Pakistan’s Likely New Leader Could Complicate Afghan Peace Talks
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Imran Khan, the presumptive prime minister of Pakistan, has voiced past support for the Taliban’s fight in the 17-year conflict in Afghanistan and has accused the United States of recklessness in its use of drone strikes on suspected extremists in Pakistan.CreditAamir Qureshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By
Eric Schmitt, July 31, 2018
WASHINGTON — The rise of Imran Khan, a former cricket star who is Pakistan’s likely next leader, could complicate new talks between American diplomats and the Taliban about ending the war in Afghanistan, officials said, fraying an already strained relationship between the nuclear-armed Islamic nation and the Trump administration.
Tensions between Pakistan and the United States were exacerbated in January when the Trump administration
suspended nearly all American security aid to Islamabad.
But the relationship threatens to be further inflamed by Mr. Khan, who has voiced past support for the Taliban’s fight in the 17-year conflict in Afghanistan, calling it “justified.” He also has accused the United States of recklessness in its use of drone strikes on suspected extremists in Pakistan, signaling he wants them to stop.
Mr. Khan tempered his harsh anti-American language with an olive twig, if not a branch,
in his victory speech last week.
American diplomats held face-to-face talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar without Afghan government officials present. It was a significant shift in American strategy toward the Taliban in Afghanistan, and analysts said Mr. Khan’s victory could now set up Pakistan to play the role of spoiler in the peace process.
“The U.S. doesn’t care much about Pakistan right now, but that issue will rise to the top,” said Shamila N. Chaudhary, a former State Department and White House official who oversaw Pakistan issues during the Obama administration.
“Khan and the Pakistani military will want Pakistan to have a very strong role in shaping Afghanistan’s future,” Ms. Chaudhary said. “I don’t think the U.S. is angling for Pakistan to have a strong role.”
Still, “the U.S. needs Pakistan’s acquiescence, if not cooperation,” said Laurel Miller, a senior foreign policy expert at the RAND Corporation, who was a top State Department official with responsibility for Afghanistan and Pakistan in both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Administration officials and independent analysts voiced doubt that Mr. Khan will have much say in the issues that currently concern Washington about Pakistan: its extremist groups and steadily growing nuclear arsenal, as well as Afghanistan.
Those are the domain of Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence agencies, which critics say influenced the elections in Mr. Khan’s favor. Mr. Khan is still trying to gather enough support to form a majority coalition in Parliament, but the Pakistani news media is already calling him the prime minister in waiting.
“His ascension will have little impact on U.S.-Pakistani relations,” Ms. Miller said. “The situation in Afghanistan, the nuclear issues — those are tightly controlled by the military establishment.”
The State Department has responded tepidly to Mr. 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 a statement that condemned violence at polling stations and allegations of elections rigging.
Much of what kept these habitually sparring allies together over the past two decades is no longer a top priority, analysts said.
Al Qaeda is not the threat it once was in the Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghanistan border. In each of the past three years, the United States has carried out fewer than 10 drone strikes in Pakistan, down from a high of 117 in 2010,
according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal.
complained on Twitter that Pakistan had “given us nothing but lies & deceit” and accused it of providing “safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan.”
The aid suspension underscored how quickly ties with Pakistan deteriorated after Mr. Trump took office.
But it mirrored several previous rifts between the countries over Pakistan’s role as a sanctuary for extremist groups — a role that has poisoned Islamabad’s up-and-down relations with Washington since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.
Last September, with the help of American intelligence, Pakistani commandos rescued an American woman, Caitlan Coleman; Joshua Boyle, her Canadian husband; and their three children.
But analysts and diplomats say it is more likely that Mr. Khan will move Pakistan much closer to the expanding sphere of China, a neighbor that he has praised conspicuously as a role model and that Islamabad increasingly relies on for aid to shore up its weak economy.
Last week, Mr. Khan’s party tweeted in Chinese — apparently for the first time — about “strengthening and improving” ties with China.
Whether the relationship remains in traditional diplomatic and security channels or is elevated into Mr. Trump’s realm of personal diplomacy remains unclear.
“I think Trump and Imran Khan would get along fine if they get the chance,” said Vikram Singh, a former top State and Defense department official in the Obama administration who is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
“Each country resents its ongoing dependence on the other,” Mr. Singh said, “but ultimately, the U.S. and Pakistan need to find ways to cooperate despite deep mistrust.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/world/asia/imran-khan-pakistan-us-afghanistan.html
........you guys need to worry about that than Pakistan and our leadership..........
