies in Afghanistan

Vanda Felbab-Brown — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:20:00 -0400

Editor’s note: The following excerpt introduces a book chapter produced by Vanda Felbab-Brown for the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) volume, Partners for Stability, published in March 2013. In this chapter, Dr. Felbab-Brown explains how international and domestic counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan cannot be successful without first achieving substantial security improvements and good governance within the country.

Perhaps nowhere in the world have a country and the international community faced such a strong illicit drug economy as in Afghanistan. In 2007 and 2008, the economy reached levels unprecedented in the world at least since World War II. But neither opium poppy cultivation nor heroin production is a new, post-2001 phenomenon: each robustly existed during the Taliban era and before. Although opium production has declined in Afghanistan since 2008, the decrease has largely been driven by the saturation of the global drug market and by poppy crop disease, rather than being the outcome of the policies of the international community and the Afghan government.

Narcotics production and counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan are of critical importance not only for drug control, but also for the security, reconstruction, and rule-of-law efforts in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, many of the counter-narcotics policies adopted during most of the 2000s not only failed to reduce the size and scope of the illicit economy in Afghanistan, but also had serious counterproductive effects on the other objectives of peace, state-building, and economic reconstruction. In a courageous break with a previous counterproductive policy, the Obama administration wisely decided in 2009 to scale back poppy eradication in Afghanistan, but it has struggled to implement its new strategy effectively. Although it backed away from centrally-led eradication, Afghan governor-led eradication persists. The interdiction policy adopted by ISAF at times approximates eradication in its negative effects on farmers’ well-being and their receptivity to Taliban mobilization, and rural development policies have failed to address structural drivers of poppy cultivation. Moreover, despite the surge in U. S. military forces adopted in December 2009 and important improvements in security in Afghanistan’s south, the 129,469 U. S. and ISAF forces deployed as of May 2012 have not stabilized other parts of Afghanistan, such as the east. The Taliban and related insurgencies have not been robustly defeated even in the south, and they maintain an important foothold in Afghanistan’s north as well. As U. S. and ISAF troops are preparing to depart Afghanistan by 2014, they are handing over an on-going war to Afghan security forces. Although both Russia and the United States have supported counter-narcotics policies in Central Asia, such as interdiction training, these efforts have achieved little systematic effect on either reducing illicit flows, the strength of organized crime, and corruption in the region or encouraging regional cooperation.

Authors

Vanda Felbab-Brown

Publication: German Council on Foreign Relations

Image Source: © Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

America's War on Terror Is Now a War Against Tribal Islam

Akbar Ahmed — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

With the United States relying on the use of drones to target Islamic extremists, Nonresident Senior Fellow Akbar Ahmed writes in his new book, The Thistle and the Drone, that what began as the war on terror after the 9/11 attacks is now a war against tribal Islam. Ahmed explains that women are the innocent victims who suffer the most and argues that America must re-evaluate its war on terror and use proper methods to attack the right enemy.

The impact of the drones has been devastating and counterproductive.

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The Thistle and Drone is a Metaphor of Two Kinds of Society in the 21st Century

We are destroying an entire generation of human beings who are completely innocent.

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The Ordinary People Who Suffer the Most are Women

The enemy is not the ordinary tribesman. The enemy are the criminals.

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Tribalism and Ethnicity are Still Very Important in Traditional Societies

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Akbar Ahmed

How America’s War on Terror became a Global War on Tribal Islam

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:00:00 -0400

Event Information

March 14, 2013
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Along with the ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, America’s global war on terror has been characterized by the use of drones. In his new book, The Thistle and the Drone (Brookings, 2013), Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World Nonresident Senior Fellow Akbar Ahmed—the Ibn Khaldun chair of Islamic Studies at American University and former Pakistani high commissioner to the United Kingdom— examines the tribal societies on the borders between nations who are the drones' primary victims. He provides a fresh and unprecedented paradigm for understanding the war on terror, based in the broken relationship between these tribal societies and their central governments. Beginning with Waziristan in Pakistan and expanding to similar tribal societies in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, Ahmed demonstrates how America's war on terror became a global war on tribal Islam. This is the third volume in his trilogy about relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world after 9/11 that includes Journey into Islam (Brookings, 2007) and Journey into America (Brookings, 2010).

