Pakistans relations with the US are at a generational crossroads
electoral map Pakistans biggest weakness is its economy. It is in the second year of a recovery that began with the defeat of the Pakistani Taliban in 2015 and confidence is brimming because China is financing a $55 billion infrastructure development programme
Tom Hussain
The Trump administration is on the verge of deciding upon long-term US objectives in Afghanistan and all the signs point to complications for Pakistan. The mood in Washington was aptly summed up for me by a well-placed source there, in a recent private conversation: Virtually everyone in DC thinks Pakistan is the reason why America has lost in Afghanistan.
This refers to Pakistans special relationship with the Afghan Taliban. The Afghan government is dominated by long-standing enemies of Pakistan who are allied with India. Pakistan cannot afford hostile borders on its eastern and western flanks, so it is a geostrategic imperative for Pakistan to back the Taliban. The cost to US interests has been high since 2015, when international forces ceded responsibility for the war to the Afghan government. The outcome has been a disastrous loss of territory to the Taliban. To avert the fall of several cities, the US military had to retake control of military planning and redeploy heavy bombers last year.
Despite that, the amount of territory controlled or contested by the Taliban leapt from 28 per cent to 43 per cent in 2016. In other words, the Afghan government does not control about half of the country and the situation is bound to deteriorate. Corruption and incompetence are words often used to describe the national unity government, an oxymoron that threatens to be torn apart within the year by bickering.
Against that backdrop, the outcome of ongoing negotiations led by US national security adviser HR McMaster and Ishaq Dar, Pakistans finance minister, could prove historic. Nusrat Javeed, a respected geopolitical analyst, says they are as important as the 1980 conversation that established the US-Pakistan alliance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the September 2001 phone call that prompted Pakistan to abandon its support for the Taliban.
McMaster and Gen Jim Mattis, secretary of defence, have been polite but clear. They are offering Pakistan a deal it cant refuse: cooperate and well make it worth your while, resist and we will make your relationship with the Taliban an expensive proposition.
The American generals are proffering carrot before stick. Addressing Pakistani complaints, US forces have prosecuted a major military operation against combined ISIL-Pakistani Taliban forces encamped along the Afghan border with Pakistan, headlined by the dropping of the Mother of All Bombs last month.
Immediately after, Gen McMaster contacted Dar by phone. On a tour of the region that followed, he made his first public criticism while in Kabul, calling on Pakistan to abandon proxy war in favour of diplomacy. The next day, he was in Islamabad and met with Dar. They met again in Washington last week. Pakistans biggest weakness is its economy. It is in the second year of a recovery that began with the defeat of the Pakistani Taliban in 2015 and confidence is brimming because China is financing a $55 billion infrastructure development programme. However, Pakistan is struggling with its balance of payments and is reliant on international support and receptive markets to maintain financial stability.
The US has used this as a pressure point in the past, delaying reimbursements for the cost of counter-terrorism operations and partially withholding military funding because of Pakistans failure to rein in the Haqqani Network faction of the Afghan Taliban. Many in Congress would support limited financial sanctions.
How far is the Trump administration prepared to go in incentivising or penalising Pakistan? It cant offer Pakistan what it really wants a veto on Afghanistan and if it were to squeeze too much, China would intervene to protect its investments. The nationwide spate of bombings and shootings, the worst in three years, is a statement by Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan insurgents.
They have consolidated their beachheads in eastern Afghanistan and re-established control of underground networks across Pakistan. The TTP has also formed a nexus with the ISIL franchise for the region and, according to the US military commander for Afghanistan, Gen John Nicholson, provides most of the manpower for its operations.
The wars on either side of the Durand Line, the disputed border dividing the two countries, have thus entered a new phase. Pakistani militants, breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban and ISIL, are a potent common threat to the Afghan government, as well as to the Afghan Taliban and its safe-haven providers in Pakistan and Iran.
ourse, they will be joined by ISIL operatives from Iraq and Syria.
If the current trends persist, Afghanistan would gradually slide back into the quagmire of the 1990s, from where the monster of global jihadist terrorism emerged to change our world.
The writer is a journalist and political analyst in Islamabad
