 Trevor Burrus And I'm Aaron Powell. Aaron Powell Joining us today is Sahar Khan, a visiting research fellow at the Kato Institute's Defense and Foreign Policy Department. She also spent much of her years before 18 in Pakistan, which is the subject of today's episode. So welcome to Free Thought, Sahar. Sahar Khan I thank you for having me. Aaron Powell So I'd like to start with a general overview of Pakistan because on the assumption that most Americans, including myself, don't know a ton about it, which it's good when we talk about nations that are important to our foreign policy that we know something about what the nations are like. So first of all, when did it get its independence? Sahar Khan So Pakistan gained its independence from British rule in 1947, which was the same time that India gained its independence. Before then they were both collectively called the subcontinent or just India, and they were predominantly ruled by the British through the East India British Company. Aaron Powell And it's majority Muslim, actually I think substantial. Sahar Khan Yes. Aaron Powell Yes. Sahar Khan The population is Muslim, and out of that 90%, I would say about 85% is Sunni Muslim, and about 20% is Shia Muslim, and then it's divided into various sects of Islam. Aaron Powell For our listeners, you don't know what's the difference. Sahar Khan Oh, so the difference, that's a good question. So there's of course like a theological difference that I won't really, I don't think I'm equipped to handle that, but basically it dates back to prehistoric times, where there was a division on the political rule of Islam, and it's related to Prophet Muhammad and his caliphs. And so Shia's believed that the first caliph after Prophet Muhammad's death should have been his son-in-law, Hazrat Ali, whereas Sunnis believe it should have been his friend and mentor, Abu Bakr. It ended up being Hazrat Abu Bakr, and so that's where the divide starts from. So it dates back, I mean, this is sort of a really historic divide that sort of plagues not just Pakistan, but the whole region in South Asia and the Middle East. Aaron Powell And so do these groups, I mean, in the context of Pakistan, do they get along? Is this kind of, you know, Catholics and Protestants in the US who seem mostly happy to be around each other, or does this end up looking more like kind of the almost tribal differences that we see a lot in that part of the world? Shia So yeah, so there's always sort of, I think of it in terms of there's always an official story, right, and then there's like a non-official story. So the official story is that they don't really get along that well. And the general consensus is that if you're not a Sunni Muslim, it would be very hard for you to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan or President or the Supreme Court, Justice, etc. But on a personal level, Shia's and Sunnis get along, and you know, often their intermarriages also. But you know, within Pakistan, it's not just the Shia Sunni divide, even within the Sunnis and Shia's, there are a lot of divisions on ethnic lines, racial lines, linguistic lines. And so people tend to, you know, marry based on that. But they have all sorts of business relationships as well. But yeah, there's definitely a tension there, especially when you think about it in official terms. In terms of the sort of way the culture ranges across the country, I don't know how I mean, it's sort of a hard question to answer. I think it gives us an idea. I always try and explain to people that, you know, you go into a country and you say, oh, it's all Pakistan. But if you know something, you can talk about Ohio because like, well, it's all Ohio is like, they're all the same. It's like, well, in the South Ohio, they're like much more like Southerners and in North Ohio, they're much more like Michigander and Midwesterners. And these are important differences, if you ever to say invade Ohio or have international relationships with Ohio. So in terms of Pakistan in the north on the Afghani border versus the south, what are the kind of differences we see or East to West too? Oh, there are definitely similar differences. And so one predominant difference is people from Karachi, like I'm from Karachi and people from Lahore, which is in Punjab always say that, oh, there's a huge difference between Karachi and Lahore and the food is different. The people are different. The sense of humor is different, you know, all of that. But, you know, that that is sort of, I always think of it more as a joke because when people do immigrate, they always say that they're from Pakistan and then maybe the second sentence would be that we're from different provinces or different cities within the provinces. But when it comes to the tribal regions, especially that's a little different. And that mainly stems from some of it is rooted in history. And some of it is because how the Pakistani state has treated the Pashtun population that dominates the tribal areas of Pakistan. So historically, the tribal areas have had a very good relationship with Afghanistan. And when partition was going to happen in 1947, the Afghani rulers thought that the tribal areas would go to them and would not become part of Pakistan. But the British who were dividing the subcontinent didn't do that. So that sort of created a tension, a territorial tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan along the border called the Durand line that's been established since 1893. Now, since then, Pakistan has also become very sensitive since its independence. It's become very sensitive to any kind of secessionist movements or any kind of groups of people who advocate for certain rights. And so the Pashtuns have generally, they're not till I would say this year. They were not a province. They were just federally administered tribal areas. And that's what FATA stands for really. And so their argument was that they were