News
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Aid cuts plunge US-Pakistan ties to new lowISLAMABAD: The US suspension of $800 million in military aid to Pakistan shows how toxic relations are, analysts say, and will do nothing to encourage Islamabad to open new fronts in the war on Al Qaeda.
Ties are now at their lowest point since Islamabad officially broke with the Taliban and sided with Washington after the 9/11 attacks.
Relations have never been easy, but they took a distinct turn for the worse early in the year when a CIA contractor shot dead two men and they dived further after the May 2 raid by the US that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
In the months since the Al Qaeda leader was found within spitting distance of Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point, US and Pakistani officials have fought a war of words through the press, hiding behind largely anonymous briefings.
That changed when the top military officer in the United States, Admiral Mike Mullen, said Pakistan may have approved the murder of a local journalist.
Then The New York Times reported that more than a third of the whopping $2 billion annual US military aid to Pakistan was being cut, which Barack Obama’s chief of staff then confirmed in a television interview.
Reaction from the Pakistani army was muted, but defiant. A spokesman said it had not been officially informed and that anyway, the cash wasn’t needed.
“The army in the past as well as at present has conducted successful military operations using its own resources without any external support whatsoever,” said military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas.
One Western security official in Islamabad said that bin Laden’s killing had hardened America’s approach to Pakistan, but the underlying difference was that the so-called allies cannot agree who or what the enemy really is.
“The problem is that the United States and Pakistan are allies, but they don’t have the same enemy and so relations will only continue along this chaotic path,” the official said.
Another security official recently said that Pakistan would like the CIA to sign a contract setting out the exact terms of the war on Al Qaeda.
For the United States, the marriage of convenience with Pakistan boils down to safeguarding its supply line to Afghanistan and wanting Islamabad to neutralise militants who plot attacks on Americans in Afghanistan and the West.
But while Pakistan is certainly fighting a local Taliban insurgency, it has resisted US pressure to open a new front against the Al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network. And the prospect of any such operation now looks increasingly remote.
“The Pakistani army will carry on fighting the war against terrorism, but they don’t want to follow everything the US wants,” security analyst Hasan Askari said.
The United States has been further annoyed by Pakistan ordering dozens of US military trainers out of the country, asking security contractors to leave, delaying visas for Americans, and CIA operations have been limited.
And ever since Pakistan officially turned its back on the Afghan Taliban in the “you’re either with us or against us” challenge after 9/11, it has been dogged by allegations of colluding with the Afghan Taliban and its affiliates.
But if this is a deeply troubled marriage, a divorce looks out of the question, analysts say, because the US and Pakistan need one another.
The Pakistani economy is in dire straits.
“The US has a lot of economic assistance leverage,” said Askari. “If they get angry, we will face cuts from the IMF and other world financial institutions.”
But the prospect of the United States suspending all its multi-billion dollar aid programmes to Pakistan is remote at a time when Washington is trying to negotiate an exit to its 10-year war in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The bottom line, analysts agreed, was that the loss of $800 million in military aid would make little difference and may have been more a symbolic gesture of US unease with the way the relationship is going.
“I think Pakistan and the United States will come to some kind of understanding soon to sort out irritants,” said analyst Rasul Baksh Raees, noting the deep antipathy to the US that is prevalent in Pakistan.
“There is a re-thinking in our country and the armed forces that price of cooperation with US has been politically and economically too high and no amount of assistance can compensate the sacrifices we have made,” he warned. afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk