By Dr. Shireen M Mazari

It seems to have become a matter of routine for US think tanks and the media to critique Pakistan on many fronts, even though its cooperation with the US on the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan has allowed the latter to reap results in terms of the capture of al-Qaeda operatives. But that has not prevented a constant attack on Pakistan, including the refrain - voiced ad nauseam by the US - that Pakistan “must do more”! For a state that continues to be termed as soft, or failing, the demand certainly seems absurd, at best!

Anyhow, true to form, the latest tirade against Pakistan comes in the shape of a Task Force Report cosponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society. This Report makes clear the different approaches the US has towards India and Pakistan. While India is seen as a friendly country to be supplied with all manner of sensitive technologies, Pakistan is still a suspect state. The sincerity of the Pakistan Army in carrying through fundamental reform is seen as remaining “uncertain” and the ISI continues to be targeted for all manner of ills! Of course, the authors of the Report praise President Musharraf while condemning the state and institutions he heads! There is a total lack of understanding that what the President cannot be delinked from the state and institutions he heads and what he says is implemented down the line. Probably having dealt with the militaries of Latin America historically - with their internal military coups and colonel juntas - the US is unable to fathom the professionalism of the Pakistan military!

But the most dangerous part of the report is the perception that Pakistan lacks a clear sense of national identity. It is this approach of the US government, analysts and media that prevents the US from understanding Pakistan. There is certainly no confusion about national identity in Pakistan. In fact, it is a confidence in the national identity that allows Pakistan to debate sensitive issues like religion, the country’s nuclear capability and Kashmir threadbare - unlike India, where one hardly sees any extensive debate on issues like Kashmir, the country’s nuclear capability and its growing religious extremism that has led to the massacre of Muslims and Christians. It is again a national confidence that allows civil society to expose social and tribal ills nationally and internationally. But the American analysts fail to understand this - or perhaps they do not want to.

Again, the Task Force Report rues the fact that Pakistan continues to sustain an “enmity with neighboring India” - as if the enmity is of Pakistan’s making and India has had no role in creating this adversarial relationship. Pakistan’s normal democratic machinations are somehow seen as reflecting an unstable state and its socio-economic problems, which are similar to those prevailing in all of South Asia including India, are somehow isolated as unique only to Pakistan.

Most ridiculous is the claim that the “US has been unable on a sustained basis to accomplish its key objective (in Pakistan): a stable Pakistan at peace with itself and its neighbors.” To begin with, the US has never had such an objective in its relationships at various times with Pakistan. In the fifties it saw Pakistan as part of the anti-communist containment policy, which by implication meant that Pakistan would be at odds with powerful neighbors like China and powerful states in close proximity like the Soviet Union. It also meant that the democracy that the US lays so much verbal store by was not seen as essential for the US alliance with Pakistan.

Of course, even at this time, once India was in conflict with China, Pakistan’s alliance worth fell substantively. But once the Cold War was over and the Sino-Soviet rift had exposed the myth of the communist monolith, Pakistan was of no use and so the seventies saw a period of almost no US interest in this region. The Soviet entry into Afghanistan began a new US romancing of Pakistan and the result was a highly destabilized Pakistan with a massive influx of Afghan refugees, drugs and weapons. But that was of little concern to the US.

Even now, in the War on Terrorism, the US would have the Pakistani state undermine its domestic polity through a US-drawn anti-terrorist agenda - while Pakistan is naturally driven by its own, nationally-motivated priority of dealing with religious extremism - especially sectarian terrorism. But nowhere is the US priority a stable Pakistan in any meaningful sense of the word.

However, Pakistan has acquired stability and confidence to be able to deal with the pressures and diversities of a fledgling democratic structure. Political conflicts and polarizations prevail but they do in many democratic states of the region including India where a democratically elected state government had committed genocide of its Muslim population not so long ago.

As for the issue of living in peace with one’s neighbors, the conflicts that prevail are not solely of Pakistan’s making. In Afghanistan presently, the Northern Alliance hostility is of Indo-US making while the Pakistan-India conflict involves substantive issues on the ground and the negative Indian role can hardly be whitewashed! But throughout the Task Force Report, there is no condemnation of India’s inability to live in peace with her neighbors!

Ironically, at a time when President Musharraf’s government is well into its policy of dealing aggressively with religious extremism - a move that began before 9/11 - the Report states a total falsehood when it accuses Pakistan of “increasing support for Islamic extremism.” In the same vein, there is an assertion that “radical Islamist political parties have gained substantial ground” in the NWFP and Balochistan. To begin with, most of the MMA coalition parties can hardly be termed “radical” - and if we, as Muslim Pakistanis, can live with US electoral results that bring to power the born-again Christians and neo-conservative extremists and the Hindutva fanatics brought to power through elections in India, the US also must respect the results of elections in Pakistan. In fact, if democracy came to the major part of the Muslim world, the US would truly be displeased with the results!

All in all, once again while the Task Force advises the US to build greater strategic links with India, in the case of Pakistan a more intrusive role within the domestic policy is prescribed. But this should not surprise us. A look at the composition of the Task Force should be explanation enough - and, even in the four Observers, the Indian presence is there while the Pakistani is totally missing. Is this omission a mere coincidence or by design? A rational assessment would veer one to the latter conclusion.

Of course, the Report does recommend that the US government write off the Pakistani debt and provide greater access to its textiles within the US domestic market, but at a macro, politico-strategic level the Report is negative on Pakistan - a negativity based on misperceptions - and these extend to the Afghanistan section of the Report as well. The main focus of the Report seems to be the need for the US to cooperate with India on all fronts, including on the defense and weapons fronts. There is no conditionality on this count.

It is this constant critique of Pakistan that naturally finds a hostile response within the broad spectrum of Pakistani civil society, as does the constant refrain of Pakistan increasing its support for Islamic extremism at a time when the government is moving aggressively in the opposite direction. These misperceptions undermine the building up of a positive US-Pakistan relationship that will endure over the long term and on this count the US has to seriously rethink its perception of Pakistan.

All in all, it is becoming evident that the US-Pakistan relationship is going to come under increasing stress and in the long term such a relationship will have to be defined within the framework of issue-specific cooperation with clear-cut quid pro quos - as well as a greater comprehension of the Pakistani state and society and the regional milieu within which it functions.

Otherwise, the accusation labeled at Pakistan, in the Report, within the context of national security policy may hold more true for the US within the context of its South Asian policy: “India, India, and then India”.

The writer is Director General of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.