The Pakistan Update

By Wajid Ali Syed

Bin Ladin is dead. Again. In the last ten years he has been reported “killed” at least four times. The only difference this time was that the President of the United States announced the death of the number one terrorist in the world. Above all, this time he was killed not in Tora Bora, not Karra Kurrum, but Abbottabad – close to an army garrison in Pakistan. As expected, his killing has raised questions, and more questions, and still more questions every time a new statement is added to the swirl of fact and myth that is turning the bin Laden raid into the stuff of legend.

Basically, a foreign national has been killed by another foreign army. (more…)

Tags: Abottabad, Al Qaeda, Army, CIA, Featured, ISI, Islamabad, Islamic groups, Obama, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Taliban, US

Posted in Afghanistan, Around, Blog, India | 1,819 Comments »

by Christopher Dickey

Osama bin Laden’s cave turned out to be a mansion. The desolate mountains where he was hiding proved, in the end, to be the pleasant little hill town of Abbottabad, only 30 miles from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He’s been holed up, and on Sunday was at last gunned down, in the biggest house around. He lived with relatives and an entourage behind high walls topped with barbed wire, in a community that’s also home to several Pakistani army units. A military academy is just a few hundred yards down the road.

“There aren’t that many six-foot-plus Arabs walking around that town,” says M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London. “Even if you buy a donkey there it creates a stir. So how could the Pakistani military not know about it?”

We shouldn’t be surprised. Several of the top Al Qaeda bad guys now at Guantánamo were captured deep inside Pakistani territory. And more often than not, they’d been living quite comfortably. “They’re not being caught in some haystack on the border,” Gohel told me back in 2004. Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda’s gatekeeper for new recruits and a planner of terrorist operations, got nailed in Faisalabad in 2002; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of 9/11, was dragged out of bed in the garrison city of Rawalpindi in 2003; Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, since convicted by a U.S. court for his role in the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Africa and now serving a life sentence in the United States, was grabbed in Gujrat in 2004. In fact, this is not news to U.S. intelligence officials. The overt and covert war along Pakistan’s northwest frontier is important for Afghanistan and American soldiers there. Some mid-level Al Qaeda commanders reportedly have been killed by drone attacks there. But for years, American analysts have suspected that Bin Laden enjoyed the same kind of comforts as his colleagues had had deep in Pakistan’s cities thanks to protection from parts of the Pakistani government and its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the infamous ISI. American operatives privately voiced suspicions that Bin Laden’s protectors either sympathized with him or saw him as the ultimate bargaining chip, or both.

So the covert operation closing in on Bin Laden at Abbottabad gained momentum over the last few months, even as the public friction between Washington and Islamabad grew more intense. In January, when two men allegedly tried to rob CIA operative Raymond Davis, he shot them dead—and got arrested by the Pakistanis for murder. Davis was freed in March after a lot of diplomatic maneuvering and payments to the families of the deceased, who pardoned Davis “in accordance with Pakistani law,” according to the White House. But as that case unraveled, it exposed the presence of hundreds of CIA personnel and contractors operating on Pakistani turf. And they weren’t just helping target Hellfire missiles near the Afghan frontier. Davis ran into trouble when he was gathering intelligence in Lahore on the other side of the country.

Last month, when Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen visited Pakistan, he spoke out publicly and with surprising force about America’s problems with the ISI. The specific issue he mentioned was the Pakistani intelligence organization’s “longstanding relationship” with the so-called Haqqani network, which works alongside the Taliban “supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners” in Afghanistan. “I have a sacred obligation to do all I can to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Mullen. “So that’s at the core—it’s not the only thing—but that’s at the core that I think is the most difficult part of the relationship.” Not the only thing indeed.

In President Barack Obama’s carefully phrased description of the “targeted operation” that killed Bin Laden he says cooperation with Pakistan “helped lead us to Bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding,” but it’s apparent “the small team of Americans” who killed him and took away his body were on their own.

Over the long run, the wars that Bin Laden did so much to begin on September 11, 2001, will not end unless some sort of understanding is reached with Pakistan’s government, its military and its intelligence service. “Going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliates,” said Obama. But for its own geopolitical—and purely political—reasons Pakistan is likely to continue being as much part of the problem as part of the solution. At least after the Abbottabad shootout, it’s clear the administration isn’t kidding itself. When it got a shot at Bin Laden, it took it. No dithering. No dilatory diplomacy. Secrecy was maintained. The Pakistanis were cut out. And justice was done.

Christopher Dickey is the Paris bureau chief and Middle East editor for Newsweek Magazine and The Daily Beast.

Tags: Abbottabad, Abu Zubaydah, Admiral Mike Mullen, Afghanistan, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, Al Qaeda, Asia-Pacific Foundation, Barack Obama, Faisalabad, Featured, Guantánamo, Gujrat, haqqani network, Hellfire missiles, ISI, Islamabad, khalid sheikh mohammed, Lahore, M.J. Gohel, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Rawalpindi, Raymond Davis, Taliban

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog, News | 3,114 Comments »

by Bruce Reidel

Osama bin Laden’s death is a severe blow to al Qaeda–but not its end. His death answers some key questions about the terror cell and Pakistan, but leaves some even more perplexing ones still open.

