This recent editorial in The Economist may of interest:
from:
Pakistan and America: To the bitter end | The Economist
Pakistan and America
To the bitter end
Growing concerns about a difficult relationship
Oct 15th 2011 | ISLAMABAD | from the print edition
THOUGH America’s relations with Pakistan grow ever more wretched, it
remains hard to imagine either side daring to break them off. Military
types, diplomats, analysts and politicians in Islamabad describe a
mood more poisonous than at any time for a generation. Links between
the intelligence agencies, the core of bilateral relations for six
decades, are worst of all, notably since America caught Osama bin
Laden hiding amid Pakistan’s apron strings. Pakistan felt humiliated
too by the way the al-Qaeda leader was killed.
Yet the ties still bind, amid fears of far worse. Last month,
America’s departing chief of staff, Mike Mullen, said Pakistan’s army
spies ran the Haqqani network, a militant outfit that has killed
American men in Afghanistan and attacked the embassy in Kabul in
September. The chatter in Pakistan was of frenzied preparation for
military confrontation.
Many Pakistanis seemed jubilant at the idea, with polls suggesting
over 80% of them are hostile to their ally, and chat shows competing
to pour scorn on America as the root of all evil. Instead relations
have been patched up. Last week Barack Obama said mildly that the
outside world must “constantly evaluate” Pakistan’s behaviour. In what
may signal a conciliation of sorts, a new CIA chief has been installed
in Islamabad, the third in a year after Pakistani spies outed his
predecessors.
American policy is contradictory. On the one side are defence types,
eager to fight jihadists and angry at Pakistani meddling in southern
and eastern Afghanistan. On the other side are diplomats, anxious
about losing tabs on Pakistani nukes or having to do without Pakistani
assistance in stopping terror attacks in the West. Many also fear the
spreading failure of the Pakistani state. A senior
American official in Islamabad starkly describes how the relationship
seemed lost last month, with “huge numbers of people trying not to let
it go over the edge”.
For the moment ties persist, though they are loosened. America has
suspended military aid, supposedly worth hundreds of millions of
dollars (Pakistanis say Americans inflate the figures). It has not
paid its agreed dues to Pakistan’s army for several months, nor have
its trainers returned. America is also readier than before to back
things that Pakistan despises, such as India’s blossoming relations
with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, who last week swept through
Delhi to laud India’s growing role as a donor.
Pakistan’s army has responded by giving a little ground. It still
refuses America’s call for a war on militants in the border area of
North Waziristan—“it’s bad strategy to ignite everything at once”
sniffs a gloomy Pakistani official—but it has, apparently, nudged
Haqqani leaders from their hiding places over the border into
Afghanistan. At the same time Pakistanis complain of impossible
American demands over jihadists: they say Mr Obama’s strategy of
“fight and talk” in Afghanistan requires Pakistan’s army to handle
insurgent fighters by killing, capturing and bringing them into
negotiations all at the same time.
Afghanistan, where the two countries fumble and fail to accommodate
each other, will remain the crux of Pakistan’s relations with America.
Pakistan’s leaders long derided what they saw as America’s vain
“transformative” struggle to make Afghanistan modern, democratic and
united—perhaps they also feared a similar push to refashion the role
of the army in Pakistan.
The head of Pakistan’s armed forces, General
Ashfaq Kayani, in particular, is said to dismiss America’s
understanding of the fractured country next door as naive and
simplistic, a doomed effort to make Afghanistan into something it is
not.
But as America’s ambitions there have shrunk to little more than
extracting its soldiers fast and leaving behind a minimally stable
territory that is not dominated by Pushtuns, concerns in Pakistan have
grown anew. It now fears being abandoned, losing aid and relevance,
and becoming encircled by forces allied with its old foe, India.
Several commentators in Islamabad suggest that, sooner than have a
united neighbour that is pro-India, Pakistan would prefer more war and
division in Afghanistan—“let Afghanistan cook its own goose” says an
ex-general.
A crunch could come in the next few months, as foreigners gather for a
pair of summits on Afghanistan, first in Istanbul in November, then in
Bonn in December. What should have been a chance to back domestic
peace talks (which have not happened) could instead be a moment for
recrimination, with Pakistanis to take the blame. Worse yet for
Pakistan would be if its ill-starred performance as an ally becomes a
prominent issue in Mr Obama’s presidential re-election campaign.
Afghanistan is sure to dominate a NATO summit to be held in Chicago in
May.
Afghanistan may, or may not, recede in importance after 2014, when
America is due to cut the number of soldiers it has in the region. Yet
even without the thorn of Afghanistan, a list of divisive, unattended
issues infects Pakistan’s relations with America. On their own they
would be more than enough to shake relations between most countries.
Pakistan is a known proliferator, and is more hostile than almost any
other country to America’s global efforts to cut nuclear arsenals and
prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. America is fast
expanding its economic and military ties with Pakistan’s great rival,
India. And Pakistan’s domestic rule would set most American diplomats’
hair on end—venal civilian leaders; army men hankering for the next
coup and having pesky journalists killed off; Islamists who shoot
opponents for being liberal. With a friend like Pakistan, who needs
enemies?
from the print edition | Asia
