General Ashfaq Kayani served as army chief for two terms from November 2007 to 2013. His views shaped Pakistan-US ties during those six years.
Kayani was appointed the army chief when domestic political compulsions forced president-general Pervez Musharraf to step down as army chief. Musharraf had often said that the uniform was his “second skin”. It was only with great reluctance that he handed over command of the army to Kayani, knowing better than anyone else that the army chief runs the country.
Sadly, for Kayani, he was the army chief on whose watch the US special operations forces intruded into Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011. When the news broke, all eyes turned to Kayani and former ISI chief Shuja Pasha.
Even though Pakistan was not at war with the US, what had taken place was a complete violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. The military’s morale tanked.
Of course, there was more to Kayani’s tenure than the Osama incident. The US war in Afghanistan went through some cataclysmic changes while he held the army chief’s position. At one point, US commander, Lt Gen. Stanley Crystal, was forced to resign after giving an interview in which he criticised his civilian superiors for bungling the war.
During Kayani’s tenure, Pakistan stood accused by President Karzai of aiding and abetting the Taliban in Afghanistan. He told the US that Pakistan was simply seeking to ward off India’s strategy of encirclement, which was being carried out with Karzai’s consent. The US had no sympathy for the argument.
After Osama’s killing, Kayani told the Corps Commanders that Pakistan had mortgaged itself to the US. It could not go to war with its banker. He said we should strengthen the economy so Pakistan could end its dependence on Washington
But the US could not wish Pakistan away since its supply lines ran from the Arabian Sea to Kabul via Pakistan. Soon after the US invaded Afghanistan to avenge the 9/11 attacks, Musharraf was famously given an ultimatum to choose sides. He sided with the US. In the years that followed, he had some “big fish” picked up and turned over to the US. Musharraf gave the US unfettered access to Pakistani air space, land bases, and hassle-free passage on the ground for its supplies. In return, the US provided billions in aid.
But Pakistan’s position on the Taliban remained undecipherable. For years, Musharraf argued that the Quetta Shura was fiction and continued to deny that Pakistan was supporting the Taliban. All the evidence was to the contrary. In her book, Political Tribes, Yale professor Amy Chua, says that Pakistan played the US like a “geopolitical pawn.”
These topics get an in-depth treatment in Directorate S, Steve Coll’s sequel to Ghost Wars. It is based on more than 550 interviews carried out by from 2007 to 2017.
The757-page tome is a tale of woe. Half of Coll’s story is about how the US mismanaged the war in Afghanistan, and the massive disasters, blunders and horrors that accompanied the invasion. That is well known. The other half of the story focuses on the complex triangular relationship between the US, Pakistan and India in the context of Afghanistan.
Of major interest are three memoranda that were submitted by Kayani to high officials in the Obama administration, called Kayani 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0.
To get the ball rolling, Kayani sent 1.0 to the US, a 106-page document written largely for him by the foreign office. It described Pakistan’s priorities as nuclear deterrence, Kashmir, access to water, the future of Afghanistan, and a non-hegemonic South Asia. Islamic extremism did not make the list.
1.0 conveyed Pakistan’s paranoia that the US was seeking to neutralise its nuclear deterrence and that the Afghan army was India’s pawn. Pakistan asked the US to mediate the dispute over Kashmir.
After Faisal Shahzad tried exploding a bomb in New York, Kayani wrote 2.0. He told the US:“You are just focused on military operations and counterterrorism. If you don’t visibly address the big deficits in our economy, energy supplies, and water supplies, this relationship is just going to continue to be a muddle.”
In 3.0, which was only some 15 pages long, Kayani said the US was not going to win the war in Afghanistan. The Afghans had beaten the Soviets and the British and would beat the US.Without Pakistan, the US would fail. He asked the US to begin talking with Pakistan about the future of the region.
The memo stirred the pot within the US administration and the CIA viewed it as an unacceptable ultimatum. While the US recognised Kayani as the true leader of Pakistan, it decided to ignore the memo and did not send a reply.
Coll informs us that when Kayani’s term was about to expire, he asked Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the pros and cons of getting a three-year extension. He got a nod of approval. The US wanted him to stay on: “In public, the Obama administration emphasized the importance of Pakistani democracy and civilian rule; in private, it negotiated for the continuation of favourable military control.”
After OBL’s killing, “cognitive dissonance” set in Islamabad, reported the US ambassador to Pakistan, Dr Cameron Munter. Pasha offered to resign, saying there was “no intentional negligence but just an aspect of failure.” He admitted that the ISI should have known where Osama was located. Kayani joined the chorus and said: “Yes, we were blind.”
Kayani insisted that he did not know where Mullah Omar was hiding. But later it was revealed that the leader of the Taliban had died of Tuberculosis in a Karachi hospital on the very day that Kayani was meeting with Karzai and Kerry in Brussels. How could Kayani have not known Omar’s whereabouts?
US ambassadors had figured out that the US should not be deluded into thinking Pakistan was a democracy just because it had a prime minister and a national assembly. It was fundamentally a country where the army was the largest political party and where the military called the shots.
After Osama’s killing, Kayani told the Corps Commanders that Pakistan had mortgaged itself to the US. It could not go to war with its banker. He said we should strengthen the economy and raise taxes, so Pakistan could end its dependence on Washington.
But he neglected to say that Pakistan should seek peace with India and lower its defence spending which was debilitating the economy. Nor did he say that the army should turn over the reins of power to the elected representatives of the people of Pakistan.
The writer has written widely on Pakistan’s national security policies.
Published in Daily Times, July 15th 2018.