The real shame in Pakistan

By Asra Q. Nomani

In this month's issue of FHM India, an international men's magazine, Pakistani actress Veena Malik made worldwide headlines with a risqué nude photo shoot. While much of the attention has been on what Malik wasn't wearing, one of the most powerful elements of her photo shoot was what she was sporting: a big, bold tattoo on her left arm, stating very simply, "ISI," for Pakistani's secretive Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

The cover headline: "Pakistani W.M.D. Veena Malik Shows You How to Throw a Grenade!"

Indeed, the cover has been explosive; PakAlertPress.com, for instance splashed a headline on its blog: "India and Pakistan Are Going Nuclear Over Provocative Political Tattoo." And the photo has elicited a furious reaction in Pakistan's media and in its living rooms.[[Break]]

In one fell swoop, the enormous tattoo on a bare woman's body managed to demystify, emasculate and parody the ISI -- something most people have been afraid to do in public since the inception of the agency a year after the birth of the nation in 1947. Founded with a mission of coordinating intelligence in the country after Pakistan's loss to India in the 1947 war in Kashmir, the agency has become a feared, though privately mocked, enterprise, its hands allegedly in every back-room Pakistani deal; rigging elections, training militants for battle in India and Afghanistan, and monitoring its own citizens. The tattoo's location on Malik's body takes on special meaning in light of retired Adm. Mike Mullen's statement in September that the militant Haqqani Network, considered by most Western analysts and experts to be based in the tribal areas of Pakistan, is a "veritable arm" of the ISI.

All the while, the ISI works in the cloak of darkness. In 2002, when I was trying to find my kidnapped Wall Street Journal colleague Daniel Pearl, I met an ISI officer in my living room in Karachi who acknowledged his employer, but introduced himself as "Major." "Major what?" I asked. "Major Major," he said. Nice. Really helpful.

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To scholars on Pakistan, the ISI tattoo is emblematic of an important new civil discourse occurring in Pakistan over issues that were formerly taboo, such as the role of the ISI in society. Hassan Abbas, the author of Pakistan's Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America's War on Terror, about growing militancy in Pakistan, said new media freedoms are eliciting rich debate in the country on deep, contested issues "such as the role of religion in society and the interference of the military in political arena." He adds, "These issues are being openly debated in Pakistan, and that is, overall, a healthy development."

Kabeer Sharma, editor of FHM India, says the ISI tattoo was meant to be a sardonic reflection of India's own conspiracy theories about the intelligence agency. "In India, you say, 'The milk has gone bad. The ISI did it,' They blame all of their problems on ISI," says Sharma.

Sharma, the son of an Indian satirist and New Delhi bookstore owner, says that a dilemma on the subcontinent is that folks don't laugh enough over the absurdities of politics. "The problem," he says, "is that we all blame our problems on this imaginary force. Who is this ISI?" Meanwhile, on the Pakistan side, everything is blamed on RAW. "We collectively have no sense of humor. We have no sense of irony," he says.

As a media image, the Malik photo was a genius expression of a real counterculture movement taking root in Pakistan, taking a dig at the secretive "Major Major" culture of the ISI, by literally exposing the agency -- and by extension, the government -- to the light of day, if just in a simple tattoo. (Malik says that the photo was altered, and both Malik and FHM are engaged in a legal battle over the issue.)

While a Pakistani newspaper said the country "yawns"at the Malik photo, it chronicled columns, commentaries and jokes circulating in the nation, including one that goes like this: "Her arm says ISI but the picture is RAW," a reference to India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing.

But this isn't just a conspiracy hatched in India (though the magazine was produced there), feeding the siege mentality behind so much of the rhetoric in Pakistan. In a country where the "ghairat brigade," or honor squad, of talking heads takes regularly to the airwaves to defend Pakistan's honor against enemies -- perceived and imagined -- the photo shoot was a victory for a new movement that is emerging in Pakistan: the beghairat brigade, or the squad "without honor," or more aptly the "shameless brigade."

To many, the beghairat brigade offers a counter to the conspiracy theories that so permeate debates in Pakistan. Josh White, a scholar on Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says, "I think the significance of the small but interesting beghairat movement is that it is trying to forge a way of being genuinely nationalistic without accepting the narrative that all of Pakistan's problems are the result of someone else's meddling."

Malik and her generation in Pakistani society illustrate a deeper battle that is playing out in Pakistan and Muslim communities on issues of honor, or ghairat, and shame, called sharam. Flagging this evolution, the acerbic Pakistani columnist Nadeem Paracha wrote earlier this year, "Goodbye ghairat."

With a sense of wit, irony and humor, the beghairat brigade offers the nation an opportunity to expunge itself of the corrosive relationship with traditional honor-shame culture, by challenging the warped sense of honor and dishonor that has defined much of the country's ethos on issues from corruption to nuclear non-proliferation, "honor killings" of women and men, homegrown militant networks, and the ISI. And the beghairat's work is rooted in Pakistani tradition with sardonic 20^th century writers such as Saadat Hasan Manto, the author of the must-read book, Letters to Uncle Sam, and a favorite of Malik's.

