- Pakistan must tread warily
US Special Envoy on Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad came to Islamabad on Thursday, on his way to oha, where he is to lead the US delegation which expects to sign an MoU with the Taliban, which will include both a timeframe for the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, and a Taliban commitment not to allow any use of their soil by any terrorist organisation. Ambassador Khalilzad’s visit should be seen as the USA’s way of calling in Pakistan’s commitments, made by Prime Minister Imran Khan during his meeting with US President Donald Trump. A key Pakistan commitment is to get the Taliban to talk with the Afghan government, something they have refused to do so far, insisting that that was only possible after they had an agreement with the USA. Separate talks are supposed to take place in Oslo, and Pakistan will have to drive towards these talks.
The USA’s leverage over Pakistan is that it controls all the elements of what Pakistan wants from the USA. For example, as a sort of earnest, the Trump Administration moved the supply of F16 parts for Pakistan after the Imran-Trump meeting, but Congress has since taken no action. While a favourably inclined Administration can help its passage, a disinclined one could go as far as vetoing it. The more lasting commercial benefits sought by Pakistan, such as a Free Trade Agreement, and for which a large economic team accompanied Mr Khan, or investments in various sectors, such as power, have not materialised. Those would have created linkages between businessmen, and created a permanent lobby in the USA in Pakistan’s favour, of those US businessmen who dealt with the USA.
The time for using Pakistan’s advantages to obtain these benefits is limited. These advantages are predicated by US assumptions of Pakistan’s state institutions controlling the Afghan resistance. Any impulse to help the USA out of any goodwill should not be allowed to override Pakistan’s own national interests. Pakistan must not find itself in the position it did at the end of the First Afghan War, when it found itself abandoned by the USA after the defeat of the USSR. It may not be as close to the USA as it was then, but it is as crucial to the US involvement in Afghanistan as it was then.