First, congratulations to President Obama and the CIA. From the very start of his administration he ordered an intense focus on al Qaeda and its leader. The trail had long gone cold due largely to the diversion of critical resources to Iraq back in 2002 and 2003. Obama rightly promised to focus on Pakistan, the center of the global jihad and the most dangerous country in the world, and his efforts have now paid off.

Many had questioned whether bin Laden was still alive almost ten years after 9/11. But there was never really any doubt. By eluding justice after his first attacks on America in 1998, bin Laden created a mystique of invulnerability. He remained not just a symbol of al Qaeda’s continuing threat but a real leader, issuing strategic direction and propaganda.

His death weakens al Qaeda’s cohesion and its image of being beyond the reach of America. It comes after two years of intense pressure on the group and its allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan from American drones in the skies as well as NATO boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Key lieutenants like his operational commander in Afghanistan, a fellow Saudi named Abdul Ghani, have been tracked down and killed just this spring. The pressure was designed to weaken al Qaeda’s operational tempo, disrupting its routines. The strategy has worked. Presumably his hideout deep in Pakistan also contained clues and data that will help further dismantle al Qaeda’s core.

But the terror cell has always known bin Laden was at risk and it has devolved much authority to his deputy, the Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri, and to others. Zawahiri has been the public face of al Qaeda for years. Just this year he has released five audio messages focused on the Arab spring (he put out only four in all of last year). Bin Laden in contrast was silent about the wave of revolutions in Arabia. The New Mexico born Yemeni Anwar Awlaki has emerged as another operational and propaganda hub with his on line English language magazine Inspire and his al Qaeda Yemen cell has tried to attack Detroit and Chicago already. We can expect effusive memorials from them to their fallen “martyr.”

And we should expect the threat of more al Qaeda attacks to remain real. This weekend, several terrorists linked to al Qaeda were arrested for plotting an attack in Germany. Last week, the group’s Maghreb affiliate struck in Morocco, killing Western tourists.

Obama was right to call his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, to thank him for help in the chase. Zardari’s wife Benazir Bhutto was murdered by al Qaeda in 2007; the death of the country’s most popular and capable leader was perhaps the group’s biggest triumph since 9/11. Pakistan has yet to recover from her demise. Al Qaeda has been focused like a laser beam on Pakistan for the last decade. It rightly judges Pakistan to be both uniquely vulnerable in the Islamic world to jihadism and equipped with the ultimate strategic prize, the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world. With allies like the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, al Qaeda will remain a threat to Pakistan’s nascent democracy and to peace in the Indian subcontinent.

Obama should schedule an early Zardari visit to Washington and his own visit later this year to Pakistan to signal our support for democratic forces there. We also now know what many long suspected: that Bin Laden was not hiding in Pakistan’s tribal wastelands, but rather in its heartland. He was killed in Abbotabad, the home town of Pakistan’s first military dictator, Ayub Khan, just thirty miles from the capital Islamabad. This raises the question: who helped him all these years hide in-country? He was not alone in al Qaeda in hiding out in Pakistan’s towns and cities. Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and Abu Zubayda, two key al Qaeda operatives, were caught in Pakistan’s urban centers. Mullah Omar, bin Laden’s Afghan Taliban partner (and the man he swore loyalty to even in the last few years) has long been thought to be hiding in Pakistan’s mega- port of Karachi. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has often publicly said she suspected some in the Pakistani establishment knew where to find bin Laden. She raised the right question. It remains a good one.

Al Qaeda long ago became more than a terror group. It is an idea, the concept of global jihad against America. It has an elaborate narrative to justify murder. But Bin Laden was caught off guard by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions this winter and the wave of turmoil that has followed them. These popular uprisings challenged his whole worldview that terror and jihad were the only way to free Islam of its dictators and of what he called “Crusader-Zionist oppression.” The triumph of freedom in Tahrir Square was a blow to al Qaeda—a sign that aside from in Pakistan and Yemen, the group seemed increasingly marginalized. NATO is now fighting to free Libya, not to occupy it. Whether al Qaeda can adapt to the new Arab renaissance is an open question. Bin Laden won’t be able to answer it. Can his heirs?

Bruce Riedel, a former longtime CIA officer, is a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. At Obama’s request, he chaired the strategic review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009.

