ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan and United States relations are unique inthe world and traditionally have been like this throughout their history.Accusing each other of double games but still carrying on due theirrespective interests. US accuses Pakistan of harbouring the terroristshitting the US soldiers and Pakistan accuses US of sheltering Indiansponsored TTP agents on Afghanistan soil under the nose of US forces andstriking Pakistan.
The story of betrayal doesn’t end here. US is not comfortable with thePakistan close relations with China giving it access to warm waters andPakistan not comfortable with US strategic partnership with India. Stillnone wants divorce.
Now, a flurry of quieter military and diplomatic contacts over the past twoweeks has patched things up, but only to a point. At a deeper level,analysts here say, both partners acknowledge that their relationship isbeset by irreconcilable differences but that neither can afford a divorce.
For decades, the two have maintained a formal but uneasy strategicalliance, first against Soviet designs on Afghanistan and recently againstIslamist terrorism. But the breach precipitated by Trump has exposed theunderlying reality: that Islamabad and Washington view the region’s threatsthrough opposing lenses.
One sees India as a menacing next-door behemoth; the other views it as anemerging democratic partner and strategic ally. One sees Afghanistan as apermanent backyard nuisance and a useful platform for countering Indianinfluence; the other views it as a dependent war zone and potential Westernredoubt against dangerous Islamist groups in the region.
“Pakistan and the United States have finally come to the undeniableconclusion that the other partner is playing footsie with its enemy,” saidMoeed Yusuf, a South Asia expert at the U.S. Institute for Peace inWashington, who is on an extended visit to Pakistan. “They have given up onstrategic convergence, but they want to keep the channels open so they cancooperate on tactical matters and ensure the relationship does not totallyrupture.”
Since the initial shock of Trump’s accusatory tweet and punitive action —which suspended more than $300 million in security aid and could affectbillions more — the signals from both capitals have been revealing.
Pakistan, under unprecedented U.S. pressure to rein in Islamist groups thatoperate in Afghanistan and India, has continued to flatly deny that itsupports them. It also insists that it has done all it can to curbmilitancy and regularly denounces terrorist attacks such as the deadlyassault Sunday on a luxury hotel in Kabul. Yet it also recently releasedtwo militant leaders with histories of fomenting religious violence, one ofwhom the United States has demanded that it rearrest.
Some hawkish Pakistani commentators, expressing outrage at Trump’s“betrayal,” have suggested that Pakistan retaliate by cutting off overlandsupply routes to the U.S. military in Afghanistan — or even by severingrelations with Washington, now that China has become Pakistan’s mostimportant international economic partner and appears poised to join it in astrategic alliance. But others, including senior military officials, haveurged restraint.
“There is no panic in Islamabad — rather, a carefully calibrated, matureand unemotional response to the raving and ranting of a mercurial leader ofa declining superpower,” said Mushahid Hussain, a Pakistani senator. WhileChina is building a solid, steady partnership with Pakistan, he said, theUnited States’ “bellicosity” and expanding relationship with India and itsHindu nationalist leader “could spark a new Cold War.”
American officials, seeking to lower the decibel level without abandoningthe administration’s demands, have initiated calls and visits to theircounterparts in Islamabad. Within days of the aid cut, Gen. Joseph L.Votel, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told Pakistan’s army chiefthat the bilateral “turbulence” was “a temporary phase.”
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who had repeatedly pressed Pakistani leadersto take tougher action against anti-Afghan insurgents or face U.S.sanctions, told reporters in Washington after the aid suspension that thetwo military communities would “continue talking with one another, as wealways have,” and said he was not concerned about China replacing theUnited States as Pakistan’s strategic partner.
Current and former U.S. diplomats also advised keeping the door open, ifonly for pragmatic reasons. Richard Olson, a former ambassador to Pakistan,wrote in an essay that U.S. sanctions would not work because of Pakistan’ssize, military strength and national pride, adding that if Islamabad cutssupply routes to Afghanistan, the U.S. military there could become a“beached whale.” Last week, Alice Wells, the top U.S. diplomat for SouthAsia, visited Pakistan in what was portrayed here as a “fence-mending”trip, albeit one short on substance.
The message from both sides, in essence, was an agreement not to slam thedoor shut, even as reminders of major unresolved issues and divergentpriorities continue to crop up. Most significant has been Pakistan’swillingness to continue appeasing some Islamist militants, and possiblysheltering others, even as the Trump administration suspended military aidas a direct result of those practices.
This past week, the Intercontinental Hotel complex in Kabul came under anight-long siege by five attackers, killing at least 22 people, includingseveral Americans. The attack was claimed by Taliban insurgents, andPakistani officials swiftly denounced it and expressed sympathy for thevictims.
But senior Afghan officials, including the chief executive and the head ofnational intelligence, blamed the assault on the Haqqani network and saidit had the backing of Pakistan — the precise charge that led to the U.S.aid cut.
Pakistani police officials escort Hafiz Saeed, the head of theJamaat-ud-Dawa organization, as he arrives at a court in Lahore on Nov. 22,2017. (Arif Ali/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
There is also the case of Hafiz Saeedlink>,a rabble-rousing, anti-Indian militant leader accused by Indian and U.S.officials of masterminding a deadly terrorist siege in Mumbai in 2008.Pakistani courts released him from house arrest two months ago, and thegovernment has since ignored repeated U.S. demands that Saeed — who has a$10 million U.S. bounty on his head — be rearrested and tried.Sign up
Finally, authorities recently freed Sufi Mohammedlink>,an imprisoned extremist cleric who led a violent takeover of Pakistan’sscenic Swat Valley in 2008, resulting in public beheadings, school bombingsand other atrocities. His unexpected release and stage-managed commentscriticizing his militant past came as Pakistani officials continued toinsist they were doing everything possible to eradicate Islamist violence.But not everyone was buying it.
“The return of the Sufi shows in clear terms to the millions of victims ofmilitancy that the state, for all its achievements against the militants,still makes way for the likes of him,” Syed Talat Hussain, a prominentjournalist, wrote in the News International newspaper this week. “When oldsymbols of organized terror are feted by the state, the silent message thatbeams across is lethal.”