Sophie Shevardnadze: I’m just going to start from the current events. There are threats to the Pakistani government from hardline extremists, but also, from what I understand, the military takeover – is an army coup likely?

Husain Haqqani: I’m not sure whether the army would like to take over directly – the army wields tremendous influence, and I think it would like to continue to wield that influence. Unfortunately what that does is that it paralyzes decision making – the civilians cannot make decisions because the army is constantly looking over their shoulder and the army doesn’t really control everything, because after all it has to contend with the civilians. So, it paralyzes decision-making, it’s not a good situation to be in, but that’s the situation we find: the army not liking the civilians, the civilians not liking the army, and yet, the army takeover not necessarily imminent.

SS: There’s another factor – the anti-government cleric Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri led a mass revolt last year, and he is now promising to lead the revolution. Now, in your opinion, is he backed by the real force, or is he just being delusional?

HH: I think he has basically a few thousand supporters – even the last time when he came to Islamabad there were a few thousand supporters. The question is why he is doing it. He has lived abroad for quite a few years, why does he feel confident enough to bring his supporters into the streets, challenge the authority of the government? A lot of people suspect some foul play. You must remember that in Pakistan’s history, street demonstrations have sometimes been used by the intel services as a means of trying to exert influence on civilian government, and sometimes even to depose it. Is something like that happening? We don’t have evidence, but we certainly have a lot of suspicion.

SS: Why do you think the current parliamentary government is in such a weak position? How did it come to this? It’s besieged from all sides: extremists, the military, now the Qadri threat. Why?

HH: First of all, the best way to run Pakistan under a civilian government is building relationships across the board. No civilian political party has sufficient strength to run the country on its own, even if it wins an absolute mandate like Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League did, the Muslim league doesn’t have support beyond Punjab; Pakistan is a country of several regions – it needs a little bit more consensus building. That’s one of the problems. The other problem, of course, is the civil-military divide. The civilians have to be very adept at handling the civilian-military issues. A third is the ideological divide. Pakistan is ideologically still very polarized between those who want Pakistan to be some form of an Islamic state – everybody has their own version of an Islamic state, but they want an Islamic state – and those who say that Pakistan needs to be a pragmatic, functional state. And then, above all, that is the whole Pakistan ideological DNA of constantly wanting either parity with India or competition with India, which makes it very difficult to invest in things like healthcare and education and run a functional economy – when the civilian government makes decisions about the economy, sometimes the military thinks that those decisions are motivated by corruption, not pragmatism; courts interfere, the institutions have not yet worked out a manner in which full democracy can move forward.

SS: Let’s talk about the Taliban, for instance. I mean, for many the Taliban represents extreme Islam, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was in strong favor of engaging the Taliban militants in peace talks. What do you make of that?

HH: First of all, we must understand that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1998 said that he actually admired the Taliban because of their commitment to Islam. This brings us to the problem that I have been writing about and speaking about openly. Pakistanis now need to revisit the very fundamental idea of Pakistan as an Islamic state, because if it’s going to be an Islamic state, people in jackets and ties are not going to be able to define Islam – Islam is going to be defined by the mullahs, and every mullah will offer a different explanation and different vision of what an Islamic state is going to look like. And that is the real reason why Pakistan is in such a mess. Now, the Taliban represents the most extreme form, and there are Taliban that have been used by the Pakistani state for influence in Afghanistan in the past, and there are Taliban who are now coming back and hunting and fighting the Pakistani state inside Pakistan. There needs to be much greater clarity about Pakistan’s future direction. Prime Minister Sharif said he could talk to the Taliban who are fighting in Pakistan and persuade them to accept some kind of a compromise – not realizing that you become Taliban because you are uncompromising. Your belief system is so hardline, that you do not like people who do not do exactly what you tell them to be. So, these are not people who are amenable to reason. Now, as far as fighting them is concerned, fighting them would require a national consensus, or some kind of national support. If the Pakistani public opinion remains divided between those who think, “Well the Taliban are at least good Muslims,” and those who think, “the Taliban are just being mislead by some foreign forces to attack Pakistan,” then in that environment, how is the soldier supposed to decide in the battlefield which Taliban should he shoot, which Taliban should he negotiate with?