On March 14, the Brookings Press hosted the launch of The Thistle and the Drone featuring a discussion on the regional, societal and humanitarian effects of the war on terrorism. Following Ahmed’s presentation, Mowahid Shah, a former Pakistani minister, and Sally Quinn, editor-in-chief of the Washington Post’s “On Faith,” joined the conversation. Khalid Aziz, a leading official from Pakistan, formerly in charge of Waziristan, offered recorded remarks via video.

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Pakistan Will Rise Again

Madiha Afzal — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 10:48:00 -0400

Pakistan will rise again. It certainly seems improbable right now. But our people are too strong and too full of heart to let this country crumble. I believe in Pakistan and in Pakistanis.

Still, with each act of violence on this soil which destroys the futures of innocent children, women and men, my hope wanes a little and my optimism recedes.

I imagine a young boy sitting in his family’s apartment in Abbas Town on the evening of March 3. His father has gone to the mosque to pray and he is putting the finishing touches on his homework while his mother prepares dinner.

Imagine his face, the surprise when that blast came out of nowhere and took his future away. Imagine his mother’s shock. Imagine the father who found everything he lived for literally blown up. One imagined face and life, and the heart shrinks.

Thinking of all those who died in Abbas Town, as well as the hundreds of Hazaras in Quetta this January and February, is almost unbearable.

Pakistan’s homegrown militants get more brazen by the day, striking marketplaces in Quetta during the evening rush hour and homes in the heart of the country’s most populous city. They attack where citizens are supposed to feel safest. But where are Pakistan’s leaders? Do they grieve each child, each man and each woman lost to this senseless violence?

They do not visit the affected areas until days after the attacks, if then. Do they look at each victim’s picture, not the one with blood and missing body parts, but at the picture of the happy eight-year-old, the face full of life? Do they bother to learn his or her name and what made the child special?

Does the thought that it could have been one of their own cross their minds? They must know it probably couldn’t, given the amount of security they receive. So, they remove themselves from the situation and hide behind aggregate casualty numbers and impassive condemnations of the attacks.

It is impossible that any well-meaning state can be this inept at protecting its own. As long as innocent citizens continue to be killed under its watch, the government’s condemnations mean nothing. A state’s foremost responsibility is protecting the lives of its citizens. How can cars get loaded with explosives and travel through the country’s largest city, through narrow streets, to arrive successfully at their target?

The ranks of the army and police far outnumber the terrorists responsible for these attacks. So, how can the militants be more adept than the state, time and again? How can the state refuse to take the name of the terrorist organisation, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which took responsibility for the Quetta attacks? Why has its leader been arrested in Punjab on charges of hate speech, instead of suspected terrorism?

Where, you ask, is there room for hope in the midst of all this? The government has certainly failed us. My hope in Pakistan lies in its people. It lies in the Shia and Sunni survivors in Abbas Town helping each other out, in those donating blood to the injured, in the lawyers who declared March 4 a day of mourning for the attack, and in those collecting donations of money, food and supplies for the survivors.

In the Pakistan where I grew up, I never knew which of my friends were Shia and Sunni. I never knew whether one was Ahmadi, the other Kashmiri. We were all the same. In almost every way, we have regressed since then, but I can bet that the majority of children today still do not know which sect their friends belong to. Let’s not let that be overwritten by the hatred of a few.

I am not alone in thinking this way. Policy analysts, who know Pakistan well, continually cite the strength and intelligence of Pakistan’s people and its growing ‘civil society’ as the reason why Pakistan is unlikely to fail anytime soon. Pakistanis rally together after disaster strikes.

Following the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan’s north, they helped in recovery and relief efforts by generously donating time, food, supplies, money and medical expertise in the affected areas. They did so again following the debilitating 2010 floods.

So, when Pakistan emerges from this wave of senseless sectarian violence, battered but still intact, I will know who saved it. It will not be the army, nor the politicians, nor the judiciary. It will be the man on the street, who remains compassionate despite the most damning circumstances.

Authors

Madiha Afzal

Publication: The Express Tribune

Image Source: © Naseer Ahmed / Reuters

The Thistle and the Drone: The United States, Islam, and the War on Terror

Akbar Ahmed — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:03:00 -0500

“We will not tolerate more genocide of innocent tribesmen.”

