07/11/12 – Sohail Mahmood – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Wharton.
Our first guest is Dr. Sohail Mahmood, Chairman of the Department of Politics and International Relations at International Islamic University in Islamabad.
And he's got this article at Counterpunch called The Crisis in Pakistan-U.S. Relations.
Welcome to the show, Dr. Mahmood.
How are you doing today?
All right.
Great.
I guess it must be very late at night over there right now.
So thanks very much for staying up.
Sure.
Welcome.
OK.
So first of all, it's obviously America's relationship with Pakistan is such a complicated mess.
But if you could please lay a little bit of the foundation of the discussion here by explaining, as you do in the article here, the attack last November, which led to the current crisis or serve as such a major part of the current crisis and and how that led to the shutting down of the routes and all of that.
And then maybe we can get into further details.
OK.
Well, the attack happened on November 26 last year.
And the important thing is that the Pakistani army believed that mistakes were committed by NATO and NATO, you know, carried out an investigation on its own.
And they came up with the argument that mistakes were made on both sides anyway, that, you know, created a shock and a hanker in a relationship which already is very tense.
So this was like, you know, a tipping point, the last straw on the camel's back, so to speak.
The event itself was not very important, but one thing led to another thing.
And there's a whole history that goes to last year, remember, May 2, you know, incident when Americans came in and killed Obama then and the military was exposed.
The military was humiliated.
The politicians were humiliated.
And then, of course, there were some other incidents.
There was incidents of Raymond Davis, a CIA operative who killed three Pakistanis in Lahore.
And you know, he was bailed out and Pakistan government agreed to release him.
And that created an anger in Pakistani population.
And the most important thing to remember is that this global war on terror, you know, and especially the drone strikes that are happening in the last few years, they have created a very strong anti-American sentiment in this country, you know.
So far, you know, already very tense relationship in an atmosphere where the Americans are hated.
And it's mutual.
I mean, of course, Pakistanis, you know, are suspected by the American establishment.
And of course, the Pakistani government is accused, the Pakistani military is accused of supporting the Afghani network, the Taliban network.
So there's a deep mistrust on both sides, acquisitions, counteracquisitions.
I mean, the main thing is that a global war on terror is, you know, affecting the society and state of Pakistan in unimaginable ways.
And this war has gone on for a very long time.
And there is a very serious divergence on what is going to happen in Afghanistan after NATO and American troops leave in 2014.
So all sorts of problems, apprehensions, trust, mistrust.
And then this incident happened, which sort of created, you know, a reaction.
And the NATO supplies were, you know, were stopped, which were only opened just recently, about a few days back.
Hmm.
Well, now, is it right that the U.S. government still has a good relationship with the prime minister and the top general, Reza Dari and Kiani, and that's all they care about, and the rest of the country can go to hell, as far as they're concerned?
Is that about right?
No, that's not correct.
No, that's not correct.
One mistake that the American government is making is that it's not reaching out to civil society as it should, and it's not making efforts to, you know, to carry out what they called winning the heart and mind strategy.
Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration had been talking about it.
I mean, you know, there's a very strong anti-American sentiment, not only in Pakistan, but in the entire Muslim world.
And Obama promised to reach out, and he made some excellent speeches in Cairo, and Hillary Clinton has been talking about reaching out to the people of Pakistan and the people of the Muslim world.
But that is not really happening.
Now, yeah, well, you know, there is a lot of tension between the Pakistan army and the Obama administration, not as much as between Dardari, I mean, the prime minister doesn't count in Pakistan, it is Dardari, the president counts, he's running the show.
The Dardari government is, in some ways, is less hostile and is more immeasurable to American interest, but the military is not, because obviously the military is exhausted, the military is, you know, has its own plans, its own doctrines, which I have criticized in my article, which are outdated, like the Pakistan military is convinced, and wrongly so, that, you know, Pakistan needs a friendly government in Afghanistan, and Pakistan needs what the military calls, quote-unquote, the doctrine of strategic depth.
I mean, these are all doctrines which were orchestrated with India.
I mean, it was, you know, the enemy was India, and in a war with India, you needed a friendly, you know, backyard, and you need some strategic depth where Pakistani forces could sort of retreat, and Pakistani assets could be sort of in safe hands, in safe territory.