The Pakistani military's public relations office reportedly sent a text message to local journalists from the Pakistani grousing that the photo was "the height of humiliation for Pakistan, done by a Pakistani on Indian soil." In a Pakistani socialists' listserv, one Pakistani writer, giving the ISI acronym new meaning, wrote, tongue-in-cheek,"Is this part of a grand conspiracy to implicate the great International Soldiers of Islam (ISI) in a controversy by the enemies of Islam...." If so, he joked, "every soldier of Islam would be eyeing to be part of the investigation team."

What is ironic is that while there have been calls to revoke Malik's Pakistani citizenship (rejected, fortunately, by the courts), there are some less-than-exemplary characters who have been lauded in the country by the "ghairat brigade." For instance, Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, is considered a victim by many in Pakistan, despite having confessed to the crime for which he has been imprisoned, the attempted murder of a number of innocents.

Then there is A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who signed a confession in 2004 that he gave nuclear secrets to the North Koreans, Iran and Libya, in violation of international nonproliferation agreements; he was pardoned, and today he is a hero in the country. Years ago, Pakistanis took to the streets when American agents caught and extradited Mir Amal Kansi, a Pakistani who shot and killed CIA employees in 1993 as they sat in their cars at a traffic light in Langley, Va. And, then, lest we forget, there is the serious homegrown militancy problem of a Punjabi Taliban and a Pakistani Taliban that includes tens of thousands of militant soldiers, based on many estimates, freely living in the country without much harassment.

Finally, there is Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani MIT graduate known as "Lady al-Qaeda." She was convicted last year in a U.S. court for attempting to shoot a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, but, in a country where the average income is about $450 a year, the government of Pakistan allocated some $2 million for her defense, and Pakistanis in the "Free Aafia" movement march regularly on the streets.

Deborah Scroggins, a journalist and author of the provocative forthcoming book, Wanted Women: Faith, Lies and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui, says, "If Aafia Siddiqui is Pakistan's 'daughter of the nation,' Veena Malik is her perfect alter ego. The 'ghairat brigade' holds up Aafia as the symbol of Pakistan victimized by the West. Veena mocks their pretentions to purity and challenges their obsession with sex."

Scroggins lays out the contrast that is symbolic of the divide that has engulfed Pakistan: Born in 1972, Siddiqui comes from the rigid, puritantical, Deobandi interpretation of Islam, and came of age during the 1980s, when jihad was celebrated in Pakistan as the source of the great defeat over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. "She's revered by the 'ghairat brigade' because although she went to the U.S. to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University, she never 'went over to the other side,' so to speak" Scroggins adds. "She never stopped raising money for jihad. She continued to view the U.S. as the enemy of Pakistan and of Muslims. When she was captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan's right-wing pundits and politicians rushed to accuse the country's democratically elected government of selling her to the U.S. in exchange for money, even though there was no evidence that the government had anything to do with it."

Born in 1984, "Veena is a symbol of another Pakistan, one that has existed since the founding of the state, but that we've seen less and less of with the rise of Islamization," says Scroggins. "It's an irreverrant, mocking, creative, secular Pakistan -- the voice of writers and poets like Ahmed Faiz," a biting 20th century intellectual. "Unfortunately it tends to be confined to the upper classes and is very much under threat these days," she says.

Both Malik and Siddiqui "broke the rules about the way Pakistani women are supposed to behave," Scroggins says. Siddiqui was divorced from her doctor husband and remarried a younger man, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's nephew, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, another 9/11 facilitator. Her activities endangered her children; she was caught shooting at a U.S. soldier. "But she is forgiven for all of that because Pakistanis believe she did it for Pakistan and Islam," says Scroggins. "It's assumed that Veena, on the other hand, is only having her nude picture taken for money. And that's the way the ‘ghairat brigade' always portrays the motives of Pakistan's secularists."

Aisha Chowdhry, a 24-year-old Pakistani-American journalist who produced a documentary, "Inside the Tinder Box," about Pakistan, says the Malik cover, whether nude as it appeared or topless, as Malik insists the photo was originally, "should not come as a surprise" to those watching the counterculture movement in Pakistan. "Art always has been a way for Pakistanis to showcase how they feel," she says. "Today, there are songs criticizing the government, paintings depicting terrorism in Pakistan, and now a racy photo of one of the country's most famous models with an ISI tattoo."

Chowdhry says, "In a country where journalists get killed if they dare to investigate sensitive issues, music videos and plays are one of the few ways to connect the young generation with what is going on in their country, and maybe even make a positive change someday."

In a piece on al-Jazeera before the Malik controversy, Syed Ali Abbas Zaida, founder of the Pakistan Youth Alliance, asked, "Can the youth of Pakistan inspire change and turn into pro-active citizens who agree to disagree peacefully?" The next month, the aptly-named band "Beghairat Brigade," uploaded its catchy new tune, "Aalu Anday" (or "Eggs and Potatoes"), calling out the politicians and military for their ineptitude in running the country.

Pakistani singer Ali Azmat just put out a new song, "Bomb Phata," ("Bomb Exploded"), that chronicles the major actors that play a part in Pakistan's instability, from President Asif Ali Zardari to army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. It speaks to the daily worries about electricity and food shortages that vex Pakistanis while bombs explode in Lahore, Karachi, and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

And people regularly slam the government's inability to contain the domestic terrorism that is striking the country. This year, Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi won a prestigious award for his art installation, "Blessings upon the land of my love," describing his work as showing "the bloody aftermath of a bombing."