This was the message of hundreds of tribesmen from Waziristan demonstrating in front of the Governor’s House in Peshawar, Pakistan on March 5, 2013. They were protesting the on-going drone campaign Pakistan which is almost exclusively targeting their home of Waziristan. Only 18 drone strikes in Pakistan have been outside of the two tribal agencies that comprise the region of Waziristan. These tribesmen were bringing attention to the fact that these drone strikes have traumatized entire tribal communities and resulted in the deaths of many innocent people, including women, children, and the elderly, in traditional meetings of councils of elders, inside mosques, and in residential homes.

As the debate about the drone and the war on terror in America emerges, these are the voices that are not heard—those of the victims and the targeted communities. They are lost in the din of the war on terror and the 24 hour media cycle in the United States. The debate is in fact no debate at all: only one position, that of America, is represented. The arguments swirl around the precision of drone technology, keeping American boots off the ground, and the legality of the strikes. Few are concerned with the moral implications of the drone’s use and the social and historical reasons why certain members of the targeted communities have resorted to violence, being merely cast aside as “Islamic terrorists,” “Islamists,” or “jihadists.”

My latest study with Brookings Press The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam, the third book in my trilogy on relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world after 9/11, provides the missing part of the debate. The Thistle and the Drone explains an important correlation: the United States uses drones almost exclusively against Muslim tribes with strong codes of honor and revenge living on the borders between nations—the tribes on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Yemen, Somalia, the southern Philippines, Turkey, and Mali. For these communities, the deadly drone is a symbol for America’s war on terror. It is constantly hovering above unseen, operated by Americans on the other side of the world, and with the ability to strike at will. The thistle is a symbol of these fierce tribes, invoking Leo Tolstoy’s novel Hadji Murad in which he compares the Caucasian tribes battling the advancing Imperial Russian army in the 19th century with this prickly flower.

Many of these tribal communities had been fighting for decades in order to defend their identity, culture, and independence in the chaotic and often brutal modern states created after the departure of the European colonial powers. After the tragic events of 9/11, it was to the “ungoverned spaces” of these peripheral communities that the United States looked to in their hunt for al Qaeda. Many of their central governments found it convenient to ally themselves with the United States and become integrated in the globalized financial, military, information, and communication networks. The United States, dominated by ideas of a “clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam, were quick to ascribe the retaliatory actions of the tribes as the work of al Qaeda or al Qaeda-linked militants as part of a “global jihad.” Once the specter of al Qaeda was invoked, the United States’ was fully committed to bolstering the military capabilities of its allies. U.S. involvement, especially the use of the drone, proved to exacerbate and expand these conflicts, each with their own social and historical context. The war on terror had thus become a global war on tribal Islam.

Amidst the anarchic violence, it is, however, the innocent men, women, and children of the periphery who suffer the most—children in a school, poverty-ridden families standing in line for food, or congregations at worship in a house of prayer. These communities are facing a massive humanitarian crisis yet their plight goes unrecognized under the din of America’s war on terror and the heavy fog of war. Pounded by drones and military strikes one day, suicide bombers the next, the people of the periphery cry out, “Everyday is like 9/11 for us.”

Relying upon forty case studies of tribal societies across the Muslim world, from Morocco to the southern Philippines, The Thistle and the Drone shows that the war on terror across the Muslim world is being fueled by the structural breakdown between the center and periphery rather than any compulsion within the Islamic faith. This study takes the reader into the heart of the war on terror—Waziristan—one of the most battered regions of the world by drones and where I served as the government administrator, or Political Agent, in the late 1970s. Using my own experiences in Waziristan, I describe how traditional tribal society functions and how to effectively administer them as a representative of government authority. I then show how the historical tension between the center and periphery spiraled out of control after 9/11, leading to one of its deadliest manifestation, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) based in the toughest clan of the toughest tribe of the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, the Shabi Khel of the Mahsud.

Expanding to other tribal societies in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, I establish a new frame for understanding the war on terror based in the historical conflict between the central government and tribal periphery, resulting in the mutation of the tribal code and increasingly deadly violence. I even discovered the catalyst for the war on terror—the 9/11 attacks—impossible to fully understand without knowledge of tribal society and this new paradigm for the war on terror. Of the 19 hijackers on 9/11, 18 of them, along with Osama bin Laden himself, were Yemeni tribesmen motivated by tribal codes. Of the 18 Yemeni hijackers, 10 were from the Yemeni tribes of the beleaguered Asir region on the southwest periphery of Saudi Arabia.

