Making Pakistan a ‘part of the solution’

Next week’s scheduled meeting between Nawaz and Obama in Washington, the first between them, will also be the first at that level between the two countries after about 18 months. The last one was held in March 2012 between then prime minister Gilani and the US president on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit at Seoul.

Two months later, Obama refused to have a private meeting with Zardari at the Nato Summit in Chicago in May 2012 in order to express US “displeasure” at a delay in the reopening of Nato ground lines of communications through Pakistan. Instead of a sit-down meeting, Zardari was only given the honour of a handshake with Obama.

The fact that Nawaz will now be visiting the US capital at Obama’s invitation is a sign not only of the degree to which bilateral relations have been normalised but, more important, of Washington’s keenness in getting Pakistan’s cooperation in facilitating a smooth withdrawal of American and Nato forces from Afghanistan. Deputy National Security Adviser to the US President Ben Rhodes spoke last month of the US “impression” that the Nawaz government “wants to find a basis to rebuild a stronger US-Pakistan relationship”. But he also pointedly referred to their differences on some issues and stressed that the two sides are going to be “very clear about what their interests are”.

Rhodes himself was very clear that as the US seeks to strengthen the Afghan security forces and pursues a peace process with the Taliban, it also wants to “make sure that Pakistan is part of the solution…particularly given how many groups have operated across [the Pakistan-Afghanistan] border”. He did not use the term, but the implication was clear that in the US view, at least some of the policies Pakistan has been following are a part of the problem; and that in his meeting with Nawaz, Obama would be pressing Pakistan to change those policies in line with the US wishes – in Rhodes’ words, “enlisting Pakistan as a partner”.

Another issue that Rhodes said Obama would be taking up with Nawaz is that of counterterrorism. This means not so much fighting terrorism against the Pakistani state as against India, as indicated also in the US-India Joint Statement on Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington on September 27. This statement contains a strong condemnation of the ‘terrorist attack’ a day earlier in Samba in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and a reaffirmation of the two countries’ “commitment to eliminating terrorist safe havens and infrastructure, and disrupting terrorist networks including Al-Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba”.

The two leaders also called upon Pakistan to work towards bringing the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks to justice. In addition, according to the Indian media, Obama promised to Manmohan to take up the issue of “Pakistan-based terror directed against India” in a “frank” manner at his upcoming meeting with Nawaz.

Obama is also reported to have said to Manmohan that Pakistan needed to focus on its own internal problems instead of India and that Pakistan would stand to gain by cooperation with India. In the context of Afghanistan, the US president reportedly described Pakistan as the “major wild card”. He is also said to have expressed concern about the role being played by the Pakistan Army, saying he doubted if it had undertaken the necessary “strategic reassessment”. All this shows how far Washington is from being an honest broker between Pakistan and India and how much Obama has adopted the Indian agenda on Pakistan as his own.

Besides regional stability (ie Afghanistan-related issues) and counterterrorism, Rhodes also said that “issues related to economic growth and development inside of Pakistan” could be discussed at the Nawaz-Obama meeting. This of course is nothing but the carrot part of Washington’s traditional carrot-and-stick approach towards Pakistan which has worked so well for the US in the past.

From the Pakistan side, the government’s US policy was laid out by Sartaj Aziz in a statement in the National Assembly on August 30. In that statement, the adviser blamed Washington for the many ups and downs in US-Pakistan relations in the past six decades. The US, he said, warmed up towards Pakistan whenever it needed our support in pursuing its global objectives, as during the height of the Cold War and then during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. But as soon as the US felt that it had achieved its goals and had no more need for our cooperation, it turned its back on Pakistan.

Currently, Sartaj Aziz said, Washington views Pakistan through the Afghan lens and regards its relations with Pakistan as being of a “transactional” nature. Pakistan, on the other hand, desired a strategic long-term relationship.

Sartaj’s speech may be correct as a statement on the history of Pakistan-US relations. But he is wrong in bemoaning the alleged fickleness of US policies towards Pakistan. After all, what is so sinister about US governments befriending Pakistan when they need our cooperation and giving us the cold shoulder when they don’t? Isn’t every country supposed to pursue its own interests in international relations?

If we have been short-changed by the US, we should be holding our own leaders accountable. Several of them have been so eager to ingratiate themselves with Washington in order to be able to cling to office – or to gain power – that they have been quite willing to sacrifice the national interest in return for US blessing to their personal political ambitions.

Two examples from our recent history, one of a military dictator (Musharraf) and the other of a democratically elected civilian (Zardari), will suffice.

As a military usurper who craved international legitimacy, Musharraf quickly gave in to all the demands Washington made from him after 9/11 to prosecute its ‘war on terror’. In return for this capitulation, he won US blessing for his dictatorial rule, which he retained throughout his years in power. In 2004, he also gave permission to the US to carry out drone strikes in Fata. Subsequently, while Washington was brokering a power-sharing deal between him and Benazir, Musharraf quietly and meekly acquiesced in the US decision to work for a removal of the international restrictions on civil nuclear cooperation with India while retaining the ban on Pakistan.

These policies were continued by Zardari. He gave Pakistan’s approval for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s clearance to the US nuclear deal with India and told the CIA director not to worry about the civilian casualties of US drone strikes in Fata. In addition, he let it be known to Washington that Pakistan was not perturbed by Obama’s declaration of support in November 2010 for a permanent seat for India on the UN Security Council, despite our public statements expressing a strong rejection of the US move.

Nawaz has now been in office for more than four months. If he wants to be remembered as someone who is different from our past leaders and places the country’s interest above everything else, he should take some bold steps during his upcoming visit to Washington to undo the damage his two predecessors did to Pakistan’s interests in their eagerness to remain in the good books of Washington. Specifically, he should do three things:

First, in his meeting with Obama, he should demand the lifting of the current international restrictions on civil nuclear cooperation with Pakistan and make this issue a high-priority agenda item with the US and other leading countries.

Second, he should tell Obama that the creation of any new permanent Security Council members would be strongly resisted by Pakistan as well as a number of other large states and that if such a decision was imposed on the UN, it would sound the death knell of the organisation.

Third, in addition to raising the drones issue with Obama, he should also launch a concerted effort for the adoption of resolutions by the UN General Assembly anzd by other appropriate international forums to declare that drone strikes are not permissible.

The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service.

Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com