NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION, I'm Neal Conan in Washington. For a series of reports that aired this month on Morning Edition, my colleague Steve Inskeep visited a country traumatized by four years of war. A country deeply suspicious of its superpower ally. A country that sees itself surrounded by enemies and floundering to find jobs, prosperity and leadership. Add to that, Pakistan's deep embarrassment by U.S. Navy SEALs found Osama bin Laden just down the road from the national military academy. Of course, the United States harbors its own suspicions about Pakistan too. More on that in just a moment. But U.S. needs Pakistan to support the war in Afghanistan and the fight against al-Qaida and its allies. If you heard the student who thinks bin Laden is still alive, the writer who describes a national case of PTSD, the brother of a murdered journalist and the former foreign minister insulted the U.S. kept the bin Laden raid secret, our phone number is 800-989-8255.
Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Later in the program things you should never say to someone seriously ill, and some things you should. But first, Steve Inskeep joins us here in Studio 3A, host of NPR's MORNING EDITION. Nice to have you back on TALK OF THE NATION.
STEVE INSKEEP: Delighted to be here. Anything to get on TALK OF THE NATION.
CONAN: All right.
INSKEEP: I go to Pakistan if I think there's a TALK OF THE NATION appearance at the end.
CONAN: You used a strong phrase to describe the situation right now. Pakistan's nightmare moment.
INSKEEP: I think that that is a fair description, because of the economic trouble, the political trouble, and of course the security trouble. There was in fact a writer who described a national case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. His view of that came from not just the frequency of suicide bombing and other kinds of attacks, but the constant threat of it, the constant presence of it, almost anywhere in the country the last several years. And the duration with which it's gone on. If that was the only problem the country faced, that would be one thing. But it's one of several problems the country is facing, simultaneously.
CONAN: And among them the long and, well, often violent relationship with the neighbor India, which seems to be - seems to be, from Pakistan's point of view - doing a lot better than Pakistan.
INSKEEP: Yeah, and that is something always to keep in mind. Here are two countries that were separated at birth. In 1947 British India became two separate countries, India and Pakistan. One majority Hindu, one majority Muslim. If you look at them objectively, if you did not know the reputation of each country, you would actually find, even today, a lot of similarities. India has a lot of the same problems as Pakistan. Pakistan has a lot of the same advantages as India and yet it seems that India is taking off and soaring toward global leadership, and Pakistan is sinking down and down. And given that these are two closely related rivals who watch each other bitterly across the border, that's a terrible situation for Pakistanis to contemplate.
CONAN: And of course, both of them have nuclear weapons, as well, and a history of warfare against each other and a festering sore in Kashmir.
INSKEEP: Yeah, yeah, and all of those problems are very much on Pakistanis' minds, to a degree that's hard to grasp, I think, from the United States. We have our own interests and concerns and obsessions in that part of the world. We are concerned - as a country, the United States is deeply concerned about Islamic extremists, concerned about Osama bin Laden until he was killed, concerned about Osama bin Laden's deputies, some of whom may very well still be in Pakistan or in the nearby areas, in Afghanistan or other areas. We have our own concerns. We go to Pakistan collectively wanting certain things. The Pakistanis have other obsessions and other concerns. And they don't - the interests don't necessarily match up, even though the two countries are allies.
CONAN: Let's bring another voice into the conversation. Julie McCarthy, NPR's Pakistan bureau chief, with us by satellite phone from Islamabad. Julie, nice to have you with us today.
JULIE MCCARTHY: Thank you, Neal. Nice to be here.
CONAN: And there was a lot of resentment in Pakistan after the United States told them only after the raid to get Osama bin Laden was over. After that, the United States shared some intelligence with Pakistan about two bomb-making facilities. This, a story that broke in the Washington Post last week. And then when the Pakistanis went to raid these two facilities, mysteriously nobody was there.
MCCARTHY: That's exactly right. And U.S. officials are saying that the targets seem to have been tipped off. That their cover had been blown, and they vacated these two facilities. These two bomb-making factories, one of which was in a girls' school in North Waziristan, were cleared out very soon after the United States had provided Pakistan this intelligence. The United States is saying it doesn't really know how that happened. But the suspicion rests on a theory that someone from inside Pakistan's intelligence apparatus alerted the militants and therefore any kind of raid to go in there and shut it down and grab those militants was scuttled.
