NEW YORK: The debate continues in the American media and other forums on President Donald Trump’s Afghan plan, a military strategy that puts Pakistan on notice for allegedly supporting militants, with several experts and analysts have warning against losing Islamabad’s cooperation in efforts to bring about a political settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan.
“There’s no way Pakistan can be cut off from the reality of Afghanistan,” Frank Schell, who teaches at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, wrote in The American Spectator, a conservative US monthly magazine.
In a stern speech Aug 21, the US president laid out a new militarised policy for the region, saying he would send more American troops to Afghanistan and insisting that Pakistan must “do more” to rein in Islamist militants or face possible sanctions, such as cutting aid or revoking its status as a major non-NATO ally.
“Stability in Afghanistan cannot occur without the support of Pakistan, which has the ethnolinguistic affinity for the Pashtun. It also has the geography, networks, money, and military resources. Some estimates are dated, but of the roughly 50 million Pashtun in the region, almost 70 per cent live in Pakistan. Those in Afghanistan are the dominant ethnic group,” Schell wrote in an article entitled: Donald Trump’s Af-Pak Policy.
He said that “reducing aid to Pakistan may sell well politically in the US but it is a bad idea: relations with Pakistan are already delicate enough, and money does provide some minimal access to the country’s decision makers. Pakistan is also needed for the overland supply of materiel to US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and these supply routes have met with populist resistance in Pakistan.
“Moreover, there has been war fatigue in Pakistan with the view that the US does not recognise the amount of suffering caused by its engagement in Af-Pak. By one estimate of two groups of international physicians, over 80,000 people have been killed in total.”
“President Trump’s request that India assist in Afghanistan will only cause the Pakistani authorities to dig in further – fear of Indian “strategic depth” in Afghanistan causes paranoia in Pakistan and necessitates that Pakistan has enhanced asymmetric capabilities for use against India.
“The actions of the Trump Administration seem disconnected: the US is investing more in Afghanistan, yet through reduction of aid it could undermine its access to Pakistan whose support for the endgame is essential. “Bullying Pakistan will achieve nothing – except more intransigence and the advancement of Chinese interests in the region,” the analyst added
Writing for The Diplomat, a Tokyo-based international news magazine, Huma Sattar, a Pakistani economic analyst, said: “Successive US governments have used economic and military aid as a bargaining chip in order to keep Pakistan in check. The choice to cut funding to Pakistan is an inherited policy from past administrations, including Obama, who substantially cut down funding since 2009. It didn’t prove productive back when Pakistan was a key ally in the America’s war on terror, can it now when Pakistan is economically stronger than before and relations between the two countries have already been tense for some time?
“The question is, what bargaining power does the United States have over Pakistan and how should it be used? Funding has already thinned, with the latest $900 million expected to be slashed to half. Pakistan’s market access into the United States is less than 0.2 per cent, while Pakistan’s exports to the United States as a share of all exports have fallen to 15 per cent from 23 per cent a decade ago. Business relations have dwindled with FDI sharply dropping.
Writing in The Hill, a newspaper which covers US Congress, Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, said, “Given the timing, tone and especially the fawning overtures toward India, Pakistanis read President Trump’s speech as the newest episode of abandonment from the nation’s longest but most fickle ally…”
“Even before Pakistan had made any response to President Trump’s speech, the Chinese, already wildly popular in Pakistan for investing heavily in its infrastructure, responded with an official statement calling Pakistan an ‘all-weather friend’ and thanking it for its ‘great sacrifices’ in the fight against terrorism.
Not to miss the opportunity, Russia’s presidential envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, proclaimed that Pakistan is ‘a key regional player,’ the pressurizing of whom could ‘result in negative consequences for Afghanistan’.
In Pakistan, such statements and the speed with which they came have been viewed as evidence that Pakistan does have choices, i.e., it may be time for Pakistan to move out of the US orbit and seek deeper alliances elsewhere…
“Let us all hope that the unimaginable remains unimagined.”