Sherry brings liberal charm, but faces slim chance for diplomatic thaw

In both style and substance, Pakistan’s new Ambassador to the US Sherry Rehman was born to be a Washington diplomat and hostess, the Washington Post believes.
“She has a designer wardrobe, a chestnut coif and camera-ready makeup. She also has a BA from Smith, a CV full of democratic credentials and the articulate self-confidence of her country’s westernised elite,” it said in a report on Wednesday.
But Sherry’s arrival as the new ambassador, a nuclear-armed, terrorist-plagued nation of 180 million, has come at a time of unprecedented anti-American clamour among the Pakistani public, which has been increasingly drawn to conservative Islamic values and infuriated by US drone attacks and other perceived aggressions.
She landed in Washington at a time of deepening bilateral mistrust, marked by the covert US raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the shooting of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor and, most recently, the November attack by US forces in Afghanistan that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
Ongoing tension between these two formal allies in the war on terrorism has plunged US-Pakistan relations to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
Moreover, the civilian administration that appointed Rehman is deeply unpopular, besieged by the courts and the media, and under constant pressure from Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, the report said. The crisis has led to repeated rumours, so far unrealised, that the elected government is about to fall. Sherry, 51, seems undaunted. She learned the art of politics at the side of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s late prime minister.
Since taking up her post two weeks ago, the new envoy has handled her challenging portfolio with similar, purposeful charm. “You’ll have to airbrush out the circles under my eyes. I was up all night with a Pentagon crisis,” she remarked cheerfully to a photographer last week, posing for portraits in Pakistan’s embassy, a hushed and impersonal marble fortress off Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington.
The crisis in question had erupted after a stinging new comment on Pakistan’s “double dealing” by Defence Secretary Leon E Panetta, which Sherry spent hours attempting to spin lest it provoke an apoplectic reaction from her country’s easily offended generals.
Making her entry equally difficult are the tumultuous, intrigue-filled circumstances that led to the sudden dismissal of her predecessor, Husain Haqqani, in late November.
In an interview last week, Sherry was careful not to criticise Haqqani, a one-man political operator who was constantly tweeting, meeting and spinning in several directions at once. But she signalled that she intended to do things differently, saying, “I am not a solo flier. I like to consult and to act institutionally.” Asked what Pakistan’s army brass thought of her appointment, she answered euphemistically. “The message I am getting is that everyone is able to work with me,” she said. “I come from a long tradition that is anti-establishment, but I am very clear that here, I speak for one government.”
Sherry’s appointment has been viewed as a breath of fresh air in Islamabad and Washington. William Milam, a former US ambassador to Pakistan, described her as “tough and courageous”, and said she represented “the traditional values of Jinnah’s Pakistan, tolerance and moderation”.
“We are in a process of strategic reset,” she said, speaking from an obviously vetted script. “I feel strongly that Pakistan and the United States can have a rational, constructive, predictable and transparent relationship, but we have not had that in a sustained way for too long. We need to lower expectations and do business in a grounded way. We need a relationship that is invested with less emotion.”