The U.S., Pakistan and Afghanistan

Three Cups of Tea begins in the 90s and follows Mortenson’s work in the region up through post-9/11.

  • The long and checkered Pakistan-U.S. relationship has its roots in the Cold War and South Asia regional politics of the 1950s. U.S. concerns about Soviet expansionism and Pakistan’s desire for security assistance against a perceived threat from India prompted the two countries to negotiate a mutual defense assistance agreement in 1954.
  • By 1955, Pakistan had further aligned itself with the West by joining two regional defense pacts, the South East Asia Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization (or “Baghdad Pact”). As a result of these alliances, Islamabad received nearly $2 billion in U.S. assistance from 1953 to 1961. President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously called Pakistan America’s “most allied ally in Asia.” Differing expectations of the security relationship long bedeviled bilateral ties, however.
  • In the mid-1970s, new strains arose over Pakistan’s efforts to respond to India’s 1974 underground nuclear test by seeking its own nuclear weapons capability. U.S. aid was suspended by President Carter in 1979 in response to Pakistan’s covert construction of a uranium enrichment facility.
  •  However, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year, Pakistan again was viewed as a frontline ally in the effort to block Soviet expansionism. In 1981, the Reagan Administration offered Islamabad a five-year, $3.2 billion aid package. Pakistan became a key transit country for arms supplies to the Afghan resistance, as well as home for some three million Afghan refugees, most of whom have yet to return.
  • With the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistan’s nuclear activities again came under intensive U.S. scrutiny and, in 1990, President George H.W. Bush again suspended aid to Pakistan
  • After more than a decade of alienation, U.S. relations with Pakistan were once again transformed in dramatic fashion, this time by the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States and the ensuing enlistment of Pakistan as a pivotal ally in U.S.-led counterterrorism efforts

 

Pakistan-India Rivalry

 

  • Three full-scale wars — in 1947-1948, 1965, and 1971 — and a constant state of military preparedness on both sides of their mutual border have marked six decades of bitter rivalry between Pakistan and India. The partition of British India into two successor states in 1947 and the unresolved issue of Kashmiri sovereignty have been major sources of tension. Both countries have built large defense establishments at significant cost to economic and social development. The Kashmir problem is rooted in claims by both countries to the former princely state
  • India blames Pakistan for supporting a violent separatist rebellion in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley that has taken some 66,000 lives since 1989. Pakistan admits only to lending moral and political support to the rebels, and it criticizes India for human rights abuses in “Indian-occupied Kashmir.” India held Pakistan responsible for late 2001 terrorist attacks in Kashmir and on the Indian Parliament complex in New Delhi.
  • The Indian response, a massive military mobilization, was mirrored by Pakistan and within months some one million heavily-armed soldiers were facing-off at the international frontier. During an extremely tense 2002 another full-scale war seemed a real and even likely possibility, and may have been averted only through international diplomatic efforts, including multiple visits to the region by top U.S. officials.

 

Afghanistan

 

  • Pakistani leaders have long sought access to Central Asia though friendly relations with neighboring Afghanistan. Such policy contributed to President-General Zia ul-Haq’s support for Afghan mujahideen (“freedom fighters”) who were battling Soviet invaders during the 1980s and to Islamabad’s later support for the Afghan Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001.
  • British colonialists had purposely divided the ethnic Pashtun tribes inhabiting the mountainous northwestern reaches of their South Asian empire with the 1893 “Durand Line.” This porous, 1,600-mile border is not accepted by Afghan leaders.
  • Following Islamabad’s major September 2001 policy shift, President Musharraf consistently has vowed full Pakistani support for the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and he insists that Pakistan is playing a “totally neutral role” in Afghanistan. Islamabad claims to have arrested many hundreds of Taliban militants and remanded most of them to Afghan custody, and it reportedly has provided $300 million in economic assistance to Kabul since 2001.
  • Nevertheless, Musharraf and Karzai have exchanged public accusations and recriminations about the ongoing movement of Islamic militants in the border region, and U.S. officials have issued increasingly strong claims about the problems posed by Taliban insurgents and other militants who are widely believed to enjoy safehaven on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line.
  • In August 2007, an unprecedented joint “jirga,” or tribal assembly, was held in Kabul and included nearly 700 delegates from both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The meeting was endorsed by the United States as a means of bringing stability to Afghanistan. In the days immediately preceding the opening session, some 40 tribal elders from North Waziristan announced they would not attend, saying the absence of Taliban representatives rendered it pointless, and President Musharraf himself later announced his withdrawal from participation. Analysts widely considered the move a snub to both Afghan President Karzai and to the U.S. government, which expressed dismay at the decision.
  • Musharraf made a last-minute decision to attend the final day’s session, where he offered a rare admission that support for militants emanating from Pakistan has caused problems for Afghanistan, saying “There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil. The problem that you have in your region is because support is provided from our side.”

