Forecasting in international relations is not just tricky, it could be unsafe also. But few things are too obvious to ignore. It would not be too far-fetched to suggest that the Pakistan-US relationship is in for a rough ride because of a very intense feeling in Washington that Pakistan has not been doing enough to cut off support for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan from its territory.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on ‘Situation in Afghanistan’ Feb 9, top US commander Gen. John Nicholson proposed a “holistic review” of relations with Pakistan, on whose soil Taliban and Haqqani Network fighters allegedly continue to enjoy “safe havens” and “freedom of action”, which, he believed, “increases the cost to the United States in terms of lives, time, and money”.
The US general warned the senators that the Taliban/Haqqani network sanctuaries in Pakistan provided them “the strategic initiative, allowing them to determine the pace and venue of conflict” and that “elimination of external sanctuary and support to the insurgents” was a prerequisite for US success in Afghanistan.
There was hardly anything new in this assessment. The US has been whining about Pakistan’s alleged inaction against the Taliban/Haqqani network for years and precisely for this reason Islamabad last year lost the F-16 deal after Congress refused to subsidize the sale. Furthermore, it has been losing $300 million to $400 million annually for the past few years of its own money that the US has to reimburse simply because the American defense secretary has not been testifying that Pakistan has acted against the Haqqani network and uprooted its sanctuaries from its soil.
But ground realities have changed now. Tough-talking Trump is in the White House, and will soon be attending to the war in Afghanistan that has not been going well. The US has spent $117 billion there since 2002, but the situation there is increasingly becoming serious. The Afghan government has lost 6.3% more territory to the Taliban since 2015 and the casualty figure for Afghan security forces has been going up—some 7,000 were killed last year. And hence the thought of a few thousand more US soldiers being sent back to Afghanistan to regain some of the lost momentum.
This means an impending troop surge, but before that materializes, US diplomats privately say, there would be a serious rethink about how to get Pakistan to finally move against the Taliban/Haqqani network. Pakistan’s former envoy to Afghanistan and India, Amb (retd) Aziz Ahmed Khan, agrees with this assessment. “At the moment it is difficult to predict what direction Pakistan-US relations will take in President Trump’s temperamental tenure but essentially they will be influenced by developments in Afghanistan,” he observed and cautioned that the Americans “may not be as understanding about the complexity of the situation”.
Conflict in Afghanistan, the Americans seldom realize, lingers not just because of alleged sanctuaries in Pakistan, but because there are several other dimensions to it as well, including the capacity of Afghan security forces, problems with the functioning of the National Unity Government, corruption, and a flourishing narcotics trade with poppy growth increasing by 43% over the past few years. But, the allegations about sanctuaries in Pakistan overshadow other problems within Afghanistan even though they are no less important.
Gen. Nicholson’s words and the observations of some of the other committee members, including its chairman Senator John McCain and Senator Jack Reed, therefore, came as a sort of rude awakening for a few in Islamabad, who had been led by government advisers into believing that they had secured assurances from the Trump administration that it would not be too harsh towards Pakistan.
Foreign Office Spokesman Nafees Zakaria expressed disappointment over “the assertions and insinuations” made during the Senate committee hearing and said they were “misplaced and not in synch with the current situation on the ground”.
No matter how biased these appraisals about Pakistan are, it remains a fact that these perceptions, particularly those of the top commander in Afghanistan, would find receptive ears in Washington and add to wrinkles in the relationship.
It is not only that civilians who have been under the illusion that Trump is going to be soft towards Pakistan, the military leadership is suffering from the same delusion, or is at least promoting it publicly. A readout issued by the ISPR after Defense Secretary James Mattis’ “20-minute” long conversation with Army Chief Gen. Qamar Bajwa spoke about an agreement on “continued engagement at multiple levels”.
Even if one were to assume that there are no illusions in Rawalpindi or Islamabad, their spokesmen are deliberately or unintentionally mixing too many things together.
