As I stated in my last article the cutting off of aid by invoking the American law (Pressler Amendment) that required such an action in the event that Pakistan possessed a nuclear device created tensions in the relationship but more importantly strengthened the Pakistani belief that Pakistan could never rely on the United States. The invocation of the Pressler Amendment was followed by a disengagement from Afghanistan and total indifference towards the problem Pakistan faced in sending back to their home countries the many Islamista who had established bases in Pakistan to wage the “Jihad” against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Pakistan, on the other hand remained deeply embroiled since the principal Mujahedeen parties were in Pakistan and expected Pakistan to help place them on the “throne” in Kabul.
Najeebullah however proved to be more tenacious than had been expected. The Mujahedeen assault on Jalalabad was repulsed by the Afghan government forces. A stalemate set in which was broken only after Soviet aid was cut off in 1992 and the Afghan army virtually disintegrated. Pakistan did make efforts both with UN assistance and directly to broker a power sharing arrangement between the Mujahedeen and Najeebullah but these efforts were rebuffed by the Mujahedeen but this failed partly because the Mujahedeen felt that they had support in their obduracy from significant elements of the power centres in Pakistan. The United States interest in Afghanistan appeared limited to the search the CIA had mounted for recovering from the Mujahedeen the Stinger Missiles that they feared the Mujahedeen would sell to Iran or other Middle Eastern countries.
In the meanwhile the unification of Germany and the new status of the East European countries after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact led to the total loss of western interest in the concept of self determination and therefore in Pakistan’s demand that a solution to the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan be found by granting the people of Kashmir the right to determine whether they wished to be part of India or of Pakistan. The issue in Kashmir instead became one of Pakistan assistance to the freedom struggle that had been launched by the Kashmiris in 1989 and to the allegations that in supporting such elements Pakistan was becoming a state sponsor of terrorism. Pakistan’s efforts to draw a distinction between “terrorists” and “freedom fighters” elicited little sympathy. This was a source of further strains and mistrust between the two countries. To Pakistanis it seemed that the international support they needed to secure a just and equitable solution of an issue that had bedevilled Indo-Pak relations was no longer available and that this was largely owed to the change in the US attitude.
In theory, the nuclear blasts carried out by India and then by Pakistan in May 1998 were condemned by the US and required under US law the imposition of sanctions on both countries. As the larger country India obviously suffered far less strain as a result of these sanctions than Pakistan but the problem was compounded when in Oct.1999 General Musharraf overthrew Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government. This required the imposition of additional sanctions by the USA and exacerbated the difficulties between the two sides that were further heightened when President Clinton in his visit to South Asia spent five days in India extolling the Indians and talking of the major role India was destined to play in world affairs but only a few hours in Pakistan which he utilised to deliver a lecture to the Pakistanis about their shortcomings and the need to combat extremism and the support that Pakistan was seen to be offering to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Of course the patent differentiation in the treatment accorded to the two countries was prompted in part by the Kargil misadventure and the humiliation Pakistan suffered when it had to seek the intervention of the United States to avert the prospect of an all-out war between India and Pakistan.
From the US perspective Pakistan was seen as using extremist elements to pursue low level conflicts and promoting activities that the US perceived as terrorism and that Pakistan was thus damaging its domestic polity which was particularly dangerous given Pakistan’s demonstrated nuclear capacity. For the United States as their report on Global Patterns of Terrorism showed the centre of terrorist activity had shifted from the Middle East to South Asia. It was no surprise to the United States that when they tried in 1998 to use cruise missiles to hit Bin Laden in Afghanistan they ended up killing fighters from a Pakistan based group which was assisting the freedom fighters in Kashmir. While it was only after 9/11 that the full might of the US was deployed in what was then called the Global War on Terror there is no doubt that even earlier and particularly since the bombing of the American embassies in East Africa, terrorism had been a issue of great importance to the USA and Pakistan was seen as a factor in this.
It is of course very difficult to understand why the United States, given this preoccupation allowed or even encouraged Osama bin Laden to move from the Sudan to Afghanistan. It is correct that the Saudis were unwilling to accept him and Yemen to which Osama traced his ancestry was also unwilling to accept him. But for the Americans dealing at that time with a Sudanese government that was seeking to improve its relations with the United States it made sense to let him remain in Sudan. Letting him move to Afghanistan where the Americans had no relations and where the Mujahedeen regarded Osama, as a hero seemed to put it mildly, an act of folly. No one it seems can offer a satisfactory explanation for this and this may remain one of the unexplained mysteries when the history of this turbulent period is recorded. Let it however be acknowledged that his return to this region played a pivotal part in strengthening the forces that the United States so adamantly opposed and in strengthening in Pakistan the extremism that the US was concerned about.
In August 2001, when the newly elected Bush administration was reviewing relations with South Asia and looking at the question of fostering a “strategic relationship” with India to follow up on what Clinton had worked on the United States sought and secured Indian endorsement of its proposal for creating a ballistic missile defence (BMD). India was one of the few countries approached after the Bush administration had, in one sense sabotaged the possibility of an agreement with North Korea on halting its development of nuclear weapon capability. This caused umbrage in Pakistan since the development of such a shield would call into question the value of Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent. This was also seen as the first step that the US was taking towards lifting the sanctions that had been imposed on both India and Pakistan after the 1998 nuclear tests. It was clear however to Pakistan that even if the nuclear test sanctions were lifted only India would benefit since Pakistan was under a further set of sanctions imposed when President Musharraf overthrew a an elected civilian government and imposed military rule.
As regards Pakistan, the then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the man principally responsible for navigating US-South Asia relations spoke of an American desire to “prevent the Talibanisation of Pakistan” and of establishing a relationship with Pakistan which would be positive. In the past he said the relationship had been based on being anti something. It had been an anti Soviet alliance on the American part and an anti India alliance on Pakistan’s part. America now wanted a relationship, which would be about the people of Pakistan.
This necessarily selective history of US-Pak relations makes the point that distrust and a sense of betrayal became from the Pakistani perspective the hallmark of the US-Pak relations during this period while the Americans remained suspicious both of Pakistan’s nuclear programme and of the direction in which Pakistan’s use of extremist elements to further foreign policy goals was pushing Pakistan’s relations with its eastern and western neighbours and equally importantly its domestic polity.
This then was the setting when 9/11 happened and a new era – the subject of my next article – set in.
(to be continued)