Malik's photo is a little more subtle, but in its nuance, it's likely to become an iconic symbol of a moment when one Pakistani decided to, quite literally and shamelessly, strip bare the truth of how institutions in Pakistan, are focused on the wrong priorities. "My dear patriots, there are far graver issues than this which need your serious consideration," wrote Pakistani economist and writer Raza Habib Raja, after the photo spread earned the rancor of the honor brigade. "The biggest issue is perhaps your screwed up mind set which gets riled up on these trivialities while completely ignoring much serious problems like rising extremism, sectarian killings and massive inequality."

Raja concluded: "...I loved that ISI tattoo. Now that was really liberating and bold!!!"

Asra Q. Nomani, a former reporter at the Wall Street Journal, is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She teaches journalism at Georgetown University.

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

Graveyard of empiricism

By Javid Ahmad and Dhruva Jaishankar

As Yogi Berrafamously put it, "It's déjà vu all over again." Amid a looming budget standoff,a presidential election cycle in full swing, and the popular dissatisfaction ofboth the left and the right, the United States has arrived -- yet again -- at acritical juncture in its war in Afghanistan, with key decisions being debatedconcerning the post-surge scenario and the prospects of political reconciliationwith various militant groups. The tragedy is that, much like its previousiterations, the current round of the Afghanistan debate in Washington isriddled with a staggering number of mischaracterizations. While the Cold Warproduced a cohort of able Soviet specialists, the decade-long war inAfghanistan has so far failed to produce sufficientregional expertise in the United States (this reasonably comprehensive list, for example,identifies just 107 Afghanistan-watchers in the United States).

Consequently, anumber of questionable assumptions about the Afghan people -- concerning theirattitudes to foreigners, their history, their society, and their values -- gounchallenged. Historical analogiesand socioeconomicdata are regularly manipulated by various parties to validate their ownbiases and preconceptions, and readingsof Afghan historyare, when not completely erroneous, unapologeticallyWestern-centric. For example, onecommon view that has gainedcirculation among think-tankers, policymakers, and congressional staffersis that a majority of Afghans are inherently hostile to the United States. Yet this viewpoint is not borne out by polling data, however imperfect. Thelast pollconducted by ABC News, the BBC and, ARD German TV, for example, says that nearlyseven in 10 Afghans support the presence of U.S. forces in their country.

Another and perhapsmore damaging misperception is of Afghanistan as the "graveyardof empires": a historically insignificant strategic backwater where greatcivilizations -- inevitably European ones -- ended up mired in ruinous war. Buteven a cursory examination of the region's history makes a mockery of this nowentrenched concept. During his conquests, Alexander of Macedon spent about twoyears solidifyinghis control of what is today Afghanistan and Central Asia, referred to inhis day as Bactria and Sogdiana. In fact, his army chose to reverse its coursein today's Punjab, over 200 miles to modern Afghanistan's east, afterthe Battleof the Hydaspes. The 19th-century British Empire, despitean initial setback, wonsubsequent engagements against the Afghans in its bid to create a bufferzone to British India's northwest. And the defeat of the Soviet military in the1980s was only made possible with American,Pakistani, and Saudi support.

The "graveyard of empires" canard also largely ignores non-Western history. Ancient and medievalAfghanistan was in fact at the heart of a number of major civilizations,including the GreekBactrian states; the KushanEmpire, which was a contemporary of imperial Rome; and, from the 10th to 12th centuries, the Ghaznavidsultanate, whoserulers made regular military forays into the subcontinent. The great MughalEmpire, at its zenith perhaps the most prosperous realm on Earth, had itsfoundations in what is today's Afghanistan, when its progenitor Baburestablished a presence in the region between Kabul and Peshawar. Count, on topof all this, several centuries of sustained Persian rule over the region.

In addition topopular misconceptions of Afghan xenophobia and historical backwardness, argumentsare regularly setforth about theincompatibility of Afghan societywith democracy.Although Afghanistan does have a history of underdeveloped democraticinstitutions, there are many reasons to question this blanket assessment.Definitional problems certainly persist: For many rural Afghans, democracyconnotes unlimited freedoms, rather than responsible and self-determinedgovernance. During the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet forces and their Afghan clientsoften called themselves democrats, further adding to confusion about the termin the minds of many Afghans. At the same time, there are mechanisms -- shuras,jirgas -- that, though hardly Jeffersonian, are analogous to the town hallsthat formed the bedrock of early American democracy. In this year's edition ofthe reasonably reliable Asia Foundation surveyof Afghanistan -- which polled 6,348 Afghans from all 34 provinces -- anoverwhelming 69 percent of Afghans polled say they are satisfied with the waydemocracy works in Afghanistan.

