Center for a New American Security

A few days old, but my most recent article for the guys at afpak is up on their website.

"The international community uses force in Pakistan and Afghanistan as if there is no other option, when, in fact, there are other largely untried levers. A public opinion survey conducted by the New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) shows that militancy has little organic support in the region al Qaeda has made its base, and that the United States' image there is not beyond repair."

I tend to be a bit cautious about surveys. In my experience, the questions asked, the identity of the questioner, the self image of those being questioned and a bundle of other unquantifiables can give you pretty much any result you want. The BBC Panorama documentary I worked on last year highlighting racism was made in response to comments by the head of a UK rights body that in the UK people are "increasingly comfortable with racial diversity". I'm not sure anyone asked the people who repeatedly attacked my co-reporter and I. Maybe they were asked but their idea of what constitutes "a racial background they are comfortable having live next door" didn't extend to two Muslim recent immigrants. Or maybe, the pollsters asked the people who lived a little up the road, where the houses were nicer, the pubs didn't have a weekly Friday night bloody punch up and the kids mostly went to school. Or maybe they asked people in central Bristol and ended up speaking to some of the brightest students in the country.

However, a good survey or poll is worth its weight in gold (and I mean when its printed out and bound up). The New America Foundation's recent public opinion survey for FATA is one such survey. No survey is going to give a foolproof picture of what everyone is thinking in any given area. But in a place like FATA you need to ask some pertinent questions that give an insight into the views that affect a volatile situation. The report does that brilliantly.

Another insightful and useful report was by I to I Research in the UK who launched their Afghan Futures study in the summer. I to I took on the seriously challenging task of looking at what would make Afghans think things were improving; a challenging enough quantifiable to measure within the usual confines of independent surveying without adding all the constraints of asking people questions like that in places where their answers might get them killed. A study worth looking at while I work up to giving it the full review its findings merit.

UPDATE 1: Oh, and as Abu Muqwama has noted, I managed to pay homage to my second most favourite American in the article. So check it out for him if nothing else.

There's more that connects drone attacks and the AirBlue crash than the fact both relate to Pakistani airspace. Huma Yusuf writes in the Dawn newspaper that in Pakistan the thread of poor governance runs through terrorism and natural disasters.

As Huma points out, where government fails to provide, extremist groups see plenty of opportunity:

"Few can forget that five years ago, in the wake of the October 2005 earthquake, the government's failure to cope with immediate relief efforts created a vacuum within which the Jamaatud Dawa pulled off its greatest publicity stunt. The extremist organisation had the most efficient response teams on the ground, and boasted the most functional and well-stocked relief camps. Its mobile X-ray machines and operating theatres made international headlines. Through their clever use of mobile technology, the group's volunteers established an unparalleled communications infrastructure that facilitated relief work.

The government and army, meanwhile, fumbled in early relief and reconstruction efforts, as charges of corruption in the distribution of aid and resources were rampant. The consequences of Jamaatud Dawa stepping in where the government should have been exercising its authority are obvious today in the support and influence that the organisation enjoys"

The Jamaatud Dawa to which Huma refers is the new front group for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Christine Fair and Jacob Shapiro did some polling about a year ago on militant support in Pakistan and came to the conclusion that increased living standards or the provision of aid did not lead people to abandon support for militancy. To me, it sounds like the structure of the polling was a bit off. In 10 years of reporting around the Muslim world, I have seen countless times extremist or fundamentalist groups step in and provide social services where a government seen as incompetent and corrupt has failed. And everytime they have done this, they have increased their level of grassroots support. In Ain el Helwe camp in Sidon, it's Hamas that is seen to look after the interests of the Palestinian refugees, not the bumbling and corrupt Palestinian secular organisations. The same was true in Gaza before Hamas took power there. Since the 1920s, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has built up a formidable national network through social service provision. The Jordanian chapter of the group has replicated that model in the Hashemite Kingdom and predictably has gained support. So maybe it's not about aid in $ terms persuading people not to support militants, even though that's nice and easy to quantify. Really, its about aid supporting better governance.

