Jihad as grand strategy : Islamist militancy, national security, and the Pakistani state

185 Pages·2017·1.66 MB·English

by  Kapur

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Jihad as Grand Strategy
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Jihad as Grand Strategy
Islamist Militancy, National
Security, and the Pakistani State
S. Paul Kapur
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CONTENTS
1. Introduction 1
2. The Logic of a Militant Proxy Strategy 13
3. Partition and an Emerging Strategy 32
4. Pakistan’s Militant Strategy Evolves 51
5. Kashmir and Afghanistan Reprise 81
6. Jihad as Grand Strategy: An Assessment 111
7. The Future: Can Pakistan Abandon Jihad? 127
Notes 143
Index 173
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Terrorism’s ascendance as one of the world’s leading strategic dan-
gers has been a central development of the post– Cold War security
environment. Its effects have included a fundamental reorientation of the
United States’ grand strategy, de- emphasizing long- standing postures of
deterrence and containment in favor of prevention and preemption; the
launch of a global “war on terror”; and the initiation of wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq.1 Scholars and analysts have generated a voluminous literature
attempting to identify demographic, economic, psychological, ideo-
logical, strategic, and other patterns in terrorist violence.2 Although the
nature and prevalence of such patterns are a matter of vigorous debate,
one recurring theme concerning terrorism is strikingly clear: A dispro-
portionate amount of it has been linked to Islamist militants3 based in
Pakistan.4
For example, members of the team that attacked the United States on
September 11, 2001, received training from senior al- Qaeda operative
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Karachi. He later wired them funds to sup-
port their preparations for the attacks. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was
subsequently arrested in a predawn raid on his safe house in Rawalpindi,
the twin city of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and headquarters of
the Pakistan Army.5 Al- Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the most hunted
terrorist in history, was discovered and killed in a Pakistani garrison town
crawling with security personnel, in the shadow of Pakistan’s military
academy. He apparently had been there, living in a large, custom- built
home, for over five years.6 The leader of the group that carried out the
July 2005 London bomb attacks had undergone paramilitary training
in Pakistan. In addition, the group received bomb- making instructions
over the telephone from a caller in Rawalpindi.7 And the perpetrators of
the Mumbai attacks in November 2008 were members of the Pakistani
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militant group Lashkar- e- Taiba. They trained for their mission under
the tutelage of active and retired Pakistani army and intelligence officers
in Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir, departed by sea for Mumbai from
Karachi, and were directed in real time during the operation by handlers
in Pakistan.8
Acts like these are important not only because they kill significant
numbers of people around the world but also because they undermine
international stability, instigating conflict that can ultimately result in far
more death and destruction than the acts of terror themselves. The 9/ 11
attacks drove the United States to launch two major wars, which are esti-
mated to have cost the United States between $4 trillion and $6 trillion9
and resulted in well over one hundred thousand deaths.10 At present,
Pakistan- linked militant attacks threaten to incite a large- scale Indo-
Pakistani conflict. Given India’s and Pakistan’s possession of nuclear
weapons, the outcome of such a confrontation could be catastrophic. The
detonation of a single 50- kiloton weapon over New Delhi or Islamabad
would likely kill more than five hundred thousand people and result in
more than one million casualties.11 The consequences of Pakistan- based
militancy thus reach far beyond particular acts of violence or even South
Asian regional politics— they severely damage stability and security
across the globe. Not surprisingly, Pakistan is widely viewed, in the words
of the Economist, as “the world’s most dangerous place.”12 A survey of
leading international relations experts by the journal Foreign Policy tied
Pakistan with Iran as the top security challenge facing the United States.
Indeed, more than twice the number of respondents identified Pakistan as
the United States’ leading security threat as chose China.13
This book seeks to understand the connection between Pakistan and
Islamist militancy. Where did the link between the Pakistani state and
Islamist militants come from? How did it evolve over time? What have
been its effects on Pakistani strategic interests? How has it affected
regional and international security? The book addresses these questions
by departing from standard approaches to militancy in Pakistan, which
treat it either as an inexorable sociological phenomenon, as a historical
accident, or as an obviously self- destructive policy devised by short-
sighted generals and self- interested politicians. Instead, the book explores
the Pakistani state’s use of militancy as a rational strategy, designed to
generate security for itself in the face of an extremely demanding domes-
tic and international environment. It argues that Pakistan’s use of Islamist
militancy is the latest incarnation of a sophisticated asymmetric warfare
campaign,14 deliberately developed and prosecuted since the Pakistani
state’s founding. From 1947 to the present day, Pakistan15 has used reli-
giously motivated nonstate actors as strategic tools to confront stronger
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adversaries and shape its strategic environment without the costs and
risks of direct combat, and to help promote internal cohesion to compen-
sate for Pakistan’s weak domestic political foundations.16
THE LITERATURE
The Pakistan– militant nexus has come under intense public scrutiny in
recent years. Most discussions of the problem, however, are of limited
utility in understanding its true nature. The popular press often charac-
terizes the Pakistan– militant relationship as the result simply of Pakistani
evildoing or paranoid bumbling, without identifying the strategic factors
that originally created the connection and continue to drive it today.17
More careful journalistic reporting on Pakistani militancy is often lim-
ited to discrete aspects of the problem, such as the agenda or leadership of
a given militant group, or the unfolding of a particular terrorist operation.
Even when broader in scope, such work is mainly descriptive and does not
explain the deeper causal forces underlying Pakistan’s militancy problem
and their impact on current Pakistani security policy.18
The scholarly literature on Islamist militancy in Pakistan, though less
extensive than popular commentary and reporting, is growing apace.
This work provides far more context and analysis than do discussions in
the popular press and offers valuable insights into the Pakistan– militant
problem. It consists of four main camps. They focus on in- depth empirical
documentation, sociopolitical variables, politico- military and organiza-
tional strategies, and broad historical narratives.
The first camp seeks to provide a careful empirical record of the
Pakistan– militant connection. Authors in this camp offer extremely
detailed discussions of Pakistan’s historical involvement with Islamist
militant groups, including fine- grained accounts of Pakistani leaders’
decision- making processes and development of ongoing militant strate-
gies and relationships with the militants.19 Some authors in the empirical
camp focus their attention on particular militant organizations, such as
Lashkar- e- Taiba, or on the use of militants in specific conflicts, such as
Pakistan’s use of the Taliban in Afghanistan.20
The second camp in the scholarly literature emphasizes the role of
societal and political variables in causing Pakistan’s militancy problem. It
describes the processes of Islamization and militarization that have taken
place within Pakistan in recent decades and explains how they have cre-
ated an environment in which militancy could thrive. Works in this camp
focus on a wide range of specific causes, including the military dominance
of Pakistani society, the lack of experienced political leadership following