Ethnic politics isanother common source of confusion, with regular calls now heard inWashington for a soft partition of the state, creating a Taliban-dominated "Pashtunistan" separated from a confederation of provinces dominated by ethnicTajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. Soft partitions, which were also advocatedin the case of Iraq not that long ago by U.S. Vice President JoeBiden, may appear to be easy and seductive solutions to pacifying complexpost-colonial societies overrun by civil war. But among otherproblems, they present a moral quandary, implicitly (thoughunintentionally) opening the door to ethnic cleansing. A cursory look athistory tells us that the partition of mixed political entities has almostalways been accompanied or preceded by ethnic cleansing or immense sectarianviolence: Consider India, Palestine, Bosnia, or Cyprus. Afghanistan'spopulation is heterogeneous, and given the commitment to establishing apluralistic and democratic state, calls for the country's de facto or de jurepartition appear both irresponsible and impractical.

Just as there areseveral peculiar narratives about Afghan society and history in steadycirculation, thereis also growing skepticism aboutthe United States' abilityto prosecute theAfghanistan war, with enormousdivergences between official U.S. and Afghanperspectives. One reason often cited for limiting the United States'involvement is the financial burden that the Afghanistan war represents in an era ofausterity. But according to the Congressional ResearchService, the war in Afghanistan will cost the United States an estimated$114 billion this year, a mere 3 percent of the federal budget, and a muchsmaller fraction of the American economy. This appears to be a small investmentrelative to the importance to American foreign policy and national security ofgetting Afghanistan right.

Somecommentators make theargument that the Afghanistan war is a sideshow to other forms of securitycompetition, particularly in East Asia -- that, in essence, the continued U.S.involvement in Afghanistan distracts from looming threats to U.S. securityposed by other great powers such as China. This is questionable for at leasttwo reasons. Firstly, other major powers -- including China, India, Russia, andIran, all of whom see Afghanistan as part of their extended neighborhoods -- areclosely watching developments affecting the U.S. position there. Americansuccess or failure will resonate in Moscow and Beijing, as well as New Delhiand Tehran. Secondly, the United States is not confronted with a binary choicebetween prosecuting the Afghanistan war and retaining a military presence againstmajor state threats. The United States has faced multiple security challengesbefore; the resources required to tackle them are quite different from oneanother; and U.S. military resources dedicated to securing Europe and theAsia-Pacific region have been steadilydeclining regardlessof investments in Afghanistan.

Finally, it is widely believed today inWashington that the Taliban enjoy popularpublic support, particularly among the ethnic Pashtun population ofAfghanistan. If true, it is certainly not reinforced by extant survey data. Noris the Afghan public weary of the United States' intensified involvement. Accordingto the Asia Foundation survey, aplurality of Afghans (46 percent) believes that the country is headed in the rightdirection, compared with 35 percent who believe otherwise. What is even moreencouraging, only 11 percent of Afghans have a lot of sympathy for armed opposition groups,half the proportion who expressed similar sentiments two years ago. In that sameperiod, those who have "no sympathy at all" for the Taliban have almost doubledto 64 percent of the population. Despite frustrations with the ability of the currentgovernment to deliver, Afghans express optimism about democracy as a principle,associating it most closely with peace and freedom. The United States, suchpolls clearly reveal, should not fool itself with undue pessimism. Its effortsare gradually beginning to bear fruit.

Currently,Afghanistan's fledgling state, though challenged frequently by security, governance,and development problems, has an elected government and an internationalpresence to contribute to the work of nation-building. Despite the ongoinginsurgency, widespread corruption, and the daily risk of arbitrary orextrajudicial killing, the Afghan people continue to strive for normalcy intheir day-to-day lives and hope for peace and prosperity in the future. Withthat in mind, the pontification of a few pundits and the exigencies ofnear-term politics should not lead to poor or rash decision-making. A balancedview of Afghan public opinion, history, culture, and politics -- and, just asimportantly, of the United States' ability to shape these factors in advancingits national security interests -- is crucial as Washington debates a decisionthat will have important regional and international implications for decades tocome.

JavidAhmad, a native of Kabul, is program coordinator and Dhruva Jaishankar is program officer with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the UnitedStates in Washington, D.C. The views reflected here are their own.

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Don't hold back with Pakistan

By Michael Waltz

In the winter of 2009, standing on the mud wall of a border outpost manned by our partnered Afghan Border Police, I was chatting with Commander Aziz, a well-known local police chief commander. Aziz pointed east to the locations of Taliban training camps on a mountain just inside Pakistan, and to their usual infiltration routes around the dusty bordertown of Angor Adda. Suddenly, the high-pitched whoosh of rockets launching screamed across the valley from the direction of Pakistan to our left front towards our main coalition base to our rear. "Incoming!" one of my operators yelled as we dove under the nearest vehicles in a flash. I was only visiting, but they knew that typically the rocket attacks on the coalition base were accompanied by mortar fire on the Afghan border posts. As we dusted ourselves off, and my Air Force combat controller jumped on the radio to call for one of the aircraft continually circling over Afghanistan, I looked off in the distance towards the Pakistani military border post known as Post 41. The white trails of smoke from the rocket launches were coming from the base of the outpost on a small hill several kilometers in the distance. I noticed the launch site for the rockets was within spitting distance of the Pakistani post. The Border Police had established ambushes the night before on several of the typical launch sites, but the Taliban had learned to set up their sites very near Pakistani border positions, as the Afghans wouldn't come near them for fear of being attacked by the Pakistanis.