I mean, but that is old story.
But the military is reluctant to give up these, you know, these old ideas, because the military is convinced that India is the enemy, and the military is very concerned, I point out in my article, that India is making some inroads in Afghanistan at the cost of Pakistan.
So the military is more antagonist to the USA than the civilian government.
But, you know, I must point it out, the military is still calling the shots in foreign policy, in security policy, you know, the civilians don't count that much.
So I mean, the real man to talk to is General Kearney, not Zardari, on these matters.
Now, I wonder, do you have any insight into why in the world the American policy has been, for years now, to support Indian intervention in Afghanistan?
I mean, I understand that the Northern Alliance types are the ones that the Indians are nominally friendly with.
But why does America have to insist, or at least, you know, cooperate with actual Syrian intervention on the ground there?
It seems like, well, for years and years, we've talked on this show with people like Eric Margulies and Salim Shahzad and other experts about this, about how this just forces the Pakistani government to continue to support the Haqqanis and the Taliban and whichever posture based resistance in Afghanistan, because they have to prevent this American Northern Alliance, Indian alliance from being successful in creating any kind of real state there.
Yeah, I mean, that's a good question.
But that question should be addressed to the American establishment that is doing this, you know, and it is a mistake.
I mean, you should realize the sensitivities of Pakistan, you know, remember, remember, please understand this.
You know, the Mujahideen fought against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, and the Americans supported the Mujahideen.
Right.
All right.
I'm sorry.
You know what, I asked you such a big, loaded question right before the break here like this.
But we have to take this hard break.
But if you would, please hang on the line here through the commercial, and we'll be right back, everybody, with Dr. Sohail Mahmood from the University of Sumner, over there in Islamabad.
I got it here.
International Islamic University.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Dr. Sohail Mahmood from the International, International Islamic University in Islamabad.
He's got this piece at Counterpunch, the crisis in Pakistan, US relations.
Sorry, I have all your bio material in an email in the other computer on the other side of the room, and it's kind of hard to read from here.
Anyway, so let's see.
I was asking you if you had any brilliant insight into why in the world America has such a stupid policy in Afghanistan.
And you rightly put that back on me that I should go and ask some idiot in New York somewhere or Washington, D.C., where they're in charge of these ridiculous things.
How should you know from where you're sitting?
I don't know.
But so let's get to the massive protests here, because basically what we're talking about is how there was, out of the thousand crazy things in the American-Pakistani relationship, one of them was this attack that killed a bunch of Pakistani troops last fall, and Obama and Hillary Clinton's refusal to just say sorry this whole time, which led to the closing of all of the trade routes, the supply route, not trade routes, the military supply routes from Karachi through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan for the war there.
And now finally Hillary Clinton went ahead and said sorry.
And so now they reopened the routes.
But then there were massive protests.
Could you please describe the reaction of the people of Pakistan once the apology was made and the routes were reopened?
Yeah, that was expected.
That was expected.
You know, for the fact of the matter is that there is a very strong swell of anti-Americanism in this country, which is not diminishing, which is getting ever bigger and bigger and bigger, you know.
So that is the real problem for the Americans and the government of Pakistan to end it.
But that was expected, you know.
Coming back to your earlier question, you know, the larger game in our part of the world is that India and the USA have a very formidable strategic partnership.
And although India is not a signatory to the non-nuclear proliferation treaty, but yet the USA is assisting Indian civilian nuclear, you know, technology.
So that is something which is of concern to countries like Pakistan.
I mean, you know, and the larger picture is that India and the USA, you know, both agree that the greatest challenge is the rising power of People's Republic of China just across the Himalayas.
So this is a historic shift that has happened.
You know, India and the USA have come very close.
And the aim is not Pakistan as such, but the aim is to contain the rising power of China.
But, you know, what we are concerned about is that there is a very serious territorial dispute between India and Pakistan.
I'm sure you know about it, you guys, that is Kashmir.
And which is lingering, you know, there was a history of American, you know, they have not really tried hard to bring the Indians and the Pakistanis on the negotiating table.
The Pakistanis need American help to bring India on the negotiating table.