Tags: 9/11, Abbotabad, Abdul Ghani, Abu Zubayda, Al Qaeda, Anwar Awlaki, Ayman Zawahiri, Ayub Khan, Benazir assassination, Benazir Bhutto, CIA, drones, Featured, Hillary Clinton, Islamabad, Jihad, karachi, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Lashkar e Taiba, Mullah Omar, NATO, Obama, Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari, Taliban

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog, News | 1,234 Comments »

By Nathan Cohn

The recent thaw in India-Pakistan relations and the resumption of structured dialogue presents an opportunity for modest but valuable confidence building measures. One achievable measure might be an agreement establishing rules to avoid provocative behavior at sea and reliable mechanisms to resolve maritime disputes. In coming years, contentious maritime issues and nuclear dangers are likely to grow between India and Pakistan. The Indian Navy has plans to expand substantially, submarines will become a larger part of the naval equation, maritime aircraft are becoming more capable, and both India and Pakistan are positioning themselves to introduce sea-based deterrents. Incidents between surface ships, submarines, or aircraft might become increasingly frequent and risk unintended escalation. An incidents at sea (INCSEA) agreement can build norms for responsible behavior which can reduce the risk of unintended escalation.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, heightened tensions at sea led American and Soviets officials and analysts to invest considerable intellectual capital in constructing a mechanism to prevent and resolve naval mishaps. U.S. and Soviet naval vessels repeatedly engaged in risky and dangerous maneuvers, while U.S. warplanes ‘buzzed’ Soviet ships. Cat and mouse games brought submarines and ships into dangerously close proximity, even resulting in collisions. Soviet and U.S. navies often simulated attacks against each other’s ships and planes. In a crisis, mock attacks or collisions, even if accidental, could have been misinterpreted as a real attack with escalatory potential.

In response, the United States and Soviet Union negotiated and signed the 1972 Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents at Sea between the United States and Soviet Union. This INCSEA agreement prescribed measures to prevent ships from colliding, reduced interference in naval formations, and prevented provocative maneuvers and simulated attacks. Significantly, the agreement established navy-to-navy channels to resolve disputes, which expanded and regularized bilateral military communication. Annual forums served as a consultative mechanism.

While incidents at sea were not eliminated, INCSEA’s rules considerably reduced their frequency and provided a mechanism for resolution when preventative measures failed. Since 1972, INCSEA has served as a model for similar agreements involving over 30 navies. The widespread adoption of incidents at sea agreements is a testament to INCSEA’s effectiveness.

The waters around South Asia have been calm compared to the dangerous confrontations at sea between the U.S. and Soviet navies. For most of their history as independent states, friction between India and Pakistan has been mostly on land, not at sea. Nonetheless, there have been maritime incidents and naval military activities of note. The detention of fisherman operating in non-demarcated areas is a regular occurrence. Their release is usually one of the signals of reduced tensions in the region. During the 1971 war, India’s navy sustained a blockade which prevented resupply of Pakistani forces and contributed to Pakistan’s decisive defeat. The most worrisome incident at sea to date occurred in 1999, when an Indian MiG-21 fighter aircraft shot down a Pakistani Atlantique naval surveillance aircraft near the Rann of Kutch. Each side claimed the other had violated national airspace. The ensuing dispute heightened tensions, and could have been much worse had the incident occurred just three weeks earlier during the Kargil conflict.

Maritime friction is likely to grow. Since 1998, India’s blue-water navy has steadily expanded, including the high profile purchase of a Russian aircraft carrier. India plans to deploy new nuclear subs, destroyers, and an indigenous aircraft carrier by the end of the decade. Naval-air improvements are also underway, including the high profile purchase by New Delhi of the P-8 multi-mission naval aircraft designed for surveillance and anti-submarine warfare. While Pakistan does not have the resources to match India’s build-up, Islamabad is purchasing four Chinese frigates and six new submarines from China, in addition to the recent acquisition of three French subs. Pakistan will also add eight P-3C naval surveillance and patrol aircraft, which are likely to be employed in anti-submarine warfare. Both nations are acquiring the means to place nuclear weapons at sea, perhaps initially on platforms that carry cruise missiles.

As India and Pakistan’s navies stretch their sea-legs in coming years, the two fleets could operate in close proximity with greater frequency. India’s leadership has enunciated an expansive role for India’s Navy, from the Gulf of Aden to the Straits of Malacca. India’s fleet may also operate in close proximity to Pakistan’s major port facilities in Karachi and Gwardor. Incidents of harassment cannot be ruled out, especially in the absence of adequate communication during crises. The most dangerous possibility is that harassment during a crisis will unintentionally result in actual combat.

The risk that nuclear-armed vessels could become embroiled in a confrontation at sea gives these incidents escalatory potential, especially if command and control is deficient. India has begun initial sea trials of a nuclear submarine designed to carry ballistic missiles, the Arihant. Islamabad is unlikely to seek or afford similar capabilities, but appears to be interested in developing a sea-based version of the nuclear-capable ‘Babur’ cruise missile. During a crisis, maneuvers intended to track a submarine could be misinterpreted as foreshadowing offensive operations. Even if prudence and caution characterize decision-making, heightened use-it or lose-it pressures could prompt elevated alert or readiness levels, exacerbating command and control challenges.

The avoidance of mishaps at sea requires rules against provocative behavior, and dialogue to help resolve disputes. Unfortunately, none of these conditions exist in South Asia. There is no permanent mechanism for consultation between the Indian and Pakistani navies and there are no rules for responsible behavior at sea. Just as the U.S.-Soviet INCSEA agreement prohibited disruptive behavior and established the first permanent line of communication between the U.S. and Soviet navies, a similar agreement in South Asia could reduce the risk of incidents. Annual meetings, similar to those established by the US-Russian INCSEA agreement, could be useful to air disagreements and engage in genuine discussion.