Read on

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Out with the old, but what of the new?

By Shamila N. Chaudhary

I first met Husain Haqqani in 2007 when I served on the Pakistan Desk at the Department of State. At that time, he was a Boston University professor known for his very public criticism of Pervez Musharraf's government and pointed analysis of the military's role in fomenting Islamic militancy in Pakistan, most notably in his 2005 book "Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military." So, when he became Ambassador under the new Asif Ali Zardari-led government in 2008, many in Washington wondered how the newly minted Ambassador Haqqani might reconcile his strong views on Pakistan's military with a U.S.-Pakistan policy so heavily centered on the security establishment. Turns out he never did.

Haqqani resigned on November 22 over his alleged involvement in preparing a secret memo to the United States offering to replace Pakistan's military and intelligence leadership in the aftermath of May 2 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Haqqani continues to deny any involvement in the memo, but his longstanding views on civil-military relations render his participation plausible. The question of responsibility is an important one for the Government of Pakistan and its citizens. Pakistan's democracy is still stifled by its history of military dictatorships, but its active civil society and media continues to push for an explanation, as a legal debate unfolds over whether Haqqani's alleged involvement in dragging the U.S. into Pakistan's internal affairs constitutes treason.

It remains to be seen whether Haqqani will face a legal inquiry. Any elaborate proceedings, however, are not in the interest of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) government. President Zardari no doubt faces a risk that with Haqqani's resignation, the political opposition and military may begin to question the possibility of his involvement in "Memogate," as was suggested, then denied,then suggested again by Mansoor Ijaz, the Pakistani-American businessman at the center of the scandal. The Supreme Court and the activist-minded Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry could also take up this issue as part of its agenda against PPP's corruption and bad governance. The government must strike a balance between accommodating public calls for justice and maintaining its strength in the lead up to the March 2012 Senate elections, during which the PPP is expected to win a majority of seats.

The government must also contend with public perceptions, especially among the Western foreign policy community, that the military is so incensed by this incident that it will overthrow the government. In substance, this argument has no legs. At least under Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani's leadership, the military continues to avoid overt involvement in civilian affairs, primarily due to Kayani's desire to improve the military's image following the bin Laden raid. However, if Pakistan's civilian leadership continues to disappoint, Kayani will have a harder time convincing the rest of the senior military leadership,which views the civilians as corrupt and inept, to stay out of domestic politics.

But it's not just the military that needs to stay out of politics. The memo shows how much the U.S. government is pulled into domestic affairs in Pakistan, whether it chooses to be or not. The United States smartly stayedout of it this time, with the White House, Department of State, and the embassyin Islamabad issuing statements that the memo issue was an internal matter for Pakistan's democratic institutions to address. The United States should push for more balanced civil-military relations in Pakistan, but it should limit how it exerts its influence to resolve those civil-military conflicts. Doing so under the circumstances of "Memogate" would have only confirmed the views of Haqqani's critics, who identify him as an American stooge, and of his supporters, who credit him with holding together a broken bilateral relationship. Both views exaggerate Haqqani's influence on the United States and Pakistan, which are bound together by forces greater than personalities, namely the ability of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to conduct attacks on the United States from Pakistani territory.

Haqqani's weakness was not that he was too close to theU.S., or underperforming as Ambassador. Rather, it was his inability to convince the military establishment that he represented the entire Pakistani government, and not just the civilian leadership. Do not forget that before "Memogate,"the 2009 scandal over the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid legislation pulled the United States into another domestic conflict that revolved around Haqqani. At the time, the military blamed Haqqani for the legislation's attempts to contain the military's role in civilian affairs. What was intended to be a historic moment in U.S.-Pakistan relations and an effort to focus on the needs of the Pakistani people become mired in a decades old imbalance in civil-military relations.

The job of Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States hasnever been easy. Over the past year, during which time I served as Director for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the White House National Security Council, the United States cooperated with Haqqani on many unexpected developments; the shooting of two Pakistanis by American contractor Raymond Davis, managing the aftermath of the bin Laden raid, the unfortunate death of key interlocutor Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, a tremendous expansion of U.S. counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, as well as attempts to revitalize civilian engagement in the country.

No one can doubt Haqqani's appetite for politics, or his feisty attempts to attack challenges or seize opportunities in his path. I am reminded of a story he told me from his time as a 24-year old Karachi-based journalist for the Far Eastern Economic Review. During his first meeting with General Zia-ul-Haq, Chief Martial Law Administrator and 6^th President of Pakistan, Haqqani asked him when he would "step down and implement democracy?" Zia's response was that Pakistan needed democracy but also stability. For someone who started his career in politics in the student wing of the conservative religious party Jamaat-e-Islami, this was no doubt a bold move on Haqqani's part, and propelled him into a career that would analyze the hard realities ofthe Pakistan military's stronghold on civilian politics.

However, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship now faces some of the most challenging policy questions it has faced in decades, related todefining Pakistan's role in an eventual reconciliation process with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the impact of the 2014 international troop drawdown in Afghanistan on Pakistan's national security interests. Because of the high risks these questions pose for both the United States and Pakistan, the next envoy to Washington must be able to speak to the whole gamut of bilateral issues, including Pakistan's security priorities, which will remain front and center to U.S. national security interests in the foreseeable future.

