WASHINGTON: After US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threat to Pakistan overIMF bailout package by new government in Pakistan the US officials have nowlaunched yet another tirade against Imran Khan led PTI government inPakistan.
Pakistan PM elect Imran Khan could complicate new talks between Americandiplomats and the Taliban about ending the war in Afghanistan, US officialssaid, fraying an already strained relationship between the nuclear-armedIslamic nation and the Trump administration, reported *The New York Times.*link
Tensions between Pakistan and the United States were exacerbated in Januarywhen the Trump administration suspended nearly all American security aid toIslamabad.
But the relationship threatens to be further inflamed by Khan, who hasvoiced past support for the Taliban’s fight in the 17-year conflict inAfghanistan, calling it “justified”. He also has accused the United Statesof recklessness in its use of drone strikes on suspected extremists inPakistan, signalling he wants them to stop.
Khan tempered his harsh anti-American language with an olive twig, if not abranch, in his victory speech last week.
“With the US, we want to have a mutually beneficial relationship,” Khansaid. “Up until now, that has been one-way — the US thinks it gives us aidto fight their war.”
Recently, in a reversal of a longstanding policy, American diplomats heldface-to-face talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar without Afghangovernment officials present. It was a significant shift in Americanstrategy toward the Taliban in Afghanistan, and analysts said Khan’svictory could now set up Pakistan to play the role of spoiler in the peaceprocess.
“The US doesn’t care much about Pakistan right now, but that issue willrise to the top,” said Shamila N Chaudhary, a former State Department andWhite House official who oversaw Pakistan issues during the Obamaadministration.
“Khan and the Pakistani military will want Pakistan to have a very strongrole in shaping Afghanistan’s future,” Chaudhary said. “I don’t think theUS is angling for Pakistan to have a strong role.”
Still, “the US needs Pakistan’s acquiescence, if not cooperation,” saidLaurel Miller, a senior foreign policy expert at the RAND Corporation, whowas a top State Department official with responsibility for Afghanistan andPakistan in both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Administration officials and independent analysts voiced doubt that Khanwill have much say in the issues that currently concern Washington aboutPakistan: its extremist groups and steadily growing nuclear arsenal, aswell as Afghanistan.
Those are the domain of Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligenceagencies, which critics say influenced the elections in Khan’s favour. Khanis still trying to gather enough support to form a majority coalition inParliament, but the Pakistani news media is already calling him the primeminister in waiting.
“His ascension will have little impact on US-Pakistani relations,” Millersaid. “The situation in Afghanistan, the nuclear issues — those are tightlycontrolled by the military establishment.”
The State Department has responded tepidly to Khan’s apparent victory.
“The United States takes note of yesterday’s election results in Pakistan,”a State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said last week in astatement that condemned violence at polling stations and allegations ofelections rigging.
Much of what kept these habitually sparring allies together over the pasttwo decades is no longer a top priority, analysts said.
Al-Qaeda is not the threat it once was in the Pakistani tribal areas alongthe Afghanistan border. In each of the past three years, the United Stateshas carried out fewer than 10 drone strikes in Pakistan, down from a highof 117 in 2010, according to the Foundation for Defence of Democracies’Long War Journal.
At the same time, the number of American troops in Afghanistan has droppedto about 15,000 from more than 100,000 at the height of war more than adecade ago. The Pentagon relied on moving many of its war supplies throughPakistan but is much less dependent now.
Even before American military and intelligence operatives tracked down andkilled Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, American officials chidedPakistan’s military and intelligence agency as harbouring or turning ablind eye to militants.
“Both sides need each other much less than they did in the past twodecades,” said Seth G. Jones, who heads the Transnational Threats Projectat the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Advances in the relationship have been few under the Trump administration,which in January suspended as much as $1.3 billion in annual aid toPakistan — an across-the-board freeze that was the most tangible sign yetof Washington’s frustration with the country’s refusal to crack down onterrorist networks operating there.
The decision came three days after President Trump complained on Twitterthat Pakistan had “given us nothing but lies & deceit” and accused it ofproviding “safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan”.
The aid suspension underscored how quickly ties with Pakistan deterioratedafter Trump took office.
But it mirrored several previous rifts between the countries overPakistan’s role as a sanctuary for extremist groups — a role that haspoisoned Islamabad’s up-and-down relations with Washington since theterrorist attacks of September 2001.
Administration officials emphasised at the time that the freeze wastemporary and could be lifted if Pakistan changed its behaviour.
That has not happened, despite repeated urging by top American officialsthat the Pakistani government cut off contact with militants and reassignintelligence agents with links to extremists — a goal that Republican andDemocratic administrations have pursued for years with little success.
Much of the aid earmarked for Pakistan is now being allocated elsewhere,State Department officials said on Tuesday.