The apology would have been swift if this was not an election year in US, but politics trumped policy yet again.
FREMONT, CA, US: This is with reference to Talat Hussain’s article of May 18 titled “Ironic that the apology came from Pakistan”.
One of the biggest challenges of waging war anywhere is supplying logistics to deployed troops. The supply challenge becomes even more formidable when the war theatre is a landlocked country located thousands of miles away and involves transit through one or more other countries and international border crossings. The US military has been facing a similar challenge since it deployed troops in Afghanistan in 2001 and it’s become only more difficult since the Obama troop surge in 2009, worsened by deteriorating ties with Pakistan.
The apology would have been swift if this was not an election year in the US, but politics trumped policy yet again. The endgame for the US in the region is likely to become much tougher unless they have the Pakistanis on board.
Riaz Haq
Published in The Express Tribune, May 19th, 2012.