SS: If the government does pin its hopes on a peace treaty with the Taliban, isn’t launching a military offensive a strange step in that direction?

HH: Absolutely! It reflects ideological confusion. The real ideological confusion is: are the Taliban just some people who are angry with the state, who are angry with America in Afghanistan, or are they people who have a vision that means taking Pakistan, and everywhere where there are Muslims, into the 8th century. All evidence points to the fact that these people want to drag our society into the 8th century. They don’t want young girls to go to school, they don’t want to have religious pluralism, they want to kill anybody who doesn’t conform to Islam as they see Islam. They don’t consider Shia, Sunni, Barelvis, Ahmadis as Muslims, and they don’t want Christians and Hindus. They want the purification of society, they slaughter people like goats. These people are not people of the 21stcentury, so how does the 21stcentury negotiate with the eighth century? Such people will never be amenable to negotiation.

SS: Is the latest anti-Taliban North Waziristan offensive one amongst many previous ones that have proved futile – or is this one any different?

HH: The Taliban has the advantages of terrain, surprise, and confusion within society. Look: in Russian, when, for example, extremists cause terrorist attack,  the whole nation is united in thinking so your military, intelligence service, all kinds of law enforcement people are all on one page. In Pakistan, we have deliberately created confusion over the last six or seven years – we have always said “No, no, no, people who operate in the name of Islam are good people” – even when they are slaughtering people like goats! So, what we have is a confused state apparatus. What you need is clarity. Are we trying to build a modern Pakistan, which allows people to practice Islam, which encourages people to remain moral, but which is not going to be bound by any clerical vision of an Islamic state? We are not doing that, and the Taliban has an advantage.

SS: So, just a tiny bit more about the Taliban. Pakistani Special Forces and the military helped create the Taliban, hoping to wield influence in the region through them. So why is Islamabad so involved with the Taliban now? Has it been worth it? What do you think?

HH: I think the Pakistani military does realize that the Taliban has become a problem for Pakistan, but it is just too late. The Taliban has sunken deep roots in Pakistan, and now it’s very difficult to beat the enemy when it was previously your friend and your creation.

SS: Now, Washington’s drone program has been active in Pakistan for years now, targeting the Taliban, mainly, but also causing civilian casualties, and that has been kind of a problem. But is that now becoming less of an issue for the Pakistani government? What do you think?

HH: I think the current government has been able to work out some kind of an arrangement with the Americans, whereby most of the drone strikes are now taking place only with some kind of coordination between Pakistan and the US. So we don’t hear too much about them. When the drone strikes were not coordinated, Pakistan used to leak the information to the media – we are not seeing those leaks, and therefore we are seeing less of a reaction as well. And groups like Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek Insaf, which was running the campaign against the drones, have now shifted their emphasis to other issues.

SS: But what do you think of the US drones attacking extremists in Pakistan – is it a good thing for you?

HH: Well, very frankly, the drones were used primarily because Pakistan was not launching a ground offensive and there was no other way of paralyzing those people. You know, the American attitude was “We have a list of people who need to be paralyzed, who need to be taken out, so that they are not a threat internationally”. That was the strategy, it was not only for Pakistan or Afghanistan, it was also for Yemen. Everywhere where there was no ground capability or air capability in the region to fight the terrorists. I think that if the Pakistani military manifests its interest in fighting the terrorists inside Pakistani territory, then there will be less drone strikes.

SS: Can the Taliban be defeated without the drone offensives?

HH: I think that drones were only a way of eliminating leaders, but the Taliban has shown a remarkable capability of recruiting new members and I think basically the idea of Talibanization needs to be confronted. Somebody needs to stand up in Pakistan and say: “This way forward is not a way forward. These people represent ideas that are not acceptable to Pakistani society, and these people are not Pakistan’s partners for regional influence.” The North Waziristan operation will result in a lot of internally displaced persons. These people will include the future Taliban; as long as the ideology of the Taliban is alive, they will continue to recruit all over Pakistan.

SS: Can Pakistan insure the safety of its nuclear arsenal against any threat?

HH: I think Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has the same kind of safety arrangements that most countries do. The real problem is – is Pakistan a secure nation?

SS: Well, that’s what I mean because there is so much turmoil around who is governing the country.

