Paul Staniland's blog

By Paul Staniland

Saturday's New York Times reports that Pakistan has expanded its maritime land-attack missile program, possibly based on modifications to U.S.-provided anti-ship Harpoons. News like this fuels concerns that the Pakistani establishment is not taking the internal security threat seriously enough, instead favoring its standard obsession with India. In this view, the expansion of both conventional and nuclear weapons programs shows that Pakistan is not serious about its wars within, instead myopically focusing on a status quo India that poses no real threat to Pakistan.

There is certainly merit to the argument that Pakistan simply "doesn't get it" when it comes to fighting the Taliban. The Pakistan Army has a deeply-ingrained organizational distrust of India and strong incentives to continue building and buying expensive new systems, rather than getting into the dirty, cruel, complex business of counterinsurgency on its northwestern frontier.

The Army has made various destabilizing and counterproductive mistakes, whether supporting radical militant groups, undermining electoral democracy, or contributing to nuclear proliferation. The U.S. has good reasons to make sure that its agreements with Pakistan are not being violated. U.S. military aid can be terminated if the US deems that the use of these weapons, like the possible Harpoon modification, are against American interests or being adapted for purposes other than their intended use.

But it is important to keep in mind that continued Pakistani military modernization is not irrational given Pakistan's dangerous security environment. India is hugely powerful relative to its neighbors, with a massive population, a large and capable military, nuclear weapons, and a growing economy that is slowly but surely fueling its own military modernization and doctrinal evolution.

Pakistani forces are outgunned and outmanned by India, and the country would ultimately lose in a large-scale land war across the plains of Punjab and Sindh/Rajasthan. This is a crucial reason that Pakistan has tried to improve its conventional capabilities, adopted a first-use nuclear posture, sponsored bloody terrorism and insurgency in India, and looked to the U.S. and China for military, financial, and diplomatic support. As India further grows, its power will be even more threatening to Pakistan, whether or not India intends it to be.

This fear is not simply the result of Pakistani domestic politics, ideology, or military worldview, though those also crucially matter. Because of its power, India is viewed with  a measure of suspicion throughout the South Asian periphery -- Sri Lanka has made sure to hedge its bets by cozying up to China and Pakistan (and in the late 1980s even provided weapons to the Tamil Tigers against an Indian peacekeeping force), while Bangladesh and Burma in the past have both at least tacitly provided sanctuary to insurgents trying to secede from India.

Neither Americans nor Indians always understand how threatening their military strength can look to weaker countries. This dynamic is clearly at play in the case of Pakistan -- Indians feel that they are self-evidently not a threat, while Americans are often baffled that Pakistani security elites care so much about India, which to the U.S. looks like a positive force for stability and democracy. At the end of the day, however, the world does not look the same from Rawalpindi and Islamabad as it does from Washington, and the U.S. needs to remember these differing goals, incentives, and fears as it pursues its vital interests in the region.

The Pakistan Army absolutely cannot be given a free hand to direct American money against India or to violate agreements about the use of U.S. weapons and aid. But the U.S. should not assume that Pakistani military modernization is an unambiguous sign of its lack of commitment to internal security. Indeed, India itself has expanded its conventional and nuclear forces with an eye on China even as it battles various separatist and Maoist insurgencies at home. It should come as no surprise that Pakistan is similarly trying to keep up with its own larger and increasingly powerful neighbor.

Paul Staniland is a PhD candidate in MIT's Department of Political Science and Security Studies Program.

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By Paul Staniland

When Kashmir is discussed in the strategic discourse these days, it is usually in the context of the broader stabilization effort in the region. Reducing tensions between India and Pakistan would improve Pakistani cooperation in Afghanistan and thus advance US interests. But Kashmir itself is curiously absent from many of these discussions -- the assumption seems to be that between them Delhi and Islamabad control the Kashmir Valley, and once the governments agree on the high politics, Kashmiris will fall into line.

Lydia Polgreen's Sunday New York Times article and Kashmir's recent history instead clearly show that, for better and worse, Kashmiris have the capacity to surprise everyone, even Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies. Though violence has substantially dropped since 2003, the last two years have been in many respects the most dramatic since the insurgency began in 1988.

The summer of 2008 saw a prolonged series of massive street protests over land use issues that catalyzed a broader movement against Indian policy, followed in 2009 by another round of demonstrations against human rights abuses (including a double rape-murder) allegedly committed by the security forces. Both series of protests were able to shut down parts, and at times all, of the Valley for weeks at time.

Yet in between these protests, there was a state assembly election during the winter of 2008 marked by surprisingly high voter turnout, followed by a national election with decent turnout during in the spring of 2009. This political rollercoaster was most recently capped by a sordid series of allegations and counter-allegations between the Valley's main political parties, including the faux-resignation of the state's Chief Minister amidst microphone throwing, shouting matches, and walk-outs in the state assembly.

There are two realities in Kashmir that are under-appreciated elsewhere, and which have implications for any future attempts to settle the dispute (or even just reduce tensions between India and Pakistan).

First, the era of mass protest has returned after a grim period in which brutal, extremely violent insurgency and counterinsurgency dominated political life in Kashmir. This political mobilization is often inspired or directed by political leaders of various ideologies, but it shows that mass unrest and disaffection have not disappeared. They are now being expressed openly, and in significant numbers. While in Kashmir it is impossible to miss the depth of sentiment against Indian policy (what Polgreen calls "seemingly bottomless Kashmiri rage").

Second, the politics of the Valley have become far more closely contested than either the period before militancy, or that of much of the 1990s. Since the rise of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) in the late 1990s, Valley politics have moved beyond the hegemonic control of the National Conference (NC) and into a hard-fought, extremely partisan battle for electoral power. The separatist movement is also factionalized and often internally competitive. Any possible settlements or confidence-building measures would need to survive this polarized political climate.

In some strange sense, this means that Kashmir has actually become more like "mainland" India, in which strikes, street protest, and cutthroat partisan political competition are par for the course. There are more avenues for people to politically express themselves, both in and outside of mainstream politics, than in 1997 or 1987.

One of the huge differences between Kashmir and India south of the Pir Panjal mountain range, however, is that these protests have been met with lethal force by security forces who have legal impunity and are not accountable to local elected representatives. Moreover, political instability in the state has the potential to disastrously unsettle India-Pakistan relations - what would be a parochial tussle for power among obscure parties in Karnataka or a routinely raucous street protest in Uttar Pradesh has serious geopolitical implications in Kashmir.

If the United States tries to facilitate deals over Kashmir in the future, as some suggest and others fear, it must pay very close attention to the politics on the ground in the Valley. Kashmir looks remarkably different from the streets of Srinagar than it does from the seminar circuits of Delhi, and Kashmiris are serious political players who can thwart the agendas of the Indian and Pakistani governments.

Neither Delhi nor Islamabad have strong track records in predicting or controlling politics in Kashmir, which has an unpredictable, whirlwind political dynamic all its own. Any effort to reduce tensions over Kashmir, with an eye to stabilizing the broader region, must build a coalition that includes at least some major indigenous Kashmiri stakeholders; without this, no deal will realistically bring peace or stability. Taking Kashmiris seriously is essential for slowly removing Kashmir from the "AfPak" equation.

Paul Staniland is a Ph.D candidate in MIT's Department of Political Science and Security Studies Program.

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