We've been carrying out negotiations on Kashmir for a very long time.
But we need a breakthrough.
We need a friend, friendly country.
And the best is the USA, which can play a role of an arbiter, you know, provide good offices, a third party and somehow reconcile.
Remember, I mean, if you recall, you know, it took Jimmy Carter to negotiate, you know, the Camp David Accords.
Remember that in the 1970s, bringing in Markham Began and Anwar Sadat.
So if the Americans were to listen to some good, you know, hint or a good way to bring down anti-Americanism in Pakistan is to help Pakistan negotiate the dissolvement of the Kashmir dispute with India.
And remember, if you go back, Pakistan supported the liberation movement.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, you know, Kashmir is a Muslim territory and India is a kind of a liberation movement going on from the 80s.
I mean, about 80,000 people have been killed, massive human abolition in Kashmir.
And then Pakistan did support the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba was, you know, fighting for independence, supporting the independence movement in Kashmir.
And, you know, Kashmir still remains the main stumbling block between improving Pakistan-India relations.
And, you know, if the USA can deliver on Kashmir, I mean, in the sense that they can just provide some, you know, negotiating space for the Pakistanis and Indians, that would be a great help.
And that will bring down anti-Americanism in Pakistan.
Pakistan supported the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the quick proposal was India is now supporting the Balochistan Liberation Army, you know, the insurgency that is happening in Balochistan, two of them.
So that is why the Indian presence in Afghanistan is suspect as far as the Pakistan military is concerned, because the Balochistan Liberation Army, I mean, those guys, you know, they are of course in the camps in Afghanistan, supported, trained by Indian agencies, secret agencies, and these guys are coming back and there's insurgency going on.
Okay, now, I'm sorry, let me stop you right there.
I want to get back to Balochistan in just a second.
But real quick, I just want to make sure everybody's, you know, catching up here or, you know, with us on what all we're talking about here.
You're basically saying that America's role in the region, its obvious role in the region ought to be to negotiate a peaceful settlement between Pakistan and India on the Kashmir issue, which is where so many people have died, and which is the probably, you know, just in terms of odds, the most likely place where a nuclear war could start in the world right now is the fight between these two countries, the low-level war between these two countries over Kashmir this whole time.
And instead, what we're doing is we're betraying our long-term, decades-long, throughout the Cold War, our ally, the Pakistanis, by forcing the Pakistani government to wage a civil war in the tribal areas, by twisting their arms to allow us to do the drone strikes all across their country, which is turning the entire population against us, and by allying with the Indians in a military fashion in Afghanistan, where we need our Pakistani allies the most, we're sticking it right in their eye, and bringing their enemies in, and endangering that entire relationship, and turning their entire country against us.
And then now, please, Balochistan, you said it's the Indians, or you said it's the Americans and the Indians encouraging separatism in Balochistan there?
Okay, I mean, the Indians are interfering in Balochistan.
There is an insurgency going on, and that has been going on for quite some time.
The fact of the matter is that the Balochistan Liberation Army, that is fighting against the Pakistani army and the Pakistani government in Balochistan, I mean, Balochistan is a mess.
Very serious problems in Balochistan in terms of security, and, you know, very serious problems.
There is no doubt, I mean, there is a lot of evidence that we have, and we have brought it up with the government of India a number of times, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Foreign Secretary, a number of times we have supplied what are called evidence, dossiers, the Foreign Ministry has given them a lot of evidence of RAW, I mean, RAW, that is Indian Intelligence Agency, supporting the insurgency, you know.
I mean, the fact of the matter is that Pakistan was supporting the insurgency in Kashmir, what we are, remember what I call, as far as the Pakistanis are concerned, a war of liberation, but as far as India is concerned, separatism or whatever, but that was the past.
We are not going, we are not doing it now, because obviously, there is a very serious problem in Afghanistan.
All right, I'm sorry, Dr. Mahmood, we're going to have to continue this conversation another time, we're all out of it for this segment, but thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Okay, sure.
Okay, everybody, that's Dr. Sohail Mahmood, Chairman of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Check out his piece at Counterpunch, The Crisis in Pakistan-U.S. Relations, counterpunch.org.