CONAN: And what do the Pakistanis say?
MCCARTHY: Well, the Pakistanis aren't saying a whole lot about that, at all. But the U.S. is careful to say that there are indications that some senior Pakistani officials aren't happy about what appears to be comprised U.S. intelligence. What those indications are we're not sure. But again, you know, this goes to this whole question of how the United States makes this very difficult relationship with Pakistan work. And it reopens that whole issue of how to share intelligence, when to share intelligence. And that question about the difficulty of this relationship is obviously something that looms very large now, as the U.S. is starting to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and an end game to the war is starting to take shape. The U.S. needs Pakistan's help in bringing along those same militants, the U.S. may end up having to negotiate a peace settlement with and is fighting with now.
CONAN: Steve?
INSKEEP: Julie, I'm curious listening to you, and listening to you in recent days, if there are ways in which this most recent embarrassment could be helpful. Pakistanis were outraged, of course, that the U.S. did not tell them in advance of the bin Laden raid. One of the reasons was Americans said, well, the information might leak. Pakistanis were furious about that implication that they couldn't be trusted. And suddenly comes this indication that maybe, actually, they can't be trusted. Certainly the senior leaders probably could be trusted, but somebody is leaking information perhaps. I wonder if this is an incident that might actually get everyone on the same page a little more than they were a few weeks ago.
MCCARTHY: Well, that's a very interesting question. But let's just back off and see. I mean, to answer that, I tell you, at this moment, what is taking shape here, very quickly, is a new reality. It's what I call the post-Osama bin Laden landscape. As you point out, the catch and killing of Obama was - of Osama bin Laden was an earthquake here. And it changed the contours of the relationship with the United States. It changed the way people looked at their once-unquestioned Pakistani army. They for the first time, publicly, began to say a lot of things about the armed forces that they never said before. Very pointed questions about why the army lived so well and the rest of the county is suffering. Why they run banks and insurance companies and why they're given plots of land freely. Why their budget is a secret. So the moment of that embarrassment and that disgrace has almost kicked a door open that has allowed some sort of questioning of what really is the power center here in Pakistan.
And for many people, a power center that has deprived them of the oxygen of growing a democratic system. So in that sense there's - a whole new debate has arisen here. And you've got things, I think, that would have happened maybe two months ago that very few people would have taken notice of. We had the killing of a journalist that many Pakistanis believed was the work of the Pakistan Intelligence Agency. That was just a few weeks ago. Steve, you know all about it. You were here what it happened. Of course, the Pakistanis deny that what he was trying to expose was true. What he was exposing, what he wrote about, were links between al-Qaeda and the navy that allegedly made the takeover of the navy complex in Karachi two weeks ago possible. There is a hue and cry here about that man's killing.
And then, just last week, there was a killing of a young man in Karachi at the hands of Army Rangers. It was a caught-on-camera killing. It was basically a cold-blooded killing. And that, again, has created an enormous debate in this country about the impunity with which the armed forces act. And the Supreme Court has gotten into that act. So incidents that would have caused ripples before are causing tidal waves now. And because - and very much related to the Osama bin Laden case, that humiliation that opened everybody's eyes about, wait a minute. Where are we with this military?
CONAN: Let's get a caller into the conversation. We want to hear from those of you who heard the series of reports Steve Inskeep did on MORNING EDITION, questions about the U.S. relationship with Pakistan. Alice is on the line, calling from Ft. Lewis in Washington.
ALICE (Caller): Hi. Thanks for taking my phone call. I listen to your shows whenever I can, and I was just curious. My husband is - well, he's over in Afghanistan right now. I was just wondering if you were able to talk to any of the soldiers over there. He found it extremely frustrating, you know, every time they were attacked, every time they did raids, it was basically finding Pakistani passports, Pakistani cell phones. It's just incredibly frustrating to deal with, quote-unquote, an ally. And I was wondering if you encountered that on the ground as well.
