Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Security Challenges Involving Pakistan and Policy Implications for the Department of Defense

Statement

Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - Security Challenges Involving Pakistan and Policy Implications for the Department of Defense

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REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I agree with your analysis wholeheartedly in the box that we're in and perhaps how we got there. I wonder if you could address sort of what the counter argument and the reason, you know, our administration has pursued this path is that -- the fear that well if it's not Musharraf then the extremists take over, and we don't have -- have control. We can't risk moving away from him because there is no alternative.

It seems to me that we would be -- where we would have been better served, and we'd even be better served now to push for democracy. Because we may have Musharraf but we're losing the population. And ultimately if you lose the Pakistani population, their support for the U.S., even their -- even their support for the notion that the extremists in their midst like al-Qaeda are a profound threat to them, when they see us as the cause of that, we're really undermining our policy.

So two questions: what is the specific way back from that? How do we get the population of Pakistan to -- and I don't even think we should focus on getting them necessarily to be more sympathetic to the U.S. I think we need to get them to the point where they see al- Qaeda, the Taliban, and that group of extremists as a threat to them that they need to confront. That would be my goal.

What is the way back to that? And what is the risk along the way of those people gaining more electoral power if we try to move off Musharraf? How do we get the former without falling into the latter?

MS. SCHAFFER: Well, I think you're talking fundamentally about the message that Pakistani leaders who are sort of seeking popular election will be delivering or won't be delivering as the case may be.

Where the U.S. I think missed a number of opportunities was that our support for the democratic process in Pakistan has been at best anemic. And if we'd been having this conversation a few years ago there were lots of alternatives, none of them perfect, but several of them, people that we had in fact worked with in the past, so it's not as if it was just Musharraf and the crazies.

You now have the possibility of a government emerging from the next elections that will include Musharraf's people and Benazir Bhutto's people, all of them having lost something in credibility and political popularity in the process of getting there. They have an opportunity to recast the struggle against the extremists as Pakistan's struggle. If they don't do that, I would submit to you they are in trouble because there has been violence in Pakistan in the past three months on a scale that I can't remember it.

REP. SMITH: Can I ask -- can I ask about that, focus in on that point. And as you mentioned earlier, a lot of that, the Pakistani people have said is because of Musharraf's polices, his alliance with the U.S., what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There's got to be a piece of it that is at least, gosh these extremists are a threat to us. So I would imagine there is some balance to the public opinion. But can you help me out with your greater knowledge of how the Pakistani people look at that?

MS. SCHAFFER: I can't help you out at the level of the man in the street or the man in the wheat fields because there's an awful lot of them. It's a country of 160 million people. But if you're talking about the opinion of elite educated people, there is widespread recognition that extremists, particularly those that are prepared to use violence, pose a real threat to the integrity of the state. I -- Lisa and I were at a meeting last weekend with a number of distinguished Pakistani representatives who made the most impassioned plea to that effect that I can remember hearing in a long time.

So it's really a question of how you articulate and how you envision the battle for self preservation that I think the Pakistani state has to undertake. And this is something that is taking place not just in the frontier areas, but also in what Pakistanis call the settled areas. The Red Mosque after all is in downtown Islamabad, which is a sleepy suburban feeling capitol.

REP. SMITH: I'm about out of time. I want to ask one final question. Isn't there a certain wisdom at this point in stepping back a little bit on our part as the U.S. and saying, we believe in democracy enough to accept its outcome in Pakistan, and we don't feel the need to manipulate it? Or is the risk in doing that greater than the reward?

MS. SCHAFFER: Sir, if I -- the risk in everything, I would agree with that statement?

REP. SMITH: Okay.

MR. WEINBAUM: One of the problems that we have now is that our credibility has fallen so low that virtually anything we do is misinterpreted. When we for example just a few weeks ago Secretary Rice initiated a phone call, apparently 2:00 in the morning, which I don't think we decided that. But there was a great degree of disagreement within the elite itself, within the establishment itself, whether going to emergency rule was really in the best interests of the country or the military for that matter.

Secretary Rice I think changed the balance here or the feeling and he did not go ahead -- what happened in Pakistan is that rather than getting the credit for salvaging democracy in this case, we got the blame for interfering in their politics. So that this is a situation that we face here that I agree with you, it's perhaps necessary to step back.

Let me just add one thing, that there is a distinction in the public in Pakistan between al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Al-Qaeda are viewed as foreigners. Here I think the large majority in Pakistan are willing to see them as a source of terrorism and recognize that.

But we have to realize that a large part of the country, particularly the Pashtun area of the country, does not see the Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, as the enemy. They view them as one of the same kind of people -- they share many cultural values together. They also believe that what they're doing in Afghanistan is supporting the Pashtun people in Afghanistan.

So there's a great deal of difference there. And it's important, because it limits what the Pakistan government can actually do in dealing with the Afghan Taliban. Again, making another distinction, the Pakistani Taliban, their agenda is the kind of agenda we've been (fearing for ?), and that is to spread this Talibanization inside Pakistan.

REP. SMITH: Thank you very much.

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