by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright December 2011
Note: This is Roger gazing into his crystal ball, nothing more.
The US and Pakistan have a decades-long habit of calling each other buddies. I think this will end shortly, and what follows is going to be bitter. This is something we should be preparing for because it's likely to be an ugly and expensive divorce. The consequences of the divorce have the potential to be a lot more expensive to the US, and the world, than our Blunder spendfest of the last decade on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.
But first, a quick history of Pakistan to lay some ground work for this coming divorce perspective.
Many books have been written speculating on what America would be like if The South had won the Civil War. One real world analogy that came to my mind recently is to compare the American Civil War situation to the post World War Two history of the South Asian subcontinent -- India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
South Asia was steadily unified under British rule starting in 1600's and essentially completed in 1858 when administratively it became the British Raj under Queen Victoria. This union of the region survived the two World Wars the British Empire fought. But while the unification was considered a blessing by most, all through this period many Indians were clamoring for independence -- one of the most famous in the Raj period was Mahatma Gandhi. The British government agreed in principle as early as the 1890's and made good on their promise in 1947, two years after World War Two ended.
But with a twist: Two nations were created not one -- Hindu-dominated India and Moslem-dominated Pakistan. And with some violence Pakistan split in 1971 into Pakistan and Bangladesh. In fact, this whole splitting-in-two-then-three process was quite violent, although that is not often brought up in contemporary histories told in the US. According to Wikipedia, "The Partition resulted in a struggle between the new states of India and Pakistan and displaced up to 12.5 million people in the former British Indian Empire, with estimates of loss of life varying from several hundred thousand to a million." In sum, the split was violent, chaotic, very ugly, and poisoned the relation between India and Pakistan. And that poisoning persists even to this day. It was as big and ugly as the American Civil War, but not as well adapted to history-style story telling.
Applying this back to American history, India plays The North, Pakistan plays The South and Bangladesh plays Texas. And in both America and South Asia the split/attempted split brought on much bitterness that lasted for many generations.
So much for history and analogy, now back to South Asia geopolitics.
South Asia is a big, populous, strategic place, so it was no surprise that during the Cold War era the US wanted a supporting state in the area. India had had enough grief getting independence from the British that it was socialist- and Russian-leaning so it was not interested in becoming a US supporter. Pakistan had the same heritage, but it was a wild and wooly enough place that its allegiance could be bought much more cheaply than India's could, and the various US administrations decided paying the price was a good deal. The US's dealings with Pakistan in this era were no better and no worse than its dealings with numerous other shaky governments around the world during the Cold War era.
The panic in the US administration over 9-11 dramatically changed the game in South Asia -- rather than just another piece of geopolitical arm candy, Pakistan became a lot more important. It was the gateway to Afghanistan and those deeply frightening Taliban who lived there.
I get a bit facetious here, but think of this next scene as being in some cheesy political thriller movie...
Shortly after 9-11 the shadowy US representative comes into the office of a "king-maker" in Pakistan.
He says, "We appreciate your service in the past, and now we need more... lots more... BILLIONS more." and produces a hefty briefcase to prove his point.
The king maker looks at the stash with great respect, and says, "Sure! Give us a couple days to arrange a coup, and... We're All Yours, Buddy!"
He takes the briefcase and the two walk out of the office, arms over each other's shoulders.
It didn't happen quite like this, but in retrospect it's not far off.
What the "king maker" neglected to tell the US patsy... uh, shadowy representative, is that half the king makers in Pakistan were pro-Taliban because the Taliban were anti-India, and that counts for as much as money in wild and wooly Pakistan power politics.
So for the whole War on Terror era the Pakistanis have been playing both sides, and playing them both hard. Initially, the US leadership was satisfied with this because the Pakistanis were at least superficially on their side so the US could spend billions bringing violence to Afghanistan. Being able to do that brought a lot of approval in the US.
But the years have worn on without the expected victory, and the current US adminstration finally got "cranky" about this arrangement. That crankiness showed up big time when the US special forces took out Bin Laden in May 2011 in Abbottabad, a moneyed suburb in Pakistan near the capital, without giving the Pakistanis any notice.
With the US ready to cut bait on Afghanistan, and the Pakistanis deeply insulted by the US raid that showed them as being both two-faced and ineffectual, this is relation is going to change dramatically throughout 2012.
What's coming next will be a vicious cycle. The US no longer needs Pakistan's support very much, so it will stop paying much for it -- gone in Pakistan are The Days of the US Sugar Daddy.
This is going to be hard on the leadership, expect a coup. It's also going to be hard on the people -- they were being bought off, too, as they enjoyed a lot of fallout prosperity. Expect a dramatic rise in anti-American hostility as the Pakistan economy crashes.
The pullout itself could get violent. The US is there in force, but so is the Pakistan army. A bad case scenario has stone-throwing mobs of civilians attacking US convoys while the Pakistani army watches sympathetically... at first. Then things turn really ugly with lots of gunfire on both sides.
It will get even more violent when the Pakistani government starts supporting accusations that the US is being pro-India. When that happens, all bets are off!
As the relation gets ugly both sides are going to be looking to make other friends nearby. How that will fall out I can't begin to guess, which means the area is going to have a quantum leap in uncertainty.
The tribal areas of Pakistan are "Afghanistan East". Whatever level of unrest Afghanistan ends up with as this pullout progresses will spill into the tribal areas. What that will mean for Pakistani politics is even more uncertainty and chaos. Pakistan is going to become more failed statish, more like Somalia, and the Afghanis will be showing them the way. As they do, the US leaderhship come to care even less for them, and will spend even less in the region. The region will be transformed into a huge, sucking, power vacuum.
In sum, we are watching the beginning of the geopolitical divorce of the decade. The acute violence won't last as long as that in Afghanistan, but for a brief time it could be a whole lot more violent. We could end up with the ironic oddity of US forces based in Afghanistan rescuing US forces stranded in Pakistan. We will end up with a major reshuffling of alliances and power relations in the area.
Update: This 25 Dec 11 NY Times article, US Prepares for a Curtailed Relation With Pakistan by Eric Schmitt, outlines another step in the divorce. It won't be the last.
Update: This Christian Science Monitor 16 May 12 article, Pakistan's price: US to pay $365 million more a year to reopen supply lines by Saeed Shah, talks about a partial reconciliation... being bought by the US. "The accord, which the Pakistani government announced late Tuesday, would revive the transport of vital supplies of food and equipment from Pakistani ports overland to land-locked Afghanistan.
In return, the US-led coalition will pay Pakistan a still-to-be-fixed fee of $1,500 to $1,800 for each truck carrying supplies, a tab that officials familiar with negotiations estimated would run nearly $1 million a day. The officials requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to reveal details of the agreement.The accord, which the Pakistani government announced late Tuesday, would revive the transport of vital supplies of food and equipment from Pakistani ports overland to land-locked Afghanistan.
In return, the US-led coalition will pay Pakistan a still-to-be-fixed fee of $1,500 to $1,800 for each truck carrying supplies, a tab that officials familiar with negotiations estimated would run nearly $1 million a day. The officials requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to reveal details of the agreement."
Update: Whoops! The above update was... premature. These 21 May 12 articles from LA Times (NATO summit: Obama's Pakistan gamble falls flat) and WSJ (NATO Leaders Seal Afghan Exit Plan) indicate agreement has not actually been reached yet. The divorce continues it's rocky course.
Update: This 16 Aug 14 Economist article, The wrath of Khan As a former cricketer and a cleric conspire to roil a fragile democracy, the country’s army will try to reap the rewards, talks about the continuing problems that not having US money is causing.
-- The End --