India and Pakistan have endorsed an incidents at sea agreement twice before, in both the 1999 Lahore Declaration and a 2006 Joint Statement. Dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad resumed in February after a two year hiatus following the Mumbai attacks. Modest confidence building measures can reduce tensions and defuse sparks which could ignite conflicts. An incidents at sea agreement is not a game changer with the potential to transform India-Pakistan relations, but it is both achievable and helpful.

Nathan Cohn is a research assistant at the Stimson Center for the South Asia and Space projects

Tags: Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents at Sea, arihant, Atlantique, babur cruise missile, china, Gulf of Aden, gwardor, incidents at sea, INCSEA, India, india-pakistan relations, indian navy, karachi, Lahore Declaration, MiG-21, Mumbai Attacks, P-8, Pakistan, Rann of Kutch, South Asia, Straits of Malacca

Posted in Blog, India, News | 1,272 Comments »

By Michael Krepon, Ziad Haider, and Charles Thornton

Since India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, their leaders have rhetorically rejected the concept and requirements of nuclear war-fighting. While New Delhi and Islamabad appear quite confident that they will not repeat the Cold War mistakes of Washington and Moscow in relying on nuclear war-fighting options to bolster deterrence, it is far from clear that the South Asian nuclear rivals would be willing to take steps to agree to constraints or to forego entirely short-range, battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons. Declaratory statements to this effect would not be verifiable, but would reinforce public statements in favor of credible minimal deterrence and against nuclear war-fighting concepts of deterrence. The absence of new production and flight-testing of short-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missiles would lend credence to public disavowals of intent to pursue nuclear war-fighting capabilities.

The dilemmas associated with nuclear weapons having very short ranges are particularly acute. The most prominent applicable dilemma relates to escalation control. Any use of such a weapon – even a singular demonstration shot by the weaker party to signal the urgency of stopping a threatening advance – presents a strong likelihood of uncontrolled escalation. While the dilemma of escalation control applies to any use of nuclear weapons in South Asia, the potential for this theoretical dilemma to become real increases if short-range nuclear weapon delivery vehicles are deployed on the battlefield.

With conventional conflict amidst missile deployments, much will be left to chance. If short-range ballistic missiles are deployed close enough to an adversary’s forces to damage them or some other target that the adversary holds dear, a breakdown of deterrence would have immediate, catastrophic effects. The trigger for uncontrolled escalation could occur if fighting erupts, if a missile battery is captured, if a local commander exercises a pre-delegated authority to fire the missile, or if command and control arrangements break down. Alternatively, uncontrolled escalation could be triggered before combat begins as a result of an accident relating to deployment or through the actions of an extremist group during the depths of a crisis.

Another concern is force protection. There are more opportunities for something unfortunate to happen when tactical nuclear weapons are forward deployed than when they reside in highly secure storage facilities. Some of the dilemmas of force protection in South Asia can be addressed by not deploying nuclear warheads mated with their launch vehicles in a crisis, where they could be subject to accidents, seizures, and breakdowns in command and control. If, however, the requirements of rapid response are deemed to be paramount, the dilemmas of vulnerability and maintaining strict command and control will rise to the fore.

How serious are Indian and Pakistani leaders in asserting that they do not intend to build nuclear war-fighting arsenals? If these assertions are genuine, and if national leaders wish to demonstrate their intent not to follow the mistakes of other states that possess nuclear weapons, how might they do so? One way would be for the governments of India and Pakistan not to engage in additional flight tests of certain short-range ballistic missiles. National leaders could publicly designate which existing missile system would not be flight-tested in the future. “Giving up” this option may be more difficult for Pakistan, because the forward deployment of short-range ballistic missiles might be viewed in some quarters as reinforcing deterrence when the order of battle is unfavorable.

Lesser constraints on missile flight tests could also have utility. For example, flight tests for existing and new missile programs could continue, but under conditions that increase stability and that begin to lay the groundwork for long-distance, cooperative monitoring. A far more dramatic gesture to signal disinterest in developing, producing, or relying upon tactical nuclear weapons and nuclear war-fighting strategies would be to dismantle and destroy existing short-range ballistic missiles, either by designated type or by a mutually agreed range threshold. Alternatively, each side could designate a particular class or classes of missiles to be subject to dismantlement and destruction. There are many obstacles that stand in the way of such an accord. Powerful institutional interests and domestic constituencies in both Pakistan and India might be opposed to dismantling any missiles that are a source of national pride, even if they have marginal military utility and pose significant dilemmas on the battlefield. Verification would also be a thorny issue for an agreement of this kind.

A less dramatic, but still highly symbolic, accord can be envisioned that sidesteps problems of verification. National leaders in both countries could pledge publicly not to deploy such missiles, even in times of heightened tension. An agreement of this sort faces long odds. Non-deployment pledges would face stiff opposition on the grounds that any weapon deemed necessary to produce and maintain ought not to be prohibited from appearing on the battlefield. Definitions of what constitutes “deployment” and “non-deployment” might vary, and a non-deployment ban might not be honored during a crisis.