INSKEEP: Alice, what service is your husband in?
ALICE: He's in the Army.
INSKEEP: He's in the Army. And how long is he there for?
ALICE: Almost a year.
INSKEEP: Okay. Well, I hope he remains safe. That is an interesting story you tell, and it's a very common story. There is tremendous frustration in the U.S. military over people who are believed to have safe havens on the Pakistan side of the border, who are able to move over to the Afghan side of the border. It's very hard to secure that border.
It's interesting. When we were on the Pakistani side - I went with a team of NPR producers. When we were on the Pakistani side, you heard almost a mirror image of that frustration. In fact, over the past year or more, when I have visited northwestern Pakistan, I've heard Pakistani military commanders complain that there are militants coming across the border from Afghanistan and attacking targets in Pakistan.
As Julie McCarthy knows very well, there was such an attack just about a week or so ago, a week and a half or so ago, in which dozens of people were killed. I think you can look at this in a larger way - and I think a lot of military planners in both armies are attempting to do so - look at it in a larger way and just realize that there is a lot of territory to secure. It's hard to ever have enough troops to secure all the hundreds and thousands of square miles that we're talking about. And really, the only solution that a lot of people see is a political solution that ends the motivation for the fighting, or at least ends some people's motivations for fighting, because it is just hard to seal off every mountain pass.
ALICE: Yeah, but I guess my point is - I mean, I listen to, you know, the - oh, gosh, the word? The scolding we got from Pakistanis over killing bin Laden and that we didn't inform them enough and we didn't tell them this and we didn't them that. And at the same time, you know, you see those people coming over the border, and how are we supposed to trust them?
INSKEEP: It is frustrating.
CONAN: Alice, we're going to let you go. But stay with us, because when we get back in the next segment, we're going to ask Julie McCarthy about the double game that Pakistan plays in its neighbor, Afghanistan. So thanks very much for the phone call. We appreciate it. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
The is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. We're talking with MORNING EDITION host Steve Inskeep about his recent visit to Pakistan. The trip included a visit to a 19th century brick fort in Charsadda tribal region, where he spoke with Commander Irshad Alam of the Frontier Constabulary. Alam recently lost 79 people in a double suicide bombing.
(SOUNDBITE OF NPR'S MORNING EDITION)
Commander IRSHAD ALAM: (Through translator) It was very strange for us, because the recruits were lying just like sheeps and goats. I was picking them up with my own hands.
INSKEEP: Irshad is a veteran of 29 years, his beard flecked with grey. But for all of his experience, the bombing threw him into a depression.
ALAM: (Through translator) That day, my heart was strong, because if it wasn't, the other recruits would be demoralized. The next day, I felt really bad. For the next 18 days, I felt bad.
INSKEEP: He told us he was feeling better, but as he spoke, the lines began to deepen around his eyes and his face contorted. He said the image kept replaying in front of my eyes.
ALAM: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: Do you need to take a minute, sir?
ALAM: (Foreign language spoken)
INSKEEP: He stepped out of the room, returning a few minutes later.
ALAM: (Through translator) Why are our children being killed? What mistake have we made? Maybe it's punishment from God, because our behavior hasn't been very good.
CONAN: If you heard Commander Alam's story and the others in the series, give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. Julie McCarthy, NPR's Pakistan bureau chief, is still with us. Also with us here in Studio 3A is Asma Khalid, producer for NPR's MORNING EDITION. She traveled with Steve Inskeep in Pakistan. And Asma, nice to have you with us today.
ASMA KHALID: Thank you.
CONAN: And I wonder you were there for that moment. It must have been a very powerful, to see a man like that with his kind of experience, overwhelmed.
KHALID: Yeah, I mean I think it was extremely, extremely difficult to watch. And I'm sure Steve would agree. And I think, you know, it really brought home for me I think for many of us as Americans, I think that we have forgotten or maybe just not been aware of the fact of how many Pakistanis have died since September 11th. And that's a similar sort of narrative that we heard throughout our trip, is that 30,000 plus Pakistanis have died. And when you see a man who, you know, has risked not only his life, his soldiers' lives, but to some degree if you hear the story - blood relatives. This is a tribal culture in which some relatives perhaps are part of the militant groups and other relatives are on the other side fighting brother to brother, cousin to cousin.