Shamila N. Chaudhary is a South Asia Analyst at the Eurasia Group and a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as Director for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the White House National Security Council from 2010-2011.

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The law and politics behind Afghanistan's "traditional" Loya Jirga

By Scott Worden

On Wednesday, more than 2000 Afghan representatives will meet in Kabul for a "Traditional Loya Jirga" at the request of President Hamid Karzai. The ostensible purpose of the meeting is to gain popular consensus on a Strategic Partnership Agreement with the United States on security cooperation and to reconfirm a commitment by the Afghan people to a peace process with the Taliban.

Both subjects need national support to succeed. But many in Afghanistan are questioning whether a Jirga is a legal means for approving agreements rather than the government or elected representatives. And even if it is legal, is it still wise?

The first question is easier to answer. There is nothing illegal per se for the Afghan President, or others, to convene a "Traditional Loya Jirga" when they want, just as someone may convene a ‘Million Man March' on a given issue in Washington. Jirgas, or councils, have been a common mechanism for community decision making in Afghanistan for centuries. National Loya Jirgas, or grand councils, have been used selectively to decide important matters of state.

Since 2004, however, a Loya Jirga has no binding legal authority unless it complies with formalities of the Constitution -- and the upcoming "traditional Loya Jirga" does not. Article 110 of the Constitution defines a Loya Jirga in very specific terms, stating that its voting members comprise "1. Members of the National Assembly; [and] 2. Presidents of the provincial as well as district assemblies." Most notably, no district council elections have been held, and therefore a proper Constitutional Loya Jirga is currently impossible. Beyond that, many of the delegates that were invited, such as tribal leaders, businessmen, or civil society representatives, do not hold positions authorized by the Constitution to attend an official Loya Jirga -- making quorum rules and voting rights entirely unclear.

A consultative Jirga, on the other hand, can make political statements or send signals to those in Parliament or the country's government about what is acceptable to the people. In 2010 President Karzai convened a "Consultative Peace Jirga" to initiate a peace process with the Taliban, and it endorsed the creation of the High Peace Council that was headed by former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani until he was assassinated in September. Yet the High Peace Council was ultimately formed by President Karzai under his executive powers. As such, it serves as an advisory body and does not set a precedent for consultative Jirgas to pass legislation or otherwise take official state actions.

Those who criticize the legality of the upcoming Loya Jirga have two primary concerns. One is that President Karzai will seek to amend Article 62 of the Constitution, to allow him to run for a third presidential term. This seems unlikely, given the clear legal deficiencies the upcoming Jirga has compared to the Constitutional requirements stated in Article 110. Moreover, any attempt at amending the Constitution would surely encounter strong opposition from democratic opposition leaders and the international community, some of whom have already made their voices heard against Wednesday's Jirga.

The more difficult question is whether the Loya Jirga will be asked to approve a strategic partnership agreement with the United States as a binding agreement in lieu of Parliamentary ratification. Article 90 of the Constitution gives the National Assembly (comprised of both the upper House of Elders and lower House of the People) the duty of "Ratification of international treaties and agreements, or abrogation of membership of Afghanistan in them." The strategic partnership agreement probably would not qualify as a treaty because, among other things, the United States has so far not proposed to present it for Senate ratification under its own Constitution. Whether or not it meets the Constitutional definition of an "international agreement" hinges on its specific terms and definitions under Afghan law that likely have no precedent under the current Constitution.

That legal thicket should be left for another day, however, because the real concerns about Wednesday's Loya Jirga have more to do with political legitimacy than legal fine print. Implicit in the questions from Parliamentarians about the Traditional Loya Jirga's legality or the Taliban's threat to kill Jirga attendees is a fear that the "Traditional Loya Jirga" has more public credibility than they do, and will undermine their authority. Indeed, while the membership of other Loya Jirgas has been criticized as politically manipulated and unrepresentative, the Parliament is seen as little better after the fraud-filled 2010 election. The Taliban's credibility is, by some measures, at even lower ebb.

Ultimately, the merits of the Traditional Loya Jirga rest on whether one sees it as fundamentally democratic or a tool of an exclusive political elite. This, in turn, depends on the Jirga's membership and mandate. In an ideal form, national Jirgas could be seen as a rough equivalent of a referendum as compared to parliamentary legislation. While elected representatives handle everyday matters of law, a referendum's more direct democracy presents an opportunity for ‘the people' to surpass the legislature on matters of particular importance when conducted in accordance with the Constitution.

National jirgas have not been so pure in practice, however. Since the Constitution was ratified in 2004, national jirga representatives have tended to be selected on an ad-hoc basis, largely by the office of the President, without transparency and with clear deficiencies in representation of women, civil society, and other important constituencies.

Given that the "Traditional Loya Jirga" lacks formal requirements to assume constitutional powers, its main authority is political. Therefore, its success will depend on whether President Karzai has chosen members that truly represent diverse constituencies and limit themselves to political outcomes. If instead the delegates are seen as exclusive of key interest groups and attempt to make legally binding decisions that could not be approved otherwise, this Loya Jirga will represent a significant setback for Afghan democracy and could foment greater conflict, rather than pushing forward the priority of peace.