Some of the proposals we offer here are modest, but extremely useful. The more ambitious proposals will require considerable political will to enact over the resistance of powerful interest groups. Regardless of the state of the nuclear competition or the size of nuclear arsenals, national security establishments and “strategic enclaves” will be loath to constrain military flexibility and nuclear options. It is the responsibility of national leaders to weigh these concerns against broader imperatives to reduce nuclear dangers. Such agreements would be predicated on hard-headed assessments that the military utility of short-range ballistic missiles is extremely modest compared to the dilemmas of escalation control, vulnerability, command and control, and resource allocation. National leaders in Pakistan and India have pledged not to repeat the mistakes of other nuclear-armed nations. They have an opportunity to demonstrate their opposition to nuclear war-fighting strategies and capabilities by agreeing to measures to clarify this intention. Tactical nuclear weapons are poorly suited for military purposes in South Asia, and well suited for nuclear risk-reduction measures.

Michael Krepon is co-founder of the Stimson Center. Ziad Haider is a joint degree candidate at Georgetown Law and the Harvard Kennedy School. Chuck Thornton is an international security policy expert who provided program management support to the US Government’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program and is currently a research fellow at the University of Maryland.

Tags: Cold War, Featured, India, nuclear weapons, Pakistan, South Asia

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog, India, News | 2,090 Comments »

by Rebecca Winthrop

For the millions of people who read and were inspired by Greg Mortenson’s books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, Sunday’s revelations by CBS News’ 60 Minutes that much of his story was at best vastly exaggerated and at worst fabricated, came as deep disappointment. For the thousands of Americans, including school children, who donated to his foundation, the Central Asia Institute, to build schools in the some of the most remote parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, their disappointment is coupled with disillusionment that their money was probably not well spent.

As I travel around Pakistan this week and look at education issues across the country, including in the Federally Administered Northern Areas where Mortenson’s book Three Cups of Tea was set, I am struck by the bitter-sweet effect of these revelations. On the one hand, Mortenson’s book hid one of the country’s biggest educational success stories and promulgated a model of education assistance that has been proven time and again to be ineffective. On the other hand, his story captured the hearts of millions, bringing needed attention to the very real educational needs of Pakistan’s children and articulating the very important role good quality education can play in reducing conflict risk.

What is the real story of education in Pakistan’s Northern Areas, or Gilgit-Bultistan, as it is now called? How do we make sense of the damaging revelations about the Central Asia Institute that is dedicated to what many believe is still important work?

The Real Education Story in Gilgit-Bultistan

Contrary to the Three Cups of Tea portrayal of Gilgit-Bultistan as a place with little educational opportunity, it is one of the regions in Pakistan that has demonstrated true educational transformation over the last 50 years. In 1946, just prior to partition from India, there were an estimated six primary schools and one middle school for the entire region. Today there are over 1,800 primary, 500 middle, 420 high schools, and almost 40 higher education institutions. Girls are often noted to be outperforming boys and staying in school longer. It is true that community leadership and civil society organizations have played a major role in this transformation; it just was not Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute. When I asked the governor of Gilgit-Bultistan, Pir Syed Karam Ali Shah, how this education transformation came about, he was quick to point to the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a network of private, international, nondenominational development organizations, an assertion with which other education experts concur. Led by His Highness the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, the concerted focus on improving education, and especially girls’ education, started in 1946 and has continued, led by community members, for decades. Initially starting in the Ismaili communities in Gilgit-Bultistan, the work spread quickly to other non-Ismaili communities in the region, when the clear economic and health benefits of educating girls were seen by neighboring communities. Many civil society organizations, government interventions and public-private partnerships have developed over time, helping to increase levels of human capital and capacity through heavy investment in education, particularly of girls. According to Mehnaz Aziz, member of the national Pakistan Education Task Force, if the rest of Pakistan could only follow in the footsteps of the people of Gilgit-Bultistan, the status of education in Pakistan would be greatly improved.

Yes, There Is an Education Crisis in Pakistan

Despite the education success story of Gilgit-Bultistan, there is a serious education crisis for large numbers of Pakistani children across the country. The underlying message of Mortenson’s book and his related advocacy – that investment in education is greatly needed in Pakistan and it is an important part in promoting peace – still holds true, despite whatever factual inaccuracies in his book. One in 10 of the world’s primary school-age children who are not in school live in Pakistan, making Pakistan one of the top two countries in the world with the largest numbers of out of school children. Only 23 percent of Pakistan’s youth are enrolled in secondary school. At the current rate, the province of Balochistan will only be able to enroll all its children in school by the year 2100. With half the country under the age of 17, this poor state of education is a significant economic and security liability. Increasing access to quality education is likely to reduce Pakistan’s risk of conflict as cross-country estimates show that increasing educational attainment is strongly correlated with conflict risk reduction. Last month, a national campaign – Education Emergency Pakistan 2011 – was launched to spur country-wide dialogue on the need to prioritize educational investment and progress.