It is true that the Americans will not just disconnect; they’ll need Pakistan’s cooperation to settle the Afghan mess. But, the gloves would probably come off. That could be hurtful, because Pakistan-US ties are not just about the two countries, but they also affect Islamabad’s relations with several other countries as well as its standing at multilateral fora.
This is also what far-right think tanks such as the Hudson Institute are recommending to the Trump administration as it prepares its policy for the region. “The objective of the Trump Administration’s policy toward Pakistan must be to make it more and more costly for Pakistani leaders to employ a strategy of supporting terrorist proxies to achieve regional strategic goals,” a recent report by the Hudson Institute authored by Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani and Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow on South Asia at the Heritage Foundation, said.
“We would need to play our cards carefully. Trump would be heavily influenced by the Indian opinion vis-a-vis the issues relating to terrorism,” Amb. Aziz says.
Another misperception that is being propagated by some quarters, in response to a growing chorus of criticism of the alleged presence of sanctuaries, is that the Pakistan government is receiving different signals from different tiers of the Trump administration. But the fact remains that the messages may have been phrased differently, but they are essentially same. The Americans do want engagement, but for them the priority is an end to all support structures the Taliban/Haqqani network may have here.
Moreover, Pakistan’s response to American and Afghan allegations of the presence of the Taliban/Haqqani network sanctuaries has been a standard reference to the “successful Operation Zarb-e-Azb”. The Americans do acknowledge that, but what is apparently not being addressed is that despite that counter-terrorism operations, the issue of safe havens remains unaddressed.
“We have great respect for the operation they conducted in Waziristan. It was a very large and significant operation and they suffered heavy casualties,” Gen. Nicholson said and separately pointed out that sanctuaries exist “in areas like Quetta, with the Taliban leadership, and other cities within the tribal areas for the Haqqani leadership.”
The way out of this rather grim situation, to quote Amb. Aziz words is “a careful calibration of our policy”.
The only thing we need to keep in mind is that it is Trump’s US that we are dealing with and not India.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad mamoonarubab@gmail.com @bokhari_mr
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on ‘Situation in Afghanistan’ Feb 9, top US commander Gen. John Nicholson proposed a “holistic review” of relations with Pakistan, on whose soil Taliban and Haqqani Network fighters allegedly continue to enjoy “safe havens” and “freedom of action”, which, he believed, “increases the cost to the United States in terms of lives, time, and money”.
The US general warned the senators that the Taliban/Haqqani network sanctuaries in Pakistan provided them "the strategic initiative, allowing them to determine the pace and venue of conflict" and that "elimination of external sanctuary and support to the insurgents" was a prerequisite for US success in Afghanistan
The US general warned the senators that the Taliban/Haqqani network sanctuaries in Pakistan provided them “the strategic initiative, allowing them to determine the pace and venue of conflict” and that “elimination of external sanctuary and support to the insurgents” was a prerequisite for US success in Afghanistan.
There was hardly anything new in this assessment. The US has been whining about Pakistan’s alleged inaction against the Taliban/Haqqani network for years and precisely for this reason Islamabad last year lost the F-16 deal after Congress refused to subsidize the sale. Furthermore, it has been losing $300 million to $400 million annually for the past few years of its own money that the US has to reimburse simply because the American defense secretary has not been testifying that Pakistan has acted against the Haqqani network and uprooted its sanctuaries from its soil.
But ground realities have changed now. Tough-talking Trump is in the White House, and will soon be attending to the war in Afghanistan that has not been going well. The US has spent $117 billion there since 2002, but the situation there is increasingly becoming serious. The Afghan government has lost 6.3% more territory to the Taliban since 2015 and the casualty figure for Afghan security forces has been going up—some 7,000 were killed last year. And hence the thought of a few thousand more US soldiers being sent back to Afghanistan to regain some of the lost momentum.
This means an impending troop surge, but before that materializes, US diplomats privately say, there would be a serious rethink about how to get Pakistan to finally move against the Taliban/Haqqani network. Pakistan’s former envoy to Afghanistan and India, Amb (retd) Aziz Ahmed Khan, agrees with this assessment. “At the moment it is difficult to predict what direction Pakistan-US relations will take in President Trump’s temperamental tenure but essentially they will be influenced by developments in Afghanistan,” he observed and cautioned that the Americans “may not be as understanding about the complexity of the situation”.