In the Muslim political consciousness, Islamic governance equates to social justice and social services provision, which is why the "Islamic state" bandwagon is so tempting a short cut for leaders looking to replace competence with PR. In my view, one of the reasons al-Qaeda has failed to gain widespread popular support is due to the fact that it has failed to demonstrate its commitment and ability when it comes to providing "Islamic" governance. This, coupled to its bloody butcher's bill of Muslim lives and its zealous pursuit of communal warfare makes it fundamentally unattractive to most Muslims. It's only claim to popular support is its "Jihad against the crusaders and their allies". Ultimately, that's not enough.

The earthquake was five years back, Huma has more current examples to take note of:

"The collapse of the legal system - the backbone of efficient governance - in the Swat Valley led to locals supporting the call given by Sufi Mohammad of the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi for Sharia law in the mid-1990s, and again last year. The closure of civil courts in the Malakand division indicated the usurpation of the state's authority by militants and extremist organisations. Indeed, Maulana Fazlullah and Sufi Mohammad were only able to win over (or terrorise) the Swatis because of the government's seriously compromised administrative capacity in the region."

And to the events of the past week:

"Official responses to the past week's events have betrayed equally problematic failings in governance. Much has already been written about the poorly coordinated rescue operation at the Margalla Hills - a situation in which rescue workers are prevented from reaching the site of a disaster by security forces indicates a crippling level of administrative chaos.

Meanwhile, the government's handling of relief and rescue operations for flood victims in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan has been totally inadequate. As the rains abate, the variety of ways in which the government has again failed its people is becoming obvious: ill-conceived evacuation plans; a shortage of boats and helicopters for rescue missions; sparse provision of food and other relief goods to those stranded or displaced; defunct district-level disaster management authorities.

I haven't heard that militant groups have stepped in to fill the gap but they definitely have the capacity and the motivation.

Another option, as expressed to me by a non-posh friend in Lahore: "If the Americans really care about the well being of Pakistanis why don't they send helicopters or planes with aid? They are just across the border and it's because of them that the army doesn't have the manpower to handle the floods."

Looking at Pakistani public opinion from abroad is like reading a Philip Pullman novel. The picture you see resembles the reality you are accustomed to, but somewhere along the line it seems history took a different turn and you are actually looking at something similar but very different. And it's that superficial familiarity that actually make the differences so much more jarring. I haven't been in Pakistan since Faisal Shehzad's attempt to blow up Times Square but Sabrina's article in the New York Times the other day on how Pakistanis see the incident rings accurate.

"ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Americans may think that the failed Times Square bomb was planted by a man named Faisal Shahzad. But the view in the Supreme Court Bar Association here in Pakistan's capital is that the culprit was an American 'think tank.'"

Yes, you read it right, "think tank". It looks strange to me seeing that written in black and white, but I'm not really all that surprised. Like any opinion anywhere, Pakistanis' perceptions aren't plucked out of thin air, they are based on the world they see around them and the conclusions they come to in order to try and make sense of events beyond their control.

At the moment, think tanks are all the rage in Pakistan. As opposed to people in Britain and - I'm sure - most people in America, Pakistanis have heard a lot about think tanks recently. Reports published in Washington and London are quoted in Pakistani newspapers and are discussed at length in well-read columns. People understand that ideas that could seriously affect their lives are often today born in think tanks. But like most news consumers anywhere in the world, calm analysis remains for the  less-popular outlets and hysterical arm waving is most commonly order of the day's coverage. Think tanks then are "shadowy" and "powerful", which actually means that they are also mysterious and attractive. For this reason, I have heard many large and small political organisations in Pakistan talking about setting up their own think tanks. (Pakistan already has quite a few good independent ones of its own, check out PIPS for some very interesting reports). Like the furore over Blackwater and other US contractors, Pakistanis are picking up on trends that they see as impacting their lives and applying what they think they know to what they see around them. As Sabrina suggests in the article, the reluctance of US and Pakistani officials to fully communicate with the population along with a very tabloid-centric media environment is not a good mix.

