‘Pakistan policy to liberate Kashmir with jihadis has backfired’

Pakistan’s involvement with jihadi groups at the highest level aimed at “liberation” of Jammu and Kashmir has backfired, ex-diplomat Husain Haqqani said on Tuesday following the deadly terror attack in Lahore.

And even as its decades-old policy has backfired, the Pakistani establishment is reluctant to declare an all-out war against terrorist groups, Mr. Haqqani, the country’s former envoy to the U.S., told PBS in an interview.

“Pakistan’s involvement with jihadi groups initially was primarily as a strategic investment, which was supposed to bring them benefits through influence in Afghanistan and the liberation of Jammu and Kashmir from India. That has backfired,” said Mr. Haqqani.

“Now even though it has backfired, Pakistan has been very selective in going after these jihadi groups. That is the reason why the jihadis pick specific targets like Shias, Ahmadis or Christians, to improve their recruitment, playing on various kinds of polarisation, and taking advantage of that to advance in society further,” he said.

“The real problem lies in that attitude of the government of trying to protect the parties in Punjab, while going after the terrorists in other parts of the country, but not in the Punjab. That’s what has come back to bite them,” he said.

Mr. Haqqani said the fact of the matter is that the Pakistani military and civilian leadership easily gets distracted by delusions of fighting India and its influence in Afghanistan and allowing certain jihadi groups to pursue those objectives, not realising that they can end up having offshoots, just like the Pakistani Taliban emerged out of the Afghan Taliban.

“The Pakistani component of the Afghan Taliban ended up becoming a separate group. And now Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has broken away from the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan has to make a decision to go after all terrorist groups, as well as the mindset that breeds these terrorists. And Pakistan has not been able to make that decision,” he observed.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for Sunday’s grisly suicide attack in Lahore that killed 72 people.

Mr. Haqqani said the Pakistani establishment is not taking action against India-centric terrorist groups.

“The state has not taken the measures that are necessary to isolate them all. So, there are groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed which attack India. They are spared. Once they are spared, it’s very possible that some of their members will actually join splinter groups which will attack Pakistan,” he argued.

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U.S. aid to Pakistan will be used against India: former diplomat

As the U.S. prepares to sell F-16s to Pakistan, the country’s former top diplomat has warned the Congress that such fighter jets would end up being used against India and not against terrorists.

Describing sale of such military hardware and even reported talk of a civil nuclear deal as an appeasement policy towards Pakistani military, the former top Pakistani diplomat has urged the U.S. to tell the leaders in Pakistan that their ambition of rivalling India is akin to Belgium trying to rival France or Germany.

“The Obama administration’s consideration of a nuclear deal with Pakistan, just like its decision a few months ago to sell almost $1 billion in U.S.-made attack helicopters, missiles and other equipment to Pakistan will fuel conflict in South Asia without fulfilling the objective of helping the country fight Islamist extremists or limit its nuclear arsenal,” said Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S.

In a prepared remark submitted ahead of a Congressional hearing on ‘Civil Nuclear Cooperation with Pakistan: Prospects and Consequences to the Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs’, Mr. Haqqani said Pakistan’s failure to tackle its jihadist challenge is not the result of a lack of arms but reflects an absence of will.

“Unless Pakistan changes its worldview and its compulsive competition with its much larger neighbour even in violation of international commitments, American weapons will end up being used to fight or menace India and perceived domestic enemies instead of being deployed against jihadists,” he said.

Currently, director of South & Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, a top American think-tank, Mr. Haqqani said competition with India remains the overriding consideration in Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policies. “By aiding Pakistan over the years— some $40 billion since 1950, according to the Congressional Research Service — the U.S. has fed Pakistan’s delusion of being India’s regional military equal. Seeking security against a much larger neighbour is a rational objective but seeking parity with it on a constant basis is not,” he said.

“Instead of discussing civil nuclear deals and selling more military equipment to Pakistan, U.S. officials should convince Pakistan that its ambitions of rivalling India are akin to Belgium trying to rival France or Germany,” Mr. Haqqani wrote.

India’s population is six times as large as Pakistan’s while India’s economy is 10 times bigger, and India’s $ two trillion economy has managed consistent growth whereas Pakistan’s $245 billion economy has grown sporadically and is undermined by jihadist terrorism and domestic political chaos.

Mr. Haqqani said unlike other countries, Pakistan did not raise an army to match the threats it faces. Pakistan inherited 33 per cent of British India’s army, raised for the Second World War, at independence in 1947 and has sought to identify threats that match the size of that army.

Asserting that since the 1950s, U.S. policy has ended up nurturing Pakistan’s military and keeping alive its dream of parity with India, Mr. Haqqani told lawmakers that it is time, the U.S. adopted a policy towards Pakistan that supports the aspirations of its people for a better standard of living instead of allowing its military and civilian hardliners in pursuing unwinnable competition with India.

“The U.S. government has been giving the signal that Pakistan is too important for the U.S. to ignore, which reinforces all of Pakistan’s wrong policies. These are policies that both the U.S. and a significant section of the Pakistani intelligentsia would like changed,” Mr. Haqqani said.

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