A Fragile Friendship

Many Pakistani men joined the Army to defend their homeland from India. They are ready and willing to fight and die, if necessary. The problem is, for many of these men, they are fighting the wrong enemy. Young officers, ranging in rank from captain to colonel, are not convinced they should be risking their lives on Pakistan's new, western front to hunt down Taliban and Qaeda remnants. These missions in support of the U.S.-led war on terror require patrolling rugged areas, where troops could face threats from local tribes as much as from Qaeda holdouts. "America forced these guys in here," grouses one colonel, "and now we are being asked to clean up their mess."

Late last month a Pakistani Army major, captain and eight infantrymen, operating on U.S.-supplied intelligence, were killed in a Qaeda ambush near the Afghan border. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf continues to promise the risks are worth the rewards. But the rank and file are not so sure. Now, in mess halls and officer barracks throughout the country, soldiers are asking, "What's in it for us?" Old grudges and new concerns may be giving rise to an anti-American feeling within the Pakistani officer corps, blunting the effectiveness of the U.S. war on terror. "The Americans always want our support, but then they don't reciprocate on Kashmir or with long-term military or economic aid," says one Army major. "We've been burned before."

Indeed they have. In the 1980s, when Pakistan was a key American ally against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, bright young captains and colonels could study at West Point. Islamabad received impressive packages of U.S. military hardware from its Washington wish list, including F-16 fighters, M-48 tanks and vintage American warships. American training opened officers' minds, while arms transfers put the best weapons in their hands. But Pakistan's headlong pursuit of its nuclear-weapons program ended the courtship. In 1990, soon after the Soviets left Afghanistan, the U.S. Congress passed the Pressler amendment, prohibiting Pakistan from receiving any U.S. military training, arms or even spare parts because of its surreptitious nuclear ambitions. Almost overnight, Pakistan and its proud military went from being a favored American ally to a pariah. The American about-face stung Pakistan's corps of young officers. "Many younger officers became anti-American, not for ideological reasons but because they thought Pakistan was being unfairly discriminated against," says Rifaat Hussain, a Pakistani defense analyst who is now a visiting scholar at Stanford University. "The sanctions hurt the younger officers the most, resulting in feelings of anger, resentment and betrayal against the U.S."

America's abandonment of Pakistan changed the military's mind-set, and left a void to be filled. "To make up for the lack of new technology, senior officers placed a greater emphasis on ideological motivation and orientation," says retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood. The lieutenants, captains and majors who were deprived of U.S. training in the 1990s are described today as being "more nationalistic, xenophobic, conservative" than their predecessors, according to retired Pakistani generals. "Lacking contact with the West, the officers' world view began to change," says Masood. "Their vision became more narrow and parochial and they became isolated and alienated from the West." So when America dropped Pakistan cold in 1990, officers were more prone to listen to the shrill anti-American rhetoric coming from the religious right and the country's Urdu-language press. Musharraf's call to aid America's antiterror war last year only increased the volume and fervor of anti-Americanism being delivered from pulpits and in the papers. "This anti-American line influences and shapes younger Army officers as well as the society as a whole," says Husain Haqqani, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "That does not mean that the officers are on the same wavelength as the religious groups, but many agree with the basic anti-American and anti-Indian tenets of the Islamists."

Musharraf has made a gallant effort to sell the concept that cooperation with America is in Pakistan's national interest. He says that Pakistan has no alternative but to stop the perils of terrorism at home, and that the Americans can be crucial allies in that fight. He also tells his officers that the United States has promised to assist him in bringing India to the negotiating table over Kashmir, and that significant military aid will be forthcoming from Washington. So far most officers seem to be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But officers differ in their definitions of a terrorist. Some, especially those who served a tour of duty in the military's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence branch and who helped train many of the militants for the Kashmir "jihad," tend to sympathize with their former charges. And some younger officers worry that a blanket crackdown on militants comes dangerously close to the suppression of Islam.

Pakistani officers, young and old, see themselves as leaders of a "pro-people force," says Rifaat Hussain. Consequently, the Pakistani Army is unlikely to launch assaults on right-wing religious parties as its counterparts in Algeria and Egypt have done, say retired officers. "The Army is very reluctant to be put into a situation in which they are in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with a popular demonstration, whether the protesters are Punjabi or tribesmen," adds Hussain.