never really part of Pakistan. So a lot of rules don't apply to them. And over the past 10 years, they have been subjected to a really brutal counterinsurgency campaign that's really created a lot of tensions within Pashtun population and other populations within the country. Do you think is the Pashtun population would many of them say they have more in common with people on the other side of the Afghanistan border than they do with Southern Pakistan? I think they would because they sort of they are a lot more tribal. Then say those in other provinces, especially in Sindh and Punjab, tribes exist all over Pakistan. But their tribal system is a little different. They take a little more pride in it and it's ruled by this code called Pashtun Valley, which is just applied to the Pashtun tribes. And that's very similar to the tribes that exist in Afghanistan. But I think now, you know, a lot of Pashtuns would say that they are Pakistani because, you know, they're third or fourth generation Pakistanis, they've never been a part of Afghanistan. And so actually the current Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, just last week said that he would give Pakistani citizenship to Pashtun tribes and Baloch tribes and in a way to sort of increase citizenship of the country. Speaking of the Prime Minister, what is what is the governing structure of Pakistan look like? Sure. So it's a federally provincial system. So at least that's what it's officially called. So basically there's a federal government. And there are four provinces, Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. And it also has a tribal area that has now been incorporated into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. And then there are other areas called Gilgit-Balistan that are not a province, but the federal rules apply to them. And then it has, you know, it's a parliamentary system. So it has a lower house called the National Assembly and an upper house called the Senate. And it has a judiciary, which is there are high courts in each province and Islamabad, which is the capital, has its own high court. And then there's a Supreme Court of Pakistan. Now, getting into the U.S.-Pakistan relations, in your paper, you kind of started at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But I mean, stuff happened before, but I guess that's a pretty big moment when the Soviets invade Afghanistan. And then is that there's something big change there between the U.S. and Pakistan at that point? Well, I think, yeah, I think the Cold War is sort of, you know, like a pivotal moment, I think in world history that really dominates still a lot of countries' narratives and political structures and their strategies. And Pakistan is not any different. So there was certainly like a change within the U.S.- Pakistan relationship after the Cold War ended and even during the Cold War. But before I talk about the U.S.-Pakistan relationship post-Cold War, I think it's also important to understand that Pakistan and the United States have always had a relationship since Pakistan was created in 1947. I mean, within a month of its creation, the United States had reached out to Pakistan and recognized it as a sovereign country and they became a member of the United Nations. They have more or less always had an economic relation where the United States has always given Pakistan economic aid, which I think a lot of Kato scholars would argue is not always good. But, you know, that's sort of formulated their relationship. And I think another important thing to know about the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is that Pakistan played a really crucial role in normalizing relationships between the United States and China in 1972. In fact, and this is kind of a fun fact, my great uncle was the Pakistani ambassador to China at the time and he was friends with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. And so he arranged for Kissinger to come to Pakistan and then travel to China, which paved the way for President Nixon to go. So Pakistan has, you know, been an ally, I would say to some extent, and the current tensions are dominated still by Cold War happenings. But before the Cold War, the two countries did have a relationship. And how did 9-Eleven change our relationship in the global war on terror? So 9-Eleven, I think, is one of those things that, you know, it's unfortunate how it has negatively changed a lot of U.S.'s relationship with other countries. With respect to Pakistan, I think the Bush administration had an almost binary approach, which was either you are with us or against us. There's no gray area, right? And so Pakistan, considering its economic ties with the United States, considering that Afghanistan is its neighbor and somewhat troubled neighbor, but it still wants to be friends with Afghanistan because it has India to its east, which it does not get along with. So considering all of that, Pakistan, who was ruled by military dictator Parvez Musharraf at the time, basically took the United States side. But even though there was official rhetorical support, there's been evidence now that it wasn't always material support that Pakistan lent to the United States. So for example, when the U.S. invasion to Afghanistan started, President Bush allowed President Musharraf to take out Pakistanis that were operating in Afghanistan, in official capacity or unofficial capacity. But if there were Pakistani citizens in Afghanistan, especially in Kabul, the U.S. said Pakistan could take them out. So Pakistan did take out its citizens, but also took out top leaders of the Taliban, who eventually also became some leaders of the Ghani network and other groups. And so Pakistan wasn't always forthcoming in its involvement. For the Taliban, which I think came into Afghanistan in 96, is that correct? But Pakistan supported the Taliban government. Yes, yes. Was that just as a strategic for stability