2014 Looms Large in Pakistan
By: Sophia Lalani
Ambassador Sherry Rahman, Pakistan’s Ambassador the United
States spoke at the Harvard University Kennedy School of
Government to a packed audience of students professors,
students, policy makers. Professor Meghan O’Sullivan Professor
of International Affairs at the Kennedy School, introduced the
Ambassador and alluded to the important bilateral relationship
between the two countries. When the Ambassador took the
mike, she wasted no time in launching into the US-Pakistan’s
long and tumultuous relationship beginning in the late 1970s
with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The Ambassador reviewed the thirty years of conflict, bringing
history squarely into the discussion. Fulfilling the role as her
country’s representative to the United States, she briefed the
audience on the anti-American sentiment that makes
prominent headlines, and gave Pakistan’s side of the story to a
room-full of future policy makers and analysts.
The first battlefield encounter in Afghanistan as allies against
the Soviet Union, informs the collective memory of Generation
X, she started. Prior to the 1979 war, the concepts of terrorism
and militant extremisms were alien, and that before 2001, there
had been only one known suicide bombing in Pakistan. The
guns, drugs, and terrorist triad that suddenly appeared in 1980s,
“was the blow-back we were left from an outsourced war in
Afghanistan.” She repeated slowly, “It was an outsourced war,
and it felt like one.” Rahman continued that even if they had
crafted and executed the best policy, Afghanistan’s porous
border with Pakistan and what was left behind there left
Pakistan awash with the world’s largest population of refugees.
Reminding the audience that while the 1979 war that has been
long-forgotten among the American Generation X, is everpresent among the same in Pakistan: “We still host them
[Afghan refugees] today. They are the new and living
demographic that we live with.”
With every passing fact, the Ambassador became more
emphatic in describing the responsibility that Pakistan has
assumed for the United States, and dismal mess that the US left
behind for Pakistan after defeating the Soviets.
Rahman’s historical narrative led her to the point of 2014 –
when Americans will once again withdraw from Afghanistan. As
Pakistan looks toward 2014, she urged the US to manage the
unintended consequences of war “this time.” 2014 “is a date
looming large over policy discourse. There is deep concern
about whether the US will be able to leave a reasonably stable
Afghanistan behind, or if the blood and treasure invested over
a decade will yield not any serious tangible results.” She made
clear that Pakistan’s policy and outlook for 2014 is inextricably
linked to its 1979 experience. “I’m sorry that memory remains
such a tangible ghost at the bilateral tables,” she said, but
quickly reminded the audience, “there is very good reason for
that.”
After spending over half of the speech on Pakistan-US history
leading to 2014, she spent the remainder of her speech
describing Pakistan’s political system, President Zardari’s term in
office, and the upcoming elections. She described their vibrant
and raucous media, not mentioning the politicians and private
citizens such as Salman Taseer that have been killed in the
pursuit of fairness and equality among citizens, the journalists
that have been kidnapped and killed, and the continued
marginalization of ethnic minorities. When asked by a student
to describe the government’s response to the continued
targeted killing of the Hazara minority in Quetta, the
Ambassador deflected the question. Instead she fired back
saying, “It is heartbreaking to know that our citizens are being
targeted but we are losing soldiers by the day as we have
150,000 soldiers on the border. Pakistan’s story of commitment
and resilience is quite unprecedented and I would also seek
some appreciation for that.”
The Ambassador began the speech not wanting to give the
audience a “victim’s narrative.” She fell dangerously close to
that. While a historical narrative is perhaps one way to avoid
past mistakes, the Ambassador did not address its internal
challenges and how it seeks to play its part in the reconciliation
and peace process. Rather, she struck a belligerent tone
throughout the remarks, especially when she alluded to the
US’s role in brokering a settlement among the government and
non-state actors in Afghanistan: “No one can broker a
sustainable peace agreement except for the Afghans
themselves. Afghans have to lead the process for peace.
Pakistan will support any roadmap for a negotiated settlement
of this war. We will not support any particular group or play
favorites.”
While there many not be a clear understanding of the causes
and implications of the 1979 US invasion of Afghanistan
amongst American citizens, policy makers in Washington
comprehend the dynamic that the anti-communism euphoria
created. Indeed, Secretary Clinton made this clear when she
stated to Congress in 2009, “The people we are fighting today,
we funded twenty years ago. So we then left Pakistan … We
said, okay fine, you deal with the Stingers that we left all over
your country… you deal with the mines that are along the
border and… by the way we don’t want to have anything to
do with you… in fact we’re sanctioning you… So we stopped
dealing with the Pakistani military and with ISI and we now are
making up for a lot of lost time.”
The anti-American sentiment among the Pakistani Generation Y
that has seen a relentless projection of American power in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan may not surprising, but if Pakistan’s
policy makers cannot grant its own concessions in taking
responsibility for its threadbare democracy and mismanaged
security apparatus, US-Pakistan relations will be tenuous at best
and belligerent at worst.