(Via AM) Nicholas Schmidle has an interesting piece in Slate on how to “save” Pakistan. In part, it’s interesting because he notes the ethnic component to the Pakistan that I noticed earlier. (In fact, and this is a side note, I am becoming increasingly convinced that the ethnic divide between Pashtuns and Punjabis [and to a lesser extent Sindhis] will prove the TTP’s undoing.) But what is with this?
This is the only country in the Islamic world where tens of thousands protest in the streets for the rule of law. Sure, there’s some support for the Taliban and their ilk, but as last year’s election, in which the Islamist parties were drubbed, showed, the Islamists don’t enjoy as much grass-roots support as their American-flag-burning rallies would suggest. (Unfortunately, the civilian government that took power last spring has squandered much of its goodwill and is, like Pervez Musharraf’s government before it, increasingly seen as toadying to the Americans.) So what can Washington do to save Pakistan?
He doesn’t seem to notice that he is answering his own question, only unintentionally. Why not try persuasion? Buried in that paragraph is the realization that the current government has undermined itself, much like with Musharraf in the early 2000s, by cooperating too much with the U.S. Only, when the Pakistani government behaves independently and criticizes U.S. activity it doesn’t like, American officials take to the TV and newspapers to denounce their new uncooperative supposed ally.
My twist on Schmidle’s plan is this: try the slightest ounce of humility. The biggest deficit the U.S. faces in Pakistan is that, like Afghanistan, Iraq, and everywhere else, the people in charge of its public presence seem to assume that everyone likes them and thinks they have their best interests at heart. The one thing missing from Schmidle’s plan, which is nice except for the advocacy of more combat for the troops in Eastern Afghanistan, is the idea of actually trying to make an honest case for why the U.S. and the civilian government is better for Pakistan’s people than anyone else. Right now, simply operating and assuming American goodness will outweigh Islamist perfidy hasn’t worked well; when formulating grand ideas of partition and counterinsurgency, American policy makers responsible for Pakistan should also include a way to persuasively argue for why American-centricity and presence is preferable to the alternative.
Related: See Chapati Mystery’s hilarious take-down of the petty alarmism about Pakistan I try to highlight here (and BTW Rebirth of Mothra Pt. III is one of the greatest movies evar to grace the SciFi channel at night).
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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