HH: What happens when extremists take over the country, for example – and that is something the Pakistanis should be open to talk about. We can’t turn around and say “our internal problems are not the problems of the rest of the world” – no, they are, because our internal problems are causing problems for the rest of the world. Our nuclear designs ended up in North Korea, Libya and Iran. We blamed one man, Dr AQ Khan, but we must come forward and hold all those who did it accountable.

SS: Seeing how the Taliban threat is getting stronger and relations with India are actually getting smoother…I mean, originally, the nuclear bomb in Pakistan was created because India seemed to be a threat. But what does Pakistan need the bomb for now?

HH: I won’t get into what Pakistan needs the bomb for or not, because I have my own views on Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent. I am, personally, one of those who feels that Pakistan should be part of some international nuclear restraint regime, but I am a very small minority in Pakistan. The problem in relation to India is that relations may be smoother on the surface, but deep down there – not. Pakistan needs to think of itself as a trading nation, not as a warrior nation. The bigger problem is what is the purpose of Pakistan in the world? Is Pakistan always going to be a warrior nation that wants to be India’s equal, without having the economic resources or the size of geography and population – or is Pakistan willing to be a nation that pays attention to its 180 million people?

SS: A while ago there were reports that the US Special Forces were getting ready to move into Pakistan and seize the nuclear arsenal in case pro-Taliban elements come to power. Do you think Washington still has that plan in mind?

HH: Americans make all kinds of plans. I don’t think it’s practical for American special operations forces to arrive in Pakistan without some kind of support base inside Pakistan. And you must remember – 83 percent of Pakistanis have a negative view of the US. So if American troops ever come to Pakistan, it will result in a kind of chaos and a war-like situation which I don’t think the Americans want. I think the Americans would like to have a government in Pakistan that takes responsibility for Pakistan’s nuclear program, and I think it’s in Pakistan’s interest to make itself part of the global community with restraints rather than an un-restrained country that doesn’t allow international observers into Pakistan even for normal check-ups on its nuclear technological facilities. This kind of isolation is not good for Pakistan. It makes Pakistan more like North Korea, rather than like South Korea, which is an economically prosperous and open society.

SS: Talking about North Korea, you know that US intelligence spends just as much time spying on Pakistan as it does on North Korea and Al-Qaeda. Why is it that they feel they need to spy on its ally?

HH: I think that the Pakistan-US alliance is essentially now just a charade. Everybody knows that Pakistan’s strategic calculus is very different from America’s strategic calculus. I’ve written a whole book called ‘Magnificent delusions’ in which I say that the Pakistani delusion is that it can maintain its strategic calculus with American assistance and their support, whereas the American delusion is that they can change Pakistan’s strategic calculus by giving it aid and arms. These two countries need to review their relationship in a very significant way, and we must come to terms with the fact that there are people in Pakistan who have ideas about how they will fight America and there are Americans who think that Pakistan needs to be brought under restraint much more than they say publicly. So, I don’t think that the alliance is really an alliance anymore, and I agree that the Americans are conducting the kind of surveillance in Pakistan that they usually reserve for countries that are deemed as hostile. And that is not good either for the US or for Pakistan.

SS: Just a little bit more about the nuclear program. The ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, is responsible for safeguarding the nuclear arsenal – but is it really as untrustworthy as the US thinks it is?

HH: No, I don’t think…look, I think sometimes these questions are framed wrongly. I mean, who is it untrustworthy for? No Pakistani would want Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to fall into the hands of either the Americans or Indians or anybody else. People like me worry about what happens when people with jihadist sympathies take over Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons were designed primarily as a deterrent. We already have that deterrent capability. Why do we need to expand on our nuclear weapons program when 42 percent of our school-going age children do not go to school? We need to think about the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is that it’s not just Americans, many other countries also are getting concerned about Pakistan as a petri dish for global terrorism. Most of the people arrested in Europe have had some kind of relationship – either they went through Pakistan or were in Pakistan when they became radicalized, and those are things that we need to address for ourselves. So a radical Pakistan which is also nuclear is definitely a problem. But a nuclear Pakistan that is responsible and takes responsibility for its nukes? I don’t think that needs to be confronted in the same way.