Chapter One: The Nature of Pakistan

Abstract

Can Pakistan find a way out of violent instability? How severe are the problems of this strategically crucial country, and how much of a threat do they pose beyond Pakistan's borders? Has Pakistan become an ungovernable failed state?

Hilary Synnott draws on his experience of Pakistan to argue that any strategy for addressing the country's problems requires a nuanced understanding of its turbulent history, the failings of successive governments and the weaknesses of core institutions. He sheds light on the role of Pakistan's army and its intelligence service in the power-play of domestic politics, and looks at how the army has used religion and the issue of Kashmir to maintain its own influence, often with disastrous consequences for the security of Pakistan and the wider world. Synnott rigorously analyses developments in Pakistan's volatile tribal regions, little understood in the West despite their profound implications for regional and international security, and examines the role of past events – especially since 11 September 2001 – in generating the animosity that many Pakistanis feel towards the West today.

Where does Pakistan go from here? Emphasising that there are no easy answers, Synnott explores how concerned outsiders might finally succeed in building durable relationships with Pakistan, and help to stabilise a country that has struggled with disordered politics and chronic insecurity since independence in 1947.

Notes

H.V. Hodson, The Great Divide (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1969), p. 580.

After Indonesia and just ahead of India. There is some dispute about the order, with some suggesting that India's Muslim population is larger than that of Pakistan. 3

Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History (London: C. Hurst & Co, 1998), p. 13.

S.P. Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2004), pp. 205 and 207.

Owen Bennett-Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 270.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, pp. 275–6.

Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (London: Penguin Books, 2005), p. 44.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, pp. 248 and 267.

For a graphic and emotional account of the US relationship with Pakistan, see Tariq Ali, The Duel (London: Simon & Schuster, 2008). See also Dennis Kux, The US and Pakistan, 1947–2000 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

See for example Mirza Aslam Beg, ‘Emerging Union of Pak-Iran and Afghanistan’, Pakistan Observer, 4 January 2009, http://pakobserver.net/200901/04/Articles03.asp. In the same article, Beg also suggests that ‘the callous bloodbath of Mumbai on 26 November was enacted by RAW [the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency], CIA and Mossad, – the Saffron Nexus – to defame Pakistan in the comity of nations and lend justification for punitive action’.

Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin, The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story (London: Leo Cooper, 1992), p. 81.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 267.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, ‘Politics of Islam’, occasional paper presented to a private IISS meeting, 20 April 2007.

Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 175.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 268.

Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, p. 108.

Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 175.

Ibid., p. 180.

The ceasefire line between the Indianand Pakistani-administered parts of Kashmir following the 1947–49 war came to be called the Line of Control under the terms of the 1972 Simla Agreement.

Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (London: IB Tauris, 2000), p. 21.

Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 283.

Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, p. 29; Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 291.

Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, p. 23.

‘Afghanistan: Funding of NGOs’, House of Lords Hansard, 25 February 1999, cols 1233–5, http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.com/pa/ld199899/ldhansrd/vo990225/text/90225-01.htm.

Duncan Gardham, ‘MI5 Chief Warns of Threat from Global Recession’, Daily Telegraph, 7 January 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/4144460/MI5-chiefwarns-of-threat-from-global-recession.html.

Conversation with Pakistani officials, 2001.

Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire (New York: Free Press, 2006), pp. 209–11.

Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 480.

Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, p. 88.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 411.

Ibid., p. 295; Mateen Haider, ‘ISI Closes its Political Wing’, Dawn.com, 23 November 2008, http://www.dawn.com/2008/11/23/top3.htm; Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, p. 178.

Lawrence Ziring, Pakistan at the Crosscurrent of History (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2004), p. 210.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 287; other non-Pakistani historians and analysts have written in similar terms.

Ibid., pp. 293 and 309.

Ziring, Pakistan in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 524.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 311.

Bennett-Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, p. 233.

Ziring, Pakistan in the Twentieth Century, p. 527; Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 312.

Ziring, Pakistan in the Twentieth Century, p. 535.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 317.

Ibid., p. 321.

Ibid., p. 329; Ziring, Pakistan in the Twentieth Century, p. 541.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 326.

Ziring, Pakistan in the Twentieth Century, p. 548.

Ibid., p. 565.

Ziring, Pakistan in the Twentieth Century, p. 571; and Bennett-Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, p. 235.

Ziring, Pakistan in the Twentieth Century, p. 572.

Bennett-Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, p. 36.

Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, p. 150, Bennett-Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, p. 238.

M. Ziauddin, ‘Bill Has to Cover Two More Stages’, Dawn, 10 October 1998, http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/amendments/15thamendment_stages.html.

Bennett-Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, p. 18.

The tension between Sharif and Musharraf and the lead-up to Musharraf's coup are vividly described in ibid., pp. 37–48.

Bennett-Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, p. 237, quoting Iqbal Akhund, Bhutto's foreign-affairs adviser.

Ibid., pp. 230–31.

Robin Cook, October 1999.

Mudassir Raja, ‘IHC Sets Aside Convictions in Gilani Corruption Cases’, 5 February 2009, http://www.dawn.com/2009/02/05/top5.htm.

See Nathan Associates, ‘Pakistan: Economic Performance Assessment’, produced for review by USAID, September 2007, p. 24, http://www.nathaninc.com/nathan2/files/CASProjects/DOWNLOADFILENAME/000000000036/Pakistan2007EconomicPerformanceAssessment.pdf.

Shaun Gregory, ‘The ISI and the War on Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 30, no. 12, December 2007, pp. 1,013–31.

Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 373.

Yousaf and Adkin, The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story, pp. 1 and 22.

Gregory, ‘The ISI and the War on Terrorism’.

Nawaz, Crossed Swords, pp. 411–13.

Sean P. Witchell, ‘Pakistan's ISI: The Invisible Government’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter- Intelligence, vol. 16, no. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 380–1; Gregory, ‘The ISI and the War on Terrorism’.

Nawaz, Crossed Swords, pp. 452, 467–9, 472–3, 482.

Ibid., pp. 479, 534.