HOME :: PUBLICATIONS :: Is it Time to Break With Pakistan?, by PETER BROOKES

Is it Time to Break With Pakistan?

by PETER BROOKES May 6, 2011
 
Amid the euphoria of Osama bin Laden's well-deserved demise is the gut feeling Pakistan isn't shooting straight with us in the War on Terror almost 10 years after 9/11.
 
Where -- if at all -- does Washington go from here with Islamabad?
 
It's hard to stomach that the world's most renowned killer was comfortably chilling for five or more years in a pricey mansion in an army town less than 50 miles from the country's capital.
Islamabad's response to the news hasn't helped. Struggling to find a voice, Pakistan's leaders wrapped denials, concerns, congratulations and warnings into their convoluted message.
 
Yes, Pakistan has helped nail al Qaeda bigs such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- but the Osama-fiasco is only the latest in a series of problems we've had with Islamabad.
 
Start with the fact that, even as the Talibanstarts its spring offensive against our brave troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban and al Qaeda still find safe haven in Pakistan. Top Taliban commanders even spend their winters grabbing R&R in the Pakistani city of Quetta.
 
While we've done a great job knocking out midlevel Taliban commanders in Afghanistan, nabbing senior leaders while they recharge in Pakistan would be a real body blow to the terror outfit.
 
Plus, it's no secret that most of the Taliban's supplies come from inside Pakistan, including our troops' No. 1 nemesis: IEDs.
 
Then there's Pakistan's intelligence organization, the ISI, and its continuing contact with a whole raft of bad actors in the neighborhood.
 
This includes the Taliban, al Qaeda-associated groups (e.g., the Haqqani network) and other terror groups (e.g., Lashkar-e-Taiba) that have spilled plenty of blood in Afghanistan, India -- and even Pakistan itself.
 
It's also widely believed that Ayman al Zawahiri -- bin Laden's No. 2, and perhaps al Qaeda's next leader -- is hanging out in Pakistan.
 
On the political front, Islamabad reportedly called on Kabul recently to dump the United States as an ally and sign on with Pakistan -- and China, which could provide plenty of aid.
All this, when the United States has been generous with Pakistan, having doled out some $20 billion in military and economic assistance over the last decade.
 
So, is it time for us to cast off Pakistan as a "partner"? It's more tempting than ever -- but probably shortsighted. We have too much at stake in fighting terror over there; the risks of jettisoning our relationship with Pakistan only begin with the problems it would trigger in Afghanistan. (For starters, our Afghan supplies, such as fuel, come through Pakistan.)
But luckily, with the Osama matter in the rear-view mirror and damning info on the ISI quite possibly in our hands, we have some leverage to steer ties.
 
First, we must get tougher with Islamabad. This can be done privately, but we should let Pakistan's leaders know they're not pulling their weight -- and it's time to man up on bringing down the extremists.
 
While Pakistan insists it suffered its own massive intelligence failure over Osama (the government often dubbed the notion he was in Pakistan a Western conspiracy theory), we should call on Islamabad to come clean.
 
Second, Congressshould scrub our aid package. Neither we nor Pakistan's largely poor 190 million people are getting our money's worth.
 
US aid is already conditioned on the Pakistanis' cooperation on counterterrorism. While Team Obama signed off that they were meeting benchmarks, the requirements need review -- and immediate strengthening.
 
Managing future Pakistani ties isn't going to be easy, but the status quo is unacceptable. We shouldn't have had to unilaterally bring bin Laden to justice.
 
But with Pakistan, it's best to bear in mind this bit of wisdom from Winston Churchill: "There is at least one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is to fight without them."
 
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Peter Brookes is Senior Fellow, National Security Affairs and Chung Ju-Yung Fellow for Policy Studies in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
 

Peter Brookes is a Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation and is a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He writes a weekly column for the New York Post and frequently appears on FOX, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR and BBC. He is the author of: "A Devil’s Triangle: Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction and Rogue States." Mr. Brookes served in the U.S. Navy and is now a Commander in the naval reserves. He has over 1300 flight hours aboard Navy EP-3 aircraft. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy; the Defense Language Institute; the Naval War College; the Johns Hopkins University; and is pursuing a Doctorate at Georgetown University.

Peter Brookes is a Heritage Foundation senior fellow and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense. 
peterbrookes@heritage.org

 
Twitter: @Brookes_Peter



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