The New Pakistan US Relationship (After the Salala Check-Post Attack)

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Redefined Pakistan-US relationship means less cooperation, lower expectations

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, January 2, 2:35 PM

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — In what could be the biggest change in a decade in a relationship that has been a mainstay of U.S. military and counterterrorism policy since the 9/11 terror attacks, the United States and Pakistan are lowering expectations for what the two nations will do together and planning for a period of more limited contact.

The change described by both Pakistani and U.S. officials follows a series of diplomatic crises over the past year that strained an already difficult partnership based around the U.S. goal of stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a reduction in Islamic-inspired terrorism.

For Pakistan, cooperation on that agenda was rewarded with billions in financial aid. The change means less cooperation with Washington and a willingness to swear off some aid that often made Pakistan feel too dependent, and too pushed around.

For the United States, scaling down an expensive military and economic program that has not met expectations could come at the cost of less Pakistani help in ending the war in next-door Afghanistan.

Both U.S. and Pakistani officials said the November killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a NATO airstrike and Washington’s refusal to outright apologize for the deaths has been a game changer in a relationship characterized by mistrust and mutual acrimony.

In the United States, civilian and military officials have called the friendly fire incident a tragedy caused by mistakes on both sides, but insist that Pakistan fired first. Pakistan denies that, and has called the incident an unprovoked attack.

Pakistan’s loudly angry reaction has, if anything, hardened attitudes in Congress and elsewhere that Islamabad is untrustworthy or ungrateful.

A senior Obama administration official conceded that the deaths made every aspect of U.S. cooperation with Pakistan more difficult, and that the distance Pakistan has imposed may continue indefinitely. The official, like most others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of ongoing discussions.

Pakistan has already stopped billing the United States for its anti-terror war expenses under the 10-year-old Coalition Support Fund, set up by Washington after the 9/11 attacks to reimburse its many allies for their military expenses fighting terrorists worldwide and touted by the U.S. as a success story.

“From here on in we want a very formal, business- like relationship. The lines will be drawn. There will be no more of the free run of the past, no more interpretation of rules. We want it very formal with agreed upon limits,” military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told The Associated Press in an interview in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.

Pakistan will further reduce the number of U.S. military people in Pakistan, limit military exchanges with the United States and rekindle its relationship with neighbors, such as China, which has been a more reliable ally according to Islamabad. Earlier this year Pakistan signed a deal with China for 50 JF-17 aircraft with sophisticated avionics, compared by some, who are familiar with military equipment, to the U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets.

Pakistan retaliated for the friendly fire deaths by shutting down NATO’s supply routes to Afghanistan and kicked the U.S. out of an air base it used to facilitate drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Both U.S. and Pakistani officials expect more fallout, most likely in the form of additional tolls or taxes on NATO supplies into Afghanistan through Pakistan. There could also be charges for use of Pakistani airspace, said some officials in Pakistan.

Pakistan also asked the U.S. not to send any high-level visitors to Pakistan for some time, the U.S. official said. After past crises, including the flare-up of anti-U.S. fervor following the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in May, Pakistan had accepted top-level U.S. officials for a public peace-making session rather quickly. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the then- top U.S. military official visited Pakistan less than a month after the bin Laden raid, and pledged continued cooperation on several fronts.

U.S. officials said they would like to mend fences quickly, but the senior administration official and others said they assume there will be less contact, fewer high-profile joint projects and fewer American government employees living and working in Pakistan.

Since 2001, the U.S. has pumped aid to the country under both Republican and Democratic administrations with the expectation that Pakistan will be a bulwark against the spread of Islamic terrorism. Anti-American sentiment has only grown, and spiked in 2011. In Pakistan, both a military dictatorship and the elected civilian government that followed it have accepted the aid and pledged cooperation against terrorism and on other fronts.

The mutual conclusion that each side can live with a more limited relationship comes at a troubling time for Washington. It has suspended drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas since the NATO bombings, yet the unmanned drone is considered by many who are familiar with the conflict to be one of the most effective weapons against insurgents hiding in Pakistan’s tribal regions.

With the clock ticking until its combat withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2015, Washington’s battlefield strategy is to break the momentum of the Taliban in order to improve its negotiating position at the table. Pakistan is seen as crucial to the success of this effort.

Washington needs Pakistani help to bring the Taliban to the table. Senior Taliban leaders live in Pakistan, and mid- and low-level fighters who target U.S. troops in Afghanistan slip across the Pakistan border to regroup and rearm.