Good Intentions Are Not Enough

Despite the importance of Mortenson’s message on the education crisis in Pakistan, the effectiveness of his Central Asia Institute remains questionable. Good intentions do not necessarily translate into effective international development practices and NGO management. In the ongoing search for successful aid models, it is important to highlight that there are many professional non-profit organizations that do excellent education work in Pakistan. Many of them are Pakistani organizations, such as the Citizens Foundation and the Children’s Global Network. Community involvement and leadership are central to many of the work of these organizations, which is further supported by the education expertise of local staff and implementation of basic organizational management principles to track funds and monitor activities.

Stop Just Building Schools

One of the weaknesses of Mortenson’s work on the ground in Pakistan is the education approach he used. “Several of the schools I have seen that he has built in Gilgit-Bultistan are very good structures,” says one senior Pakistani NGO leader, “but his strategy of just building a school and then not providing any other follow up support is one that I think will be unlikely to succeed.” Indeed, Mortenson is neither the first nor the last person to try and solve education problems by building schools. The developing world is littered with school buildings waiting for teachers to be deployed and students to attend. Far greater education minds than Mortenson have fallen into this same trap. In one West African nation I visited, a major World Bank and Ministry of Education project to improve education infrastructure led to new school buildings standing vacant for months and months while teacher deployment and student enrollment systems tried to catch up. Given his almost singular focus on building schools, it is not surprising that some of them appear to have fallen into this same fate. A recent report by McKinsey & Company finds that in the effort to improve education, far too much focus has been placed on inputs such as school buildings and far too little on the improvement of the teaching and learning process.

It is unfortunate that the 60 Minutes expose has called into question the accuracy of Greg Mortenson’s books. Without defending Mortenson or whether the facts in his memoirs are accurate, I can say truthfully that there is indeed a very serious education crisis in Pakistan. The international community should not lose sight of this and the real needs of the Pakistani children and youth seeking to improve their lives.

Rebecca Winthrop is the Director of the Center for Universal Education

Tags: 60 minutes, Afghanistan, Aga Khan Development Network, central asia institute, Children’s Global Network, Citizens Foundation, Education Emergency Pakistan, FATA, Featured, Gilgit-Bultistan, greg mortenson, ismaili, Mehnaz Aziz, Pakistan, Pakistan Education Task Force, Pir Syed Karam Ali Shah, three cups of tea

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog, News | 1,961 Comments »

By Alex Rodriguez

Pakistan on Friday pulled out of upcoming talks with the U.S. on the war in Afghanistan, a move meant to convey Islamabad’s anger over an American drone missile strike that it says killed a gathering of civilians along the Afghan border.

The U.S. and Pakistan disagree on who was killed in the strike Thursday in North Waziristan, a volatile tribal region that serves as a stronghold for an array of militant groups, including Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network, a wing of the Afghan Taliban that regularly attacks U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The U.S. said it struck a compound where militants were meeting. But Pakistani authorities insisted that among the 45 reported dead were tribal elders and other civilians meeting to discuss an ownership dispute over a mine.

The dispute comes at a particularly sensitive time in U.S.-Pakistan relations, when Pakistanis are seething over the release Wednesday of a CIA contractor charged with murdering two motorcyclists in the eastern city of Lahore in late January.

At small protests organized by Islamist parties in Islamabad, Lahore and other cities, demonstrators angrily denounced President Asif Ali Zardari’s government for allowing Raymond Davis to go free. His release was made possible by a “blood money” agreement sanctioned by Pakistani law and negotiated by Islamabad and Washington that allows the accused to pay financial compensation to the victims’ families in exchange for their forgiveness.

In announcing that Pakistan would not take part in talks with Afghanistan and the U.S. scheduled for Brussels on March 26, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter that such drone strikes “constituted a flagrant violation of humanitarian norms and law,” according to a statement by the Foreign Ministry.

Drone strikes are a crucial component in Washington’s strategy against Islamic militant groups hiding out in Pakistan’s largely ungoverned tribal areas, and experts say they have been successful in degrading Al Qaeda and the Taliban’s ability to launch attacks.

Pakistan has maintained a policy of publicly condemning the drone strikes while tacitly allowing them to take place. In some instances, the strikes are carried out with the help of Pakistani intelligence-gathering.

This story originally appeared in the L.A. Times

Tags: Afghan Taliban, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, cameron munter, CIA, Drone Attacks, haqqani network, NATO, North Waziristan, Pakistan, Pakistani Taliban, Salman Bashir

Posted in Afghanistan, Around, Blog, News | 1,781 Comments »

by Greg Miller

The CIA has launched an internal review of how it trains and deploys security officers overseas after a fatal shooting by one of the agency’s contractors in Pakistan triggered a diplomatic crisis and new recriminations between the two nations’ spy services, U.S. officials said.

As part of the probe, the agency is expected to examine decisions on where security guards are sent, the scope of their activities in foreign assignments, and the rules of engagement that govern how and when they may use lethal force, officials said.

