Lisa Curtis (top left), Douglas London (top right), Marvin Weinbaum (center left), Javid Ahmad (center right), and Husain Haqqani (bottom)

 

Panel Stresses Importance of US Engagement with Pakistan at MEI Webinar
By Elaine Pasquini

Washington: In the world of American think tanks, US relations with Pakistan remain a constant topic as the South Asian country and US ally continues struggling with economic, political, humanitarian and environmental crises. To discuss these issues, the Middle East Institute (MEI) assembled an expert panel for a November 21 webinar.

Moderator Marvin G. Weinbaum, director of Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies at the MEI, noted that these crises, in addition to directly affecting the well-being of the Pakistani people, also carry strong regional and global implications. According to its National Defense Strategy plan for 2022, the United States is reducing its involvement with Pakistan or at least changing the nature of it, Weinbaum said.

Although for the past 20 years Washington’s policy towards Islamabad was heavily driven by US military involvement in Afghanistan, it is beneficial to America’s national security interests to remain engaged with Pakistan and work toward normalizing cooperative relationships, he argued.

Now that the US is no longer militarily engaged in Afghanistan, US-Pakistan relations are “relatively cordial,” said Lisa Curtis, senior fellow and director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for New American Security and former National Security Council senior director for South and Central Asia. But with US foreign policy focused now on Russia and China, “there is not a lot of attention and thought going into US-Pakistan relations at the strategic level…although the US is concerned about Pakistan’s close relationship with China,” she added.

“I do think Pakistan welcomes our engagement and they don’t want to be solely reliant on China,” Curtis continued. To counter China’s influence, she recommended the US build up trade relations with Pakistan and focus on “incentivizing” US companies to do business with our ally.

Discussing the Pakistani military’s relationship with its US counterpart, Douglas London, MEI nonresident scholar and former CIA field officer and analyst, pointed to the recent visit to Washington of Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa [scheduled to retire November 29]. “There is certainly more openness on the part of the military and intelligence services to US contact even if there is not really substance,” he noted.

Working in Pakistan when he was with the US government, London dealt with the Pakistani army frequently. “I found them to be very much a consensus-oriented organization…whose leaders worked with corps commanders and they all wanted to be on the same page,” he related.

If the situation worsens in Afghanistan, perhaps US-Pakistan relations will improve, he posited. “I think at least on the military side they are going to be thinking they need to work a little more with the United States to keep that door open.”

The former intelligence officer warned that the US and Pakistan should not lose sight of the threat that a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan poses to the entire region in terms of the instability it can sow, even if it’s not actively promoting the extremist groups. “I think there is some room to work with Pakistan in terms of figuring out what is going on in Afghanistan,” he enthused. “They want to know as much as we do what’s going on and they want to influence things as well.”

Javid Ahmad, MEI nonresident scholar, Atlantic Council senior fellow and former ambassador of Afghanistan to the UAE, put forth that Afghanistan is one of the countries to watch closely and that what happens there under the Taliban could potentially also shape the future of US-Pakistan relations going forward.

Internally, Pakistan is undergoing a “clashing of identities,” he opined. There is “a relatively politically weak civilian identity, a powerful military identity…and a populous identity involving scores of young, mostly conservative, members of the urban middle class,” he added.

Ahmad referred to Pakistan’s relationship with China as “not a partnership of equals.” He noted that “at least one-quarter of Pakistan’s massive external debt” [close to $135 billion] is owed to China. Pakistani exports to China are stagnant and bilateral trade between China and Pakistan is heavily skewed in favor of the Chinese even though there is a free-trade agreement between the two countries, he said.

Husain Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute and former Pakistani ambassador to the US, expressed his view that after withdrawing from Afghanistan the Biden administration believes the US does not need Pakistan the way it used to. “Right now, the relationship is at a level where there is functional engagement but nothing like a close partnership,” he said. The relationship, he noted, is “not comparable at all to the good days when Pakistan was described as America’s most allied ally by President Eisenhower back in the 1950s or even as close as it was under President Reagan or President Obama.”

According to Haqqani, if there is going to be a longer term sustained partnership between the United States and Pakistan, one of the biggest dimensions would need to be an economic one. “Pakistan is neither a major buyer of American products nor is it a major exporter to the United States and that must be rectified,” he stated.

On the subject of Imran Khan’s popularity, the panelists expressed differing opinions. In Curtis’ view, he’s a “very popular leader in Pakistan,” but, she noted, US-Pakistan relations are complex and don’t depend on who is prime minister. “While the United States wants to see stability in Pakistan it does not support one faction over another or one leader over another,” she added.

Haqqani opined that Khan has created a “very cult-like following that is very active on social media…but even that has limits.” In future elections, “he will be a force, but will not be the force,” he stated.

In conclusion, Haqqani stressed overall that the US should seriously engage with Pakistan because “no one wants Pakistan to become a hermit kingdom á la North Korea. ”

(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)