The United States has long pressed Pakistan to flush insurgents out of tribal safe havens along the border, with minimal success. While the Pakistan army denies giving direct aid to Taliban groups, particularly the Haqqani network, it also says it won’t launch an offensive to kick them out.

With more than 3,000 Pakistani soldiers killed and thousands more injured in border fights with militants as part of the anti-terror war, Abbas said the Pakistan military has grown weary of Washington’s repeated calls for Pakistan to do more.

Meanwhile some U.S. politicians are calling for an aid cut off to Pakistan, arguing that the U.S. has little to show for billions sent to Pakistan over the past decade. A total aid cutoff is extremely unlikely, but Congress has already trimmed back the Obama administration’s latest request and is expected to demand less generosity and more strings over the coming year.

The U.S. official said the current political standoff has made the already difficult White House argument to Congress even harder to make. That argument basically holds that because of its geographic location, prominence in the Islamic world, past willingness to hunt terrorists and its nuclear weapons, Pakistan is a partner the U.S. may not fully trust but cannot afford to lose.

Pakistani military officials said a U.S. aid cutoff would suspend delivery next year of six refitted F-16 aircraft. Currently Pakistan currently has 47 F-16s, a small percentage of a fighter wing that also includes Chinese and European-made jets.

Abbas said U.S. cash payments, made through the Coalition Support Fund, have been erratic. In the last 10 years Pakistan’s army has seen only $1.8 billion of $8.6 billion in CSF funds. The rest of the money was siphoned off by the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf to finance subsidies and prop up his government.

Currently the U.S. is withholding another $600 million in CSF that was promised last year.

“The equipment we have been getting from America over the last five years has been almost a trickle,” said former national security advisor retired Gen. Mahmud Durrani.

He complained of “second-hand helicopters that were badly refitted.”

Less aid might propel Pakistan toward greater financial independence, he added.

“If the money stops we can get our act together and manage. It is not the first time that American money has dried up and maybe we need to go cold turkey. Maybe in the long term we will be saying, “Thank God this happened.’”

___

Kathy Gannon is The AP Special Regional Correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan and can be reached at Twitter .

Gearan reported from Washington.

Redefined Pakistan-US relationship means less cooperation, lower expectations - The Washington Post

 

[unicorn]

Militants agree to truce with Pakistan


Pakistani Islamist militants have pledged to cease their four-year insurgency against Pakistani security forces, and join the Taliban's war against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The agreement on Sunday reunited four major Pakistan-based militant factions under the flag of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban chief, an announcement by the militants said.

Security experts in Islamabad said the agreement to end the insurgency with Pakistan was a dual-purpose tactical move by the Taliban.

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It has lost hundreds of fighters during a two-year surge of US forces in its southern Afghanistan strongholds.

The Pakistani militants, too, have been pummelled by security forces since 2009, and by late 2011 had splintered into dozens of factions without a unified command. The agreement coincided with discrete negotiations between the Pakistani militants and the government in Islamabad, held since October.

The pact would enable Mullah Omar to reinforce the Taliban ranks, while the pledged cessation of attacks against the Pakistani security forces would allow the militants greater freedom to launch cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

"It will take a lot of pressure off the militants, and deepen the tensions between the US and Pakistan," said Mansur Mahsud, director of research at the Fata Research Centre, an independent think tank. "There will be angry complaints by the Americans, and counter-accusations by Pakistan that NATO isn't stopping raids by Pakistani insurgents from Afghan territory."

Taliban sources said three heavyweight militants mediated the intra-militant pact, reached after a month-and-a-half of reportedly tense negotiations: Abu Yahya al Libbi of al Qaeda, and Maulana Mansoor and Siraj-ud-Din Haqqani of the Taliban.

The agreement bound together the factions, which previously had occasionally fought each other over territory, into a consultative council based in the twin Pakistani tribal regions of North and South Waziristan.

The regions, notorious as Taliban safe havens, are under constant surveillance by US intelligence and, since 2004, have been the focal point of CIA drone-launched attacks.

The drone warfare has increased tensions, largely over contentions that innocent civilians have died in those attacks.

Meanwhile, relations between Pakistan and the US hit rock bottom following the killings of 25 Pakistani troops by American forces in November in a friendly fire incident on the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan was infuriated further when a Pentagon investigation, which it had declined to join, found that Pakistani troops had fired first in the incident, which was blamed on poor coordination.