I've heard the phrase "conspiracy theories are a national sport in Pakistan" more times than I looked up the history of coalition governments in the UK. The phrase goes someway to capturing the pervasive nature of this type of thinking in Pakistani society, but it also seems to belittle the seriousness of the situation. It's a phrase used by commentators abroad and in Pakistan as well as by politicians and generals inside the country. It's often accompanied by a wave of the hand and perhaps a bit of eye rolling. I think that is a serious mistake. After all, the same politicians and generals are often the first to play up to it when trying to win votes or discredit opponents. The perceptions of the Pakistani public generate a reality that needs to be responded to. I'd bet the off-the-shelf price of an drone that what Faisal Shahzad was thinking in the weeks before he attempt his attack weren't a million miles away from the opinions expressed in Sabrina's article.

The article should be viewed not as a tale of Pakistani curiousness but a timely pointer towards an under-analyised issue which underlies talk of aid, drone attacks, secure nuclear weapons and terrorism inside and outside Pakistan's borders.

I'd go further than just Pakistan and say that this issue is relevant to most of the Muslim world. My first serious engagement with Muslim conspiracy theories came when I was writing my dissertation at university. Against advice from my lecturers to stick to sensible topics like water rights in the Bekka Valley, I took the tabloid route and decided to compare public opinion in Egypt and Britain over the death of Princess Diana and Dodi al Fayed. In that year or so before Sept 11, I learned that conspiracy theories in the Muslim world are built on inaccurate assumptions about the West based on perceptions of how things work at home, resentment towards perceived unfair treatment in a one sided relationship, resentment that unfair practices are not even acknowledged by the stronger party, a desire to "prove" any sort of superiority over the stronger party and many others that have now faded from my memory.

But what I took away from the exercise was the realisation that all the wild theories might sound idiotic but are built on real perceptions. The aftermatch of 9/11 made it clear that those theories create a reality that has very real effects. In the Muslim world over the past few decades, wealth disparities have grown ever wider. One of the knock-on effects of this is that the opportunities and exposure enjoyed by the haves and have nots is widely divergent. Winning over the rulers/elites no longer means gaining over-all compliance. As the have nots are in the vast majority, they set the tone of the discussion. (A good, easy-to-read overview of this process can be found in Whatever Happened to the Egyptians by economist Galal Amin) What policy makers in the West require is a willingness to recognise that public opinion in Muslim countries is important - possibly more important than the compliance of unpopular and unstable regimes - the will to learn what affects this opinion and an understanding that policy needs to take this opinion into account.

But I'm not saying that "policy should be subservient to the mad Jihadi desires of loons in turbans". Governments take all sort of considerations into account when formulating policy. Perhaps a rebalancing is in order between what is needed to bring foreign elites on board and what is needed to placate their populations. 

The situation that Sabrina describes is not inevitable and unchangeable. Over the past few months, I spent a fair amount of time in Islamabad's fashionable drawing rooms, less fashionable roadside stops and quite a few electricity-less villages, and I don't remember speaking to one person who when pressed wouldn't admit that Pakistani society had self inflicted problems that went beyond Western meddling. But there was a frustration that the US seems to want to bully Pakistan and the country's leaders are unable to stand up for its interests.

As a reporter in the Middle East, I found that bounding up to people, announcing myself as a Reuters correspondent with notebook and pen in hand and asking them pointed questions (even in their own language) in a dispasionate manner made me look like the embodiment in that moment of the West. This meant that those I was talking to felt the need to explain their "people". Most of the time, people weren't telling me what they thought, rather what they thought I should know. Having left reporting, I still find myself talking to people about their views and their lives. But as a curious and interested stranger, what I am told is often much more candid, nuanced and revealing, and fuels my optimistic belief that views aren't written in stone.

There is also a good video package to go with this article. Check it out below:

 

Nine days is a long time in Pakistan these days.

Since Londonstani went off on his (mostly) road trip around Pakistan a lot has happened. Not much of it has been good.

Several incidents occured on the day Londonstani climbed into a car and drove several hours eastwards. On October 24, the Pakistani army said it had captured Kotkai, the home village of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud. However, considering Mehsud was not based there and the area contained no real Taliban assets, structures or stores, Kotkai's capture seems more of a morale boost than a key achievement. 