Officials stressed that the review is not expected to scrutinize the conduct of Raymond A. Davis, a contractor who fatally shot two Pakistani men on Jan. 27 and returned to the United States this week after being released from a Pakistani jail in Lahore.

Even so, the decision to launch an internal review suggests that the Davis case has triggered broader concerns among senior CIA officials about its vast and largely contract-hired security staff.

The aim of the review is “not how does our guy get into a shoot-out,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the probe. “It’s more how do you use security officers in the field. What’s their role? How many and where” are they used?

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta ordered the the review last month “with an eye toward strengthening the ability of agency security officers to protect operations and personnel,” said a second U.S. official.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he doesn’t fault Davis’s conduct, but expressed concern over “the mistrust that has built up over this incident” between the United States and Pakistan.

“This clearly has strained the relationship,” Rogers said.

The frictions intensified after a CIA drone strike Wednesday killed as many as 40 people that Pakistani authorities said included a large number of civilians. A U.S. official disputed the claim, saying, “This was a group of terrorists. We’re not talking about a bunch of guys who were playing pinochle at the local Kiwanis club.”

The Justice Department is investigating the Davis shooting, which occurred when he was engaged in what CIA officials refer to as “area familiarization” work in a busy section of Lahore. Davis, 36, said the two men he shot were armed and attempting to rob him at a traffic signal.

Davis “did exactly what he was supposed to do,” said the U.S. official, who added that Panetta addressed the agency’s security staff last week “to thank them and express support for all they do.”

But some CIA veterans said they are puzzled as to why Davis fired as many as nine rounds from his weapon, and may have lingered at the scene before being detained — outcomes that case officers are trained specifically to avoid.

The case has also raised new concerns about the agency’s use of contractors, a practice that came under severe criticism in connection with treatment of CIA detainees — including one who was beaten to death by a contractor in Afghanistan — after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Davis worked for the CIA’s Global Response Staff, a sprawling security wing that is “heavily” dependent on contractors to fill positions providing security to operatives overseas, said a former CIA official involved in overseeing the group’s work.

This story originally appeared in The Washington Post

Tags: CIA, drones, house intelligence committee, leon panetta, Pakistan, Raymond Davis

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by Missy Ryan

CIA contractor Raymond Davis may no longer be locked in a Pakistani jail, but the diplomatic storm unleashed by his arrest will likely leave scars on a fragile relationship central to U.S. security.

A Pakistani court acquitted Davis, who shot and killed two men in the Pakistani city of Lahore on January 27 in what he said was a robbery attempt, of murder charges and released him on Wednesday after what some officials said was a deal that involved paying “blood money” to the victims’ families.

Davis’ release ends a weeks-long standoff that inflamed already strained ties with Washington, which has leaned on Pakistan to crack down on militants who are making it hard for President Barack Obama to finally end the Afghan war.

After weeks of unusually public pressure on Islamabad to declare Davis immune from prosecution, officials in Washington sought to put a bright face on the situation on Wednesday, saying his release meant a return to business as usual.

But when it comes to secretive, high-stakes U.S. ties with Pakistan, a shaky democracy, nuclear power and a big recipient of U.S. military aid, that business is anything but ordinary.

“While one diplomatic dispute between the U.S. and Pakistan has found resolution, the fundamental challenges to the relationship certainly remain,” said Lisa Curtis, a South Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation.

One such challenge is the conundrum facing Pakistan’s unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari, who needs U.S. funding but whose political future could be cut short if he exposes himself to anti-American sentiment growing across Pakistan.

The Obama administration meanwhile is frustrated by its inability to coax the Pakistani military to act more strongly against certain insurgent groups sheltering in Pakistan.

A Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington and Islamabad would now work to reschedule high-level meetings that were put on hold after Davis’ arrest.

“Officially, we expect things to be the same, but there will definitely be some footprints left on the long-term relationship — and a trust deficit on both sides,” he said.

INTELLIGENCE TIES BRUISED

Davis’ release clears the way for unfettered U.S. drone strikes on militants in Pakistani tribal areas, which were halted for weeks after Davis’ arrest in a long pause seen as linked to the tension over his fate.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he expected no lasting impact to military ties, offering as proof military cooperation against insurgents along the Afghan border that continued during Davis’ detention.

Ripples from the case may be more acutely felt in joint efforts between the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI spy agency.

Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations said the affair may limit future U.S. intelligence in Pakistan, where it is believed CIA personnel have sought to supplement information provided by the ISI on groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba — anti-India militants sometimes allied with the Pakistani Taliban.

Tags: CIA, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, President Asif Ali Zardari, Raymond Davis

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by Sadnand Dhume

It’s time to bury the myth of moderate Pakistan. You know the one: the notion, repeated ad nauseam in magazine articles, think-tank reports and Congressional testimony—as though saying it often enough will make it true—that Pakistan is an essentially tolerant country threatened by a rising tide of fundamentalism. Here’s a news flash: The tide has risen.

