The United States on Tuesday pledged to pursue a strategic partnership with Pakistan through expanded economic and security co-operation and support for democracy in the South Asian country, whose support Washington considers vital to combating terrorism in Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.
Michele Flournoy, Under-secretary of Defence for Policy and one of the architects of President Barack Obama's regional strategy, also recognised that part of the equation to facilitate Islamabad's greater focus on combating the common terrorism threat is to lower its concerns about other potential threats in the region, including reducing tensions vis-a-vis India.
"Pakistani democracy needs our support," she told a gathering of security and foreign policy experts at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We have to confront the threat together in order to succeed against al Qaeda and other violent groups that strike the Pakistan-Afghanistan region and many of which have the potential to also strike us".
"Building Pakistan's counterinsurgency and counterterrorism capability is the key so that Pakistan's legitimate government can more effectively combat militants at home," she said in reference to combating al Qaeda and its sympathisers, who crossed over into Pakistani border areas in the wake 'US-led forces' ouster of the Taliban regime from Kabul after September 11, 2001 attacks.
Yet, the senior Pentagon official believed, "in Pakistan, as in Afghanistan we certainly cannot succeed with military means alone." "We have to help the population on the border region make the area more inhospitable to extremists. We need to provide meaningful alternatives to supporting extremists and that means strong and well-resourced support for development, rule of law and governance programmes from the bottom up."
"It also means significant civilian investment from us and from our allies. It is absolutely vital to strengthening Pakistan's institutions so that they can overtime provide security and opportunity to ordinary Pakistanis throughout the country."
Flournoy said the administration 'will seek some new tools to focus our assistance to Pakistan on these common aims' better counterinsurgency capabilities, both equipment and training for armed forces, and increased civilian assistance through the Kerry-Lugar legislation, which President (Barack) Obama has endorsed to provide Pakistan with $1.5 billion annually over the course of five years.
The official, who was repeatedly asked how the administration planned to win the Pakistanis' trust and co-operation to get them more focused on the fight against militant threat, said "We need to work with various Pakistani institutions including but not limited to armed forces to shift their strategic calculus."
At the same time, she said, in the wake of a spate of terrorist attacks inside the country in recent years, there is real recognition that some of these extremist groups pose threat to Pakistani society and Pakistani stability. "I also think part of the equation is trying to help lower their concerns about other potential threats in the region and hence the regional approach that we have got to lower tensions in other areas so that there is greater confidence in security to turn attention to threat from within.
"I think this is a work in progress. There are many cases of very close co-operation in combating these together and there are areas where we need further improvement." "I think part of this is getting to a more strategic level partnership and a more consistent and significant level of assistance not just monetary but in terms of training, advising and working hand in glove across the board."
Asked pointedly about the critical question of addressing Pakistan's concerns regarding India and in the context of its role in Afghanistan, in order to allow Islamabad to focus more effectively on the fight against extremists, she said: "I think you touched on a very deep and historic distrust between Pakistan and India.
And I think that the only way that you are going to give the Pakistani government and armed forces the confidence to shift their focus is to address some of those areas of tension, to try to reduce tension between the countries to develop confidence building measures, to allow the sort of breathing space that would allow folks on the Pakistani side to turn their attention to some of the internal challenges they face."
Answering a question in the bilateral context, she said: "We need to substantially increase our military assistance and broaden the form." "If we could get beyond a transactional sort of equipping, support, reimbursement relationship to a strategic relationship where we are also training, advising, working together on the ground, sharing intelligence, sharing operations, I think we would be much more effective and get a lot farther down the road of achieving our common objectives."
Responding to a question about the Pakistani public opinion about the United States, she acknowledged the need to overcome 'trust deficit' with the country. "I think the way we deal with that is to engage strategically with them, to go back to first principles, to identify areas where we have shared interest, to get our relationship out of a sort of transactional mode to a level of strategic partnership, to invest in that country at a meaningful level over a sustained period with measures of accountability.
It needs a fundamental shift in this relationship for things to work. That's obviously going to take time. It is going to sustained efforts and frankly we have some work to do here to convince our own stakeholders here that this can and should be done."
Flournoy struck a number of positive notes in regard with helping Pakistan overcome its economic and security challenges and chose to ignore a question that cast aspersions on the Pakistani intelligence organisation. In answer to a question, she voiced her concern about the Swat peace arrangement, saying ultimately, these groups will take advantage of the law in the north-western valley. "They are not reconcilables for the most part. I think they need to be dealt with in a consistent and concerted way."