For some time now, Pakistan has resisted American pressure to launch military operations against Afghan militants and their allies in North Waziristan, saying the 147,000 troops it has deployed to the tribal areas are overstretched.

However, US officials have repeatedly asserted the reluctance reflects a covert alliance between Pakistan's security forces and the Taliban - in particular, the Haqqani Network, which draws fighters from the Waziristans.

The network brokered a peace agreement between its allies and the Pakistani security forces in 2006, ending two years of fighting.

The Waziristan council's first order of business was to reassert the Taliban's writ over Pakistani splinter groups, according to a pamphlet distributed in North Waziristan over the weekend.

Militants were warned to stop kidnapping Pakistanis for ransom, and to cease summary executions of tribesmen suspected of collaborating with the security forces.

"If any holy warrior is found involved in an unjustified murder or crime, he will be answerable to the council and could face Islamic punishment," the pamphlet declared.

This comes amid deliberations between American and Pakistani officials on the proposed opening of a Taliban office in Qatar, to facilitate peace talks.

Ahmed Pasha, chief of the Pakistani military's premier spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence directorate, visited Doha last week for talks about the provision of an "address" to the Taliban.

Yousaf Gilani, the Pakistani prime minister, is to follow him on Wednesday.

Militants agree to truce with Pakistan

And here is an answer to this redefined co-operation

 

[Imran Khan]

no please for god sake no more relations + DRONE ATTACKS look we even forget that era when daily they bomb us . for hell sake no relations with them .

 

[lem34]

I think that the supply routes simply must not be reopened until: any money owed is paid, removal of Indian consulate from Afghanistan, a monetary charge made for any container shipped over our routes.

 

[VelocuR]

First year passed since the Raymond Davis caught in Pakistan last year.

 

[Imran Khan]

I think that the supply routes simply must not be reopened until: any money owed is paid, removal of Indian consulate from Afghanistan, a monetary charge made for any container shipped over our routes.

and what abut drones? how on earth we can forget it ? USA start this mess with killing of naik mohmmad at night and we pay price of 30.000k+ lives sir . drones and supply should not open allowed at any cost if you wanna see pakistan save from this fire. and if we are ready for mess and sold our blood then take money and wait for blast suicide attacks drone attacks US- NATO VOILATIONS AND COMMANDO ATTACKS on pakistan by them

 

[Developereo]

I think that the supply routes simply must not be reopened until: any money owed is paid, removal of Indian consulate from Afghanistan, a monetary charge made for any container shipped over our routes.

You can't do that. You can't force two independent countries not to have mutual relations. It makes Pakistan look like a sulking child throwing a tantrum because he didn't get invited to the party.

If India starts making trouble in Baluchistan or elsewhere from their Afghan consulates, we can handle the matter in our own way once the American umbrella is removed. But removal of the American umbrella is paramount and NATO route closure is critical to that strategy.

 

[Hulk]

I am yet to see the american counter attack. So far I think they are just waiting for Pakistan to define the new relationship from their side.

 

[Thorough Pro]

Really, did your wet dreams of making them to starve for toilet paper got real. And did American pulled out even a single soldiers after NATO air-strike.

Only because Pakistan has not yet restricted Pakistan air space to Us millitary cargoplanes.

---------- Post added at 06:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:49 AM ----------

I think that the supply routes simply must not be reopened until: any money owed is paid, removal of Indian consulate from Afghanistan, a monetary charge made for any container shipped over our routes.

Supply routes MUST NEVER be opened. We are better off without this disease.

 

[Luftwaffe]

