ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The words from Pakistan’s top foreign policy adviser could not have been clearer. At a news conference welcoming China’s foreign minister to the Pakistani capital this week, Sartaj Aziz declared, “Pakistan’s relations with China are the cornerstone of our foreign policy.
It was a blunt signal of change by a country that has long been a key ally and aid recipient of the United States, from the nations’ Cold War alliance against Soviet meddling in Afghanistan to a more recent, uneasy partnership in the fight against Islamist terrorism in the region. Today, Pakistan continues to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. annual support.
But Islamabad’s political pivot from Washington to Beijing, already its dominant investor and increasingly important global interlocutor, is hardly surprising, experts said.
Pakistani officials have been worried for months that the Trump administration will put heavy pressure on their government, possibly by cutting aid or even declaring it a “state sponsor of terrorism” — a giant black mark — because of complaints by Afghan authorities, U.S. military officials and members of Congress that Pakistan continues to harbor anti-Afghan insurgents.
At the same time, Islamabad has been concerned about Washington’s emerging friendship with India, Pakistan’s much larger, nuclear-armed rival and neighbor. This week’s upbeat state visit to Washington by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was received enthusiastically by President Trump, raised new alarm bells here.
On Thursday, Pakistani newspapers featured a photo of Trump and Modi hugging goodbye accompanied by anxious headlines and a testy statement from Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry that called a joint statement by the two leaders “singularly unhelpful” in achieving stability in South Asia and said it “aggravates an already tense situation.” The ministry also said China had endorsed Pakistan’s view.
Pakistan was especially upset that Modi and Trump spoke about the importance of reining in regional terrorism — referring indirectly to Pakistan’s alleged support of anti-Afghan insurgents — but ignored Pakistan’s denunciations of human rights abuses by Indian forces against protesters in the contested border region of Kashmir, as well as its charges of Indian support for anti-Pakistan militants.
“Those who seek to appropriate a leadership role in the fight against terror are themselves responsible for much of the terror unleashed in Pakistan,” the Foreign Ministry said, referring to India.
Pakistani commentators suggested that Washington, in turn, was trying to please India by suddenly placing Syed Salahuddin, the longtime Pakistan-based leader of a Kashmiri Muslim rebel group, on a list of global terrorists. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the United States had begun “speaking India’s language.”
Pakistani officials and commentators also expressed concern about new agreements between India and the United States on sales of Predator drones and other American defense equipment, as well as commercial aircraft. Pakistan has had a long-standing military and intelligence relationship with the United States, and it has fought three limited wars with India since the 1960s. – Washington Post