Rethinking Pakistan-U.S. relations

On Tuesday, April 7, the U.S. government was given a rude shock. The Pakistan they had become all too comfortable dealing with seemed to have snapped out of it. At a news conference, Pakistan’s polite, Cambridge-educated foreign minister wasn’t his usual docile self. Shah Mehmood Qureshi was more than firm and categorical in mentioning his country’s reservations with regard to the way the U.S. was handling its ally in the war on terror and with its anti-Pakistan campaign.

The moment of this change in the foreign minister’s, and by extension, Pakistan’s posture was at a joint press conference with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Admiral Mike Mullen. The former is Barack Obama’s special envoy to South Asia, and the avuncular Navy man is the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff—America’s most powerful military official. Both were in Islamabad to discuss various issues germane to the brutal “war on terror” that Pakistan is engaged in. The conference was a follow-up to a day of very intense discussions between the visiting dignitaries and various arms of the Pakistani government. At every one of their meeting destinations, the U.S. envoy was told about Pakistan’s very strong disgruntlement with consistent U.S. drone strikes in its tribal areas: the long list touched on the unfair maligning of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s premier intel agency, to the lack of equipment being provided to the Pakistan army to fight the war, to the involvement of the Indian consulates in Afghanistan in the nationalist uprising in Balochistan.

The U.S. was told about its lackadaisical commitment to its vital “strategic partner” (a term applied to Pakistan during the Bush presidency, which critics claim has done little to improve Pakistan’s fortunes). In the month preceding the Holbrooke visit, there had been a Brobdingnagian tirade of accusations aimed at the ISI in the mainstream U.S. media. Add to the accusations of the media bazaar and the think tank pundits, the perceived rude remarks of Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who had expressed complete hopelessness for the case of Pakistan. However, the case against the ISI makes little sense and adds salt to the literal wounds of most Pakistanis.

Since joining this war, Pakistan has lost over 2000 soldiers and 14000 civilians, with many more having suffered crippling injuries. The list includes officers as highly ranked as generals in the Pakistani army. The country, which has captured hundreds of Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, has seen its infrastructure destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people internally displaced, its political leaders exposed to terrorist threats, millions among its population antagonized, and large amounts of its financial resources spent on beefing up internal security. Yet the consistent theme from the other side is that Pakistan is providing sanctuary to the Al Qaeda leadership, nurturing the militants, and that its intelligence agencies leak sensitive information to the other side.

The Inter-Services Intelligence is so-named because it draws almost all its workings from officials of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and is consequently subservient to the army. It makes little sense for someone within this structure to jeopardize his career, his life, and the lives of fellow officers by disobeying orders and helping rogue elements. The ISI has been at the helm of capturing some of the most wanted terrorists on the planet. The ISI is nothing more than an arm of the armed forces of Pakistan (not an elusive, out-of-control monster), and if by helping terrorist elements, it helps kill and maim its own troops, doing so is an idea understandably arcane to most Pakistanis.

The time has come for Pakistan’s needs to be recognized. Every country has its own interests, and for a country that has been extremely loyal to U.S. bidding since its creation, these interests become that much more germane. Pakistan was once called America’s “most allied ally,” when as a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization, it existed as a staunch enemy of communism. It was Pakistan the Soviet Union threatened with nuclear holocaust due to the persistent presence of American U-2 spyplane bases on its soil in the ’50s and ’60s. It was Pakistan, at the very pinnacle of the Cold War, that lost 1400 citizens through Soviet-inspired bombing campaigns, because it was running a proxy army at the behest of the U.S. in Afghanistan. Pakistan is scarred by the betrayal it feels from the crippling U.S. sanctions that ensued after the fall of the Iron Curtain. With this mindset, Pakistanis are weary of the fickle friendship the Americans bring to the table.

While there is no doubt that President Obama is trying to mend fences with many parts of the world that U.S. foreign policy has alienated in the past few years, he also claims to be doing so with Pakistan. The Kerry-Lugar Bill projection of $1.5 billion a year in economic aid for the next five years is a good first step, but much more needs to be done to address the trust deficit and the lack of appreciation for Pakistan’s many sacrifices in support of this war. The United States must at all costs fundamentally change the way it deals with its front-line ally. There must be mutual respect and genuine understanding of each other’s needs—both security and economic. This is a perfect opportunity to, in the words of former president Richard Nixon, “seize the moment”.

The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in economics and Middle East Languages and Cultures.