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Friday, May 06, 2011
US-Pakistan relations in troubleWASHINGTON: Osama Bin Laden’s death has Congress pointing fingers at Pakistan and many in the Obama administration expressing thinly veiled exasperation. But it probably won’t mean the breakup of a marriage of convenience that is maddening to both the US and Pakistan. The alternative would be worse.
The commando raid on Monday on Bin Laden’s comfortable house deep inside Pakistan exposes a stark truth that bodes ill for the decade-long US strategy to coax greater cooperation from its counterterrorism ally. Some in Congress are already clamouring to cut or eliminate the nearly $1.3bn in annual aid to Pakistan. And the Obama administration may be tempted to opt for more go-it-alone operations.
Through either complicity or incompetence, Pakistan’s failure to do anything while the al Qaeda mastermind spent up to six years in a conspicuously oversized villa near a military academy raises alarming questions.
The Obama administration is investigating. Any evidence that points to Pakistani support for Bin Laden or his terrorist network would amp up the pressure in the US to cut off military and civilian assistance for President Asif Ali Zardari’s fragile government. Neither government wants that. The US needs Pakistan’s assistance to fight Bin Laden’s followers and exit from Afghanistan; Zardari’s government fears overthrow from an emboldened opposition if it loses its American backing.
Members of Congress are divided for now on Pakistan, with some lawmakers saying the death proves that Pakistan has been playing a double game all along — supporting US enemies on the theory that it might one day need them — and others calling for more US engagement to expand the fight against terrorism. The prevailing idea seems to be to press the US advantage while Pakistan’s military might be more motivated to demonstrate its resolve.
But the tension released by Bin Laden’s killing couldn’t come at a worse time for US-Pakistani relations. In recent weeks, popular anger in Pakistan spiked when CIA contractor Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis, on top of disagreements over US drone attacks on Pakistani territory. And just last month, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan’s military-run spy service of links with the Haqqani network, a major Afghan Taliban faction.
The Bin Laden operation has revealed the shifting ground: The Obama administration trusted its partner so little that it only told the government of the military incursion when it was over. And in a statement Tuesday, the Pakistani government warned that an “unauthorised unilateral action cannot be taken as a rule,” calling it a “threat to international peace and security.” It has made clear that it had nothing to do with the operation. “We have a complicated but vital and important relationship with Pakistan,” Carney said. “We don’t agree on everything, but their cooperation has been essential in the fight against al Qaeda.”
That also could partly explain Obama’s decision on Wednesday against releasing Bin Laden’s death photos, saying their graphic nature could incite violence. “There’s no need to spike the football,” he said in an interview on Wednesday with CBS’ “60 Minutes”. But the problems with Pakistan aren’t likely to go away — especially if the US gathers intelligence that more top terror suspects such as new al Qaeda No 1 Ayman al-Zawahri, the Taliban’s Mullah Omar or Siraj Haqqani are hiding there. US officials said this week they suspect that al-Zawahri is in Pakistan, and the others have long been assumed to use the country as a haven to attack US forces in Afghanistan.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner suggested the US could conduct more solo operations. “Al Qaeda hasn’t abandoned its intent to attack the United States,” he said. “This is an ongoing armed conflict, and we believe that the United States has authority under international law to use force to defend itself when necessary.”
Pakistan will have to play a significant role brokering a political solution to the violence in Afghanistan, reconciling the Taliban with President Hamid Karzai’s US-backed government, he said. And while the US succeeded in killing Bin Laden on its own, it will surely need Pakistan for future operations.
Some analysts weren’t so sure, seeing in Bin Laden’s killing the recovery of a lost American swagger, the feeling in the United States after 9/11 that al Qaeda’s defeat was inevitable — with or without Pakistan’s help. apCourtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk