The Future of Pakistan

333 Pages·2011·1.37 MB·English

Highlights from The Future of Pakistan
“ Because Pakistan is marinated in crisis, attention is riveted on the latest outrage, disaster, or
calamity to occur in the country. . . . The often-asked question following such events is whether
they will push Pakistan over the edge, ‘edge’ being variously defined—at the minimum, as
another military takeover; at the maximum, as the breakup of the state. The cover of this book,
which features a puzzle, symbolizes the larger analytical problem: is Pakistan coming apart or
is it being put together in some new order?” —Stephen p. Cohen in the Preface
“P akistan has witnessed the banning of a number of militant groups and the arrests and targeted
killings of key al Qaeda and related militants. . . . The results have backfired—and continue to
backfire—on the Pakistani army, through both colossal casualties in the tribal areas and direct
attacks against regional and national security forces and military headquarters.”
—LaiLa Bokhari
“ There is no likelihood of a takeover of Pakistan by religious extremists. Pakistanis are a deeply
religious people, but extremism is alien to their nature, and, as they have proven, their tolerance
for the Taliban form of government is very low while their tolerance for suffering in the cause of
ridding themselves of this scourge is very high.” —Shaukat Qadir
“I f the military does seek full power over the next five years, it will probably be in response to
domestic instability so palpable that military rule would be welcomed by most of the public.”
—Marvin G. WeinBauM
“ Too often people use the trope that tradition is largely responsible for Pakistan’s challenges
in lowering its population growth rate. That is fallacious. The lack of priority given to female
education, combined with the lack of priority given to developing sectors in the economy to
support the economic empowerment of women, is fundamentally responsible.”
—anita M. WeiSS
“ [Pakistan] can go either way: decline and fragment or emerge as a functioning democracy
and a middle-level economy. However, Pakistan’s turnaround is not possible without internal
determination to address the issues that afflict the state and society and international support to
meet those challenges.” —haSan aSkari rizvi
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS
Washington, D.C.
www.brookings.edu
Cover design and photo collage by Ann Weinstock
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The Future of Pakistan
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The Future of Pakistan
stephen p. cohen
and others
brookings institution press
Washington, D.C.
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Copyright © 2011
the brookings institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
www.brookings.edu
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means without permission in writing from the Brookings Institution Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
The future of Pakistan / Stephen P. Cohen and others.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: “Examines Pakistan within the context of current geopolitics and economics,
including specific factors such as impact of foreign and domestic Islamist and other radical
groups on internal and international security; influence of the Pakistani army, civil govern-
ment, and key regions; nuclear weapons; and relationships with India, China, and the
U.S.”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-8157-2180-2 (paperback : alkaline paper)
1. Pakistan–Politics and government–21st century. 2. Pakistan–Foreign relations–21st
century. 3. Civil-military relations–Pakistan–21st century. 4. Pakistan–Social condi-
tions–21st century. 5. Internal security–Pakistan–21st century. I. Cohen, Stephen P.,
1936–
DS389.F88 2011
303.495491–dc23 2011036940
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed on acid-free paper
Typeset in Minion
Composition by R. Lynn Rivenbark
Macon, Georgia
Printed by R. R. Donnelley
Harrisonburg, Virginia
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Contents
Foreword vii
Bruce Riedel
Preface xi
1 Pakistan: Arrival and Departure 1
Stephen P. Cohen
2 Pakistan’s Future: Muddle Along 70
Kanti Bajpai
3 Radicalization, Political Violence, and Militancy 82
Laila Bokhari
4 Addressing Fundamental Challenges 91
C. Christine Fair
5 Looking Ahead 107
Tariq Fatemi
6 The China Factor 122
Mohan Guruswamy
7 Factors Shaping the Future 134
William Milam
8 The Clash of Interests and Objectives 150
Shuja Nawaz
v
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vi Contents
9 Still an Uncertain Future 158
Shaukat Qadir
10 Visualizing a Shared India-Pakistan Future 172
Bahukutumbi Raman
11 At the Brink? 182
Hasan Askari Rizvi
12 Security, Soldiers, and the State 199
Aqil Shah
13 Looking at the Crystal Ball 215
Hilary Synnott
14 Regime and System Change 225
Marvin G. Weinbaum
15 Population Growth, Urbanization, and
Female Literacy 236
Anita M. Weiss
16 The Perils of Prediction 249
Joshua T. White
17 Youth and the Future 257
Moeed W. Yusuf
18 Afterword 284
Stephen P. Cohen
Contributors 297
Index 299
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bruce riedel
Foreword
P
akistan is a country of growing, indeed crucial, importance to the
United States and to the rest of the world. Three years ago President Barack
Obama called me a few days after his inauguration and asked me to chair an
urgent interagency review of policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan. He said
that no issue on his foreign policy agenda was more important than the fate
of Pakistan, which he rightly has described as the epicenter of the global ter-
rorist threat today. Two years later Obama would send American SEAL com-
mandoes into Abbottabad, Pakistan, to kill al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin
Laden, in an operation carried out without the advance permission or even
knowledge of the Pakistani government and army. It would be a defining
moment of the Obama administration.