in the region or would they allied somewhat with the more fundamentalist aims of Taliban? Oh, so that's a great question. I think so, before we talk about the Taliban, we sort of have to go back to the Cold War. So during the Cold War, the United States had sort of partnered up with Pakistan, who was ruled under another military dictator, Zahal Haq, at the time. And the goal was that in order to stop communism from rising in Afghanistan, the United States would arm anti-communist groups. And that group became the Mujahideen, which are called rebels. Their sort of translation from Arabic is those people who conduct jihad. And jihad basically translates into a political struggle. In this case, the jihad was against the Soviet invasion because they were oppressors and they were external actors. So all of that aside, the U.S. basically gave Pakistan money. The Pakistani military aided the United States, especially the intelligence agency of Pakistan, called ISI or the Inter-Servances Agency. So they had a partnership where they helped the Mujahideen flourish. Now, after the Cold War ended, the United States essentially exited from the region. And Pakistan was left with neighboring Afghanistan that was experiencing its own civil war. And it was run by these militant actors, these Mujahideen, who are now unemployed. And so some of them became the Taliban. And so when the Taliban did rule Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, and Pakistan, who was ruled under Democratic leader Benazir Putto at the time, I think she made a strategic calculation, decide with the Taliban, because her thought was that if Pakistan actually supports the Taliban, which is Pashtun dominated, then it would help Pakistan's own Pashtun population and make them think that, you know, the Pakistani government is not targeting Pashtuns, that we are all friends and we can get along, even though Pakistan recognizes the durand line that I mentioned earlier, and Afghanistan doesn't. So her calculus was just like we should support the Taliban. And Pakistan was one of the three countries that recognized the Taliban, the other two were Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In general, and I mean, this shifted over time, but how I guess how fundamentalist is the government of Pakistan? Like, do they, so there's a difference between, you know, what they can get away with and like what a democratically illicit system can do versus like what they would want. So I guess how kind of Islamically conservative to fundamentalist is it generally? So that's a tricky question. So I would say, and I think that the general consensus is that Pakistan is a democratic system with Islamic leanings. So what do I mean by that exactly? Basically, the constitution of Pakistan has stated that the official religion of the state is Islam. But we also have to know, recognize that Islam is not just, you know, based on a single version, it has a variety of versions. And so there is a disagreement on which version should be applied to Pakistan. So the constitution has sort of tried to address some of those concerns. One is to, you know, declare the official religion, which is which is Islam. The second is article 260 of the Pakistani constitution defines who a Muslim is. And so a Muslim, according to the Pakistani constitution, is one person who believes in the unity and oneness of God or Allah and who also believes in the finality of the prophethood, which means that prophet Muhammad is the last prophet. And anybody who does not agree with this is a non-Muslim. So this has sort of created an issue with regards to the Ammadi community, which is a community that exists in Pakistan that believes in the oneness of God, but that criticizes the finality of the prophethood. They don't believe that prophet Muhammad was the last prophet. So according to Pakistan's constitution, they are not Muslim. And I think what does that does that mean that they lose certain rights or yes. OK. So it means that they cannot hold official positions. They are they're not allowed to practice their faith freely. And if you are Ammadi, you are persecuted. And a lot of Ammadi's have actually sought refuge and political asylum within the United States. So there's that element when it comes to when you think about the spectrum of the political system of Pakistan. So I think in that way, it's a very, very conservative, fundamentalist system. Another way that to think about it is also that Pakistan considering its call to independence, the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah essentially used Islam as a slogan for Indian Muslims, saying that Pakistan would be a country where they would not be subjected to a Hindu majority rule that they would be able to profess and practice their faith as they could be. And this would be for any Muslims. And he himself was not a Sunni Muslim. He was actually an Ismaili Muslim, which is a sect of Shia Islam. And in today's language, he would be considered very liberal. He drank, he ate pork, his wife was not Muslim, etc. But he sort of revered as the leader of this now almost Sunni state. And so I think basically whether or not Pakistan is really conservative or really fundamentalist, it's hard to determine because it depends on who you ask. But I think when it comes to an institutional understanding, the separation of church and state or religion and state is very, very small. You mentioned Indian. I'm curious every now and then in the news, we hear something about how Indian Pakistan might go to war. And everyone kind of freaks out about it for a little bit. And then it seems to go away. So what's going on there? Thousand words at last. So, so Indian Pakistan have gone to well, first of all, they've gone to war three times, right? So in 1948, right after they were independent, they had been independent for like a year or less than a year. They fought a war for Kashmir, which is a mountainous