Waiting by the phone?

NSA's somewhat problematic interview with Britain’s Financial Times has recently been doing the rounds. phone?

National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf’s somewhat problematic interview with Britain’s Financial Times newspaper has recently been doing the rounds. His comments regarding a phone call between PM Imran Khan and President Joe Biden — in fact, the lack of one — were notably unnecessary and came across as immature. This is further complicated by the fact that they appear to go against the government’s efforts to prove that it is standing up to the US and aiming for a relationship of equals.

The fact of the matter is that, from an American perspective, Biden doesn’t need to call Imran to accomplish any US foreign policy goals in the region. At the same time, the fact that Imran and the government are adamantly refusing to assist the US militarily means that Biden will see no need to treat Pakistan as a cozy ally and just agree to a phone call that would do little to advance US goals, but would be politically advantageous for Imran.

It is also unfortunate that for the rest of the interview, Yusuf appeared to be well on point, establishing that the military and elected leadership were on the same page, that Pakistan couldn’t just tell the Afghan Taliban what to do, and that talks with US NSA Jake Sullivan had gone well. He even admitted that the PTI government had been harsh in its criticism of US policy towards Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, he also said that nobody on the American side had complained about it to him, assuring that they would also try to roll it back if such complaints were made.

Yusuf could have made the point that Biden should have directly reached out to Imran simply as a matter of respect for an ally. He could have even skirted around explicitly making the point. His mention of how Pakistan “has options” was enough to let any seasoned diplomat know that it was in the US’s regional interest to initiate a healthy relationship of equals between the two countries’ top leaders. Instead, he made Pakistan out to be a dejected lover with low self-esteem, sitting by the phone, ready to sell themselves out if the ringer ever sounds.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 6^th, 2021.

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