Selling long-term solutions in a short-term town

Husain Haqqani, now ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, gave a good talk Friday at the Carnegie Endowment (full disclosure: my day job), where he was previously a fellow. Haqqani immediately emphasized that he was speaking only in a personal capacity, in view of the transitional state of the government, which, in the understatement of the day, he described as having become “a more complex entity” of late.

Naturally, however, he had a message or two to deliver. A student in the audience asked how Pakistan would respond to further U.S. military operations on its soil. “I don’t agree with your presumption that there will be repeated incursions,” Haqqani replied coolly. Translation: “You seem like a smart guy, and a smart guy would keep his dear friends well financed, because it would just be a cryin’ shame if your house was to catch fire…”

Sure enough, within minutes, “I think the Biden-Lugar bill is very good,” Haqqani remarked of proposed U.S. legislation to provide Pakistan $15 billion in aid over the next 5 years, and maybe for the next 5 years after that as well.

Haqqani stressed that the U.S. should not expect the new civilian government to abandon the war on terror. In the last two weeks, he said, Pakistani military actions have killed 560 al-Qaeda and/or Taliban associates. The new government will allow different stakeholders to weigh in on the considerations before it makes decisions, rather than afterwards, he argued, and that would make military operations a lot more successful in Swat, Bajaur, and the like, because it would imbue them with democratic legitimacy.

It sounded good, but no matter what sorts of uniforms the new leaders wear, they’ll have good reason to only want to help us so much in the war on terror. Or, as Haqqani rightly, if opportunistically put it, “maybe ‘war’ is the wrong word. There won’t be a surrender. There’s no 1 or 2 or 3-year fix.”

Still, there’s a case to be made that political progress is underway. Saturday’s presidential elections were as free as any in Pakistan’s history, and Musharraf’s resignation is historic, Haqqani argued, because it is a result of a political process, not an event like a plane crash. (The degree of one’s optimism about Pakistan hinges in large part on how much stock you put in this claim.)

“Pakistan is a significant and important country under all circumstances,” Haqqani said. “Pakistan is important in its own right. Now is the time to engage Pakistan on a long-term basis…it needs to be transformed into a stable democracy.”

“The engagement has taken place,” Haqqani said of the increasing U.S. commitment to Pakistan. “The only question is how to consummate the marriage.”

As a nasty old prison joke has it, looks like we’re the wife.