territory that's been under dispute since independence and continues to be run as a police state by the Indian government. And Pakistan believed that it should have been part of Pakistan. So there's been a territorial dispute there. Pakistan and India fought in 1965 as well. And in 1971, actually, East Pakistan became Bangladesh. So just a backdrop, when 1947 Pakistan became independent, it had two wings. East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh, and West Pakistan, which is modern day Pakistan. Now West Pakistan had a huge problem with Bengalis. They felt that they were too secular and that they were influenced by Hinduism too much. And even though Majibur Rahman had won the general election of 1970, Zulfiqar Ali Putto, who became the prime minister, eventually contested that and that resulted in a civil war and the breaking of the country. And India actually helped the freedom fighters of Bangladesh. So Pakistan also has that. They hold that against India. And then there was sort of a nuclear standoff in 1998 called the Gargle Conflict. So both countries now have nuclear weapons. Pakistan became a nuclear power in 1998. And I think it was a combination of hotheadedness and miscalculation that these both countries almost went to nuclear war. So that was 1998. So it has been 20 years and there usually is always some firing on the line of control, which is the border between India and Pakistan and Kashmir. And every anytime that happens, there's this talk of these two countries will go to war. Personally, I don't think that they will. I think the nuclear deterrent works really well in this case. Also, I don't think both countries can afford to go to war. And personally, I don't think India is really that interested in going to war with Pakistan. Now, since 9 11, as we said, changed a bunch of things. America has had different relationships with Pakistan in different ways. Recently, Trump has criticized, I guess not recently, but a few months ago criticized Pakistan for not adequately, I guess, quelling the fundamentalist groups that they support. And in your paper, you explained that they do actually support these groups. So what are the groups that they support? And how do they do that? So there are a lot of groups operating within Pakistan. And one feature to know about these groups is they almost operate like an alphabet soup. So while the Pakistani government might ban a group officially, it will regroup under a different name. So considering that reality in that context, I would say that there are four groups that Pakistan predominantly sponsors to operate in Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban, or what we just simply called Taliban, and their militant wing called the Haqqani Network. Now, often in Washington, DC, when we talk about the Afghan Taliban Haqqani Network, we think of them as two different groups, but they're actually a lot more closely aligned than we would like to think the Haqqani Network is, I would say, the militant side of the Taliban. Not that the Taliban are some sort of, you know, flower holding apologize. But, you know, in that context, they're even more militant and they're in charge of Afghani operations in Afghanistan. And they have not conducted every attack within Afghanistan. But the major ones which have created some of the major civilian casualties have been done by the Haqqani Network. The other two groups that Pakistan predominantly sponsors or supports are the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Now, both of these groups are Kashmiri separatist groups or insurgent groups that attack Indian forces and Indian administered Kashmir. So, Kashmir, like I had mentioned before, is a disputed territory between India and Pakistan. One third of it is under Pakistan's control. Two thirds of it is under India controlled. So when I say Indian administered Kashmir, I'm talking about the two thirds that's under Indian rule. So these are the four groups that Pakistan predominantly sponsors. And by sponsors, I mean that they give them aid, ammunitions, training, safe havens. They sort of turn a blind eye like Pakistani authorities turn a blind eye to their criminal activities. A lot of terrorist groups engage in criminal activities for financial reasons. A lot of them have fake passports, fake ID cards that essentially Pakistani local authorities sort of either it's a capacity issue or not, but they sort of get away with a lot. I'm going to ask what I think is probably a stupid question here, but it's something that is always confused me. So the Taliban was at one point the government of Afghanistan. But would you call it a party at that point? Was that kind of what it was, a political party? So it wasn't, that's actually a great question because it wasn't that I have a dumber one coming up. That's the first one. Yeah, well, that was a good question. So the Taliban in the 1990s, I wouldn't call them a political party because I think we have a very specific understanding of what a political party is, right? A political party is supposed to represent ideally supposed to represent the people and it's supposed to, you know, participate in elections and have some sort of legitimacy from it from the public. I don't think the Taliban necessarily had that, especially in the 1990s. Because Afghanistan in the 1990s was involved in a civil war. This is post Cold War, a country that had already experienced at that point about 20 years of war. The institutions were completely eroded. Hardly any hospitals or schools or roads existed. So these were basically, you know, militants who overtook and it was through sheer material power that they could. There was nobody else who could contest their power. So when they said we're the government of Afghanistan, they were the government of Afghanistan. But that the Taliban has now since evolved. And I would say that when we currently talk about the Taliban, especially