- Will Trump help Pakistan out?
While the US bureaucracy’s overall mindset on Pakistan remains decidedly negative, US President Donald Trump meanwhile wants Pakistan to help ‘extricate’ the USA from Afghanistan. This explains why he invited Prime Minister Imran Khan to Washington, setting aside bureaucratic procedures and without first informing the State Department. The meeting turned out to be a success. President Trump’s offer to mediate on Kashmir with India as quid pro quo, turned out to be a damp squib when India first rejected the offer and then announced the scrapping of Article 370 through a constitutional fiat. Pakistan also expects the USA to help it get a clean chit from the FATF.
The US bureaucracy is again in action. A delegation, led by Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian affairs, Alice G. Wells and comprising State and Treasury Department officials, reached Pakistan on a five-day visit on Tuesday and has already met PM’s Finance Advisor Dr Hafeez Sheikh. The delegation has reportedly come to make an independent assessment of steps, actions and measures identified during the Florida meeting of FATF in June, and the progress made by Pakistan since then. Dr Sheikh briefed the visiting delegation on the reforms being undertaken by Islamabad to implement the FATF Action Plan. According to the government’s version, Ambassador Wells appreciated the briefings.
An unofficial version however tells of lack of satisfaction on the part of the delegation when told that the bills relating to amendments in the Foreign Exchange Regulations and the anti-money laundering law had yet to be passed by Parliament and signed by the President of Pakistan. Knowing that the government lacks a majority in Parliament, passing the bills might not be a cakewalk. The delegation also wanted visible progress on action against terrorist networks to address the adverse opinions from the majority of FATF members.
It is unknown if, during Mr Khan’s meeting with President Trump, they agreed to set up a direct line of communication between the White House and Khan’s office, bypassing the thick bureaucracy. With Ambassador Wells and her team looking attentively into the minutiae and raising disturbing questions, the government may need President Trump’s personal intervention to upgrade Pakistan from grey to white as required by the IMF.
