The raucous debate on how to respond to US President Donald Trump's tweet categorising us as liars and deceivers has ignored the elephant in the room. After 9/11, when then President Musharraf decided US threats to bomb us into the Stone Age if we did not cooperate in the war on terror were not to be taken lightly, a duality of policy was adopted quietly. The more discerning and informed analysts amongst us saw this duality as comprising acting against al Qaeda, the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks, while saving the Afghan Taliban for a rainy day. The rainy day consisted of the belief that like all invaders and occupiers of Afghanistan, the US would eventually tire. Backing the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network in the conflict in Afghanistan presented itself therefore as a sensible hedge for Pakistan's interests in the neighbouring country, given the history of fraught relations since independence (over the Durand Line for one) and forces hostile to Pakistan in the new, US-imposed setup in Kabul.
Subsequent governments to Musharraf's, basically elected civilian governments, continued the duality of policy that allowed safe rear bases on Pakistani soil to the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network to wage their resistance to the US, its western allies, and the Kabul regime. Or more accurately, surrendered security, defence and foreign policy et al to the military. One unintended consequence of the intervention in Afghanistan, originating in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's tenure in 1973 and accelerated with western help during the Soviet occupation by General Ziaul Haq, was the infection of the tribal areas (particularly FATA) with the ideology of jihad. This led to the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban and, after the Lal Masjid events in 2007, to the formation of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), dedicated to overthrowing the Pakistani state through armed struggle and terrorism, and replacing it with their extremist version of an Islamic state.
The fact that the Pakistani state was threatened by the TTP led to military operations against their base areas in FATA, resulting in some success but in the end the TTP retreated into Afghanistan close to the border and out of reach of Pakistan. The counterterrorism effort that was to follow up the 'export' of our homegrown terrorist problem, exemplified in the National Action Plan, has had mixed success but been unable so far to root out terrorist cells inside Pakistan or prevent, despite fencing of the border (ongoing), attacks by the TTP from across the divide.
The narrative that Pakistan has acted consistently against all terrorist groups on our soil is essentially an establishment-driven one that has been internalised by our media and politicians. It basically centres round the victim card (human and economic losses because of the war on terror) and papers over if not categorically denies any presence of the Afghan Taliban or Haqqani Network on our soil. This flies in the face of innumerable reports over the years of the Afghan Taliban's Quetta Shura and the Haqqani presence in FATA. Our insistence on our innocence in this matter has only widened the perception gap between what we claim and what the world believes.
Our civilian and military leaders have put their heads together and come out with a restrained response to Trump's calling us out, followed by suspension of security-related aid and the outstanding reimbursements under the Coalition Support Funds, unless we move against and deny the Afghan insurgents their safe rear base areas inside Pakistan. That restraint does not extend to ministers individually and the commentariat generally. Defiant chest thumping may prove cathartic in the short run, but will not help our cause in the long term.
What is at stake for both sides of the estranged alliance? For the US, the supply and logistics routes that run through Pakistan are not to be sneezed at when the costs and difficulties of all other available options are totted up. For the longer term, Washington, and particularly the Pentagon, would not like to push things to a point where whatever is left of the troubled relationship implodes. This is because in the region Pakistan is located in, its army is the biggest, most battle-hardened, professional force in the Muslim world. No mean asset that if the troubled landscape of the region is taken into account. The Pakistan armed forces remain in Washington's (and particularly the Pentagon's) eyes as a force for pursuing US and western interests in the region and beyond. For Pakistan, the brave rhetoric emanating from our leaders and commentators notwithstanding, estrangement from the US can have strategic, economic and financial costs. Strategically, if the relationship breaks down irredeemably, the dynamic at work in the region could leave Pakistan even more dependent on close neighbourly friends such as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia and Turkey. While these countries can provide short term palliatives economically and financially, they cannot replace the clout that Washington exerts on the international financial institutions and financial markets. Both conventional soft financing from the former and harder commercial finance from the latter could be squeezed at Washington's behest. Given the state of our economy and the projected need for big external deficit financing this year, these portents bode ill.
Those who shout the loudest in support of defiance and cutting off ties with the US are the emptiest vessels when it comes to remedies for our dependent economy in such a scenario. Defiance or departure from Washington's embrace only becomes viable if our model of economic development and management of the economy is weaned off the drip it has always depended on. That however, would require nothing less than a revolution to change the existing dependent model to one that can incrementally carve out space for independence and real sovereignty.
Since that prospect is nowhere in sight, logically we had better reconcile ourselves for the present to working with the Americans to soften the sharp corners of disagreement and divergence, work our influence to bring the Afghan insurgents to the negotiating table in demonstrable fashion, and thereby pave the way for a peaceful settlement of the long running Afghan conflict. Anything less promises perhaps unprecedented pain and losses. The choices, patriotism aside, are stark and unmistakable.
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