as the Trump administration is sort of thinking of negotiating with them or thinking of talking with them, they might start looking more like a political party. And in that way, I mean that even though the Taliban don't view the Afghan government as legitimate and they have not agreed to participate in elections just yet, they do say that they want to be part of the political system to some extent. And they do agree with the Afghan Taliban with the Afghan government that the Islamic state that has now sort of is like a new militant organization in the region that the Taliban is against them. So I think the Taliban is trying to evolve into a political party. But my sense is that if you called them a political party, they're going to get really mad and think that this is a Western concept that's being applied to them. And therefore it's problematic. Now what's the dumb question? So I've always wanted this about so that say Taliban leaves and then now the Taliban like controls or holds this area. But the members of the Taliban, I feel like it's like being a member of Minsa or something. You know, there's just a bunch of people, some of them say they're a member of the Taliban and they are like in this area. And if they I don't think there's like a you know, it's like the Kiwanis Club and like, you know, they all meet down there. Like if you wanted to contact the Taliban or one of these other groups you mentioned, like do they have an extremely formal organizational structure or is it just a bunch of people in an area who have some adherence to different groups? And when they say, hey, we're going to go do an attack, they get them together and attack. But that makes them very amorphous and difficult to deal with that. So I've always wondered how like official are these groups and how do you have relationships with them in that way? The Taliban is very official, I would say in sort of the spectrum of groups that exist in the area. The Taliban actually has a political office in Doha Qatar that was established under the Obama administration. And one of the reasons was so that negotiations could take place because the Afghan government didn't want Taliban's office to be in Afghanistan because obviously they're fighting against the Afghan government. The government felt like it wasn't the best place. And so the Obama administration had sort of asked various countries, you know, would you host the Taliban? And it's not a territorial thing. It's just literally a place where we can meet and have negotiations. And so that's where Qatar came into play and the Taliban opened an office in Doha, which still exists. And in fact, Ambassador Alice Wells, who's the assistant secretary of South and Central Asia, met Taliban officials in July in Doha. So it is like the Kiwanis club or going down to the Elks, the Elks trade. Sort of, yeah. But so Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is another group I mentioned that conducts attacks on Indian forces and Indian administered Kashmir, they don't have like a Doha office, right? So the way LET or Lashkar-e-Taiba operates is it has various wings. So it has a welfare wing called the Jamaat-e-Tawa, which is a welfare organization that operates openly in Pakistan. In fact, it has one of the largest ambulances, ambulance network in Pakistan. And this also sort of talks about how the Pakistani state doesn't really have capacity, right? And how certain militant groups fill the states, fill the gaps that states have. So Jamaat-e-Tawa addresses that. Another wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba is a political party that it recently formed, whose name I can't remember. That's okay. But it contested these elections. So all of these militant groups, there's no one uniform organizational structure that they follow, right? So a lot of their structure depends on how much money they have and how secure they feel in their surroundings. So I also mentioned the Haqqani network, which is closely aligned with the Taiba. So the Haqqani network is actually very decentralized. In fact, there's a lot of disagreement on exactly how many people are in the Haqqani network. I mean, the range is from 4,000 to 15,000. It's a huge range of operatives, right? And then there's a disagreement of who they are, right? Some of them might be accountants who just don't fight but deal with the operational side. Some of them are sort of the guy who like presses the remote control of a bomb. So there's a lot of disagreement on who's who and what the numbers are. But I think in all of these groups operating within the region, the Taliban, I would say would be the most official one because of their Doha office and because of just the importance they have for the U.S. war in Afghanistan. How did the U.S.'s relationship with Pakistan change from the Bush administration to the Obama administration? So it didn't really change all that much. I think the thing that Democrats and Republicans have in common, though I think they don't like to acknowledge it, is foreign policy, especially when it comes to South Asia. So the Bush administration, you know, of course, that's when 9-11 happened and so had, you know, made a partnership with Pakistan and gave them a lot of aid, but then also cut some aid. The Obama administration did the same thing, right? They started off somewhat OK. And then Pakistan did something that the United States didn't like. And the Obama administration said, OK, we're going to cut certain funds, the either the federal military funding, which is like a grant program that the United States gives to various countries so they can buy their defense equipment or coalition support funds, which is part of the Department of Defense to it's like a reimbursement program if the U.S. uses a particular country's military base. So sometimes the United States will say we're going to cut the coalition support fund or we're going to cut the federal