All organs of the Pakistan government appear to be hesitant to take on the US in spite of frequent embarrassing verbal attacks by the US civilian as well as military/CIA leadership against their Pakistani counterparts.
Notwithstanding rhetorical statements that the government is engaged in a parliamentary review of US-Pakistan relations in the aftermath of the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers' two facts indicate that it maybe business as usual. First, the resumption of drone strikes after a little more than a month of cessation after Salalah. The Prime Minister in a talk with senior columnists and editors stated that the government, post-Salalah, decided to request the US to vacate Shamsi airbase and stop supplies by road to Nato but refused to respond to the query whether any decision was taken on downing drones. Be that as it may, many conclude logically that the month long cessation of drone strikes reflected US concerns over the distinct possibility of Pakistani army/airforce destroying the drones, given that Pakistan has the capability to do so, as per the statement of the air force chief; and that their resumption indicates that US concerns have been dealt with by the Pakistani civilian government and the military establishment. This view was lent further credibility in a report carried by a US newspaper.
And second the confirmation by Ahmed Mukhtar, Pakistan's Defence Minister in response to US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter's earlier revelation that Pakistan was allowing the US to use its airspace to allow supplies to Nato forces to continue - a more expensive route though the number of trucks destroyed en route to Kabul must also be taken into account by the US while determining the actual cost of the road route.
What is fairly evident is that there are divisions within the US government as to what is the most appropriate way to deal with Pakistan. To argue that the US is unaware of which organ of Pakistani government is a major stakeholder in making critical decisions with respect to the ongoing war on terror, on the continuation of drone strikes, on the visas that need to be issued for its intelligence operatives and indeed on any other facet of the relationship is simply not credible. It has been evident over time that the State Department has been making considerable effort to support people to people contacts, evident from Hillary Clinton's press conferences and town hall meetings with Pakistani NGOs and civil society while on visits to Pakistan. The passage of the Kerry Lugar bill in support of civilian as opposed to military assistance is also regarded as an effort by the US to change its negative public image in Pakistan .
In contrast, the US military leadership has been urging a direct link between assistance to Pakistan, be it for meeting the cost of the war under the coalition support fund or extending military hardware/training, to its mantra of "do more" in terms of going after the Taliban in areas where the Pakistan military is reluctant to enter. The US military also accuses ISI of complicity with the Taliban and has time and again publicly stated that informing the Pakistani military prior to an attack on a known specific location of say insurgent bomb-making factories has led to the militants learning their cover had been blown and for them to vacate the sites before military action could be taken.
A third element that of the US congress has entered into the fray and many congressmen are clamouring for higher value for their tax dollars: get Pakistan to attack Taliban strongholds that are a danger to the Nato forces and not to extend civilian assistance if the people of Pakistan hate Americans as survey after survey shows.
The US administration maintains it has a different policy. A recent briefing given by a senior administration State Department official to the 2013 budget - USAID budget states: "The authorisation bill, the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill you refer to authorised up to $1.5 billion over five years. This was the bill that was enacted in 2010. For the first couple of years, we have requested $1.5 billion. The Congress - and through the negotiation over the budget, we never got that high. And so given the budget constraints, given the fact that we're under caps, and the fact that we really had to look very hard at our spending, we have since decided to request something a little bit lower than the 1.5. We did the same thing last year. So we're at about 1.1 billion for Kerry-Lugar - for the non-military assistance program. It just means that to get to the $7.5 billion of what we refer to as Kerry-Lugar-Berman funding, it's just going to take us a little bit longer. But we still have a very, very robust commitment to Pakistan. In addition to the 1.1, there is money in military assistance, the traditional foreign military assistance, which is part of a multiyear agreement. And as the Deputy Secretary said, even though we have our challenges with the government right now, we wanted to make sure that the budget reflected the nature of the program, its importance to our security, importance to our efforts in that region. So a $ 2.5 billion Pakistan budget, which includes those two things plus the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, is a - is really, I think, a strong statement of support for what we're doing there".
Pakistan's Economic Affairs Division's statistics of disbursements indicate that around 300 to 400 million dollars maximum and not 1.1 billion dollars have been released under the Kerry-Lugar bill in 2011-12 and the Coalition Support Fund remains pending due to certain questions raised by the US on the bills prepared in this country. However Pakistan's civilian and military establishment no doubt is focusing on the promise to deliver assistance, albeit a bit slowly while the opposition parties are focusing on actual releases and embarrassing statements by US administration officials and congressmen and women.
More recently the resolutions on Balochistan in the US have further fuelled anger in Pakistani officialdom though unfortunately that has not led to any change in our policy towards the Baloch: a change that by itself has the capacity to defuse the Baloch separatists' demand and its support by no more than a handful of US congressmen/women.
Several political parties, especially those outside parliament, have denounced the government's US policy and its failure to follow through with parliamentary resolutions with reference to the drone strikes - parties that include Imran Khan and the Defence Council under which umbrella religious parties (unfortunately including those that are proscribed) have begun to agitate for a change in our US policy.
There is an urgent need to bring our own house in order not only on the economic front but also in terms of our foreign policy as well as our engagement in the war on terror. Unless this is undertaken in a proactive manner the US leverage, clearly evident on our civilian government and military establishment, will continue.