by Jason Kumar
Late last month, Admiral Mike Mullen denounced Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) for working with a known terrorist group, the Haqqani network, by giving it shelter and funding in a campaign to undermine American forces in Afghanistan. Other voices quickly echoed his. Both President Obama and President Karzai more recently expressed disapproval with Pakistan and announced that they would not maintain a long-term relationship with the Pakistani government if the latter did not change course in short order. All this while Pakistan remains a mess. Its Sindh province faces a major humanitarian crisis due to flooding, insurgents are taking safe haven within its Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATAs), and its government is furiously lashing back at the West for the accusations and threatening to break off the alliance. Pakistan is a powder keg on the verge of exploding and Adm. Mullen’s first salvo threatens to set it off. What should be done?
Ironically, it is Pakistan‘s long history of waging asymmetrical warfare that makes its denying contact with the Haqqani network seem particularly dubious. As Pakistan’s disputes with India over the territories of Jammu and Kashmir escalated in the 1980s, the ISI supported and supplied pro-Taliban insurgent groups within Kashmir, using these groups as puppets in a proxy war. At the same time, Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, a specialized paramilitary unit recruited from and stationed in FATAs under the auspices of the ISI, built up experience in undermining and suppressing insurgent groups. U.S. Special Operations analysts have gone so far as to say that the ISI’s combination of experience and skill at counterinsurgency (COIN) and fomenting insurgency (FOIN) makes them highly effective at utilizing both carrot and stick to control violent actors that don’t always play by the rules.
And oh, how the Haqqani network doesn’t play by the rules. Since its formation in the 1980s, it has had decades to build a wide intelligence-gathering network, train highly skilled fighters, and wage an impressive recruitment and propaganda campaign in the heart of Pakistan’s FATAs and eastern Afghanistan. The Haqqani network was held responsible for the bombing of the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul this past June, the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul this past September, and a series of other high profile bombings, kidnappings, and raids since 2008. U.S. military forces in Afghanistan have called it the most resilient enemy they’ve had to face, and given its expansive area of operations, the notion that the ISI has had dealings with the Haqqani network should come as no surprise. Indeed, President Obama even speculated that the ISI is investing in the relationship with the Haqqani network to hedge its bets, and make good with whom they believe will sweep into Afghanistan’s power vacuum once U.S. troops begin withdrawing in 2014.
Despite the actions of the ISI, though, Pakistan’s civilian authority has truly played the part of U.S. ally during the war. Despite popular protest, the civilian government has given free access to the U.S. to wage its drone war in northern Pakistan. Additionally, they’ve tasked the 80 thousand members of the Frontier Corps and the Special Services Group (their equivalent of special forces) to go after Al Qaeda and other high value targets in the FATAs. While it has been utilizing the bulk of its army to secure its northern border as well, the army’s lack of experience with COIN and reliance on the heavy armor and infantry tactics that it used against India have not been as effective against the unconventional tactics and politics of the native insurgents.
So the question still remains: what’s to be done with Pakistan? President Obama set the record somewhat straight when he stated that he is “hesitant to punish [the Pakistani people] for poor decisions by their intelligence services”, which is at odds with Adm. Mullen’s and President Karzai’s unilateral denouncements of Pakistan as a whole. The weak ties between the Pakistani civilian authority, its army, and the ISI are clear in the dicey game it plays with the U.S.: extending friendship and aid with one hand, but supporting insurgencies and undermining Afghanistan’s security with the other. The US has continued to play the part of reluctant ally, taking the Obama-esque stance of pledging support, while at the same time offering veiled criticism of Pakistan’s policies.
This is not enough. Criticism of Pakistan for the actions of the ISI will only alienate its people and it threatens to drive a bigger rift in the strategic alliance, all while the Pakistani people pay the price. Perhaps it’s time for the U.S. to let actions take the place of words. Using the ISI’s own stratagem, U.S. decision makers ought to consider taking direct action against those elements of the ISI that support the Haqqani network, while at the same time continuing to help Pakistan’s army with its COIN efforts, thereby continuing to invest in the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people. By dealing with the ISI and the civilian authority in different ways, the U.S. would show that it does not simply see Pakistan as another wayward actor or failed state, but rather for what it really is: a strategic conundrum that needs immediate, but controlled intervention.
Established in 1995, the Georgetown Public Policy Review is the McCourt School of Public Policy’s nonpartisan, graduate student-run publication. Our mission is to provide an outlet for innovative new thinkers and established policymakers to offer perspectives on the politics and policies that shape our nation and our world.