Larry P. Goodson: Why Pakistan Will Never Break with its Islamist Allies

Larry P. Goodson is a Professor of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Army War College and author of the forthcoming book, Pakistan: Understanding the Dark Side of the Moon, to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2012. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Pakistan’s long conflict with India shapes its national security worldview. Far smaller and weaker than its neighbor, Pakistan compensates with far higher military spending and a larger Army than it can afford, creating a national security state. India is never far from the minds of Pakistan’s national leaders, but the differential in size is such that Pakistan has had to develop a strategic triad of national security tools in order to counter it.

First, Pakistan has a large and tactically proficient conventional Army, but of the four wars it has fought with India, it happens to have lost all of them. Second, it has an arsenal of perhaps 100 nuclear weapons, but these too are hardly useful because India is an immediate neighbor and many of its key military installations and formations are so close to the border that it would not be able to hit the Indian army without hitting itself. The shortcomings of these first two aforementioned tools have led Pakistan to rely heavily on a third one, of which the United States generally disapproves: an arsenal of asymmetric actors, variously known as irregulars, guerrillas, and/or terrorists. In the last decade, the United States has persuaded Pakistan to turn on some of these groups, but Pakistan’s perceived security needs have ensured that it still tolerates or actively cultivates the existence of others. And while the successful U.S. operation against bin Laden might provide Pakistan with the cover it needs to break decisively with al Qaeda, it will also likely lead the country to rely on its other militant groups even more.

Unlike its unsuccessful army or its unusable nuclear weapons, Pakistan’s irregulars have been used early, often, and successfully throughout the country’s history. Since creating an Islamic homeland for South Asia’s Muslims was the founding idea of Pakistan, some variant of Islamic ideology has frequently been the motivational principle for these irregulars. Initially, the Islamic ideology centered on the split between India and Pakistan, especially in the Kashmir region, but over time it has taken on additional dimensions. The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 deepened the sectarian divide within Pakistan and led to the creation of both Sunni and Shia militant groups within Pakistani society. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, also in 1979, combined with Pakistan’s simultaneous internal process of Islamization to beget the Afghan mujahideen and, eventually, the Taliban, which Pakistan supported as an instrument of its foreign policy right up to (and even a little beyond) September 11. 

Operation Enduring Freedom, which began with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, complicated issues for Pakistan. After years of developing, supporting, and using Islamist irregulars as a foreign policy tool, Pakistan had to choose whether to abandon those irregulars and side with the United States, which intended to attack the Islamists, or stay with the Islamists and be attacked by the United States. The second choice was unthinkable, given the worldwide condemnation of al Qaeda in the wake of the September 11 attacks, but giving up its most effective national security tool was also deeply unappealing. As a result, Pakistan made the obvious choice to modulate its efforts against Islamist irregulars, going after some while cultivating others, based on a firmly established and highly justified belief that Americans do not really understand Pakistan and will not stay in the region for the long haul anyway....