military fund and, you know, because you keep supporting the Haqqani at work. And then things sort of ease up and then things are back to normal and aid programs are reinstated and stuff like that. So I don't think there's been much of a difference. The rhetoric has been different. I think Obama was a little more no-nonsense with Pakistan. And I think that he cut a lot more aid than the Bush administration did. And I think the Obama administration was a lot more open to having direct talks with the Taliban, which is something that the Pakistani government didn't like because just considering what I said earlier about Pakistan and Taliban's relationship, Pakistan has sort of taken a bet on the Taliban. And so they very much view the Taliban as like their ally, right? And oftentimes you'll hear United States say Pakistan needs to leverage its relationship with the Taliban. And so Pakistan feels like, you know, if the U.S. wants to talk to the Taliban, they should do it through them. And the Obama administration was basically like, no, we're going to do it directly, right? And now they have an office in Doha, so we're going to go to Doha. So I think that created attention that perhaps the Pakistanis didn't see coming. What about the assassination of Osama bin Laden? That that was a pretty crazy thing when we flew at least two helicopters into a sovereign states area without telling them, correct? Which says, does that say something about the relationship between Pakistan and America? That if we do, we think that if we told them, they might tip off Osama bin Laden. And so we basically invaded a country sovereign area to kill this guy. Yeah. So there's, you know, there's still disagreement. Pakistan officially maintains that it did not know about the U.S. raid. And this was like not, this is like the suburbs of Islamabad. Yeah. So I would say so Aptabad is not really the suburbs. Though there are people who live in Aptabad and commute to Islamabad. Could you compare it to some place in Washington, DC, metro area? Sure. I would say it's like like Fairfax or Gleesburg. OK. OK. So get out there. D.C. OK. Right. Though that's just nothing for most of our listeners. But they could pull up Google Maps right now. It's fine. So I would say it's kind of like a almost a two-hour commute. OK. Right. So generally you ideally would not want to be doing a two-hour commute one way. Right. So Aptabad is its own city. Right. It's sort of a mid-level city. I've been there and the food is really good. It's beautiful. Mountness and, you know, sort of a quiet small town. So it made sense that Osama bin Laden was there, to be honest. Because if you're not from Aptabad, you have no reason to visit. You just don't go to Aptabad. Right. So I guess in that way it's kind of like Ohio. But basically, so yeah, Aptabad is a small, small town. So the Pakistani government maintains that it did not know about the raid and that the U.S. absolutely violated its sovereignty. Now, myself and many other skeptical Pakistanis believe that that's not true for several reasons. The first reason is that the Pakistani, Pakistani lacks the Pakistani government and even the military to some extent lack capacity in a lot of areas. But the one thing that they do not lack capacity in is defending their territory. This is a country that has experienced a civil war and that lost one third of its territory, right? It does not take kindly to anyone who wants to come in and take anybody away. If they want to take somebody away, it has to be them. So my sense is that the Pakistani military knew and the Pakistani military probably said, OK, fine, you take him out because it's better that you do it than we do it. And also this also gives Pakistan plausible deniability, right? Saying, look, we didn't know, you know, and we are a victim of terrorism too. That said, Pakistan has lost 22,000 civilians since 9-11, right? So it's not Pakistan is not wrong when it says that it's a victim of terrorism and Al-Qaeda attacks and, you know, other militant groups attacks because while Pakistan does sponsor some militant groups, it doesn't sponsor a lot of militant groups that attack Pakistani civilians in the state. So it gave the Pakistani military and civilian leadership, you know, some plausible deniability. But in order to investigate this, Osama bin Laden was killed in 2009. And in the Asif Ali Zardadi. Was it 2011? I can't remember. Oh, it must be 2011. Well, we'll figure it out. It's all a blur. Keep going. Yeah, it's all a blur. But yeah. So when Osama bin Laden was killed, basically, Pakistan was under the leadership of a democratically elected government, Asif Ali Zardadi. And Zardadi basically said that he conducted an investigation or he asked the government to conduct an investigation on the killing and the raid and what happened. And that report is a 700-page report called the Aptabad Commission. It has not been publicly released. Some pages were that Al Jazeera English reported on. And the report basically said that, you know, the military and local law enforcement agencies were complicit. And they knew about Osama bin Laden, but they didn't, you know, tell the government about it. So that gives bring up the question, kind of going back to some Aaron's previous questions about how conservative or fundamentalist is Pakistan. Would it be an issue for the government to give up Osama bin Laden because a lot of people there might support him or generally be in favor of al-Qaeda or at least terrorist activities against the United States. And therefore, maybe they kind of went on the side and said, you guys do this, we didn't know. Is there enough sort of fundamentalist issue in Pakistan that that would be a question? Well, you know, I think when it came to Osama bin Laden, I think a lot of Pakistanis felt like the reason why Pakistan is in a bad state right now and it is a victim of terrorism and why so many civilians have died is