The costs of war

In a recent interview for his favourite television channel — Fox News — Donald Trump was his usual caustic self. In a diatribe directed at retired Navy Admiral William McRaven, Trump veered off course and took a swipe at Pakistan. Defending his decision earlier this year of withdrawing security aid to Pakistan, Trump spoke of how Pakistan doesn’t do a ‘damn thing for us.’ Later, taking to Twitter, he would continue his outburst by holding Pakistan responsible for the reawakening of the Taliban and its failure to disclose the whereabouts of Bin Laden. More than any other US leader, Trump has kept up a constant barrage of attacks on Pakistan’s role in the war on terror. But much like all statements made by the perpetually misinformed President of the United States, things are not as black and white as he makes them out to be.

The costs that the people of Pakistan have borne because of the war on terror cannot be swept aside by a series of tweets. Facts remain facts and Pakistan has enough of those on hand to disprove the allegations made by Donald Trump. When Trump suspended security assistance to Pakistan in January of this year, Pakistan released a factsheet showing how terrorism had killed more than 74,000 people over the last 14 years. Its economic losses were approximated at around $123 billion. In terms of troops, US Defence Secretary James Mattis admitted that Pakistan had lost more troops in the war on terror “than all of the NATO coalition combined.” These figures don’t account for the devastation that North and South Waziristan suffered at the hands of American drone strikes. The exact number of civilian casualties suffered by these remote-controlled instruments of death is hard to peg down, but they number more than a thousand — and they include women and children. Such nuances seem to not form a part of President Trump’s all-caps proclamations on Twitter — but the people of Pakistan remember. Of course, it is not as if Pakistan was helpless when drone strikes slaughtered its own people. We simply turned a blind eye and agreed to let the Americans do what they wished. The government may have been complicit in what happened, but our people know the cost of the US war on terror.

It is likely that Trump’s anger flows not from some perceived inability of Pakistan to do enough but rather his own growing frustration at the fact that Afghanistan is a Gordian knot that he just cannot unravel or cut through. Trump is searching for a way out of Afghanistan that does not give the impression of defeat or failure. With trillions of dollars spent on the war in Afghanistan, the US is no closer to creating a stable country than it was more than a decade ago. But this failure cannot be pinned on Pakistan, without whose help the US may never have been able to scourge the curse of al Qaeda. The Pentagon echoed this point shortly after Trump’s verbal assault — maintaining that Pakistan was a ‘critical partner’ needed for peace and stability in Afghanistan. American military efforts are, after all, built around Pakistan’s co-operation in terms of land and air pathways. And now that the US has resigned itself to the fact that it must negotiate with the Taliban to salvage some semblance of success in Afghanistan, it is on their directions that Pakistan has released a number of Taliban leaders so that they may help facilitate peace talks between the Americans and the Taliban.

Trump misses another crucial point — perhaps because he does not grasp just how complicated the situation in Afghanistan is — the fact that the American war in Afghanistan caused a wave of terrorism to spill over into neighbouring Pakistan. Yet, Pakistan, in the wake of the terrible attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, mobilised and launched an offensive that has so far been successful. The South Asian Terrorism Portal’s statistics show a clear decrease in the number of terrorism-related fatalities in Pakistan since 2014.

These factors belie the myopic view of Pakistan’s role in the war on terror that Donald Trump has taken, but Pakistan must not let Trump’s attacks derail its relationship with the United States. Because Trump and his key staff seem to be operating on different wavelengths.

While Trump is claiming to be distancing himself from Pakistan, the US military continues to exchange intelligence with the Pakistan Army. This seems to be the hallmark of the Trump presidency, as Bob Woodward describes in his latest book, Fear, Trump’s staff in the White House realise that the President doesn’t fully grasp the intricacies of half the things he is talking about. Woodward writes that Trump was obsessed with withdrawing from his country’s Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) despite his staff and advisers telling him it was essential as it provided the incentive for South Korea to give important intelligence information about North Korea. Trump was stubborn, much like his view of Pakistan, he felt KORUS was one-sided, with South Korea not doing enough. A letter was drafted that said the US was withdrawing from the treaty. Gary Cohn, the President’s economic adviser, would steal the letter off Trump’s desk. Trump never noticed, and the US stayed in KORUS.

The United States and Pakistan must continue to work together to eradicate terrorism, but this relationship cannot undermine the huge costs that Pakistan has incurred in assisting the US in Afghanistan and the war on terror. Prime Minister Imran Khan thus gave a befitting reply to Donald Trump, and the people must fully support his defence. However, Pakistan cannot forget how it has constantly played with fire regarding its support for certain organisations that undermine its mission to eradicate terror. Trump’s words may be nothing more than ill-informed rhetoric, but Pakistan must also do its own share of soul-searching — both with regard to Afghanistan and the war on terror.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 27^th, 2018.

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