Pakistan was high on his agenda even before his call to me. The terrorist
attack on Mumbai, India, in November 2008, just days after Obama’s election,
was the first major international crisis on the newly elected president’s watch.
That attack was staged from Pakistan’s biggest city and major port, Karachi.
Obama stepped up drone attacks on terrorist targets in Pakistan dramatically
right from his first days in office. Today U.S. drones attack terrorist targets
inside Pakistan frequently, often twice a week.
Of course, Pakistan is much more than just a problem for U.S. counterter-
rorism policy. Now the sixth-largest country in the world in terms of popu-
lation, Pakistan, with its fast growth rate, soon will be the world’s fifth-largest
country and the largest Muslim country, outpacing Indonesia. No country is
more important to the future of America’s relationship with the Muslim
world. It also has the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world, producing
vii
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viii Foreword
more weapons today, including tactical nuclear weapons, than any other coun-
try. It may soon have the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, out-
gunned only by the United States, Russia, and China. No country is more
important with respect to nuclear arms control, nuclear proliferation, and
nuclear war.
The United States and Pakistan have had a very conflicted relationship for
over half a century. Some have described it as a roller coaster ride of highs and
low, others as a very dysfunctional marriage that goes through courtship,
marriage, divorce, and courtship over and over again. Americans have come
to see Pakistan as a deceitful partner; many wonder whether Pakistan’s spies
were clueless or complicit in hiding bin Laden for more than five years just a
mile from the country’s military academy. Pakistanis have come to see the
United States as an unreliable partner at best and an existential enemy at
worse. Polls show that Pakistanis’ opinion of the United States is very negative.
For most of the last century the United States has been a partner of Pak-
istan’s military dictators, enthusiastically embracing all four generals who
have ruled Pakistan. Presidents from Kennedy to Bush have invited them to
the White House for state dinners and intimate consultations. We have jointly
embarked on great clandestine projects such as the U2 base in Peshawar in the
late 1950s; Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing from Islamabad in July
1971; the covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan that helped
destroy the USSR in the 1980s; and the battle against al Qaeda in this century.
All were done with the involvement of Pakistan’s military dictators. Despite
our commitment to democracy, we have provided little backing to Pakistan’s
civilian leaders over the decades. The United States is not wholly responsible
for Pakistan’s unhealthy civil-military relationship, but it is not innocent of
responsibility.
Pakistan was born in great violence, and it is becoming a more violent
place. Partition in 1947 led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions
of refugees. Now Pakistan is wracked by terrorist bombings, assassinations,
and even firefights in its major cities, especially Karachi. For years friends of
Pakistan have warned that by harboring terrorists, Pakistan risked being
devoured by terrorism. Now those fears seem all too real.
For all its importance to so many issues and for all this tangled mutual his-
tory, Pakistan is little understood in the United States. There are no think
tanks with programs dedicated to the study of Pakistan or institutes for Pak-
istan studies in America. Pakistan is almost always grouped with its larger
neighbor, India, in South Asia programs. This is understandable, given their
common heritage in the British Empire, but it often means that Pakistan takes
a back seat to its bigger and richer neighbor in American studies. That is a
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Foreword ix
shame; Pakistan is an extremely important country in its own right. If geog-
raphy had placed it somewhere else in the world, it would be seen as one of
the emerging critical nations of the twenty-first century, but geography puts
it in the shadow of India. It needs more attention.
Thankfully, this book presents an important and timely group of essays by
leading American, European, Indian, and Pakistani scholars trying to fill the
gaps in understanding Pakistan’s future. My colleague at Brookings, Stephen
Cohen, is the dean of Pakistan scholars in America. He has written some of the
very best studies of the country in the last decade, especially his masterpiece,
The Idea of Pakistan. Now he has brought together the best experts available to
determine where Pakistan is going. Many of them got together for a workshop
in Bellagio, Italy, in 2010 to brainstorm about the key factors influencing Pak-
istan’s future, and they produced the essays that are the core of this book. Other
scholars provided essays to fill in gaps and offer additional perspectives.
The result is the best possible guide to the future of this important coun-
try available anywhere today. In less than 300 pages the key issues are explored
in depth and from many angles. There is no common answer to the impossi-
ble question of what the future will bring, but there is more informed com-
mentary and analysis on that question here than anywhere else. This book will
not tell you the unknowable, but it will give you a guide to understanding the
road that Pakistan is moving along and the various destinations that it may
reach in the next five to seven years.
Bruce Riedel
Brookings Institution
October 2011