The same day, in Bajaur north of Waziristan, a drone missed its target - apparently senior Taliban commander Faqir Mohammed - instead killing 22 others. Londonstani had thought that the less than surgical drone strikes might dampen what has become a widespread desire to see the army deal with the Taliban threat, but that was not the case. Also on the 24th, the Pakistani military lost a helicopter in the rough area of the drone attack. Although, a technical fault was the stated reason for the incident which killed three soldiers, there were reports that Taliban fire had brought it down.

A car suicide bomb exploding at a police checkpoint on a motorway seemed a relatively minor incident by Pakistan's standards as only one person died. But depending on your point of view it was either a worrying sign that militants were dispatching car bombs all over Pakistan or a signal that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies were proving capable of picking up information on such hard-to-spot threats and communicating them in time to officers on the ground. Of course, for the officer who died after stopping the car, causing the driver to detonate, it was just bad.

On October 27, a second high ranking military officer became the target of an assassination attempt in Islamabad. Brig Waqar Ahmed Malik survived when a gunman fired at his car. Brig Moinuddin Ahmed was killed along with a soldier in a similar attack on October 22.

October 28 saw what Reuters called Pakistan's bloodiest militant attack in two years. A huge car bomb ripped through Meena bazar in Peshawar. The dead are still being pulled from the rubble, but the most recent death toll is around 120.

Of a truly gruesome attack, this is the harrowing image that will stick with Londonstani for a long time:

"A fire-fighter said that many children and women trapped in the debris of several buildings were crying for help, but rescue workers could not reach them because of huge flames."

The Taliban and al-Qaeda have since denied involvement in the attack. One local newsreport in Urdu quoted a Taliban spokesman saying that Western private security firms were probably behind the blast. However, Pakistani reports carried comments from local shopkeepers saying that they had received threats from militants who didn't approve of the market's popularity with women. It's not beyond the realms of probability that at least one bunch of people amongst the diffuse groups that are referred to as the Pakistani Taliban thought the attack would be a great idea. And when it actually happened, more senior strategists quickly realised its potential to alienate public opinion in a big way.

Of course, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was in Pakistan over the same period. A day after the attack, she faced a group of students who articulated the deep suspicion most of Pakistan now feels towards the United States.

“What guarantee can the Americans give Pakistanis that we can now trust you ... and that you guys are not going to be betraying us like you did in the past,” one student asked at a “townhall-style” meeting Mrs Clinton held at the Government College University in Lahore.

The student was being overly polite. The reality is that if you polled 10,000 Pakistanis on the question; "Do you feel the United States is secretly funding the Taliban to destablise the country?" the answer would be something like 96 percent "yes".

So not something that's gonna get fixed by the visit of one US official whose charm-ammunition is the line; "I had Pakistani friends at college".

Part of the reason for Londonstani's tour was to find out what the much-mentioned "real" Pakistanis think. In Londonstani's mind this phrase is used when people mean "poor, probably illiterate and unexposed to Western media, outlooks or views". There is a nagging feeling then that wealthy, literate (at least in English) and Western educated/travelled Pakistanis are then "unreal", however, that is another discussion.

What follows is a summary of many conversations had in Punjab, Pakistani Kashmir, NWFP and Sindh:

In very stark terms; the army has lost its traditional authority as the only neutral and relatively competent public institution. Previously, the army stepped in to separate warring tribes in FATA. Now the tribes gang up to take on the army. It's previous aura has gone.

The government is full of incompetent crooks, installed by the Americans, who are like rabbits in headlights when it comes to the country's many economic and political problems (not even counting security). While the country slides off a cliff, the ruling party guys line their pockets and wait for the last plane to Dubai/London. The government is not providing educational services, electricity, water, jobs or anything else. At the same time, for the average man or woman any interaction with the government is likely to be short and brutal or long and grindingly painful. This is true whether to you getting paperwork done or are stopped for a driving offence.

Outside the main cities, the army/police is not in control. Even in the towns where they have garrisons, they are boxed in. There's a definite sense that "ungoverned spaces" are expanding and government control is shrinking. On certain main roads in Punjab (let alone NWFP or Sindh) locals advise against driving at night in case of banditry. 

