Carl Levin wants Pakistan to take the fight to terrorist safe havens in North Waziristan. And he’s willing to end Washington’s uneasy friendship with Islamabad if lawmakers there fail to do our bidding.
“Our response should be that if the only option Pakistan presents us is a choice between losing an ally and continuing to lose our troops, then we will choose the former,” the Michigan Democrat, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told a gathering of pundits at the Council on Foreign Relations last month.
“It is unacceptable for the United States to spend its blood and treasure so that Afghanistan does not once again become a breeding ground for militant extremists while Pakistan protects terrorists who cross the border to attack us. Pakistan cannot evade responsibility for its role in allowing and supporting these attacks.”
All true, I admit; no argument there. But the senator might want to tone down his rhetoric, since the tough talk does little to help our reluctant friends fix the problem.
You see, politicians in Islamabad would love to crack down on the militant threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty, but they lack an important quality absent which they cannot lay claim to the moral and legal authority necessary for the use of decisive violence.
That absolutely vital quality is legitimacy .
Without it, Pakistan’s use of force in the remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (of which North Waziristan is one “agency”) carries about the same moral weight and acceptance as American drone strikes on tribal territory.
To be clear, the Pakistani administration in Islamabad is viewed with considerable suspicion by fiercely independent-minded Waziris who don’t see themselves as part of one big national family. In fact, the Waziris haven’t belonged to anything much bigger than Waziristan since the Mughal Empire began disintegrating in the 18th century. Neither the Sikhs nor the Brits were able to successfully co-opt the tribes, and the region existed as an independent tribal territory outside the British Empire from 1893 until the borders of Pakistan were drawn around it in 1947. So Waziristan’s very inclusion in Pakistan is, in a way, an accident of history.
To ask Islamabad to use force in this context is to encourage illegitimate violence that is itself a form of terrorism. This sets us up for failure on three fronts: First, it does great harm to our image as champions of freedom, democracy and human dignity; second, it erodes the internal legitimacy and credibility of the civilian government in Islamabad; and finally, it increases the threat to NATO forces underwriting Afghanistan’s security. On the whole, it’s a lose-lose-lose proposition that hurts more than it helps.
Levin and his colleagues in the Senate would be wise to pursue strategies that shore up Pakistan’s internal sources of legitimacy.
Issuing orders to Islamabad won’t do us much good in the long run.