Scott Worden is a Senior Rule of Law Advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He served as a Commissioner on the 2009 Afghanistan Electoral Complaints Commission and was an observer of the 2010 Parliamentary Elections.

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Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir: A grand bargain?

By Teresita Schaffer, Howard Schaffer

With U.S. relations in Pakistan at a low point and the two countries' strategic disagreement over priorities in Afghanistan on full display, it is time to review U.S. strategic options. One that deserves a close look is a grand bargain: give Pakistan what it wants in Afghanistan - but on two conditions: Pakistan assumes responsibility for preventing terrorism out of Afghanistan, and Pakistan agrees to settle Kashmir along the present geographic lines. This is not a panacea, nor would it be easy to execute. But it addresses the principal stumbling block to the current U.S. strategy, and provides an incentive to settle the region's longest-running dispute.

For the past decade, U.S. policy has been based on the assumption that the United States and Pakistan shared the strategic goal of extirpating from the leadership of Afghanistan the Taliban and allied terrorist forces. This objective was at the heart of the partnership struck after 9/11. As with the two previous major U.S.-Pakistan partnerships, in the 1950s/60s and in the 1980s, the assumption of strategic agreement was at best only half true, and the differences between the two countries' goals have become increasingly difficult to paper over. This time, Pakistan's desire to ensure what its army chief has referred to as "a friendly government" in Kabul - meaning a government deferential to Pakistan and impervious to Indian influence - has intensified, especially since the beginning of 2011. During that time, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship was devastated by the aftereffects of the shooting of two Pakistanis by CIA contractor Raymond Davis and his subsequent arrest, by the raid that killed Osama bin Ladin, and by the harsh public criticism of Pakistan by retiring U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen.

The two governments have been trying to salvage some working elements of partnership. However, their ability to work together toward a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan, badly strained by conflicting goals, was for practical purposes ended by the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Karzai government's designated representative for peace initiatives toward the Afghan Taliban. This was not the first time Pakistan's insistence on controlling negotiations inside Afghanistan had trumped its stated policy of supporting the Afghan government's negotiating role, but this incident has brought tentative peace feelers, already rickety, to a virtual halt.

Washington's response to this situation has been to seek a stronger basis for working with Pakistan. This reflects U.S. recognition of Pakistan's critical importance to peace in the region and to Afghanistan's future - as well as the major U.S. stake in nuclear-armed Pakistan's own political and economic health. These are indeed important considerations - but it does not follow that the U.S. should continue on essentially the same path that has repeatedly come up short.

There are two other strategic options: treat Pakistan as a hostile power, and try to impose an acceptable solution in Afghanistan in the teeth of Pakistani efforts to control the process; or build a strategy that allows Pakistan to have the major say in Afghanistan, but on conditions that protect U.S. strategic interests and give Pakistan a strong incentive to respect them. We believe that forcing an acceptable solution is almost certain to fail. It would depend, unrealistically, on the effectiveness of an intra-Afghan negotiating process and of the government that would follow. It would also presuppose, equally implausibly, that Afghanistan would remain able to withstand the Pakistani effort to upset the settlement that would surely follow.

The strategic alternative that remains is a grand bargain, initially between Pakistan and the United States, but eventually involving India. The major elements would be:

Concede Pakistani primacy in Afghanistan: The United States would tell Pakistan's leaders that it is up to them to work with the various Afghan leaders - the government and whatever elements of the Taliban - toward a postwar accommodation that can keep Afghanistan free of terrorism and at peace. Pakistan would insist on eliminating or minimizing India's involvement in Afghanistan (a modest economic relationship, for example), and would assume the major place in Afghanistan's external environment.
Hold Pakistan responsible for terrorism from Afghanistan: At the same time, the U.S. would warn Pakistan that we would hold it responsible for any act of terrorism originating in Afghanistan or Pakistan. This does not mean a policy of automatic retaliation - such decisions need to be made case by case - but it would put Pakistan on notice that winking at the forces in both countries that have spread terrorism within the region and beyond carries a tremendous risk.
Settle Kashmir along the Line of Control: The United States would tell Pakistan that as part of this settlement, it will publicly call for negotiations to settle the Kashmir dispute by turning the existing Line of Control between the Indian and Pakistani-held portions into an international border. It would give India advance notice of this announcement. U.S. support for a settlement along the Line of Control would in all likelihood pull additional international support in that direction.

The actual negotiations would be carried out by the two countries. These would cover not just the border but a whole host of other issues, including the ground rules for ensuring both countries' security, prevention of terrorism, encouragement of economic ties, and the rights of Kashmiris on both sides of the line to robust self-government. Many of these elements were included in the proposals Pakistan's former president, Pervez Musharraf, set forth before he fell from power, and a good number were at the heart of the proposals discussed in back channel negotiations between India and Pakistan in the last years of Musharraf's presidency. Whether the United States would have a role in the negotiating process would depend on the desires of India and Pakistan.
Maintain a robust civilian and military partnership with Pakistan, including support as appropriate for its work toward a settlement in Afghanistan and generous funding for such Pakistani priorities as electric power generation. In the context of Kashmir negotiations, the U.S. could look at an updated security relationship. All this would of course be contingent on Pakistan holding to the overall bargain.

