Please check: Education
Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Geopolitical Assessments is an independent consultancy whose core business is to provide analysis and advice on international issues to various clients. The consultancy also initiates ideas which aim to assist with the development of government policies.
Specifically, Dr Rakisits is in the process of trying to establish a 2nd track, or possibly a 1½ track, strategic dialogue between Pakistan and Australia. The main objectives of such a dialogue would be to not only broaden bilateral relations but also to assist Pakistan deal with some of the very difficult challenges it is facing today and in the future.
Accordingly, his article "The Afghanistan – Pakistan Vortex" seeks to demonstrate the importance of Pakistan in the quest for peace in that region of the world.
Dr Claude Rakisits (1956) was born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and holds the Australian and Swiss nationality. He holds a PhD in Political Science and a B.A (Hons) in International Relations.
Mr. Rakisits is specialized in Pakistan and Africa and currently works as Adjunct Professor in International Relations at Webster University (Geneva).
He is also head of "Geopolitical Assessments", an independent consultancy whose core business is to provide analysis and advice on international issues:
If the international community, and in particular, the ISAF countries are to make substantial progress in restoring durable peace in Afghanistan and in large parts of western Pakistan, it will have to pursue a genuine regional approach to a war that now has ramifications far beyond the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. As President Asif Ali Zardari succinctly stated in an article in The Washington Post on 22 June 2009, "if the Taliban and al-Qaeda are allowed to triumph in our region, their destabilizing alliance will spread across the continents". President Obama has also recognized the need for a regional approach and has made several statements along those lines.
However, this regional approach – which should include an international conference at which countries like India, Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Central Asian countries, the European Union and the US would be present - must be genuine if it is to succeed. It must be a process in which decisions that are taken and implemented have the support of Afghanistan and Pakistan and are backed up financially and militarily by the countries involved in the process. By having a stake in the outcome, regional countries will be more inclined to ensure the process works.
It cannot be sufficiently stressed how important the financial aspect of this approach would be to its success. Over many years Pakistan has paid a very dear price for playing a key role in the West’s involvement in Afghanistan. First, following the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan hosted some four million refugees and was the training ground for many US and Saudi-backed Mujahideen groups battling the Soviet troops. Many of these Mujahideen and their off springs eventually turned against the Pakistan state. And since 2001, when the Pakistan government agreed to join the "War on Terror", the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, embedded in western Pakistan following their ouster from Afghanistan, have been fighting the Pakistani army – a military clash that has tied down over 100,000 troops and has caused the death of well over 1,500 Pakistani soldiers. This is more than all the Coalition fatalities in Afghanistan.
Also, the international community must not forget that Pakistan still hosts some three million Afghan refugees, some of which are the ones caused by the Soviet invasion in 1979. And the present Afghan conflict has cost Pakistan’s economy – directly and indirectly – more than $35 billion. These are financial resources which could have been directed more productively to the socio-economic development of Pakistan.
But more importantly, the presence today of the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida fighters and the earlier presence of the Mujahideen in the tribal areas have been critical factors in the growth of Pakistan’s own Taliban group in the last few years. And it is this group, which has thrived in the utterly economically neglected tribal area of Pakistan, which has caused such havoc lately in Pakistan, particularly in Swat.
The Pakistan army conducted the ruthless operation in Swat and neighbouring districts because it was under intense international community pressure, especially from Washington and London, to do so. And as we have seen, the operation against these extremist groups has caused some three million IDPs (internally displaced people). Unfortunately, already the world is forgetting about them and the financial burden they are on the Pakistani government.
This on-going humanitarian crisis – and the one that will inevitably follow once military operation in Waziristan get into full swing - is something Pakistan cannot and should not have to deal with on its own. Of course, the Pakistan government had no choice but to confront militarily the Pakistani Taliban and roll them back. However, this was also an operation which was in the vital interest of the international community. It is in no one’s interest to see the Pakistan state being progressively weakened by a cancerous Pakistani Taliban gnawing away at Pakistani society. Accordingly, the international community has a duty to share the financial burden of not only assisting with the immediate reconstruction of the Swat valley but also with the longer term development of FATA and other socio-economically deprived parts of Pakistan where extremism thrives.
Even before this latest flow of IDPs, Ambassador Holbrooke estimated that Pakistan would need some $50 billion in assistance to be able to deal with its massive developmental needs in such areas as social services, education, hospitals and infrastructure. In the short term, Washington’s decision to give $7.5 billion over five years for schools, the judicial system, parliament and law enforcement agencies should certainly help. Pakistan will also be receiving $400 million in annual military aid for 2010-2013 from the US. At the recent inaugural summit meeting between Pakistan and the EU, the latter offered $100 million in humanitarian aid to try to ease the burden of the 3 million IDPs; Pakistan was seeking $2.5 billion. At an international donors’ meeting in Tokyo in April 2009 Western countries pledged $5 billion.
Although this international assistance will help Pakistan, much more, however, will be needed in the long term given Pakistan’s war on extremism, the need to take care of three million IDPs, its massive developmental needs and the poor state of its finances. According to the Junior Economics Minister, Pakistan’s budget deficit is estimated to widen to 4.9% of GDP in the year starting on 1 July 2009. That’s higher than last year’s 4.3% and more than the 4.6% target set by the IMF as part of the 7.6 billion bailout agreed in November 2008. But the fiscal shortfall could actually end up being as much as 6.4% of GDP unless the government makes deep cuts on development expenditures which are already significantly inadequate. The government has asked the IMF for a $4 billion stand-by loan as "insurance" in case the pledged assistance does not arrive. Meanwhile, it is expected that the economy will grow by 3.3% in the year starting on 1 July 2009, which is better than last year’s 2% growth but significantly lower than the annual 6.8% Pakistan had posted for the preceding five years.
Seen from Islamabad’s perspective, Pakistanis feel that, while US assistance will help as will the other countries’ aid, they are not getting the financial assistance they believe they rightfully deserve. They will argue, correctly so, that if the war against al-Qaida is so important to the West, why not give Pakistan the very substantial funds and military materiel they need to fight al-Qaida. The international funds that are being earmarked for Pakistan are miserly small compared to what has been spent by the US alone in Iraq in the last 6 years: some $600 billion or about $8 billion per month.
However, more important than aid is trade. And it would appear that the US Congress may relatively soon pass a bill called the Reconstruction Opportunity Zones, which would remove trade barriers and provide economic incentives to build factories, start factories and employ workers in FATA and in the neighbouring border area of Afghanistan. Such a concrete economic step would be a very constructive and important counter-insurgency measure for both sides of the border; it would demonstrate Washington’s long-term commitment to the economic development of the region and not only to the pursuit of a military solution to the problem of Islamic extremism.
