More stick than
carrot
A war of words
has broken out between our foreign office and US Vice President Mike Spence. The
latter was on an unannounced visit to US troops in Afghanistan at Bagram base,
and used the opportunity to meet Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief
Executive Abdullah Abdullah in Kabul. What got the foreign office’s goat were
remarks Pence made while addressing US troops at Bagram. He said Pakistan had
been put on notice that the days of harbouring terrorists on its soil that
attack US, Afghan and allied troops inside Afghanistan are over. This line of
thinking stems from the recent foreign policy announced by US President Donald
Trump, in which Washington indicated it would work with Islamabad on areas of
convergence but was prepared to act unilaterally on areas of divergence. The main
bone of contention, not surprisingly, is Washington’s perception that its
failure to win the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, or even to persuade them
to seek a negotiated end to the conflict owes a great deal to the safe havens
they enjoy inside Pakistan, and to which they retreat when under pressure or to
rest, regroup, and fight on. Our foreign office’s response attempted to turn
the ‘notice’ mentioned by Pence towards the manifest failure of Ghani’s
national unity government to scotch widespread corruption, introduce better
governance, eliminate poppy production that reportedly finances the Taliban’s
operations, and even manage parliamentary elections. That argument
notwithstanding, Pence did hold out a measly ‘carrot’ by saying Pakistan had
much to gain from partnering the US and much to lose by continuing to harbour
terrorists. However, whatever Pence meant by ‘gains’, the ISPR chief Major
General Asif Ghafoor responded to Pence by asserting that his words were likely
to negatively impact the existing coordination and cooperation between the two countries.
On the implied withholding of aid, and in the case of the Coalition Support
Funds reimbursement of Pakistan’s expenditures on the war on terror that have
had restrictions placed on their release by Congress explicit withholding, the
ISPR chief said Pakistan was not fighting for money but trust and respect. Similar
sentiments were voiced by Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua in a briefing to a
Senate committee in which she said Pence’s remarks were at odds with the tone
and tenor of the discussions ongoing with the US. Pakistan argues in addition
that it has eliminated terrorist bases from its soil indiscriminately and is in
turn threatened by the safe havens enjoyed by the Pakistani Taliban in the
ungoverned spaces on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This was underlined by an
attack on our troops from across the border in the Mohmand Agency on the very
day Pence spoke in Kabul, an attack that killed three soldiers.
However, two
points need to be made clear. First and foremost, Pence’s remarks were
obviously part of his effort to boost the morale of US troops by emphasising
that the Trump administration was in Afghanistan for the long haul and until the
Afghan Taliban were persuaded they could not win on the battlefield. Perhaps
Pakistan should have resisted the temptation to react publicly to Pence’s
comments, relying, as it has often done in the past, on conducting diplomacy discreetly
through official channels rather than in the public space. Two, the two sides
appear publicly to be talking past each other. Washington insists the safe
havens on Pakistani soil exist, Islamabad in turn insists they have been
eliminated. This gulf has created a vast amount of (mutual) suspicion between
the two ‘allies’, particularly since Pakistan feels aggrieved by the US’s open expression
of its intent to rely strategically and in Afghanistan on rival India. Washington
could not have been pleased with, and according to our UN Ambassador Dr Maleeha
Lodhi, threatened Pakistan not to co-sponsor the UN General Assembly resolution
against Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. While Islamabad’s
calculations may include the fact that it has Washington over a barrel in terms
of the latter’s reliance on Pakistan for the logistical needs of its presence
in Afghanistan, this should not be stretched to the point where Trump’s
penchant for retaliation comes into play and Washington falls back on attacks
and even bin Laden-type raids inside Pakistan while using its clout with the
international financial institutions to put the squeeze on Pakistan. This would
cause huge problems in Pakistan obtaining the Rs 24 billion it needs to meet
its external deficit next year (estimated by some independent economists to be
closer to Rs 32 billion). Pakistan and the US need to put their heads together
to once again jump start efforts to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating
table (a stop-start process that is currently conspicuous by its absence) and
deal with both Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s terrorism problem through
cooperation, not in hostility and laced with mutual recriminations.
No comments:
Post a Comment