A deal along these lines would hand Pakistan one of its primary strategic objectives, but at a price Pakistanis would find very hard to swallow. Kashmir has a much tighter hold on the national heartstrings than Afghanistan. However, in practice Pakistan has lost its chance of gaining Kashmir, and many Pakistanis privately acknowledge this. They are well aware that for years, Pakistan's efforts have done nothing to remove India's hold on the state, and have succeeded only in deepening hostility and making the region less secure for everyone, including Pakistan.

Securing Pakistan against its military leaders' nightmare of an Indian threat from both east and west provides a strategic gain, especially when coupled with a possible Kashmir agreement that could lay the groundwork for transforming the hostile relationship with India into one that was merely chilly but improving. The bigger problem may be how to ensure that these gains are maintained. Afghanistan has never had sustained good relations with Pakistan, and may once again look to India as a balancer - an all too willing one - when it tires of being guided by Pakistan. And on the Kashmir side, even if the Pakistan government and its army agree to negotiate peace with India - by no means a sure bet - the militant movement in Pakistan includes many spoilers who will try to stir up trouble in Kashmir or elsewhere in India, providing acute temptation to the army to join in.

These difficulties make the grand bargain described here a long shot. Using military and economic aid as leverage might increase Pakistan's motivation to keep the bargain, though this is a tactic that has only worked for short periods in the past, and has never succeeded in dissuading Pakistan from following major strategic interests. To improve the odds, the United States would need to seek other international support, appealing to the desire of Pakistan's international friends to improve Pakistan's long term economic and security prospects. Bringing China at least tacitly on board would be the ideal. Other players would be the European aid donors, and some of Pakistan's Arab benefactors. The United States would also have to expend some diplomatic capital to dissuade India from trying to upset the balance in Afghanistan, noting that the U.S. had promoted a Kashmir settlement on terms quite favorable to India, and that reducing India's profile in Afghanistan had to be seen in that context.

But considering the results of ten years of engagement, and the tremendous risks flowing from a "hostile Pakistan" strategy, the long shot starts to look like the best available strategic bet.

Teresita Schaffer is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Howard Schaffer is Senior Counselor at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University. Both are retired U.S. ambassadors with long experience in South Asia. They are co-directors of http://southasiahand.com.

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Body bags in Baluchistan

By Abubakar Siddique, August 4, 2011

On Aug. 1, Pakistan's military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said the Army and its intelligence agencies are not involved in so-called "kill-and-dump" operations in the restive province of Baluchistan. Kayani was speaking in Quetta, the provincial capital, where Human Rights Watch said in a recent report that Islamabad "should immediately end widespread disappearances of suspected militants and activists by the military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps."

The report follows similar findings by Amnesty International and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Human rights watchdogs have repeatedly called on Islamabad to stop unlawful killings in Baluchistan, where hundreds of political activists have been killed in separatist and sectarian violence involving both homegrown and regional insurgents.

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Karzai's game

By Sarah Holewinski, July 26, 2011

A family of sixteen Afghans is killed by an improvised explosive device. A hospital is attacked by a suicide bomber. An innocent eight-year old girl is told to carry a package which detonates just outside a military base. While all of this terror and destruction is wrought by the Taliban on Afghans, where is President Hamid Karzai? Missing in action.

Karzai is a smart man; he didn't simply forget to condemn these horrors. In fact, he seems hyperaware of civilian casualties within his borders. When international forces cause harm, the Afghan president passionately decries their actions. In May, after NATO mistakenly killed fourteen civilians, Karzai said "...[if] they still continue to bomb our homes, then their presence will change from a force that fights terrorism to a force against the Afghan people and an occupying force." What President Karzai didn't mention is that so far this year, the Taliban killed four civilians for every one that NATO killed.

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A guide to Afghan impeachment

By Scott Worden

Last week's spectacle of shoe throwing and fist fighting between two members of the Afghan Parliament arguing over whether Afghan President Hamid Karzai should be impeached illustrates that the worst-case scenario that many feared could result from last year's disputed Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan is near: a full-blown Constitutional crisis and the collapse of government in Afghanistan.

The concept of impeachment lies at the heart of the dispute over last year's parliamentary election. President Karzai and members of his Special Elections Tribunal believe that 62 members of Parliament should be removed from office for unspecified fraud during last year's elections. In return, the Parliament has issued a vote of no-confidence against the Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko, has voted to impeach six members of the Supreme Court (including three whose terms have expired), and last week began debating impeachment of the president himself.

This raises important questions about what the actual requirements are for removing high officials from office in Afghanistan, which have been ignored so far by the Afghan institutions that are fighting each other's authority. Rhetorically "impeaching" a person's or institution's credibility is one thing. Actually going through a legal removal process is, as Americans learned during President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, another. Either way, the compromised legitimacy of the three branches of government in Afghanistan calls into question the fundamental basis of international support for the country, which rests on a partnership with a legitimate government that is capable of ruling with the consent of its people.

To sort out political rhetoric from legal reality, it is important to understand what legal powers and duties each institution involved in the election crises has under Afghan law.

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