because of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. So I don't think a lot of Pakistanis would have a problem with its government handing over Osama bin Laden had they known or what it was. That said, I think, you know, even though everybody uses Islam as a political tool, very little of this actually has to do with Islam and how it's practiced. I mean, Pakistan's support of militant groups is a political leveraging tool, right? Pakistan is not the only country that supports militant non-state actors. China, Russia, India, the United States, a bunch of others have done it. So Pakistan is not unique in that way. It just so happens that these groups also say that they want an Islamic state or that they're, you know, fighting for Islam, which has become problematic for Pakistan considering its own history with Islam and how Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder, had argued that this is a place for Muslims where they can practice their faith easily. So I think there's a lot of confusion that goes on in terms of support and I think oftentimes the government, you know, certainly uses Islam as a political tool, but I think when it comes to militant groups, they might say that it's related to Islam and that they're religiously aligned, but my sense is it's more of a strategic thing rather than a religious thing. And ultimately you are very skeptical that anything America can do is that we've had withhold funding, we've had, you know, do all this stuff, threaten them over Twitter, all this stuff to stop funding these and supporting these groups. And ultimately it's both misconceiving what Pakistan's relationship with those groups are and why they do it and the kind of power that we have over them. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that? Yeah, sure. So I think, first of all, I think the United States often gets itself in trouble when it tries to change state behavior. Yes. I mean, the United States can't change another state's behavior because every state has its own strategic calculus. Now Pakistan is not any different. So that said, if the United States cuts military and security aid, I think that's fine, right? Because at a certain point, the United States needs to evaluate what is it getting out of the money that it's paying? And if it feels like Pakistan is not doing its end of the deal, they have every right to cut aid. The problem becomes when the Trump administration says that it's gonna cut the coalition support fund because Pakistan continues to sponsor militant groups, I think that's where they find themselves between a rock and a hard place because cutting the coalition support funds or any other kind of military or security aid is not gonna stop Pakistan from supporting the Taliban because of the relationship that they have. That also said, I think there's a great deal of confusion in Washington when it comes to developing an Afghan strategy. So we have a camp in D.C., which I think has been really prominent over the past several years that's always advocated for U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan till Afghanistan becomes a stable democracy or a stable government. Now when that happens, how long there'll be no one seems to know or nobody wants to predict, right? Now over the years, another camp has also been sort of developing, which as well, U.S. troops shouldn't remain there the way they are, they can just remain there to train the Afghan national security forces in a very specialized capacity. And that would help increase the capacity of the Afghan government to eventually become a stable democracy, et cetera, et cetera. Again, there's no end date to that. And now we have a third group, which I think Kato scholars belong to is that you should withdraw because U.S. has no control over the evolution of Afghani institutions or the construction of Afghani institutions. And technically they shouldn't because they're not Afghani, right? So considering this confusion in the U.S. policy towards Afghanistan, this confusion I think bleeds into the U.S.-Bakistan relationship, which has its own host of issues. But just when you think about it in the context of Afghanistan, I think Pakistan feels that the U.S. is not consistent. Because even just recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Pakistan Labor Day weekend. This was his first official visit to meet Prime Minister Imran Khan and Foreign Minister Fasham Ahmad Gureshi who were just selected in July. So before his visit, Pompeo announced that they're gonna cut coalition support funds. And the reason is because Pakistan continues to support the Taliban. Yet a month ago in July, the United States had said, we would like Pakistan to facilitate talks with the Taliban. So I feel like these are really different messages, right? I mean, you cannot invite Taliban to the negotiating table and then slap them there, right? And that's essentially how Pakistan views the U.S. messaging. So unfortunately, in the Afghanistan realm, I don't think that there is like an easy solution. The only thing I recommend, and this is something I write in the paper, is that the Trump administration should stop trying to convince Pakistan that militant sponsorship, it shouldn't do it, right? This is something that Pakistan calculates and Pakistan will have to figure out on its own based on its own interests, not only with the United States but also regional countries as well, India, China, et cetera. The second thing is I think, the United States has relationships with all sorts of countries that with questionable ideals and questionable human rights records. And so why can't it have a productive relationship with Pakistan? It's not as bad as a lot of countries and they do have a shared interest which is stabilizing Afghanistan. Now that might mean different things for both countries but ultimately I think what it means is the U.S. at some point would like to withdraw