After over a decade, it is abundantly clear that the United States has been fighting the wrong war with the wrong methods against the wrong enemy. Only by recognizing the true source of the violence and the nature of the tribal society which produces it can the U.S. begin to provide lasting solutions. The Thistle and the Drone lays down this path to ending and winning the war on terror. In this age of globalization, we must be guided by the shibboleth tikkun olam—to go out and “heal a fractured world.” Peace is in everyone’s best interests.

Authors

Akbar Ahmed

Ill Will and the Multiplier Effect: Counterterrorism Attacks in Pakistan

Paul R. Pillar — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's note: This article was originally published by The National Interest.

A story from northwest Pakistan involves a discrepancy between reality and perception with regard to U.S. drone strikes. Last month two attacks in the tribal belt generated the kind of spreading news that has come to be routinely associated with the drones. A couple of al-Qaeda types are killed, but so are several villagers. The Pakistani foreign ministry lodges a protest with the U.S. embassy. According to American officials, however, the United States and U.S. drones were not involved at all in the attacks. “They were not ours,” said one official.

American speculation is that the Pakistani military conducted the attacks and attributed them to the United States to escape blame for the collateral damage. If so, this represents a reversal of a previous Pakistani practice of claiming responsibility for what really were U.S. drone strikes, to escape the embarrassment of allowing the Americans to conduct, or not preventing them from conducting, attacks on Pakistani territory. So a variable in this case is whatever public relations problem the Pakistani military and government most want to avoid in any given week.

There is a larger phenomenon at work, however, which helps to account for the believability of the Pakistani cover story. Once the United States gains a reputation for something, for good or for ill, the reputation not only becomes hard to shake but also gets applied by foreign populations in an exaggerated or overly expansive way. People are reacting to the reputation more than to individual events, because their perception of an event is heavily colored by the reputation.

This phenomenon can sometimes work to the advantage of the United States. It is involved in deterrence; a reputation for striking back can dissuade others from some transgression without actually having to strike them. But more often lately it has been a disadvantage. This applies particularly to the reputation the United States has acquired for Muslim-bashing. Americans tend not to understand the phenomenon fully because they see this reputation as a bum rap and know their intentions are better than that. They not only do not realize what is coloring other Muslims' interpretation of American actions in their part of the world; they also miss how some of their actions are adding to the reputation and thereby coloring the interpretation of future events.

The policy lesson in this is to take full account of the reputation-based multiplier effect in weighing the costs and benefits of actions ranging from drone strikes to military deployments and much else. The policy-maker needs to realize how existing reputations will color how foreign publics and governments interpret whatever action is being contemplated. He also needs to realize how the action may in turn affect the reputation of the United States and thus affect how the United States will be either thanked or hated for future actions—maybe even actions the United States itself does not commit.

Authors

Paul R. Pillar

Publication: The National Interest

The United States, India and Pakistan: To the Brink and Back

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:00:00 -0500

Event Information

February 26, 2013
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

India and Pakistan are among the most important countries in the 21st century. The two nations share a common heritage, but their relationship remains tenuous. The nuclear rivals have waged four wars against each other and have gone to the brink of war several times. While India is already the world’s largest democracy and will soon become the planet’s most populous nation, Pakistan has a troubled history of military coups and dictators, and has harbored terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. In his new book, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India and Pakistan to the Brink and Back (Brookings, 2013), Brookings Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel, director of Brookings Intelligence Project, clearly explains the challenge and importance of successfully managing America’s affairs with these two emerging powers while navigating their toxic relationship.

Based on extensive research and his experience advising four U.S. presidents on the region, Riedel reviews the history of American diplomacy in South Asia, the conflicts that have flared in recent years and the prospects for future crisis. Riedel provides an in-depth look at the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008—the worst terrorist outrage since 9/11—and concludes with authoritative analysis on what the future is likely to hold for the United States and South Asia, offering concrete recommendations for Washington’s policymakers.

On February 26, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted an event marking the release of Avoiding Armageddon. Bruce Riedel discussed the history and future of U.S. relations with India and Pakistan and options for avoiding future conflagration in the region. Senior Fellow Tamara Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, provided introductory remarks, and Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast and Newsweek, lead the discussion.

