David Miliband comments on the situation in Pakistan

06 Mar 2009

Foreign Secretary David Miliband commented on the situation in Pakistan during an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Friday 6 March.

Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, Getty Images

Foreign Secretary David Miliband commented on the situation in Pakistan during an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Friday 6 March.

Read the transcript

James Naughtie (JN) We're joined now by the Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Foreign Secretary, good morning.

David Miliband, (DM) Good morning.

JN: How worried are you about the stability of Pakistan?

DM: Well I agree with the Pakistani Prime Minister that the situation is very grave. You've got the combination of a political crisis precipitated by the recent Supreme Court judgment, so democratic politicians are not coming together to fight terrorism. Secondly you've got massive economic uncertainty; this is a country now with a massive IMF loan. And thirdly, you've got a security challenge on a number of fronts. The western frontier that you referred to, the 2,400 kilometre border with Afghanistan; but also the attacks in the centre of Pakistan, those that claimed the life of Benazir Bhutto as Frank Gardner said, and obviously the most recent attack. So this is a very grave situation, and it's intimately linked to the situation in Afghanistan.

JN: And the point is it's not just grave; it's getting worse isn't it?

DM: It's getting worse in a number of respects. I think that the tempo of terrorist attacks has risen, and the combination of political uncertainty, economic decline - Pakistan has been hit by the global crunch in the same way that many other countries have - and then the security side, mean that this is a particularly challenging time for any government, and I think the degree of political disunity that exists at the moment is only contributing to the problem.

JN: Well at the risk of asking a very obvious question indeed: what is at stake for the rest of the world in Pakistan?

DM: I think the safety of the UK and its citizens, because as the Prime Minister pointed out when he went to Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks, the majority of terrorist attacks in Britain have links back into Pakistan, or at least into the border area with Afghanistan. Secondly, there's obviously a large number of British troops and troops from a number of other countries at direct risk in Afghanistan, and I think that that is a potent brew.

JN: The truth is surely, that the Pakistan government has more or less ceded control of the north west frontier province. It's gone. It's patrolled by marauding guerrillas; there is terrorist training...

DM: I don't think that's entirely accurate I mean for 60 years there's been a comprehensive failure to develop any sort of economic or political strategy in... especially in the federally administered tribal areas but... across the north west frontier province; I visited there last year. The female literacy rate in the federally administered areas is less than 3%, so you get a sense there of the social disintegration. Political parties are banned and the law is defined by the Frontier Crimes Regulation, which was passed by the British in 1901. So you can see that this is not a short term problem. But you're certainly right, that the way the Pakistani authorities have pursued their counterinsurgency strategy - which has essentially been to move from a series of deals three or four years ago, to a very heavy-handed military strategy, and in some cases to flip back - has not got the right recipe for delivering a significant turn. And in some ways, in some parts of the north west frontier, things have got worse. That obviously has an impact over on the Afghan side of the border.

JN: You say a heavy-handed military strategy. On the other hand, you could look at Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is the organisation not only suspected of the Mumbai atrocities, but involved in the Sri Lankan attack this week. Here we have the leader who is under house arrest on suspicion, but... and that's all, but the organisation is more or less operating unchanged using different names; really hasn't been cracked down upon at all. Although it's been talked of as a danger to the future of the state for some time.

DM: That's a good point. We don't know who committed the attacks on the Sri Lankan team, but Lashkar-e-Taiba of course is a group that's based in the Punjab rather than in the north west frontier province. You're right to say that it's got deep roots, it's got welfare organisations and schools that it runs. I think one of the issues that I've been raising in my four visits to Pakistan, is the need for central and local government in Pakistan to work to replace those Lashkar-e-Taiba or at least their front organisations, welfare and educational organisations, with the arms of the Pakistani state. And this goes to, what I think is a core issue. Pakistan is a country that for 60 years, over the last 60 years, it's had about 31 years of military rule. At the same time, it spends less than half the amount of money on education as it does on the military. And there you have a recipe for people seeking a better life for their kids turning to madrassas and turning to extremism. I think that is the combination that needs to be taken on in the Punjab. Now the problem is you've got a central government in Islamabad and a local government in Lahore, who are now at loggerheads as the result of the Supreme Court judgment I mentioned. And that's why we are putting so much emphasis on democratic politicians coming together in Pakistan, because we worked hard alongside many Pakistanis for the restoration of democratic rule.

It's now vital that whatever the political differences between President Zardari, between Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the opposition, his brother who's the leader of the Punjab, or was the leader of the Punjab until last week, come together to unite against the mortal threat that Pakistan faces which is a threat from its internal enemies, not its traditional external enemies.

JN: Well "mortal threat" is a very strong phrase. But the problem surely, the fundamental problem, is that it is a government that is weak. I mean whatever you thought about President Musharraf and the need to get away from his military rule to democracy, there was a sense in which he was holding the line, or was seen to be anyway. This government isn't.

DM: I don't accept that, because a military rule cannot hold the line if it loses the confidence of its people, and I think that is what had happened in... especially in the later years of President Musharraf's rule; he'd lost the confidence of his own people, and you cannot fight a counterinsurgency if you do not have the confidence of the people.

JN: Let me ask you briefly, because obviously Mr Brown's been talking to President Obama and you're aware of what Mrs Clinton is up to and Richard Holbrook her special envoy in that region. There seem to be plans for a regional security conference which would involve Pakistan, Afghanistan, and it is said, Iran. Is that your understanding?

DM: Well this is a follow-up to a conference that was held last June in Paris. The Iranian interest on the... in Afghanistan is very direct; they've got a massive drugs problem that's coming out of Afghanistan...

JN: And they also have a border with Pakistan.

DM: Well in the same way... the Iranian border though with Herat in Afghanistan, in the west of Afghanistan, is the critical point for them and is the access point for much of their drugs problem. So yes the Iranians were involved in a regional conference in June. I spoke to Hillary Clinton yesterday in Brussels at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting, and I think it is important that America is changing its strategy.

First they want to look at Afghanistan and Pakistan together; that's vital. Secondly, they want to change their relationship with Pakistan from being a predominantly military relationship, where there is massive military aid but very limited education and other support, to being a relationship that's far better balanced between the civilian and the military.

Thirdly, in Afghanistan itself, they are coming round to a strategy of what I would call 'Afghanisation'. You have to put the Afghans up front, because we are not trying to create a new colony in Afghanistan; we're trying to support a democratically elected government that needs to develop its capacity to sustain itself.

JN: And can we take it that Hillary Clinton is interested and happy at your decision to change the public posture, vis-à-vis Hezbollah, so closely associated with Iran and operating in Lebanon?

DM: Different issue obviously.

JN: Yes.

DM: Hezbollah is a military... the military wing of Hezbollah is prescribed in the UK. In the Lebanon they have one cabinet member, and we've sanctioned low-level contacts with them so that we can make absolutely clear our determination to see UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for the disbanding of militias among other things in Lebanon, taken forward with real speed. After all, I mean it's a different front, but Lebanon has always been the victim of other people's wars in the Middle East, and one of the things that I know Hillary Clinton will be engaging with the Iranians about, because I spoke to her about this yesterday, is that Iranian engagement in the region with Hezbollah and others needs to be curbed, because at the moment it's a force for instability.

JN: David Miliband, Foreign Secretary, thank you.