Tough-talking Trump is in the White House, and will soon be attending to the war in Afghanistan that has not been going well. The US has spent $117 billion there since 2002, but the situation there is increasingly becoming serious
Conflict in Afghanistan, the Americans seldom realize, lingers not just because of alleged sanctuaries in Pakistan, but because there are several other dimensions to it as well, including the capacity of Afghan security forces, problems with the functioning of the National Unity Government, corruption, and a flourishing narcotics trade with poppy growth increasing by 43% over the past few years. But, the allegations about sanctuaries in Pakistan overshadow other problems within Afghanistan even though they are no less important.
Gen. Nicholson’s words and the observations of some of the other committee members, including its chairman Senator John McCain and Senator Jack Reed, therefore, came as a sort of rude awakening for a few in Islamabad, who had been led by government advisers into believing that they had secured assurances from the Trump administration that it would not be too harsh towards Pakistan.
Foreign Office Spokesman Nafees Zakaria expressed disappointment over “the assertions and insinuations” made during the Senate committee hearing and said they were “misplaced and not in synch with the current situation on the ground”.
No matter how biased these appraisals about Pakistan are, it remains a fact that these perceptions, particularly those of the top commander in Afghanistan, would find receptive ears in Washington and add to wrinkles in the relationship.
It is not only that civilians who have been under the illusion that Trump is going to be soft towards Pakistan, the military leadership is suffering from the same delusion, or is at least promoting it publicly. A readout issued by the ISPR after Defense Secretary James Mattis’ “20-minute” long conversation with Army Chief Gen. Qamar Bajwa spoke about an agreement on “continued engagement at multiple levels”.
Even if one were to assume that there are no illusions in Rawalpindi or Islamabad, their spokesmen are deliberately or unintentionally mixing too many things together.
It is true that the Americans will not just disconnect; they’ll need Pakistan’s cooperation to settle the Afghan mess. But, the gloves would probably come off. That could be hurtful, because Pakistan-US ties are not just about the two countries, but they also affect Islamabad’s relations with several other countries as well as its standing at multilateral fora.
This is also what far-right think tanks such as the Hudson Institute are recommending to the Trump administration as it prepares its policy for the region. “The objective of the Trump Administration’s policy toward Pakistan must be to make it more and more costly for Pakistani leaders to employ a strategy of supporting terrorist proxies to achieve regional strategic goals,” a recent report by the Hudson Institute authored by Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani and Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow on South Asia at the Heritage Foundation, said.
“We would need to play our cards carefully. Trump would be heavily influenced by the Indian opinion vis-a-vis the issues relating to terrorism,” Amb. Aziz says.
Another misperception that is being propagated by some quarters, in response to a growing chorus of criticism of the alleged presence of sanctuaries, is that the Pakistan government is receiving different signals from different tiers of the Trump administration. But the fact remains that the messages may have been phrased differently, but they are essentially same. The Americans do want engagement, but for them the priority is an end to all support structures the Taliban/Haqqani network may have here.
Moreover, Pakistan’s response to American and Afghan allegations of the presence of the Taliban/Haqqani network sanctuaries has been a standard reference to the “successful Operation Zarb-e-Azb”. The Americans do acknowledge that, but what is apparently not being addressed is that despite that counter-terrorism operations, the issue of safe havens remains unaddressed.
“We have great respect for the operation they conducted in Waziristan. It was a very large and significant operation and they suffered heavy casualties,” Gen. Nicholson said and separately pointed out that sanctuaries exist “in areas like Quetta, with the Taliban leadership, and other cities within the tribal areas for the Haqqani leadership.”
The way out of this rather grim situation, to quote Amb. Aziz words is “a careful calibration of our policy”.
The only thing we need to keep in mind is that it is Trump’s US that we are dealing with and not India.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad mamoonarubab@gmail.com @bokhari_mr