Pakistan’s ties with United States have been icy for months, but worryingly the engagement between the two sides over their problems has failed to yield a breakthrough.
There came at least two major statements over the last eight days which remind us that things are bad at the Pak-US front: one statement from the outgoing foreign minister Khurram Dastgir and the other, by Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Major General Asif Ghafoor, it did sound strange that a military spokesman told us about the health of our external relations.
Even as both noted that the contacts were continuing, one could unmistakably get a sense from their statements that although the process had not come to a halt, it was not delivering either. The statements were tentative official confirmations that ‘behind the scenes’ talks had not been productive.
Dastgir says the bilateral diplomatic contact and dialogue is virtually “next to none”
One may liken the situation to the one witnessed in 2011 after multiple crises – Raymond Davis, OBL, Salala – but the set of challenges this time round is different and a crucial factor is Trump administration’s lack of keenness to engage Pakistan.
“Washington is keeping the lines of communications open without making any serious effort to find a way out of the impasse. They seem uninterested,” a diplomatic source maintained.
One cannot say if there was any high in the relationship during past five years, but the latest phase started with the announcement of the new strategy for South Asia and Afghanistan by President Trump. “The new US policy on Afghanistan and South Asia has created an unnecessary divergence, which is based largely on perceptions rather than facts,” former foreign minister Khurram Dastgir said.
Soon after the policy announcement last August, a series of meetings started with the then prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi meeting Vice President Pence on the side-lines of United Nations. Several other high level exchanges took place between the two sides afterwards till December and since then, the engagement is taking place at the level of officials. State Department’s South Asia official Alice Wells has paid a few visits to Islamabad, but nothing substantive has come out, rather the situation has worsened with both sides imposing travel restrictions on each other’s diplomats last month. However, one sees that in this process, a serious and sustained engagement was clearly missing.
Dastgir says the bilateral diplomatic contact and dialogue is virtually “next to none”. He believes that the “desire to remain engaged has dwindled during the Trump presidency”.
Trump administration’s seriousness with the process could also be gauged from the fact that there is no senior and experienced hand looking after this very critical relationship in the State Department other than Alice Wells – an official at the State Department’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
Principally the contact is continuing between Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa and US Centcom Commander Gen Joseph Votel (one reason why the assessment on US ties shared by DG ISPR is important). Their last reported conversation happened on May 22 when General Votel called to condole over the death of a Pakistani student Sabika Sheikh in a school shooting incident in Texas (US). The rest of the communication is taking place through the ambassadors posted in each other’s capitals.
The problems in Pak-US are Afghan centric and if one were to have a broader view those were rooted in the misalignment of Pak, US regional interests.
“The relationship between the United States and Pakistan is not divorced from the relationship with Pakistan, from Afghanistan,” Gen John Allen, president Brookings Institution and former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said at an event on Afghanistan at his think tank last month.
Islamabad has time and again said that it is as much interested in peace in Afghanistan as Afghanistan itself or US that has spent a trillion dollar there so far besides losing couple of thousands of soldiers. The allegation that sanctuaries exist on Pakistani soil has been repeatedly denied.
Pakistani clarifications do not get receptive ears in Washington, but almost a fortnight back US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko speaking at the Brookings also said what Pakistan has been pleading: that it cannot be blamed for the Afghan situation and there are other reasons as well. “We keep referring to Pakistan as being the key problem. The problem also was that the Afghan government at times was viewed very negatively by their local people, and what you really need is to insert a government that the people support, a government that is not predatory, a government that is not a bunch of lawless warlords,” Sopko maintained.
DG ISPR Gen Ghafoor’s message at his presser this week was very important and probably something that would be noted with interest in Washington. He not only denied existence of terrorist sanctuaries and reaffirmed Pakistani commitment to Afghan peace, but categorically, and probably for the first time publicly, said that Pakistan would like to see US troops returning from Afghanistan was a “notion of victory and success”. The spokesman was clearly telling the Americans that Pakistan had no intention of undermining their mission in Afghanistan.
The writer is a free-lance journalist based in Islamabad
Email: mamoonarubab@gmail.com
Twitter: @bokhari_mr
“it did sound strange that a military spokesman told us about the health of our external relations.”
Why did it sound strange?
Ya, why does it sound strange ?