US has no coherent policy on Pakistan: Stephen Cohen

In a scathing critique of 'the incoherence of the US government' and the 'dysfunctional organisation', Stephen P Cohen, considered the doyen of South Asia experts in Washington, said the continuing missteps were a no-brainer.

Cohen, director, South Asia Program, The Brookings Institution, said, "I have a friend of mine who was in the (United States) Embassy in Islamabad, and he said when some issue came up, they received six different cables with six different kinds of advice from Washington."

"Everybody wanted to get in the act, whether it's the military commands, Department of Defense, the State Department, (former and late US Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard) Holbrooke group," he said, and added, "The White House itself is fractionated -- let along Congress."

Thus, Cohen argued the crux of the problem when it comes to dealing with South Asia, is that "we're disorganised -- we don't know how to, we don't have a…where the decisions are made."

He said he belied that "Wwe have a Monday-Wednesday-Friday foreign policy," toward the region. "Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, State is doing it, Tuesday and Thursday, Defense is doing it, and on weekends, the White House may be doing it. And the Agency (apparently referring to the intelligence officials based in the embassies) fields it when nobody's answering the phone."

Cohen said "That's a problem we have to face, and you can't be a major power, you can't act like a major power, if you have these multiple foreign policies."

While acknowledging that "at times it may be useful to fool your enemy," he argued that "we are also fooling ourselves as to what we are doing."

Cohen implied that Pakistan may be even further than on the 'brink,' and said there was a proliferation of literature "out there about the future of Pakistan, what's happening, and I divide them into several categories."

But he took a swipe at the likes of journalist and erstwhile Pakistani Ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi's contention that "Pakistan will muddle through," noting that "Maleeha's book is muddling through-plus."

"Maleeha argues that if 'Pakistan does this,' 'If Pakistan does that,' 'If Pakistan does this…' a whole series of 'ifs,' Pakistan would muddle through.

But Cohen asserted that "It's hard to do an analysis if you assume a lot of things ahead of time; you end up with a rosy future."

He said, "Others have argued that the negative factor, Pakistan's Islamic tendencies, will destroy everything, and this muddling-through strategy will fail."

Cohen, who recently edited a book titled, 'The Future of Pakistan,' with essays by leading South Asia scholars and policy wonks, acknowledged, "I am not quite sure what it is myself. Our book came out sort of in between that."

But he predicted that there are two facts that could change everything, "and will affect the army as well as Pakistan's relations with other countries. The two bad deeds were nuclear proliferation, and 9/11, the rise of Islamicm -- militant Islamic groups."

Elaborating, Cohen said, "The nuclear proliferation made it impossible to have a regular war in South Asia. So the Pakistanis immediately went underground, and I was told that in 1981 by an Air Force general, a first officer, 'Now that we're going to get the bomb --' 1981, this is 10 years, 15 years before they actually had it -- we can hurt the Indians underground. We can affect Kashmir."

However, he said, "It turns out that the Indians resisted that underground strategy of using terrorists as an instrument of state policy. It does not work. It's not a successful strategy."

"In a sense, the Pakistan army is learning how to be an army without a capacity for conventional war. It's going underground, supporting those groups. And that's had a blowback in Pakistan," he said.

He argued that this was "one of the big catastrophe's that the army has to grapple with --are these groups that they've funded over the years, now threatening the army itself, as well as the Pakistani state."

Cohen said the second major bad deed, was the rise of the Islamic extremists, and noted that "Pakistanis, themselves, including the army, elements of the army, understand this is -- they had to make a choice between supporting and working with these groups, and battling them."

"So the army is now deep, up to its nose, into fighting the Pakistan Taliban, which are not Americans, they're not Indians, they're Pakistanis, with the same ideology of the Taliban that the army is supporting in Afghanistan against Americans,.." he said.

He asserted, "This contradiction can't go on for much longer."

"The army itself will have to undergo a realisation that it's a fundamentally self-destructive strategy. If they don't change, Pakistan is headed for the rocks," he warned.