PAKISTAN, US ASSUME LESS COOPERATION IN FUTURE
​

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — In what could be the biggest change in a decade in a relationship that has been a mainstay of U.S. military and counter-terrorism policy since the 9/11 terror attacks, the United States and Pakistan are lowering expectations for what the two nations will do together and planning for a period of more limited contact. The change described by both Pakistani and U.S. officials follows a series of diplomatic crises over the past year that strained an already difficult partnership based around the U.S. goal of stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a reduction in Islamic-inspired terrorism. For Pakistan, cooperation on that agenda was rewarded with billions in financial aid. The change means less cooperation with Washington and a willingness to swear off some aid that often made Pakistan feel too dependent, and too pushed around. Today's news video For the United States, scaling down an expensive military and economic program that has not met expectations could come at the cost of less Pakistani help in ending the war in next-door Afghanistan. Both U.S. and Pakistani officials said the November killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a NATO airstrike and Washington's refusal to outright apologize for the deaths has been a game changer in a relationship characterized by mistrust and mutual acrimony. In the United States, civilian and military officials have called the friendly fire incident a tragedy caused by mistakes on both sides, but insist that Pakistan fired first. Pakistan denies that, and has called the incident an unprovoked attack. Pakistan's loudly angry reaction has, if anything, hardened attitudes in Congress and elsewhere that Islamabad is untrustworthy or ungrateful. A senior Obama administration official conceded that the deaths made every aspect of U.S. cooperation with Pakistan more difficult, and that the distance Pakistan has imposed may continue indefinitely. The official, like most others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of ongoing discussions. Pakistan has already stopped billing the United States for its anti-terror war expenses under the 10-year-old Coalition Support Fund, set up by Washington after the 9/11 attacks to reimburse its many allies for their military expenses fighting terrorists worldwide and touted by the U.S. as a success story."From here on in we want a very formal, business- like relationship. The lines will be drawn. There will be no more of the free run of the past, no more interpretation of rules. We want it very formal with agreed upon limits," military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told The Associated Press in an interview in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.Pakistan will further reduce the number of U.S. military people in Pakistan, limit military exchanges with the United States and rekindle its relationship with neighbors, such as China, which has been a more reliable ally according to Islamabad.

Earlier this year Pakistan signed a deal with China for 50 JF-17 aircraft with sophisticated avionics, compared by some, who are familiar with military equipment, to the U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets. Pakistan retaliated for the friendly fire deaths by shutting down NATO's supply routes to Afghanistan and kicked the U.S. out of an air base it used to facilitate drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal belt. Both U.S. and Pakistani officials expect more fallout, most likely in the form of additional tolls or taxes on NATO supplies into Afghanistan through Pakistan. There could also be charges for use of Pakistani airspace, said some officials in Pakistan. Pakistan also asked the U.S. not to send any high-level visitors to Pakistan for some time, the U.S. official said. After past crises, including the flare-up of anti-U.S. fervor following the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in May, Pakistan had accepted top-level U.S. officials for a public peace-making session rather quickly. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the then- top U.S. military official visited Pakistan less than a month after the bin Laden raid, and pledged continued cooperation on several fronts. U.S. officials said they would like to mend fences quickly, but the senior administration official and others said they assume there will be less contact, fewer high-profile joint projects and fewer American government employees living and working in Pakistan. Since 2001, the U.S. has pumped aid to the country under both Republican and Democratic administrations with the expectation that Pakistan will be a bulwark against the spread of Islamic terrorism. Anti-American sentiment has only grown, and spiked in 2011. In Pakistan, both a military dictatorship and the elected civilian government that followed it have accepted the aid and pledged cooperation against terrorism and on other fronts. The mutual conclusion that each side can live with a more limited relationship comes at a troubling time for Washington. It has suspended drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas since the NATO bombings, yet the unmanned drone is considered by many who are familiar with the conflict to be one of the most effective weapons against insurgents hiding in Pakistan's tribal regions. With the clock ticking until its combat withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2015, Washington's battlefield strategy is to break the momentum of the Taliban in order to improve its negotiating position at the table. Pakistan is seen as crucial to the success of this effort. Washington needs Pakistani help to bring the Taliban to the table. Senior Taliban leaders live in Pakistan, and mid- and low-level fighters who target U.S. troops in Afghanistan slip across the Pakistan border to regroup and rearm. The United States has long pressed Pakistan to flush insurgents out of tribal safe havens along the border, with minimal success. While the Pakistan army denies giving direct aid to Taliban groups, particularly the Haqqani network, it also says it won't launch an offensive to kick them out. With more than 3,000 Pakistani soldiers killed and thousands more injured in border fights with militants as part of the anti-terror war, Abbas said the Pakistan military has grown weary of Washington's repeated calls for Pakistan to do more. Meanwhile some U.S. politicians are calling for an aid cut off to Pakistan, arguing that the U.S. has little to show for billions sent to Pakistan over the past decade. A total aid cutoff is extremely unlikely, but Congress has already trimmed back the Obama administration's latest request and is expected to demand less generosity and more strings over the coming year. The U.S. official said the current political standoff has made the already difficult White House argument to Congress even harder to make. That argument basically holds that because of its geographic location, prominence in the Islamic world, past willingness to hunt terrorists and its nuclear weapons, Pakistan is a partner the U.S. may not fully trust but cannot afford to lose. Pakistani military officials said a U.S. aid cutoff would suspend delivery next year of six refitted F-16 aircraft. Currently Pakistan currently has 47 F-16s, a small percentage of a fighter wing that also includes Chinese and European-made jets. Abbas said U.S. cash payments, made through the Coalition Support Fund, have been erratic. In the last 10 years Pakistan's army has seen only $1.8 billion of $8.6 billion in CSF funds. The rest of the money was siphoned off by the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf to finance subsidies and prop up his government. Currently the U.S. is withholding another $600 million in CSF that was promised last year."The equipment we have been getting from America over the last five years has been almost a trickle," said former national security advisor retired Gen. Mahmud Durrani. He complained of "second-hand helicopters that were badly refitted."Less aid might propel Pakistan toward greater financial independence, he added."If the money stops we can get our act together and manage. It is not the first time that American money has dried up and maybe we need to go cold turkey. Maybe in the long term we will be saying, "Thank God this happened."

