Opinion

As General Mullen revealed in an interview to the Wall Street Journal, reviving strategic ties between Pakistan and the US appears a difficult proposition at the present juncture. Unfortunately, crucial matters in both the countries are in the hands of the generals and intelligence agencies. The US, as a nation, is not quite ready for any president who is other than the mainstream stereotype. The country became so polarized and that made President Obama very vulnerable. Just to show some success he let the security establishment take charge of the foreign policy viz-a-viz Pakistan and Afghanistan. On the other hand in Pakistan, even in the present democratic dispensation, the military is commandingly at the helm of affairs and the role of the political parties is nothing more than that of cheerleaders. Not surprising, most media channels showed little or no hope in the proceedings of the APC. They expected nothing other than some rhetoric and reiteration of a "resolve" to bring about the much needed change.
Time has now come to ensure that:

1) The security agencies accept the legitimacy of the elected government and the ground reality that they are institutions of the government. Politicians should be the one who make policies; government institutions are tools to implement those policies, although their input in policy-making is important.
2) The elected leaders must be assertive and active in fulfilling their obligations to the people who elected them. They must play their due role in policy making instead of letting generals do the policy making as the present government has allowed them to do so far.
3) The security agencies must understand that terror groups cannot be used as their policy-implementing tools. If Pakistan decides to work with the civilized world it will have much more leverage to defend its interests not only in Afghanistan but all over the world.