WASHINGTON – Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari visits the United States next week as Washington seeks to put pressure on Islamabad to pursue militants without pushing an already strained relationship to breaking point.
Zardari will deliver a eulogy at a memorial service on January 14 for Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat who was President Barack Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The visit comes several weeks after Obama and other top US officials publicly chided Pakistan for not acting quickly enough to eradicate Islamist militants within its borders who attack US-led forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
With 2010 having been the war’s bloodiest year yet, pressure is mounting as Washington rushes to show progress in a long, unpopular conflict before Obama begins pulling out some of the 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan in July. But experts warn against pushing Pakistan too hard as it grapples with its own political turmoil and internal threats.
“The marriage of the American and Pakistani objectives, this marriage of convenience, is rocky,” said Imtiaz Gul, author of “Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier.” “It’s now a contest between the short-term American objective of creating conditions which would allow it to prepare for phased withdrawal and the long-term Pakistani interest of protecting its border region from exploding into anti-state sentiments.” Pakistani worries that the United States could leave behind an unstable Afghanistan allied with arch-foe India add another strain to a relationship that has been jolted by significant ups and downs over the past decade.
Pakistan is on edge this week after the assassination of a senior ruling party member and the breakdown of a leading political coalition that pushed Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s government to the brink of collapse.
But concerns in Washington are focused around Pakistan’s willingness to go after the Afghan Taliban and other militants who launch attacks from along its rugged western border.
Pakistanis like to say Americans do not fully appreciate the difficulty their soldiers would face, if they waded into a messy battle with militants in North Waziristan or the delicacy of support for the country’s fragile civilian government.
“Pakistan is between a rock and a hard place. They need the Americans but … they also need to avoid doing things that don’t make sense according to their political imperatives,” said Kamran Bokhari, STRATFOR, an intelligence firm, Middle East and South Asia director.
