Pak-US relations have reached a watershed moment. While one should be ready for it, a deterioration of relations does not suit Pakistan which will find it difficult to cope with the existential threat poised by the terrorists on its own.
There was enough plain talk in Obama’s drawdown speech to suggest that difficult days lie ahead. There is just one sentence recognising the help rendered by Pakistan in eliminating the major Al Qaeda-leadership. On the other hand, there is a 7 line paragraph telling Islamabad what it has to do.
Terrorists’ havens in Pakistan have to be eradicated. Pakistan has to do more to secure a peaceful future for the war-torn region and violent extremism has to be rooted out to achieve that end. The US would obviously insist that Pakistan keeps its commitments. And, the US would in no case tolerate safe havens for those “who aim to kill us.” There was an implied message that in case Pakistan failed to take out terrorist leaders, the US would as it did in Abbottabad.
The tone of Obama’s address might have been overbearing but the intent is understandable. There are areas in Pakistan which the terrorists use as launching pads. From here, they conduct attacks on the US and allied troops in Afghanistan and have over the years killed and maimed hundreds. North Waziristan has in particular turned into an epicenter of world terrorism. It was in Waziristan that Faisal Shahzad was recruited to conduct the abortive bomb attack in New York’s Time Square. Najibullah Zazi, who pleaded guilty in the New York subway plot case, confessed to have received training here. Several terror suspects nabbed in Germany, France and several other European countries were found to have been trained in North Waziristan.
Any country finding that terrorists launching attacks on its soil are being provided shelters abroad would call on the government concerned to take action against them failing which it would take whatever measures it can to stop the threat depending on its political clout and military power. This is what Pakistan would also do if it faced the situation.
Pakistan’s help is still needed by the US though there is a realisation in the American military circles that if it is not forthcoming, the US could do without it.
The core group comprising the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan is therefore still intact and is scheduled to meet in Kabul on June 27. Pakistan is also associated with talks that the Americans are conducting with the Taliban in Germany and elsewhere. But Washington looks at Pakistan’s initiatives to hold separate talks with the Taliban with suspicion.
The US wants Afghanistan’s security to be the sole responsibility of the Kabul government by 2014. Washington has already spent nearly half a trillion dollars in the ten year war and 1,500 Americans have died in the country.
The US is keen to ensure that those who take over do not turn the country again into a launching pad for terrorists with an international reach. This means that Pakistan will either have to cut the umbilical cord that makes its “assets” in North Waziristan dependent on Al-Qaeda or take them on.
What needs to be realised is that the heydays of Pak-US ties are over. Pakistan is currently as unpopular in the US as the US is in Pakistan. While the deterioration of relations would matter little to the common man, the country’s elite, civil as well as military, would be the biggest losers. Gone would be the days of being treated as a strategic ally, of IMF bailouts with a wink from Washington, of huge US aid partly going back to where it came from, partly landing in the bank accounts of the elite, of F-16s, Orions and kickbacks. There would also be no hope of getting civilian nuclear technology from the US.
The end of the US aid could, in fact, be a blessing in disguise. As things stand, budget makers continue to pin hopes on the estimated foreign inflows instead of making genuine efforts to expand the tax net. The total burden of taxes falls on the common man while the elite simply don’t pay their dues.
The budget makers are presently pinning their hopes on the receipt of $1 billion in aid during the next few days to retain the fiscal deficit at 5.3 percent of the GDP during the current fiscal year.
Any delay in CSF inflows, it is maintained, would increase the budget deficit by 0.4 percent. In the changing scenario of US-Pak relations, the only option is to make the elite cough up or face widespread and possibly violent social unrest.
Meanwhile, Pakistan must cut a more modest role for itself in line with its being a poor developing country. The pipe dream of setting up a client regime in Afghanistan willing to provide strategic depth should be abandoned as unachievable.
The writer is a former academic and a political analyst.