Uncle Sam comes a-calling

It would be fair to say that unannounced visits by high-ranking American officials are at the least unusual if not unprecedented. The US National Security Adviser, a man who reports directly to President Donald Trump, is Lt Gen HR McMaster and he was in town on Monday 17^th for a friendly exchange with senior members of the government of Pakistan. He is the first of the Trump administration to pay a visit and it is possibly indicative that the screws are once again to be turned on Pakistan, a state that the US views as being far from a reliable ally, mutual protestations of fraternity notwithstanding. He met with civilian and military authorities, and he is moving on to New Delhi having visited Kabul before he dropped into Islamabad. Ostensibly this is a scoping mission, a reconnaissance in depth that will feed into consultations that will eventually form regional policy for Mr Trump, and as such must be seen as important in the medium to long term — and whether it is liked or not, first impressions really do matter.

One of those in the delegation accompanying Lt Gen McMaster was the senior director for South Asia, Lisa Curtis. It is of note that she is the co-author of a paper that suggests that the new American administration stop treating Pakistan as an ally and instead concentrate on isolating Pakistan if it continues to support ‘terror groups’ — a position not unlike that recently advanced by India we note with some concern. In the run-up to the visit other flags were hoisted, specifically in an interview that was given to Tolo, an Afghan channel, that made reference to ‘proxies’ being used by Pakistan. This was subsequently vehemently denied by Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa on Tuesday 18^th April who said that no proxies were operating from (Pakistani) soil. But the die is cast and the Americans think otherwise, a paradigm that is going to be hard to shift in the near term.

Uncle Sam is going to play hardball, and comforting platitudes are going to be quickly off the table. For Mr Trump perception is everything, whether true or false, and if one thing is certain it is uncertainty. We await developments.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 19^th, 2017.

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