CONAN: And as you try to understand more about these people. You have relatives in Pakistan but you grew up, like Steve, in Indiana.
INSKEEP: Where all the journalists come from.
CONAN: Where all the journalists come from, yeah. And you get a glimpse into that tribal culture, which seems so foreign to us.
KHALID: I think it does. And a little preview to a story that we have upcoming, soon, is we spoke with a novelist who has a book out about the tribal culture and I hope that your listeners will get a chance to hear that story. I think to many of us, the tribal system seems like a very antiquated way of living. I think that has unfortunately gotten sort of wrapped up and confused in recent years because of the Afghan war and because of militants pouring into that tribal region. But if you really look at the tribal system to some degree, it's very akin to sort of the Native American tribal system that we had here in the United States. It's sort of just one of the basic building blocks of human life.
CONAN: Steve?
INSKEEP: And I just want to mention, also, that as foreign as tribal culture can seem to Americans, I think it's foreign to an awful lot of Pakistanis, who are trying to understand this region that has been governed in a different way over the decades and over the centuries; where a different language is spoken than in many other parts of Pakistan; where there is commerce that passes through but there hasn't been necessarily a lot of travel. I went to one of the tribal zones called Bajor, last year, in Pakistan, and went along with a Pakistani who was working with me. He had grown up 40 miles away and he'd never been in the federally administered tribal areas, as they're called. He grew up, you know, a very short drive away. But people just don't go there. It is seen as a world apart. And then you have an army that, not in every case, is - there are units actually raised in the tribal zones - but in many cases are people from a different part of the country, speaking Punjabi, not Pashto, the language of the tribal zones. And with a different culture, in many ways, coming in and it's alien, I think, to some of them.
KHALID: Yeah, and just to jump on that. In the story that your listeners just heard, in fact, their District Commander spoke Punjabi, was not from the region. And that sort of...
INSKEEP: The Deputy Commander.
KHALID: Deputy Commander. You know, exemplifies the difficulties that the military commanders have, because they're not speaking the same language as their local soldiers.
CONAN: I wanted to follow up with Julie McCarthy on what Alice was asking about just before the break. And that is the assistance that Pakistan provides to some of the people fighting American troops and NATO troops in Afghanistan. And Julie, what you often hear for Pakistanis speaking candidly is - you Americans, well you'll be gone. And we won't be that long in terms of our history, you'll be gone and we still need to have influence in our neighboring country of Afghanistan and of course we need to maintain relationships with some of those power groups.
MCCARTHY: Well, that's exactly right. I mean what you hear them you say is, you know, we've been here for ten thousand years, we'll be here for another ten thousand years when you're 10,000 miles away. And so there is this - also a sense of encircling here in Pakistan. There is a deep fear that India rising and India, very generously, sort of giving lots of aid and assistance over in Afghanistan, is a deeply worrying thing for Pakistan. Which is sort of driving, also, their deeper relationships with China. Which is also - that's something that's looming on the horizon. I think that where the great game will really come alive here.
CONAN: And that is also - the support for groups like the Haqqani Network is part of a pattern, where the Pakistani Intelligence Services, the ISI, were supporting groups, sometimes creating groups, to further aims, the - with plausible deniability in places like Kashmir.
INSKEEP: Let me mention - oh, go ahead Julie, go ahead.
MCCARTHY: No, that's right. I mean one writer was calling, you know, the ISI and elements of the military, you know, the Dr. Frankenstein of the monsters that now are coming back to haunt Pakistan and the United States and its allies who are fighting in Afghanistan.
CONAN: Steve?
INSKEEP: We had a variety of questions put to a variety of Pakistani military and security officials during this reporting in the last several weeks. And we asked a lot of questions specifically about the Haqqani Network. Let me explain this for people who don't follow this every day. They're believed to be based, among other places, in North Waziristan, it's right there on the border with Afghanistan. Americans are very frustrated about the Haqqanis. They've been blamed for spectacular attacks on, for example, the Indian Embassy in Kabul and various targets in Afghanistan. And they're widely believed to have some kind of connection, support or a free pass from the Pakistani military and intelligence services. The Pakistani security services, for the record, denied this. They say, why would we do that? We have no interest in doing that.
