Big Think

Question:  Could al-Qaeda seize power in Pakistan?

Paul Cruickshank: Well in a way it doesn’t matter if . . .  Clearly you know . . .  Clearly Al Qaeda is not gonna respect any election because they . . . they view elections as un-Islamic.  They . . .  They are absolutely against democracy themselves.  But that doesn’t really matter, because what’s important here is how many people they can recruit.  And on the fringes I think they’re gonna have . . .  They’re gonna find it more difficult to recruit people if there is a democratic government in place which is seen to have the support of the Pakistani people, which is able to try and root out extremism in the country.  Rooting out extremism in Pakistan . . .  Rooting out extremism in Pakistan is a generational challenge.  It’s gonna be very, very difficult moving forward to eradicate Islamic radicalism from the tribal areas of Pakistan.  There’s gonna have to be . . .  There’s gonna have to be a very carefully calibrated counter-insurgency strategy put in place in the tribal areas.  The Pakistani military in 2003 and 2004 went in all guns blazing.  That was very kind of counterproductive.  The Punjabi dominated Pakistani military was seen as basically invading a Pashtun dominated area of the country; that it lost a lot of hearts and minds in the country, and won a lot of hearts and minds for Al Qaeda and the Taliban there.  So clearly a military approach needs to be done in a very sensitive way, but clearly that’s gonna be part of a solution.  The idea that the United States can go into this territory is probably . . .  The United States probably would be very misguided to go into this territory because of the sort of backlash that you would get against America all through the region by invading Muslim territory.  It’s really ideally a job for the Pakistani military to do; but it’s gonna be a very, very difficult operation to do.  It’s gonna be very difficult to have an …-type model where you basically bribe or persuade tribals to come to your side.  Because the Taliban, unlike Al Qaeda in Iraq which has a foreign leadership, is also Pashtun.  So …. the Taliban commander who was purportedly responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, is himself from one of the largest tribes in South ….  So it’s very difficult to separate the tribals from the terrorists if the tribals are the terrorists.  So it’s very difficult moving forward, and that’s why what will also be essential is to pour money into the region – development aid.  And this is a real job for the international community.  There’s a real argument for the veritable marshal-type program where you pour billions of dollars into the area.  But you have to do so very carefully because you obviously don’t want to send money to terrorists.  There are no easy answers in Pakistan.  But the Musharraf, “trust me I’ll deal with it” approach is really one which has not borne many fruits.  The President of Pakistan certainly was responsible for capturing key Al Qaeda operatives in 2002, even in 2003.  But since then we’ve seen very, very little from the Pakistani military in terms of sorting out this problem in the tribal areas.  Their attention is still being focused much too much on India and the standoff there.  Much of the $10 billion which has gone from the United States to Pakistan has been spent on weapons systems to combat India rather than on winning over the tribal population in the western part of Pakistan; and in conducting operations which are gonna go after the worst of the worst in that part of the world.  I think it’s gonna be very important for the Pakistani military to be very careful in the targets they go after.  And certainly by going after foreign targets, the Arabs, and the central Asian fighters, which are present in that part of the world, might be a way to start to sort of kick off operations.  But clearly the United States is gonna have to persuade Pakistan to get much, much more serious about combating terrorism in that part of the country.  The Musharraf government says time and time again, “We’re gonna get serious.  We’re gonna crack down.”  But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  And unfortunately so far the eating has not . . .  Well anyway let’s not get carried away on metaphors.

 Recorded on: Jan 14 2008