Pak-US relations may be on the mend, but mutual mistrust persists. That came out clearly from the proceedings of a special session on Afghanistan and Pakistan at a security forum in Aspen, USA. As usual, American officials and the Kabul government's Ambassador to Washington, Ekil Hakimi, laid the blame at Pakistan's door for their failure to defeat the Taliban, accusing Islamabad of supporting the insurgents. Participating via a video-link from Washington, Pakistan's Ambassador Sherry Rehman put things in perspective, pointing out this country had handed over 200 high value militants to the US. She also raised the all-important question "where is the strategic sympathy for Pakistan which has lost 42,000 lives in the last 12 years?" There is no sympathy for Pakistan's position whilst US officials continue to parrot the old 'do more' line pressuring the country to take on the powerful Haqqani network militants who are said to have safe havens in North Waziristan. Meanwhile, both the Kabul government and American forces keep on looking the other way as Pakistani militants, camped in Kunar and Nuristan provinces, have been launching fierce cross-border attacks on civilians and military personnel on this side of the border. The Ambassador told her audience that on 52 different occasions during the last eight months Pakistan provided information to Nato commanders about the location from which these violent extremists have been making forays, but to no avail. Even at the Aspen discussion, Special Assistant to President Obama for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Dough Lute, tried to downplay the seriousness of these attacks. He argued that "there's no comparison of the Pakistani Taliban's relative recent, small-in-scale presence inside Afghanistan ... to the decades-long experience and relations between elements of the Pakistani government and the Afghan Taliban." To compare these, he added, is simply unfair. The fact of the matter is that the Pakistani militants operating from their Afghan sanctuaries have been causing loss of a lot of lives, both civilian and military. There have been instances in which they kidnapped soldiers from undermanned posts and beheaded them to create an atmosphere of terror. They may be small in number but these extremists, armed with sophisticated weapons, harbour the big ambition of establishing Islamic caliphate in parts of Pakistan. Before fleeing to Afghanistan they had managed to establish control in Swat and some adjoining areas, unleashing a reign of terror there. By no stretch of imagination these militants can be described as a small-scale problem: they challenge the writ of this state through violent means, creating chaos and instability. The powerful Haqqani network, on the other hand, may be a much bigger group hurting the US; they may also have decades-long relations with certain elements in Pakistan - dating back to the US' last war in Afghanistan - but there is no easy way to bend their will to fight. More to the point, even if the Haqqanis operate from safe havens in North Waziristan (something they deny) there is not much Pakistan can do to beat them into accepting peace on America's terms. The reasons are obvious: one, it is no secret that writ of the state in Pakistan's tribal badlands has always been quite ineffective. Second, as Islamabad has been telling Washington its forces are already stretched too thin, and hence cannot undertake a full-fledged military operation in Northern Waziristan to drive out the Haqqani fighters. Third and most important, any such operation in the area is certain to invite a bloody backlash in the rest of the country. Pakistan needs to worry first about the safety and security of its own people before helping the US vanquish the Taliban fighting it in Afghanistan. Besides, instability in Pakistan will serve only the violent extremists' purposes. Hence instead of pointing fingers at one another, both sides need to work together to resolve Afghanistan issue.
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