But when I talked to other military officers, the people will say, well okay, we don't support specific groups, but of course we support the Pashtuns of Afghanistan - which are the majority - the largest group, not necessarily the majority, the largest group in Afghanistan. They will say, we do have, as Julie mentioned, security interests in the region after the Americans are gone. There's the question of whether the Pakistani army that's now in many of these tribal zones is going after the Haqqanis or giving them a pass. We did interview a general, on the record, who said we're attacking all the terrorists we can find in North Waziristan, but they aren't doing a full-blown offensive as they are in other parts of the country.
CONAN: And interestingly he said, but we don't of course call them, I don't call them the Haqqani. I don't differentiate between one group or another at all. They're all bad. Of course I...
INSKEEP: (Laughing) He said I shoot first and ask questions later.
MCCARTHY: But you know, Neal, there's also, you know, groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is supposed to be a banned group here in Pakistan. They were created by the ISI. They were created as - by the ISI, you know, in a bleed India campaign, to go and create all kinds of mischief in Kashmir. Supposed to have been banned. And a front organization known as Jamaat-ud-Dawa was also supposed to be banned. I was at a rally of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa in the center of Lahore, that was shut down by the authorities so that they could rally by the thousands. Now this is a banned organization that is out in the streets - with, you know, very, virulent anti-Americanism, very virulent anti-government remarks about how their own government is comporting its foreign relations and is comporting, you know, its treatment of its own people. So this is an extraordinary - it's sort of an extraordinary thing to see when you know that these were supposed to have been disbanded groups and they're out on the streets by the thousands waving their banners.
CONAN: Let's get another caller in. This is Bob, Bob with us from Scarletsville, or it could be Charlottesville, Virginia.
BOB (Caller): A question for Steve, since he was just in the region. Today is 64 years after the separation at birth as you called it. Why do India and Pakistan persist with this mutual paranoia? Is it that they fear that one is planning to militarily take the other one over, they really believe something as fantastic as that? Or why don't they resolve this and move on?
INSKEEP: It's an easy question to ask here. It is a hard question to answer over there. There are issues that go back to the very partition of India, the very creation of India and Pakistan that are still unresolved today. Just to name the largest one, Kashmir - this province that is majority Muslim, that Pakistanis believe should have belonged to them, Indians didn't want to give it up. There was a war almost immediately. And you have a situation where each country now has part of that province, Jammu and Kashmir. And they have periodically fought wars along what is not actually a border. It's called the Line of Control. It is purely a matter of whether your army can control a few extra square yards of territory.
There have been solutions floated. There are ways to internationalize Kashmir. There are ways to deal with that. But they haven't been able to get it done. It is hard for me to speak in detail to the Indian side of this equation, having not reported from there. But on the Pakistani side, the politics make it very difficult to move too closely toward peace with India because anytime you do, someone will sabotage you. If you're a civilian politician, you will have Islamist groups who are saying that you are giving in to infidels.
If you move against the military, the military has very strong feelings on that issue. And so it is very difficult to make progress. President Pervez Musharraf, the last military dictator, actually did make some efforts to move toward peace with India, very, very quietly. And then, of course, there was a bombing in Mumbai at the end of 2008 that was blamed on militants from Pakistan. And again, that process was destroyed.
CONAN: Asma, I wanted to ask you, were you surprised by the depth of the emotion about Kashmir?
KHALID: The depth of the emotion - I mean, I don't know that it's really that surprising, because I should be honest. I mean, I have Pakistani family members, and so growing up since probably the age of two I've gone to Pakistan regularly. I think it's something that you almost become accustomed to. You know, there's sort of this - it's like a high school rivalry. And you just know that it's always there and so it's not really so surprising.
CONAN: We're talking with Asma Khalid, who's a producer for NPR's MORNING EDITION; Steve Inskeep, who doessomething or other for that program...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
CONAN: ...and Julie McCarthy, NPR...