from Afghanistan and Pakistan would like that too. I think the terms are going to be different and there'll be some debate on that really but I think that's something that they can agree on. As the relationship between the two countries that exists right now, outside of the financial aid that the United States gives to Pakistan in these various ways that you mentioned, what is Pakistan getting out of the relationship with us? Because it sounds, I mean, from what you described it sounds like it's pretty frustrating and we've got concerns and they've got concerns but I guess so outside of money, what's in it for them? That's a great question. I mean, I think Pakistan at the end of the day it's a struggling country, right? It's still a developing country. It's currently experiencing a youth bulge 60% of its population is between the ages of 15 and 29 and Pakistan doesn't have jobs for them. And so one thing that I think Pakistan gets out of the United States is that the United States is huge and a lot of Pakistanis want to come to America. I mean, sure, there's some anti-Americanism, right? I mean, a lot of people all over the world are critical of U.S. policies in some shape and form but the United States hosts one of the largest Pakistani diasporas in the country and Pakistanis want to come to the U.S. They line outside the embassy and the consulate. They know a lot about America, American football and American basketball, stuff I know nothing about but a lot of Pakistanis- Do the Pakistanis have a favorite football team? I don't know. If you want to go see the Patriots, don't you? I'm just curious. They're much more cricket people. Yeah, I feel like that might be, that might add to the stress of U.S. Pakistan relations so I'm just not gonna answer that football question but I think generally Pakistanis, they believe in the American dream. America is a country where you can come and you can work hard, right? And you can have a better life based on merit and unfortunately that does not exist in Pakistan. So I think one thing that the Pakistani government perhaps gets out of it is that a lot of its population wants to come to the U.S. and is able to come to the U.S. through legal means, student visas, tourist visas, professional visas, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And actually the current government, Imran Khan's government, this is the first time he's prime minister. It's only been a month but before he became prime minister, he has had a huge philanthropic role. So he's created a huge cancer hospital in the country and universities, et cetera which actually made him fundraise abroad especially in the U.S., U.K., Australia. So he's really a lot more plugged into the diaspora than say other political leaders were. In fact, this Sunday at the Pakistan embassy, the foreign minister was there and he invited a great deal of prominent diaspora, Pakistanis to talk about what kind of change do they wanna see as a way to engage the diaspora with Pakistani policies and officials. And so I think the sense is that for Pakistan, this is a place where Pakistanis can live, can earn well and potentially send money back home which essentially helps the Pakistani economy because people have family there and siblings there and stuff like that. So I would say that's like one level that helps Pakistanis relationship. I think the other is, you know, I mean the United States is a global power. I mean we can argue about the liberal world order and the U.S. power in absolute or relative terms but the thing is it's still a major power in the country, right? And having the United States as a friend ultimately helps you when it comes to getting loans from the International Monetary Fund or when it comes to backing you up on any political agenda in the United Nations or when it just comes to supporting you in regional disputes. And so I think Pakistan views the U.S. relationship favorably. They just would like the United States to decide with them a lot more than the U.S. has. So it seems that as we've talked about Bush, post-911 world Bush, Obama and now Trump have all threatened, tried to get Pakistan to change its behavior towards especially funding these groups and nothing has really changed. Sometimes they take the money, sometimes they give it back. Trump's doing it again. Do you see anything? So that seems to be the same. Everyone's afraid, I mean, everyone's afraid that Trump was gonna be so different. He's doing the same thing that Obama and Bush did. Do you see anything else really different happening here or just the kind of the same thing will happen? There'll be threats, Pakistan won't change and relations between Pakistan and America will be generally okay, which I think is a good way of describing it. Or does Trump present some sort of difficulties that are gonna be new? I think in the Pakistani calculus, Trump is certainly a surprise. And but that said, I don't think that there will be much of a change. And there might be a change only if Pakistan is able to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table in a way where the Taliban not only has direct talks with the United States, which it's been wanting to do and actually asked to do this year. But if Pakistan is also able to have talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government and able to convince them that they should participate in the Afghani parliamentary elections, which are going to be later this fall, I think that might bring about a positive change in the US-Pakistan relationship. But I think the relationship won't change if the United States keeps thinking that it can convince Pakistan that sponsoring militant groups is not in its interest. Thanks for listening. Free Thoughts is produced by Tess Terrible. If you enjoyed today's show, please rate and review us on iTunes. And if you'd like to learn more about libertarianism, find us on the web at www.libertarianism.org.