Time to reassess our decades old and often troubled relationship with the US
Foreign minister Khawaja Asif reportedly has said that US always cheated Pakistan and in the emerging scenario the relations between the two countries would have to be revisited. That has actually been the case ever since Pakistan opted to become a US ally during the cold war era.
Nothing would explain our relationship with United States of America better than this Urdu couplet ‘Barey logone se milney mein zara tum fasla rakhna miley darya samunder sey tau woh darya naheen rehta’ the English rendering of which is that one should keep appropriate distance from the mighty while dealing with them because when a river falls into the sea it loses its identity.
The quoted lines reiterate an eternal truth that there cannot be friendship between two un-equals. But alas! Immediately after independence, the architects of our foreign policy jumped into the lap of a super power thousands of miles away by joining SEATO and CENTO in complete disregard to this common wisdom. It was ostensibly done to ward off the Indian threat to our security and territorial integrity but the move earned us the animosity of the other super power which was our neighbor and also locked in the cold war with the former.
We paid a heavy price for this fallacious move in the form of dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 when the former USSR who considered us an enemy for our alliance with USA, signed a defense pact with India and strengthened its military capability to inflict military defeat on us while the Americans remained silent spectators.
It is an irrefutable reality that the conflict in Afghanistan and elimination of terrorism requires a collaborative effort of regional countries and the US
The much-trumpeted arrival of the sixth fleet never materialized. The dismemberment of Pakistan falsified the premise on which we had built our relations with the USA. It was a classic example of betrayal by a so-called friend and ally.
Even earlier during the 1965 war with India the Americans did not help us contending – contrary to our perceptions – that the alliance was only against the communist threat. During that war the US even stopped supply of military hardware to Pakistan. Thanks to Chinese help and the support extended by Iran and Turkey in that hour of crisis, we were able to salvage some of our national pride.
The war made it abundantly clear that our security lay in having good and friendly relations with the countries of the region rather than joining alliances meant to serve the interests of the imperialists. But regrettably despite the foregoing set-backs and reversals, we failed to revisit other foreign policy options.
Even more painful was the fact that those who orchestrated our alliance with the US still did not accept the irrationality of their decision and continued to pursue the path of self-destruction by persistently trusting a country whose only objective was to use Pakistan for furthering its strategic interests in this region and at the global level.
The trail of betrayals by our so-called friend did not end there. When India exploded its first nuclear device in 1974, the Americans did not raise any alarm bells against the move. But when Pakistan started its nuclear program it adopted an extremely hostile stance and even clamped sanctions against us. The notorious Pressler Amendment which was entirely Pakistan specific spoke volumes about the discriminatory attitude of the US towards Pakistan.
The US even conceived and encouraged the military coup against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and had him eliminated through a judicial murder; a punishment for converting Pakistan into the first Islamic nuclear state. It is an open secret that the US not only has been engineering military coups in Pakistan but has also been providing props to those adventurers to prolong their rules at the cost of democracy and economic prosperity of the country. The signing of a nuclear cooperation deal and facilitation of NSG waiver with India was yet another unfriendly act against Pakistan by the US.
General Zia owed longevity of his rule to the US support as a reward for his involvement in the war against the USSR in Afghanistan. It was he who in collaboration with the US introduced Jihadi culture and created the ‘Frankenstein’ of the Taliban and also orchestrated moves to build his constituency among the religious fanatics. After the end of Afghan war the US abandoned us to face the fall out of the Afghan war in the form of Kalashinkov and drug culture.
In the aftermath of 9/11 The Americans were back again and coerced Musharraf into joining the ‘War on Terror’ as a frontline state. Musharraf like Zia grabbed the opportunity to win US support for his regime and surrendered Pakistan’s sovereignty without any scruples. The war on terror gradually became our war on terror.
During this war the US has been pummeling our sovereignty through drone attacks on our soil like the Salala attack and the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden at Abbottabad. It has all along accused Pakistan of double dealing by providing safe havens to terrorist outfits, especially Haqqanis. It refuses to be convinced about the sincerity of Pakistan in spite of the fact that it has given sacrifices of 70,000 lives and sustained colossal economic loss to the tune of $120 billion.
Even indiscriminate action against terrorist outfits based in North Waziristan through Zarb-e-Azb and the cleansing process of their supporters and sympathizers and any of the remnants of terrorists on the run through operation Radul Fasad, have regrettably failed to remove the haze. It has not given any consideration to the efforts made by Pakistan at the bilateral and multilateral forums to promote the Afghan-led and Afghan owned peace process of reconciliation in Afghanistan.
The pressure that the Trump administration is trying to exert on Pakistan and the accompanying threats that it has thought appropriate to hurl negate the diplomatic norms of inter-state relations. Nobody threatens partners and allies the way it is being by the US at the moment.
The foregoing facts prove beyond any iota of doubt that US was never really our friend and ally and has invariably cheated and betrayed us. The time now has come to revisit our relations with the US. However utmost caution and restraint is needed while dealing with a hostile ally and the only super power of the world, headed by a character like President Trump.
Pakistan simply cannot afford confrontation with the USA. Under the circumstances it needs to upgrade its diplomatic offensive for pleading its case and engaging the US administration at all levels for unraveling the ground realities to remove the ambience of mistrust and winning their continued support to take the fight against terrorism to its logical end. In this regard the support of friendly countries could also be sought.
It is an irrefutable reality that the conflict in Afghanistan and elimination of terrorism requires a collaborative effort of regional countries and the US. In fact, without the US being on board no solution is possible and vice verse the US also cannot resolve this conundrum without cooperation of other regional countries, particularly Pakistan. The US needs to understand that. Any approach contrary to this is going to have a boomerang effect which could consign the region to perennial instability also jeopardizing US strategic interests in the region.