INSKEEP: Whatever they tell me to do.
CONAN: ...NPR's Pakistan bureau chief. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, which is coming to you from NPR News.
And Julie, I wanted to ask you, in the aftermath of the bin Laden raid, there was great outrage by Pakistani officials who say this should never happen again. Furthermore, the United States must stop its drone attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan. And since then, if anything, those drone attacks have stepped up.
MCCARTHY: Well, this is another very interesting, quintessentially Pakistani question. Where does the government and where does the military really stand on the drones? That's the $64 million question. You've got WikiLeaks cables that basically say, the civilian leadership says, fine, America, go ahead and drop those, we'll just deny it if anybody asks. And you've got - but in - while that has all bubbled along since WikiLeaks came out in November, you have a growing number of people in this country dead set against drones because they're of the opinion that more civilians are being killed in them than any sort of what they call here miscreants.
Now, you know, Neal, in FATA, we can't get anywhere near there. So we have no - we have really very little authentic and verifiable evidence about what the drones are actually doing, which is, you know, which creates this whole other realm of mystery and distrusts.
CONAN: It's for the...
MCCARTHY: And now the government's sort of jumped on that bandwagon.
CONAN: And the drones are, of course, flown from a facility operated by the U.S. in Pakistan.
MCCARTHY: Well, the U.S. does not operate these facilities now in Pakistan. It came out recently that one of the bases has been seconded to the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, which then, of course, can contract with the United States. That came as quite as shock to Pakistanis that their own base have been seconded to the UAE. So there are - sort of legal ways around all of this.
But to think, when you're starting to see, Neal, is this development, an army on the defensive here, and it's begun a very serious PR campaign to claw its way back into the hearts and minds of the Pakistanis, who are sort of shocked at a number of things, not the least of which is how is the - how could the army have allowed the United States to violate the territorial integrity of the country when it came and snatched bin Laden.
CONAN: Let's see...
MCCARTHY: But you have - you have the army sort of clawing back and they've made the calculation that distancing themselves from the United States by kicking out most of the military trainers here will pay off. The Americans are so loathed, the thinking goes, that the army can find cover in actions that are perceived to be anti-U.S., like kicking out trainers, and exploit it to its own advantage. This is why they've called for a complete review of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, and that's what they're doing.
It's nursing not only its own wounds, but playing to a domestic audience for whom anything that looks like it's against the United States looks like good politics. And the army is nothing if not politically astute.
CONAN: And Steve, this is where we get back to that nightmare moment. You heard - you've spoken in one conversation about the grumbling amongst junior officers, junior officers who think the government is - well, they're just aren't happy.
INSKEEP: Well, I heard about that in several places. It's hard to get too specific about this. But you did have a number of people reporting that junior officers in the army were unhappy with their own leadership. And it was not entirely clear why, except that it's been a very embarrassing moment to be in the Pakistani military. And a number of these officers, I'm sure, are very well aware of the power and privileges that come along with being in the military, and they certainly wouldn't want to lose their future. I'm sure they're also patriotic and don't like to see their country embarrassed.
CONAN: Well, this is a country that has had repeated military coups.
INSKEEP: Repeated military coups led from the top. The chief of staff of the army is inevitably the guy who ends up taking over the country, or it has been through Pakistan's history. Sooner or later, the chief of staff of the army takes over. This is something different. This would be younger officers who are unhappy with their seniors.
And so you have the army command, General Kayani, and the rest of them, with a situation where the civilians are unhappy with them. There's the possibility, although not the probability, that these civilians will assert their control in some effective way, and maybe their own constituents, in effect, their own subordinates are unhappy with them, and that, as Julie points out, is a political difficulty, not a military difficulty.
CONAN: Steve Inskeep, thanks very much for your time today, staying late to help us out here on TALK OF THE NATION. Of course, he's the host of MORNING EDITION. Julie McCarthy, we'll let you go. It's later in the evening there in Islamabad. We appreciate your time.
MCCARTHY: It's the morning.
CONAN: It's the morning already. And we'd also like to thank Asma Khalid, a producer for NPR's MORNING EDITION, who spoke with us as well. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