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The United States, India and Pakistan: To the Brink and Back

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Drone Strikes and Anti-Americanism in Pakistan

Madiha Afzal — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

As President Obama’s second term gets underway, his administration must engage with Pakistan on the issue of U.S. drone strikes. Following the appointment and confirmation of John Kerry as Secretary of State and the appointment of John Brennan as CIA director, the time is right to revisit this issue. Senator Kerry spearheaded a huge civilian aid program to Pakistan in 2009 through the “Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill”, and John Brennan has seen through more than 242 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2009 as the architect of the Obama administration’s drone program. Both men know Pakistan well, and it is now time for them to work together to make Pakistanis understand the U.S. drone program.

The debate on whether drone strikes increase anti-Americanism in Pakistan is ongoing, with the most vocal opponents of drones arguing that they increase recruitment for terror organizations. Opponents argue that this mainly happens in two ways: first, drones can give radicals ammunition for recruiting those on the margin of becoming terrorists. But such individuals are enemies of the United States in any case, and would likely remain so, whether the U.S. is actively engaged in drone strikes or not. The second argument is that drones may convert entirely non-radical individuals into joining terrorist groups since non-radical individuals could become riled up by the havoc wreaked by U.S. drone strikes. However, this is frankly hard to imagine. It is quite plausible that individuals might be radicalized if drone strikes were to harm their families, friends or communities. However, if one argues that the only effect of drone strikes is to increase radicalization, the policy prescription which emerges is either to do nothing, or to scrap the drone program. But the drone program is here to stay, so the policy so far has been to do and say nothing.

What is getting overlooked in the debate is that drone strikes are infuriating the more moderate and liberal segments of Pakistani society, those who have traditionally been more sympathetic toward the United States. Imagine a group of well-educated people, many of whom attended English-language schools, are widely exposed to American and Western media, and like and embrace many aspects of American culture. These people have probably had some sort of personal interaction with the West, through tourism, attending college abroad, or through family members or friends who live in the U.S. What bothers this group about U.S. drone strikes, more than the attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty, is the perceived American hypocrisy toward the importance of Pakistani lives and deaths. Following the horrific school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in December, a piece in the U.K. newspaper The Guardian titled “In the U.S., mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats” went viral among educated Pakistanis.

In addition, coverage of a recent report on drone strikes in Pakistan by researchers at NYU and Stanford law schools, which recounts the daily terror facing those who live in areas where drones strike, gained wide circulation in Pakistan. Few cared to note that this report had been written by an advocacy group and that some of its statistics were suspect. While the New America Foundation, the Long War Journal, and the London Bureau of Investigative Journalism all compile statistics on drone strikes, the numbers differ, and it bothers this liberal, educated group of Pakistanis that the U.S. government does not release its own data on drone strikes. One of the only public acknowledgments on this issue was in a 2012 speech by John Brennan when he stated that there were barely any civilian deaths as a consequence of these strikes. This struck many as implausible, further angering Pakistanis.

Why does anger against America from this group of liberal, educated Pakistanis matter? After all, it is highly unlikely that any of these people will turn radical.

These people matter because they form the heart of an active civil society in Pakistan, which the U.S. counts on to serve as a counterweight to the radical segments of Pakistani society.

These people matter because they form the heart of an active civil society in Pakistan, which the U.S. counts on to serve as a counterweight to the radical segments of Pakistani society. They work in the Pakistani government, media and business sectors, and drone strikes are driving these people toward a constant distrust of the U.S. and hardening their attitudes against America. It undermines all the positive work the United States is doing in Pakistan, all the aid dollars it spends there, and drastically undercuts U.S. soft power in the region. If America loses these hearts and minds, it will lose the battle for Pakistan.

Where does this group of Pakistanis get its information? It buys into the only narrative out there, offered up by the outspokenly anti-American Pakistani media, which argues that drone strikes are callously undertaken without any regard for civilian casualties. This view overinflates the number of civilians killed by drone strikes, especially women and children, and underreports the number of militants killed. And without an official account of events from the U.S. government, this narrative can easily be exploited and promoted.

