Pay for performance relationship?

No one has defined the Pak-US relationship as succinctly and perhaps more accurately than Vice President Joe Biden, who called it "transactional" - as against their diplomats, who often spin it out as strategic and long-lasting. Look incisively through any of the so-called win-win deals between the two countries you would find it broken into a number of pay-per-performance conditions, which Pakistan is quite familiar with being a recurrent victim of sanctions and cut-backs.
Once again the Pak-US bilateral relationship is confronted with this challenge as the State Department warned that the security assistance to Pakistan would be conditioned to a "secret scoreboard" of its co-operation with the American military and counter-terrorism objectives. "While our civilian assistance continues unchanged, on the security side, on the military side, we have had to make some changes based on co-operation," says the State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland.
Then she comes to what really rankles the Obama administration's heart: "If all the training assistance is going forward, we have to have the trainers there." But Pakistan doesn't want these trainers anymore, especially after the Osama compound raid which came only a few weeks after the Raymond Davis affair. Both the incidents are believed by the Pakistanis to be the products of American intelligence agencies that are present here, largely under the cover of trainers, contractors and what not.
That after hectic diplomatic exchanges and some high-profile visits some common ground has been discovered - in that US diplomats are allowed to go out of Islamabad after giving a five-day notice instead of getting an NOC for the said travel - hardly reflects any warmth coming back to the bilateral ties. But this does, quite correctly, present in its true colours the quality of relationship. Being transactional, no wonder, it is no more warm and all-embracing, having enjoyed a long spell of close comradeship which ran afoul of a trust deficit in the wake of May 2 Abbottabad raid and the Raymond Davis killing spree.
Reporting the American move to condition military assistance on Pakistan forces' performance against militancy and extremism, the Wall Street Journal also quoted an official saying "Give us something we can show (Congress) that we are working together" - as if what Pakistan is going through, on a day-to-day basis in terms of terrorist hits throughout the country and extensive loss of human life caused by the CIA-operated drone attacks is not visible in distant Washington.
The fact of the matter is that over time Pakistan has acquired immunity against assistance cutback threats. Last month, when the Obama administration announced its decision to hold back 800 million dollars in aid to Pakistan, of which a big chunk was due to the Pakistan military, General Kayani's reaction should have served the Americans as a timely advice.
Then the New York Times had said that the cut-off was aimed "to chasten Pakistan for expelling American military trainers and to press its army to fight more effectively". And the reply to them from the general was: You may divert that assistance to the civilian side in Pakistan. Since a large part of the military assistance is not aid as such, for it's a reimbursement of what Pakistan is expending on operations against terrorism, its cut-off is more a refusal to pay what is due than an act of generosity.
And even more importantly, the quantity of aid which finally filters through to the Pakistan military and civilian sectors of Pakistan hardly compensates what we have been paying as war losses in terms of human life, economic downturn and social disorder. This being the unsavoury backdrop to the obtaining Pak-US bilateralism, we expect the American side to re-calibrate its position and posturing in order that Pak-US ties remain intact, even if less productive.
Washington can do that by recognising Pakistan's position, which are abundantly realistic and cannot be bartered away whatever the pressures and persuasions. We don't know what that 'scoreboard' is and what are those four 'baskets' our forces are supposed to fill with their performance, but we do know that Pakistan has paid the highest price as a partner of the international war on terrorism. Of course, there is a fair amount of convergence of national interests between the two countries, but the fact cannot be overlooked that sequential events and developments can throw up divergences. As a coalition partner, Pakistan can and shall do only as much; expectations beyond that would be unrealistic and should be dropped.