The most recent reminder of this came Wednesday in Islamabad when suspected Taliban militants shot dead Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s 42-year-old minister for minority affairs and the only Christian in the overwhelmingly Muslim nation’s cabinet. His crime? Supporting the repeal of a barbaric blasphemy law that makes insulting the prophet Muhammad punishable by death.

The law is often used to settle scores with hapless religious minorities, especially Christians such as Asia Bibi, an illiterate peasant sentenced to hang last year after she allegedly badmouthed the prophet during a row with Muslim co-workers. Bhatti’s assassination comes two months after a bodyguard murdered Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer for visiting Ms. Bibi in jail and speaking out against abuse of the law.

To be fair, Pakistan’s claim to relative moderation has been kept alive thus far by more than just wishful thinking. Overtly Islamist parties such as the Jamaat-e-Islami have rarely commanded more than a fraction of the national vote. Women enjoy freedoms in the public square that their counterparts in Saudi Arabia and Iran could only dream of. At great personal risk, a small but courageous group of activists, intellectuals and politicians speak out publicly against bigotry and religious intolerance.

Scratch the surface, however, and a bleaker picture emerges. Islamist parties may not garner large-scale electoral support, but Islamist ideas are widely tolerated by mainstream political parties. The major opposition party, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N), flaunts its closeness to sundry Islamists, including Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent organization of the international terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Ostensibly secular, the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party supported both Kashmiri militancy and the Afghan Taliban in the past. In its current incarnation it appears permanently cowed by the country’s legion of vocal fundamentalists. President Asif Ali Zardari failed to attend the funerals of either Taseer or Bhatti. His government has made it clear that it will not touch the controversial blasphemy law. And Interior Minister Rehman Malik declared that he would personally kill anyone who dared blaspheme Muhammad’s name.

As for Pakistan’s undeniably brave activists and intellectuals, unfortunately they appear to have more admirers overseas than among their compatriots. Hand-wringing in the pages of Dawn and the Friday Times, two of the country’s leading English-language newspapers, has not prevented Mumtaz Qadri, Taseer’s murderer, from becoming a national hero.

At court appearances, supporters garland Mr. Qadri and shower him with rose petals. Across Pakistan, rallies in support of the murderer attract thousands of fervent supporters. Dozens of Facebook groups extol him as, among other things, a ghazi (religious warrior), “the new hero of Pakistan,” and “the great soldier of Islam.” Shortly after Taseer’s murder, 500 leading clerics from the supposedly moderate Barelvi sect—often contrasted favorably with the more rigid Deobandis—publicly applauded Mr. Qadri, a fellow Barelvi, for his “bravery, valor and faith.”

Not surprisingly, anti-American sentiment—often reliable shorthand for a society’s paranoia and self-loathing—is rampant. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, American favorability ratings stood at 17% last year, the lowest of all countries surveyed. (Today they’re likely lower.) On the streets, bloodcurdling yells for the execution of alleged Central Intelligence Agency operative Raymond Davis, accused of killing two Pakistanis in January, have prevented the government from granting Mr. Davis the diplomatic immunity commonly enjoyed by spies all over the world. This despite personal pleas by President Barack Obama and Senator John Kerry.

By now the reasons for Pakistan’s predicament are well known. Among them: the intolerance embedded in the nation’s founding idea of a separate “land of the pure” for Indian Muslims; the malign shadow of Saudi Arabia on religious life; blowback from the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s; and the overwhelming influence the army and its thuggish intelligence wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence, wield on national life. The army’s very motto, Jihad-fi-Sabilillah, or jihad in the path of Allah, is an exhortation to holy war.

Whether out of hardheaded realpolitik or genuine religious zeal, successive Pakistani governments, civilian and military alike, have coddled fundamentalists. Now the proverbial genie may be too big to put back in the bottle.

For the international community, then, the long road to fixing Pakistan begins with the simple recognition that the country’s true face is not the urbane intellectual making reasoned arguments, but the frenzied mob showering rose petals on a murderer for his services to the faith. Over time, Pakistan can only be saved by rearranging the basic building blocks of the country.

This means backing provincial autonomy and linguistic identity as an alternative to the centralized pan-Islamism used by the military and its supporters to weld the country together. It means deploying social networks and satellite television to open the door to reasonable discourse about religion. It means channeling aid to ensure that children are no longer taught to glorify Islamic conquest and reflexively mistrust the West and India. It means accepting that the most poisonous madrassas—such as Jamia Binoria in Karachi and Darul Uloom Haqqania outside Peshawar—must be shuttered if they can’t be reformed.

Needless to say, none of this will be easy. But the consequences of the alternative approach—pandering to fundamentalists while blaming outsiders for all the country’s ills—can be seen in the freshly turned soil of Bhatti’s grave.

This article originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal

Tags: anti-blasphemy laws, asia bibi, asif ali zardari, Barack Obama, Jamaat-e-Islami, John Kerry, Mumtaz Qadri, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, PPP, Raymond Davis, Rehman Malik, religious freedom, religious tolerance, Salmaan Taseer, Shahrukh Khan

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