Let’s take a look at some empirical evidence for the above statements. According to the 2011 Pew Global Attitudes poll, a representative survey of almost 2,000 Pakistanis, 55 percent of respondents had heard (a lot or a little) about drone attacks, up from 36 percent in 2010. A simple cross-tabulation of education and knowledge of drone strikes reveals that the percentage of Pakistanis with some knowledge about drone strikes increases by education. In particular, more than 80 percent of the highly educated with graduate or post-graduate degrees say they have heard about drone strikes. Also according to the Pew 2011 poll, of those Pakistanis with some knowledge about drone strikes, 95 percent think that drones are “a bad or very bad thing”. In addition, 69 percent of these respondents disagree that drone strikes are necessary to defend Pakistan from extremist groups, and 91 percent agree with the statement that they kill too many innocent people.

These statistics show that there is room for the U.S. to explain the drone program to Pakistanis on two fronts in order to correct misconceptions resulting from its silence. First, it can counter the narrative that scores of Pakistani civilians are being killed by drone strikes by releasing numbers on civilian deaths, explaining the carefulness of its intelligence gathering before conducting each attack, and its minimal tolerance for collateral damage and civilian deaths. Second, to counter the perception that drone strikes are not necessary, the United States must engage the Pakistani public in explaining its rationale for conducting drone strikes relative to other options to eradicate militants. The U.S. should also explain the ineffectiveness of the Pakistani army against militants hiding in FATA and other areas, despite the fact that this will be a sensitive issue for the Pakistani government. The United States must, most importantly, tell Pakistanis just how effective the drone program has actually been in decimating militants in the region. To do all this, the U.S. needs to declassify the drone program now.

While such an engagement approach on the issue of drones is not going to be easy, it is worth undertaking, and it is time for the United States to take this narrative into its own hands. Liberal Pakistanis will likely still bristle about attacks on Pakistan’s sovereignty, but will appreciate America’s honesty, and the dignity an honest conversation confers on them and on the value of Pakistani lives. If the argument is that drones are the only viable option to eradicate militancy in Pakistan’s northwest, explain this to Pakistanis. Set right the confusion that many Pakistanis, even educated and liberal ones, have about who their real enemy is: the Taliban and Islamic extremism, not America. If this isn’t done now, the battle for these vital Pakistani hearts and minds might be lost forever.

Authors

Madiha Afzal

Avoiding Armageddon : America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back

Bruce Riedel — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Institution Press 2013 230pp.

This book is being released at a Tuesday, February 26 event hosted by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.

India and Pakistan will be among the most important countries in the twenty-first century. In Avoiding Armageddon, Bruce Riedel clearly explains the challenge and the importance of successfully managing America’s affairs with these two emerging powers and their toxic relationship.

Born from the British Raj, the two nations share a common heritage, but they are different in many important ways. India is already the world’s largest democracy and will soon become the planet’s most populous nation. Pakistan, soon to be the fifth most populous country, has a troubled history of military coups, dictators, and harboring terrorists such as Osama bin Laden.

The longtime rivals are nuclear powers, with tested weapons. They have fought four wars with each other and have gone to the brink of war several times. Meanwhile, U.S. presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have been increasingly involved in the region’s affairs. In the past two decades alone, the White House has intervened several times to prevent nuclear confrontation on the subcontinent. South Asia clearly is critical to American national security, and the volatile relationship between India and Pakistan is the crucial factor determining whether the region can ever be safe and stable.

Based on extensive research and Riedel’s role in advising four U.S. presidents on the region, Avoiding Armageddon reviews the history of American diplomacy in South Asia, the crises that have flared in recent years, and the prospects for future crisis. Riedel provides an in-depth look at the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008, the worst terrorist outrage since 9/11, and he concludes with authoritative analysis on what the future is likely to hold for America and the South Asia puzzle as well as recommendations on how Washington should proceed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bruce Riedel

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Separating Facts from Fiction In Zero Dark Thirty, Hollywood’s Take on the Death of Osama bin Laden

Benjamin Wittes — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

After nearly ten years of diligent CIA intelligence work, U.S. Navy SEALs tracked 9-11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden to his compound in Pakistan and killed him. It was an attack that resonated around the world and is now portrayed in the movie, Zero-Dark-Thirty. Senior Fellow Benjamin Wittes discusses the facts and the myths in Hollywood’s telling of the fateful events leading to the death of the notorious al Qaeda leader.

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Separating Facts from Fiction In Zero Dark Thirty

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Benjamin Wittes

Big Bets and Black Swans: Foreign Policy Challenges for President Obama’s Second Term

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

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