Pakistan: MacArthur should returnOnly an international intervention can transform Pakistan, writes Nitin Pai for Pragati.
By Nitin Pai for Pragati
According to the Obama administration "the United States will increase non-military aid to Pakistan and hold them accountable for security in the border region with Afghanistan." The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2008, introduced by Senators (now vice president) Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar appropriates up to US$1.5 billion in non-military assistance for fiscal years 2009-2013 and "encourages annual authorization of appropriations up to US$1.5 billion for fiscal years 2014-2018 on the condition of an improvement in the political and economic environment." According to the Congressional Budget Office, of the US$11.5 billion it has allocated for Pakistan over the next decade, the United States expects to disburse around US$7.5 billion.
That, to use Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland's metaphor, is a lot of money to throw off helicopters.
For, despite the promise of change and the appointment of an accomplished diplomat as a pointman for Afghanistan-Pakistan, American strategy remains 'more of the same.' That's because the United States provided around US$12 billion in overt aid to the Pakistani government between 2002-2008 and finds itself in a worse position today than it was when General Musharraf hitched Pakistan's wagons onto America's war against the Taliban and al-Qaida. Of course, it is all very well to argue that the Bush administration was to blame for the lopsidedness of the aid - only US$3 billion was allocated for non-military purposes - but the fact is that United States continues to think that some variation of giving aid and supporting democratic institutions will somehow work, and the military establishment can be humored, paid off, won over or simply left alone.
The Obama administration's approach completely ignores the fundamental problem. And that is that the entity that lies at the heart of the biggest challenges to international security - Pakistan's military-jihadi complex - is largely out of control of all its masters. The Pakistani civilian government, leave alone ordinary Pakistanis never really had control over it. But the experience of the last decade has shown that the United States, Saudi Arabia and even China are unable to influence the Pakistani army enough to secure their own interests. The terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 have shattered the hopeful myth that the 'peace process' with India has aligned the corporate interests of the military establishment away from sponsoring cross-border terrorism. If the present is bad, the future is worse - because the coming decade will see the near total radicalisation of the Pakistani armed forces run in parallel with ever more numbers of young people totally infused in Islamic supremacist ideology. Pakistan's nuclear weapons are now effectively protecting the military-jihadi complex, not the Pakistani nation. The combination presents an serious threat to the international community at large, the United States, China, Europe and Saudi Arabia included.
The focus on the war in Afghanistan has rendered the United States blind to the strategic reality that 'surges' and reconstruction efforts are bound to fail unless the Pakistani military-jihadi complex is completely dismantled. What Pakistan needs is the kind of transformation that General Douglas MacArthur brought about in Japan. There too was a militarised state that had recently invaded a neighbour for 'strategic depth'. There too was the use of extremist religious ideology as an excuse for irredentism and territorial ambition. There too was an education system that was brainwashing young minds. There too was a feudal elite controlling the levers of the economy. And there too were suicide bombers.
But between late 1945-1952, a period of just seven years, General Douglas MacArthur occupied Japan, reconstructed its war-torn economy, demilitarized the state, fixed the education system and instituted a democracy that has endured since then. Here's how he summarized his brief as he flew in, on 30 August 1947, to take over as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) in Japan:
"First, destroy the military power. Punish war criminals. Build the structure of representative government. Modernize the constitution. Hold free elections. Enfranchise the women. Release the political prisoners. Liberate the farmers. Establish a free labor movement. Encourage a free economy. Abolish police oppression. Develop a free and responsible press. Liberalize education. Decentralize political power. Separate the church from state."
It is hard to find a better to-do list for today's Pakistan.
Continues:
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?ots591=4888CAA0-B3DB-1461-98B9-E20E7B9C13D4&lng=en&id=97189
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