Moderators, if the thread is posted in wrong section, please move it to the right corner.

 

[Devil Soul]

No more ‘free run’ in Pakistan-US ties: ISPR
From the Newspaper | Back Page | (3 hours ago) Today
RAWALPINDI: Fatigued by a series of diplomatic crises over the past year, the United States and Pakistan are redefining their troubled ties, stepping back from the assumption that common goals can trump mutual suspicion.

For Pakistan that means less cooperation with Washington and willingness, and in some cases eagerness, to swear off some of the American aid that often made Pakistan feel too dependent, and too pushed-around.

Both US and Pakistani officials said the November killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a Nato air strike and Washington`s refusal to outright apologise for the deaths has been a game changer in a relationship characterised by mistrust and mutual acrimony.

A senior Obama administration official conceded that the deaths made every aspect of US cooperation with Pakistan more difficult, and that the distance Pakistan imposed might continue indefinitely.

The official, like most others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of ongoing discussions.

Pakistan has already stopped billing the United States for its anti-terror war expenses under the Coalition Support Fund, set up by Washington after the 9/11 attacks to reimburse its many allies for their military expenses fighting terrorists worldwide.

“From here on in we want a very formal, business-like relationship. The lines will be drawn. There will be no more of the free run of the past, no more interpretation of rules. We want it very formal with agreed-upon limits,” military spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas told AP.

Pakistan will further reduce the number of US military people in the country, limit military exchanges with the United States and rekindle its relationship with neighbours, such as China, which has been a more reliable ally, according to Islamabad.

Pakistan retaliated for the air strike deaths by shutting down Nato`s supply routes to Afghanistan and kicking the US out of an air base it used to facilitate drone attacks in Pakistan`s tribal belt. Both US and Pakistani officials expect more fallout, most likely in the form of additional tolls or taxes on Nato supplies into Afghanistan through Pakistan. There could also be charges for use of Pakistani airspace, said some officials in Pakistan.

Pakistan also asked the US not to send any high-level visitors to Pakistan for some time, the US official said.

US officials said they would like to mend fences quickly, but the senior administration official and others said they assume there would be less contact, fewer high-profile joint projects and fewer American government employees living and working in Pakistan.

With more than 3,000 Pakistani soldiers killed and thousands more injured in border fights with militants as part of the anti-terror war, Gen Abbas said the Pakistan military had grown weary of Washington`s repeated calls for Pakistan to do more.—AP
No more ‘free run’ in Pakistan-US ties: ISPR | Newspaper | DAWN.COM

 

[regular]

Excellent news bros....Excellent news! ..Infact we don't need that ugly relationship with the US.....God help us stay away from that Devil/Satan.....

 

[FriendOfPakistan]

it was a real shame when foreign drones were bombing villages and innocent people with impunity ... it was a real shame that the government put up with this shame for so many years ... i hope this time they are serious about protecting their citizens and the honor of their country ... pakistan will be viewed with admiration rather than contempt ,,,,let us hope so

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Lets not have any contact at all for 10 years look at how it did wonders for Iran`s national GDP and prestige

 

[DV RULES]

Pakistan has played its trump card - the supply route blockade. The resolve this time is much stronger than before. So the leverage it offers for the time being must be weighed against the next round of US actions. For now, I think USA is letting Pakistan do what it wants, so that it can reassess its positions, as it weighs its options and formulates a response.

Interesting situation, I must say.

It couldn't be called as Pakistan's trump card when there are many more cards in hand. This just a little show card and other player came into real world. In my point of view US now retreating from its regional policy priorities defined on the willings of some countries and holding very careful position not to annoy Pakistan but seeking for least relationship position to step up next .