In terms of perception of religious observance and its role in public life, there seems to be a shift towards the more severe and less tolerant. This doesn't necessarily translate always into practice, but more a shared understanding that more severe and more rigid must equal more righteous, and that those who are very severe (or even just look it) must be deferred to.

Now, where this gets scary is when you hear a conversation like:

Person 1: "The Taliban couldn't have blown up the market in Peshawar because a Muslim wouldn't do that."

Person 2: "No, the Americans did it. But you know, the market that got blown up catered for women. And you know it's haram for women to go out of the house."

Person 1: "oh.....yeah"

 

To come: Pakistan Dispatch: Conversations with "real" Pakistanis.

In the meantime, Londonstani is gonna figure out how to get more photos on the site.

Kerry Lugar is the talk of Islamabad. And as tempted as Londonstani was at first to assume everyone was referring to a new pop star rival to Britney it turns out Kerry Lugar is actually a piece of US legisation that triples non-military aid to Pakistan.

Londonstani can only justify his shocking lack of knowledge of the wierd way in which Americans name their legislative acts by pointing out that reporting on this bill has been fairly scarce. But its low profile in the Western media is inversely proportional to the amount of air and conversation time the bill is receiving in Islamabad.

Reuters describes the bill as; "legislation (that) authorizes $1.5 billion a year for the next five years as part of a bid to build a new relationship with Pakistan that no longer focuses largely on military ties, but also on Pakistan's social and economic development."

An op-ed in the Boston Globe wonders why Senator John Kerry described his bill as a landmark achievement "when we have no idea where aid to Pakistan goes."

This is a totally sensible line of questioning when you consider how US aid to Pakistan during the Afghan war was diverted and used to build nuclear weapons or lined the pockets of corrupt officials and politicians.

But, from a Pakistani perspective, this is all missing the point. And Londonstani couldn't help but feel that the cross currents of the debate in Pakistan and the US is highly illustrative of the communication problem between the two countries.

At first glance, Pakistan is getting a bunch of cash from the Americans who  want to know that its not going to end up in military programmes, training for Bombay style attacks while securing assurances that the nuclear supermarket the Pakistanis were running until very recently will be put to an end. Any right thinking Pakistani would want foreign aid to actually help alleviate poverty and not fund the generals, right? Everyone should be happy. In fact, your average Pakistani should be ecstatic, right?

Well not exactly.. not even close. Government officials have been on TV and radio day and night trying to convince the public that the aid is a good idea. Parliament is bogged down with MPs asking pointed questions and demanding answers about the strings attached to the cash. What's their problem? Well, in a word, dignity.

A Pakistani friend who works with foreign missions and international bodies sums it up; "People want to know that the government hasn't sold the interests of the nation to an outside power.

It's that potential for differences of interpretation that's worrying my friend. For example, Reuters says "the bill also stipulates that U.S. military aid will cease if Pakistan does not help fight "terrorists," including Taliban insurgents and al Qaeda followers taking sanctuary along its borders with Afghanistan."

Do Pakistanis trust America to stipulate who is Taliban and who isn't? Would the Americans wave the bill infront of Pakistani officials and tell them to kill people protesting a drone strike? A lot of Pakistanis think so.

According to figures dug up by AP only $500 million of $6.6 billion in U.S. aid between 2002 and 2008 for fighting insurgents has actually been used for what it was intended. So aren't Pakistanis worried that whatever money is around will end up in politicians' pockets anyway? Well, yes, said my friend, but the bigger worry is that it looks like we are for sale. 

Ever tried to tell a black community worker in Brixton that her friends and relatives needed to sort out the problem of errant fathers? No? Londonstani wouldn't be that stupid either, but has seen a local official try. After the meeting fell apart amid near violence, the community worker said, "sort out the discrimination, before you tell us how to live our lives." And that's what the Pakistani view of Kerry-Lugar reminded Londonstani of. "We have problems, but we won't be talked down to by the people responsible for our misery."

Pakistan's information minister, Qamar Zaman Kaira, on national TV earlier today concentrated on the theme of Pakistan's national honour.

