Spinning yo-yos on a roller coaster…
If you are looking for a yo-yo relationship, check out the Pakistan-US ties. The two states and their key interlocutors have shown great aplomb in dealing with a never ending roller-coaster ride! Looking from the outside, they appear both deadly and comical.
The deadly drones, Salala martyrs, Haqqani camps – and the comical Washington expectations manifesting recently in the ambivalent “we’re sending an invite because your foreign minister said we’ll open the Ground Lines of Communications (GLOCs); and now you’ve arrived without opening so no sit-down meeting, only the briefest walking chit-chat with our president in Chicago.” And this carrot-and-stick diplomacy right out of a juvenile instructions manual: we will cut your aid by a million dollars a year for the 33 years imprisonment you awarded to Dr Shakil Afridi instead of rewarding him! But in the din of deadly drones and juvenile threats, the two yo-yo postured roller-coaster riders are still in serious negotiations.
Washington’s grand-figures roaring, ranging from the secretaries of state, of defense and Senator John Kerry, about why should their collaborator (Dr Afridi) not be given the land’s highest award and instead be imprisoned, seems to have gone down a few octaves. Now the various spokespersons are saying they want to know under what law was the action taken. That Afridi has a right to appeal under the amended FCR has also blunted some of the criticism. It appears that on the Afridi issue, the pressure will continue.
On the Chicago Nato Summit, while Pakistan’s participation in it is being projected as a ‘big success and very fruitful’ by the government and a ‘disgrace and a shame’ by its critics, the truth perhaps lies somewhere in between. The belated invite prompted cold calculations. The Defense Committee of the Cabinet surveyed the diplomatic, economic and security scene before deciding that participation was a good idea. There was no consensus however on the level of participation. Clearly the government also was treading tricky political grounds because the parliamentary demand called for US stopping drones to open GLOCs.
Despite Obama’s impolite refusal to formally meet President Zardari in Chicago, his meeting with the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton helped the two review the hurdles preventing results from the ongoing dialogue.
As is the case in diplomacy, the business of give-and-take, neither side won clean. Pakistan insisted apology be back on the table and other issues settled before any progress on the Haqqani factor etc. could take place. Clinton said militancy needed to be tackled and the GLOCs should have opened yesterday! True to style and uncharacteristic of big power hubris, Clinton was attentive. President Zardari asserted Pakistan deserved more support and credit for the massive security and terrorism problems it was tackling, the sacrifices it was making and the political pressures that were growing at home. The apology, the Pakistanis argued could not be off the table. They wanted to open the GLOCs once matters, including the rates of containers, were sorted out. The US secretary complained of Pakistan’s insufficient action against militants, sought more action from Pakistan, promised more help on wanting rapid settlement on other fronts, and she reportedly agreed to reconsider issuing an apology! Such is the state of our bilateral relations.
But Chicago did help some. Within four days, Pakistan’s Finance Minister Hafeez Shiekh and the US Under-Secretary Nides held an hour long video conference on the issue of container rates. The Pakistan-US teams meeting in Islamabad since April 26 had not been able to resolve the rates issue and so senior level intervention was agreed upon. Clinton had told Pakistanis no cash was handed to the Uzbeks for the Northern route, but that all the transportation expenses were borne by the Americans themselves. Apparently Americans are now saying they will not pay Pakistan more than $500 per container. Earlier Pakistan was getting $250 per container as transit fee.
Similarly, top ISI and CIA officials were also scheduled to meet around May 28th in Washington to agree on the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to ensure that drone strikes are not unilaterally conducted.
These top level inter-intelligence agency discussions aside, Pakistan’s domestic conversation over drones is the most complicated and our own contradictions need to be sorted out. Irrespective of what the parliament said, in the last one week alone there have been at least four drone strikes killing more than 25 people. The US defense secretary has also declared drone strikes “absolutely essential”. The demand to end the strikes notwithstanding, Pakistan has demonstrated by its conduct that it will not shoot down the deadly unmanned drones, although, according to our nuclear scientist Dr A Q Khan, Pakistan developed this capability 15 years back.
Away from the dialogue that continues between these rollercoaster-riding ally-adversary hybrids, lies the debate in the Pakistani public through the media. Pakistani public wants an end to drone strikes and the government watches over intelligence agencies’ efforts to work out the terms on which US drone attacks will be acceptable. And so it continues – like yo-yos on a roller coaster, like talking men in the Animal Farm, like nations in need of more coherence and competence to conduct and discuss their affairs.
The writer is a senior journalist and has been a diplomatic correspondent for leading dailies. She can be reached at: [email protected]
