US-Pakistan ties: Misunderstanding runs on both sides, says Haqqani

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington has said mistrust exists on both sides, the US as well as Pakistan’s, adding that the Americans inadvertently expanded religious extremism in Pakistan.

In an interview with the New York Times, Haqqani said the US inadvertently ended up helping groups that eventually helped the extremists as it failed to understand that religious extremist groups had been in Pakistan since 1947 and some of them had been embraced by the state as a means of nation-building.

“The United States did not understand those social forces, and on many occasions, ended up inadvertently helping groups that eventually helped the extremists,” he said.

Regarding trust issues between the two countries, Haqqani said “the mutual misunderstandings started in 1947, the suspicions come later”.

He said the misunderstanding was Pakistan’s expectation that the US would help build it up in its quest for containing communism. And when the US built it up, that Pakistan would be able to seek parity with India, which was its primary rival. The Americans had no such intention. The suspicions, in my opinion, are very much contrived as a means of generating public opposition to the US in Pakistan, and thereby giving the Pakistanis leverage in the relationship,” he told the paper.

He said the suspicion in Pakistan was that the US wanted to defang Pakistan’s nuclear programme, that the US could not accept a Muslim country having a strong military, and that America wanted Pakistan to be subservient to India, just as it wanted the Arabs to be subservient to Israel.

To a question, he said “the biggest misconception the Americans have had is that they can somehow bend Pakistan to their will simply with the leverage of aid, but this never gave them leverage”.

“There has never been an effort to understand 180 million people and their aspirations,” the former envoy said.