Chapter Four: Regional Relationships: India, China, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf

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

Though they did not have political control over the waging or the direction of the war. The Pakistani prime minister decided not to involve British officers in the planning for the war. Nawaz, Crossed Swords, p. 48.

The following very compressed account draws in particular on Chari, Cheema and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process.

In seeking to distance the government from its history of inciting terrorism, Musharraf's speech of January 2002 in which he announced bans on Lashkare- Tayiba and Jaysh-e-Mohammad (see Chapter 2) effectively admitted that there had been such involvement in the past. Ziring, Pakistan in the Twentieth Century, pp. 321–3; Hussain, Frontline Pakistan, pp. 107–8.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 235.

Third parties who have offered unsolicited advice to India on a resolution of the Kashmir issue, such as British Foreign Secretaries Robin Cook in 1997 and David Miliband in January 2009, have been sharply criticised for doing so.

Chari, Cheema and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, p. 21.

Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict (London: IB Tauris, 2000) pp. 151 and 186.

Mark Mazzetti and Salman Masood, ‘US Intelligence Focuses on Pakistani Group’, New York Times, 28 November 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/world/asia/29intel.html?_r=1; Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 53.

Hussain, Frontline Pakistan, p. 35.

Jayshree Bajoria, ‘India–Afghanistan Relations’, Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, 23 October 2008, http://www.cfr.org/publication/17474/indiaafghanistan_relations.html; R.K. Gundu and T.C. Schaffer, ‘India and Pakistan in Afghanistan: Hostile Sports’, CSIS South Asia Monitor, no. 117, 3 April 2008, http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/sam117.pdf.

Both the Indian proposal and the Pakistani complaint were aired by those countries' representatives at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore, 29–31 May 2009.

Anand Gopal, ‘Coordinated Kabul Assault Shows Taliban Strength’, Christian Science Monitor, 12 February 2009, http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0212/p07s02-woap.html.

‘Home Ministry Announces Measures to Enhance Security’, Government of India Press Information Bureau, press release, 11 December 2007, http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=45446.

Somini Sengupta, ‘Dossier Gives Details of Mumbai Attacks’, New York Times, 6 January 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/world/asia/07india.html?_r=2.

‘Pakistan “Holds 71” over Mumbai’, BBC News, 15 January 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7830276.stm.

Nawaz, Crossed Swords, p. 548.

Ashley J. Tellis, ‘Mumbai Attacks: Implications for the US’, Testimony to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 28 January 2009, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=22676&prog=zgp&proj=zsa.

Ibid.

Hussain, Frontline Pakistan, p. 115–16.

Masood Haider and Anwar Iqbal, ‘Pakistan, India to Make Fresh Start on Kashmir’, Dawn, 25 September 2004, http://www.dawn.com/2004/09/25/top5.htm.

Syed Rifaat Hussain, ‘Pakistan's Changing Outlook on Kashmir’, Kashmir Affairs, March 2008, http://www.kashmiraffairs.org/rifaat_hussain_pak_change_outlook_kashmir.html.

‘India–Pakistan Composite Dialogue Stalled’, Economic Times, 16 December 2008, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/India-Pakistan_composite_dialogue_stalled/articleshow/3847316.cms.

And many commentators: see for example Coll, ‘The Back Channel’, The New Yorker, 2 March 2009.

Private discussions, New Delhi, December 2007.

Private discussion, Islamabad, December 2007.

‘The Future of Kashmir’, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/south_asia/03/kashmir_future/html/default.stm.

Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, p. 56.

Yousaf and Adkin, The Bear Trap, p. 84. The authors are careful to emphasise that nothing more than mules was supplied along the route, saying that ‘not one bullet’ came down the highway.

For a brief account of the disputes between China and India, see Synnott, The Causes and Consequences of South Asia's Nuclear Tests.

Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, p. 224.

Gareth Jennings, ‘JF-17 Production Commences’, Jane's, 24 January 2008, http://www.janes.com/news/defence/air/jdw/jdw080124_2_n.shtml.

George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 196.

Robert Shuey and Shirley Kan, ‘China Missile and Nuclear Proliferation’, Congressional Research Service Issue Brief, 29 September 1995.

Synnott, The Causes and Consequences of South Asia's Nuclear Tests, pp. 15–16. See also Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb.

Bennett-Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, pp. 205–6.

‘New Openings for Increasing Trade with China’, PakTribune, 17 August 2007, http://www.paktribune.com/business/newsdetail.php?nid=4327.

Pakistan Finance Ministry, ‘Economic Survey 2006–7: Overview of the Economy’, http://www.finance.gov.pk/admin/images/survey/chapters/overview_06_07.pdf.

‘Joint Statement Between China and Pakistan, October 2008’, 16 October 2008, http://www.cfr.org/publication/17543/joint_statement_between_china_and_pakistan_october_2008.html.

Perlez, ‘Monetary Fund Approves $7.5bn Loan to Pakistan’, New York Times, 25 November 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/world/asia/26pstan.html?scp=1&sq=chinaloantopakistan&st=cse.

Talal Malik, ‘India–Pakistan Trade with Gulf Hits $36bn’, ArabianBusiness. com, 14 August 2007, http://www.arabianbusiness.com/497795-indiapakistan-trade-with-gcc-hits-36bn.

For much of the information in this section, see Bruce Riedel, ‘Saudi Arabia: Nervously Watching Pakistan’, Brookings, 28 January 2008, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0128_saudi_arabia_riedel.aspx. See also Arnaud de Borchgrave, ‘Pakistan, Saudi Arabia in Secret Nuke Pact’, Washington Times, 22 October 2003.

Nawaz, Crossed Swords, p. 372; Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 73, 81, 296–7.

‘Weapons of Mass Destruction: Saudi Arabia Special Weapons’, Global Security.org, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/saudi/.

IISS, Nuclear Programmes in the Middle East: In the shadow of Iran (London: IISS, 2008).

Riedel, ‘Saudi Arabia: Nervously Watching Pakistan’.