In no way unsuccessful

The ninety minute long summit

A lot of preparations were made for the first meeting between PM Sharif and President Obama .The tete a tete was over in an hour and a half. Keeping in view the present state of Pak-US relations, the talks can in no way be described as unsuccessful. The extremist fringe with a perverted sense of reality would feel dissatisfied with the outcome but its views should not matter to a prime minister trying to do what is possible. Bringing Afia Siddiqui on his plane back home was only a pipedream.

Both sides were keen for the meeting and had made preparations to make it successful – as both were in need of each other – and desperately so.

The US is desperate to ink a strategic pact with Afghanistan, negotiate a possible deal with the Afghan Taliban leading to an honourable exit and at the same time secure its strategic interests in the region. The US thinks Pakistan can help bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. To cap it, Pakistan provides by far the cheapest and shortest routes for the 2014 drawdown, removing its heavy non-lethal stores, and subsequently supplies to the remaining foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s assistance would also be indispensable during the Afghan election due April 2014. Taliban would try their level best to disrupt the crucial exercise for the formation of the next government. The capabilities of the Afghan National Security Forces are yet not considered sustainable even by their ISAF trainers. The Pakistan army would therefore be called upon to help seal the approximately 2,600 km porous and mountainous Durand Line separating the two countries. A similar exercise had been taken up by it in the last elections also.

In case of a government agreement with Kabul to maintain the US forces in Afghanistan for counterterrorism operations, it would have to be supplied through Pakistan.

Washington was wary of Sharif who as an opposition leader and opposed to joining the American war on terror and wanted a review of the foreign policy. The Secretary of State John Kerry who came to sound Sharif in Islamabad in early August found him to be a different man when in power. Soon after the meeting Kerry announced the two sides had agreed to re-establish “a full partnership”. Talking about drone strikes in a television interview later the same day, an effusive Kerry declared, “I think the programme will end as we have eliminated most of the threats and continue to eliminate it.”

A week before Nawaz Sharif was to depart for Washington, US special envoy James F. Dobbins met Sartaj Aziz in Islamabad to finalise the agenda of talks and potential points to be raised in the Nawaz-Obama meeting. Thus the Americans dotted the I’s and crossed the T‘s days before the talks. They didn’t want any confusion at the eleventh hour.

After assuming power Sharif found that Pakistan badly needed the US help to tide over is financial difficulties. Like the previous government, the PML-N administration too wants tariff concessions, greater access to the US market, American investments and help in building dams and ending power shortages. Unless the economy started reviving, and there was respite from rising prices and new jobs were created for the youth, the government feared widespread unrest.

Sharif therefore made preparations for what looked like a tough diplomatic assignment. On October 15 he chaired a high-level meeting on national security. A strategy or the talks was devised in the meeting. While Sharif wanted economic cooperation to take centre stage in talks with the US through upgradation of trade links, he knew regional dynamics and anti-terror policy would be high on the US agenda. This explains who was to be called for providing inputs to devise the strategy for talks. Besides Ch Nisar Ali Khan, Sartaj Aziz and Tariq Fatemi, COAS Kayani and DG ISI Zaheerul Islam were also asked to attend the meeting

The day Sharif reached Washington he had three hour long talks with a high level security team that included US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Director CIA John Brennan and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan James Dobbins, besides Secretary of State Kerry. Everything was discussed here from Afghan Taliban, the TTP, Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan and with India . The meeting was considered necessary as it helped the Americans to further size up the new prime minister. The Pakistan side was also conveyed Washington’s priorities.

On Wednesday, Sharif was invited for a breakfast meeting with Vice President Joe Biden. This helped to settle most of the things between the two sides before the much awaited meeting hours later.

With the talks over, the prime minister has to face challenges at home. While in Washington, Mian Nawaz Sharif took up the cessation of drone attacks as a high priority issue. The drone attacks could be delayed for a few weeks at his insistence. The PML-N thinks this would help holding talks with the TTP. Drones or no drones there is no possibility of the TTP and its allies like LeJ stopping terror attacks as they are driven by an ideology where pluralism has no place and the issues are to be settled not through peaceful discussion but recourse to arms.

Before the US leaves Afghanistan, the terrorist outfits need to be taken out. Once the ISAF leaves Afghanistan the task will become much more difficult and the price will be very heavy. The TTP wants to prolong the talks, create confusion and divide political parties on the one hand and the government and army on the other.

The US help would be useful provided it is not tied up with conditions like the discarding the Iran-Pakistan pipeline project which alone can bring the much needed gas to Pakistan within less than two years. Any succumbing to the US pressure on the issue would be widely considered as surrender to the US dikat.

While there is a need to use the American help to put the economy on rails, any dependence on one country alone would restrict the country’s space to manoeuvre. Despite being a super power, the US is fast declining economically and its control over the world is diminishing. Pakistan has to meanwhile develop ties with the emerging centrrs of power, expanding trade and cultural relations with neigbours as well as with countries like Russia and China. To decrease the army’s influence on the government, diplomacy should be given more importance than use of military force to resolve problems with the neighbours.

Some in the PML-N have unrealistic expectations from the US. They entertain the unrealistic hope of having a treaty with the US for transfer of civilian nuclear technology forgetting the close ties between the US and India and the latter’s opposition to Pakistan’s demand. Ishaq Dar in fact said at a briefing in Islamabad in July that Pakistan and the US had agreed in principle to continue dialogue on cooperation in civil nuclear technology. This was immediately contradicted by the State Department.

Nawaz Sharif’s call to the US to play a role in resolving the Kashmir dispute is also thoroughly unsound. Washington has highly suspect strategic goals in the region and cannot be trusted as an honest broker. Appointing it as an arbiter could be detrimental to the cause of the people of Kashmir and likely to harm Pakistan.

Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad is a political analyst and a former academic.