 

Some Basic Information

 

 

Population: 165 million; growth rate: 1.8%

 

 

Life Expectancy at Birth: F: 65 yrs; M: 63 yrs (2007 est.)

 

Area: 803,940 sq. km. (slightly less than twice

the size of California)

 

Gross Domestic Product (at PPP): $452

billion; per capita: $2,750; growth rate

6.4% (2007 est.)

 

 

Capital: Islamabad

 

 

U.S. Trade: exports to U.S. $3.9 billion; imports from U.S. $2 billion (2007 est)

 

 

Head of Government: President and Chief of

Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf

 

Literacy: female 35%; male 62% (2004 est.)

 

 

Ethnic Groups: Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun,

Baloch, Muhajir (immigrants from India at

the time of partition and their descendants)

 

Languages: Punjabi 58%, Sindhi 12%, Pashtu

8%, Urdu 8%; English widely used

 

 

Religions: Muslim 96% (Sunni 81%, Shia 15%),

Christian, Hindu, and other 4%

 

Defense Budget: $4.14 billion (3.5% of GDP;

2006)

 

Terrorism

 

  • After the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Pakistan pledged and has provided major support for the U.S.-led global anti-terrorism coalition. According to the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, Pakistan has afforded the United States unprecedented levels of cooperation by allowing the U.S.military to use bases within the country, helping to identify and detain extremists, tightening the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and blocking terrorist financing.
  • Yet Al Qaeda fugitives and their Taliban allies remain active in Pakistan, especially in the mountainous tribal regions along the Afghan border. Nonetheless, some analysts have long called Musharraf’s efforts ineffective and the result of international pressure rather than a genuine recognition of the threat posed.
  • There are indications Pakistan’s intelligence agencies have over time lost control of some of the religious militants it previously groomed to do its foreign policy bidding.  In recent years, some Pakistani nationals and religious seminaries have been linked to Islamist terrorism plots in Western countries, especially the United Kingdom.
  •  In a January 2007 review of global threats, then-U.S. Director of Intelligence Negroponte issued what may have been the strongest relevant statements from a Bush Administration official to date, telling a Senate panel that, “Pakistan is a frontline partner in the war on terror. Nevertheless, it remains a major source of Islamic extremism and the home for some top terrorist leaders.”

 

Al Qaeda’s Resurgence in Pakistan

 

  • Pakistani authorities reportedly have remanded to U.S. custody roughly 500 wanted Al Qaeda fugitives to date, including some senior alleged operatives. However, despite clear successes in disrupting Al Qaeda and affiliated networks in Pakistan since 2001, there are increasing signs that Al Qaeda is resurgent on Pakistani territory
  • Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenant, Egyptian Islamic radical leader Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed by many to be hiding somewhere in Pakistan’s western border region. Pakistani officials reject such suspicions and generally insist there is no evidence to support them, but numerous U.S. officials have suggested otherwise.

 

Infiltration Into Afghanistan

 

  • Tensions between the Kabul and Islamabad governments — which stretch back many decades — have at times reached alarming levels in recent years, with top Afghan officials accusing Pakistan of manipulating Islamic militancy in the region to destabilize Afghanistan.
  • The Pakistani Taliban differ from their Afghan brethren in several respects, perhaps most significantly in a lack of organization and cohesion, and they possess no unified leadership council. Moreover, the Pakistani Taliban appear to have more limited objectives, in contrast with the Afghan Taliban who are struggling to regain national power in Kabul.
  • At the same time, however, both groups pledge fealty to a single leader — Mullah Omar — and both share fundamental policy objectives with regard to U.S. and other Western govt roles in the region.
  • One U.S. press report claimed that Pentagon documents from 2004 gave U.S. special forces in Afghanistan authority to enter Pakistani territory — even without prior notice to Islamabad — while in “hot pursuit” of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters or to take direct action against “the Big 3”: Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahri, or Mullah Omar. A Pakistani military spokesman called the report “nonsense” and denied there was any such arrangement.
  • As the U.S. presidential campaign gained momentum in late 2007, some candidates urged that U.S. forces should enter Pakistan to neutralize suspected Al Qaeda assets there; President Musharraf responded by saying he would consider such unauthorized crossing an invasion. 

 

For more facts on Pakistan click here!

 

Source:  Kronstadt, Alan K. Pakistan-U.S. Relations, CRS Report, February, 2008

 http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL33498_20080222.pdf