Salvaging the Pak-US alliance

Like an iceberg deciding to form a coalition with the Titanic, the post-9/11 US-Pakistan alliance was doomed from the start. The only unknown factor was how bad the inevitable collision would be and when it would take place. We now may have an answer.

Recently, President Asif Ali Zardari, trying, as always, to appease the Americans said that the government would take action against the Haqqani network. The official US response was to scoff. What they previously said privately was now being proclaimed publicly: it doesn’t matter what the government of Pakistan says if the script isn’t being written by the military.

Every successive incident has people wondering how long the partnership between the two countries can last. The Raymond Davis saga was seen as a speed bump, the Osama bin Laden killing a red light and the tussle over the Haqqani network a multi-car pileup. But the consensus seemed to be that both countries would eventually get over it because they needed each other — the US needs Pakistan to kill the Taliban and Pakistan needs the US to pay its bills.

It may be more realistic to see each incident not as a minor marital spat but as grounds for divorce. Both sides are loath to admit it, but the relationship between them is a transactional one, not an ideological one. We make the occasional arrest of an al Qaeda operative and count the bounty money as they are packed off to Guantanamo Bay. We sometimes take military action so that our shiny new toys, to be pointed in the direction of India, can be delivered to us. And the US pays us despite being an unsatisfied customer because, really, what else can they do? The Americans have neither the appetite nor the logistics to launch a full-scale invasion of the tribal areas, preferring instead to send robots in the sky. So they hold their noses and pay us off.

Now might be the time for both countries to acknowledge the reality of the relationship. A middle ground can be found between the pretence that their interests perfectly align and a complete break in ties. On those rare occasions when both sides share a common purpose, such as tackling the Pakistani Taliban, we can expend our blood and energy and the US its dollars. This would have the benefit of ending the endless rigmarole over the Haqqani network. We would simply say that we do not want to take military action against them and the US can cut its aid as it sees fit.

If we are to be perfectly honest, this scenario was going to naturally play itself out anyway in a couple of years. The US public, sick to death of endless war at a time of economic hardship, is ready to wash its hands off the region and the American military will soon follow. Most likely, there will be a rerun of the 1990s, when the US no longer saw any need to get too closely involved in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Because of our nuclear capability, the US will never completely lose interest in us, but its attention will certainly be diverted. Ties between the two countries will have to be reappraised then. Let’s just speed the process up before another diplomatic scuffle leads to a permanent break in relations.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 10^th, 2011.