New dynamics

Pakistan and the West have nurtured a relationship of an uneasy interdependence since the Cold War. Pakistan’s ruling’s classes have sided with the West’s scramble for the Great Game. The flagrant subservience of public interest to appease the global power games was no better reflected than the protracted Afghan jihad of the 1980s where Pakistan acted a frontline state. This was monumental folly as Pakistan ended up creating a self-sustaining jihad infrastructure. Thirty years later, Pakistan is hostage to the forces that it created to participate in a global politico-ideological conflict. In the second phase of Afghan saga since 9/11, Pakistan faces a dilemma that has split its citizenry and the Establishment in the middle. To top it all, its fundamental quest to secure the Western and Eastern borders against the ‘real’ enemy, India, stays intact.

September saw 22 missile strikes by CIA drones against Pakistani targets, a record number since the attacks began. It is an open secret that Pakistani state agencies have collaborated in the drone attacks, but the U.S. military carried out cross-border raids by U.S. helicopter gunships based inside Afghanistan. While the first of these raids reportedly killed ‘militants’, the last killed three members of the Pakistani military’s Frontier Corps and blew up a border post.

The U.S. later apologized but the drama entailed closure of a vital supply route for NATO forces inside Afghanistan. Hundreds of fuel tankers and container trucks remained stranded on the road from Karachi to the Khyber Pass. The second route via Chaman remained open in the classic Jekyll-Hyde fashion. The Taliban carried out relentless attacks on the stalled NATO convoys. Dozens of trucks were set ablaze and the Pakistani Foreign Office linked Taliban attacks to “the reaction of the Pakistani masses.” Yet again tacit support of Taliban actions was unequivocally exposed.
Pakistani routes are the cheapest for NATO forces. Nearly 80 percent of the coalition’s supplies are transported through Pakistan. Earlier, NATO routes were closed on more than one occasion (2008 and 2009) but the reason cited was poor security, highlighting the increased number of attacks on supplies.

The Pakistani government has been under pressure to launch an offensive in North Waziristan to quash the Haqqani network, active on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Pakistan is reluctant to do so given its old ties with the network and the strategic leverage it has due to such patronage. Hence the theatrics played out under global spotlight.

Here is the paradox. Pak-U.S. interdependence is also economic in nature. The U.S. military industrial complex and Pakistan authorities and intermediaries are in a win-win situation through NATO route rents. These rents are not just formal; they have spilled over into the informal economy. Truck mafias and criminal gangs make money off these arrangements. The Pashtuns control the transport mafia in Pakistan and possess major stakes in the NATO supply line. The transport operators also bribe Pakistani police for smooth passage and cut red-tape related to ‘paperwork’.
The criminal gangs receive rents to facilitate safe arrival of goods into Afghanistan. Similarly, the smugglers make hay from NATO sunshine by occasionally pilfering goods which are later sold in smuggled-goods-havens known as the baraas.

Insurance frauds have also been reported; trucks are willfully destroyed and damages are claimed. Afghani private security firms also profiteer when these goods arrive at their destinations. Apparently, these firms pay up the Afghan Taliban among others, thus creating a web of economic gains in the informal domain.

Not unlike the Jihad project of 1980s, the last decade of U.S. invasion has also created a dynamic, which creates local stakeholders in the war business. This time it is a war on terror. The last time it was fighting an evil Empire. Enemies change but profits remain.

Raza Rumi is a policy advisor and writer based in Lahore. He is consulting editor at The Friday Times.

Raza Rumi is a writer, policy adviser based in Lahore. He is on the editorial board of The Friday Times, and also maintains a national development blog at www.razarumi.com. Email: razarumi@gmail.com

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