"Pakistan is not a country that needs saving from outside.. We are not begging. No, we have been the world's battlefield. We were conceived as a social security state, but we became a security state... This was not of our choosing. We were hostage to fortune. Since we have been founded we have been key in the world's major conflicts. From the time of the U2s flying from our territory to the present fight against al Qaeda."

He avoided the other important theme - corruption - which Londonstani can't help but feel would have got a rather more cynical reception.

A bill with a girl's name that aims to improve the lives of Pakistan's people is attacked in Washington as huggy feely and unrelated to military aims. But the real tragedy is in Pakistan where it is dismissed as another Western plot to dismember the nation.

This is the real cost of the communication problem between U.S. officialdom and media on one hand and the people

of Pakistan on the other. Not the government, but the public. Without a basic level of trust amongst Pakistanis in U.S. aims, the likelihood is that the money will end up fueling the kind of resentment it was meant to address. After five years, it might well have been more useful to have just chucked the cash in the sea.

Right, so how to communicate with the people? Any ideas?

Here's an idea of what communication problems lead to on the mean streets of Islamabad.

We all know that Pakistan is key to Afghanistan. And it's clear that Pakistan is in trouble. How comes, everyone wonders, is that the people that rule Pakistan don't get it?

This article in the Daily, a Pakistani national newspaper, gives you a very good idea of how the movers and shakers see Pakistan's present predicament.

The basic ideas are that:
1. All of Pakistan's internal problems come from Indian activities run out of Afghanistan.
2. Pakistan's present "democratic" rulers are useless and owe their positions to America.
3. The real story is that the U.S. has failed in Afghanistan
4. London and Washington have a hidden agenda in cosying up to India.
5. The US wants to invade and dismember Pakistan

In a normal Middle Eastern military dictatorship (let's say Egypt), newspaper columnists compete to outdo each other in parroting the ruler's view in the most sycophantic manner. Pakistan is a little different and a lot less straight forward.

Pakistani's have a long history of saying what they think in the press. And more often than not, the things said in the press reflect the views of upper middle class Pakistanis, who the government needs to keep onside.

In Londonstani's view, Washington and London will never get the Pakistani government to fully realise and act on the dangers the neo-Taliban insurgency poses until it gets this demographic on side, which considering the deep memory of colonial history and the Afghan-Soviet war (and its aftermath) will not be easy.

But this is vital. Ultimately, at present, the opinion that matters in Pakistan does not see the Taliban as a threat to the state in its own right. Instead it blames the U.S. presence in Afghanistan for inflaming the passions of a "bunch of villagers" that the movers and grovers casually dismiss.

Now, this is where public diplomacy as a role to play. London and Washington need, in Londonstani's opinion, to convince Pakistani public opinion that they are on the same page, that they all share a common threat and that the Western powers aren't about to use and abandon Pakistan.

What won't work is encouraging another military guy to take over and then convince him, hoping that he takes the nation with him. Public opinion (of the right sort of public) matters in Pakistan, and there's no getting around that.

Not to overload everyone with NYT copy, but it's very worth reading this op-ed by Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswany outlining the wry but hopeful eying of President Obama by people in the Muslim world.

Now, I have a good idea what might happen here; Aswany's mention of Israel and its action in Gaza will probably kick off comment and counter comment about how Israel is, or is not, perfectly within its rights to kill 1,300 Palestinians and/or how Middle East elites fabricate popular anger over the Israel/Palestine issue to mask their own failings.

There is a tendency sometimes, Londonstani has noticed, for American foreign policy aficionados to tune out when an Arab mentions Israel. In Londonstani's opinion you can argue the rights, wrongs and origins of the conflict til you are blue in the face, but it's not productive to ignore that it is viewed by the vast majority of people in this part of the world as, what Aswany calls a; "simple, essential truth: the right of people in an occupied territory to resist military occupation."

However, the real core of what Aswany is talking about here is justice and fairness - domestically and internationally.

Aswany is a great observer and interpreter of popular opinion in a part of the world where there is a huge vacuum-packed gap between your average person and the gilded elites who are called upon to explain their people's views to the rest of the world.