WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama’s new strategy is causing serious
differences between the United States and Pakistan over how to fight the
militants hiding in the Pak-Afghan region.
US think-tanks and the media believe that the differences revolve around two
major issues: India’s role in Afghanistan and the drone attacks at suspected
terrorist targets inside Pakistan.
They acknowledge that India is using its overwhelming presence in Afghanistan to
create problems for Pakistan in Balochistan and other places.
Some experts say that in recent meetings Pakistanis officials asked the United
States to use its influence on India to stop its interference in Balochistan but
the Americans are not willing to do so.
This, according to them, explains why Tuesday’s talks in Islamabad between
Americans and Pakistani officials ended on a sour note, indicating clearly that
the two sides have serious differences.
In a report distributed on Wednesday, the US Council on Foreign Relations noted
that in their meetings with America’s special envoy Richard Holbrooke and
Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, Pakistani officials
contended that Washington showed disproportionate support for India in its
bilateral relations with Pakistan.
Also on Wednesday, the Foreign Policy magazine quoted James Traub as saying that
‘Pakistan feels as if it’s falling apart … (and) American policy has arguably
made the situation even worse’.
Mr Traub, a US scholar who writes for the New Yorker magazine and The New York
Times, noted that the Predator-drone attacks along the border, ‘though
effective, drive the Taliban eastward, deeper into Pakistan. And the strategy
has been only reinforcing hostility to the United States among ordinary
Pakistanis’.
The council, which has produced several foreign policy leaders, noted that
Pakistani officials were also criticising the parameters of Ambassador
Holbrooke’s ‘Af-Pak’ mission, saying a more productive assignment would include
mediation of the India-Pakistan conflict in Kashmir.
Many experts believed that the Kashmir dispute was ‘inextricably linked with
problems of militancy in other parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan’, the council
observed.
But the council pointed out that while talking to journalists in India, Mr
Holbrooke denied that he was pushing for new peace dialogue between India and
Pakistan.
The US think-tank reported that on Tuesday rifts emerged between Mr Holbrooke
and his negotiating counterparts in Pakistan, as Islamabad flatly rejected a
proposal for joint military operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
According to the report, Mr Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen also alleged that the
Taliban’s senior leadership was currently hiding in Balochistan.
The Foreign Policy magazine noted that the US administration justified the drone
attacks by claiming it would deny the militants a ‘safe haven’ in Pakistan.
‘This line of argument sounds persuasive, but it falls apart on closer
examination. For starters, it is not clear that al Qaeda requires a safe haven
to do damage, especially since the original organisation has metastasised into
smaller groups of sympathisers.’
The magazine pointed out that only a large-scale invasion could eliminate al
Qaeda from the region but such an invasion was impossible and therefore there
was little reason to continue the drone attacks.
‘US military strikes in Pakistan —even limited ones —tend to undermine the
Pakistani government and increase the risk that Pakistan will become a failed
state,’ the report noted.
On differences between Pakistan and the US over India, the Wall Street Journal
pointed out that Washington was finding it difficult to ‘pursue a cohesive
strategy that eradicates militancy in Pakistan and Afghanistan but doesn’t
heighten tensions among three countries whose shared history is rife with
violence and mutual suspicion’.
The newspaper reported that US policy-makers initially considered including
Kashmir as part of the US strategy but India balked.
‘US officials subsequently have taken discussion about Kashmir off the table,
even though it remains a central flashpoint in tensions between India and
Pakistan,’ the newspaper noted. ‘Pakistani officials have complained that the US
needs to consider all conflicts in the region as it seeks to solve them.’
