US-Pakistan: divorce not an option

With continued drone strikes, Pakistan has just as much reason to keep a close eye on what the Americans are up to.

There are two sides to every story. Much has been made in recent days of a report in the Washington Post (WP) that Pakistan is an area of major concern for the US, particularly that extremists could seize our nuclear assets and disable or hijack them to use against targets of choice. Pakistan is of such concern that special units have been set up to fill in the gaps that are described as ‘intelligence blanks’ in the WP article. Pakistan is described as being politically unstable — despite having made the first democratic transition from one civilian government to another and done that both relatively peacefully and with a reasonable degree of transparency, notwithstanding the naysayers. The US is spending vast sums in order to gather intelligence on Pakistan and has spent considerable, though not vast sums, over the last 12 years, with the intention of stabilising the country and supporting counterterrorism efforts.

In the words of Husain Haqqani, who until 2011 was the Pakistan ambassador to the US, “the mistrust now exceeds the trust” and this against a backdrop of public rapprochement and a warming of relations after two years at the bottom of the freezer. One of the other sides of the story is that the US has benefited from the bilateral relationship rather more than has Pakistan, which has borne the physical brunt of the hard war fighting, racked up the greatest number of casualties in the process and yet, is frequently beaten with the ‘must do more’ stick. With our sovereignty routinely violated by drones and US covert operations presumably ongoing, it might be argued that Pakistan has just as much reason to be keeping a close eye on what the Americans are up to as for the Americans to express their concerns about us.

The Foreign Office moved quickly to counter the WP report, saying that “we follow best international practices and standards set by the International Atomic Energy Agency” and that Pakistan had extensive physical protection measures, and robust command and control structures (incidentally many of them installed and serviced by the US). This unhappiest of forced marriages grumbles along childless and loveless — but divorce is not an option.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2013.

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