Intriguing

Let us not grudge Nawaz a deal even if resumption of Kerry-Lugar package is price for safe passage of US hardware.

As a nation, Americans are known to thrive on trade-offs. They don’t believe in free lunches. We Pakistanis, as a nation, do set a great store by honour. We don’t mind killing for honour or getting killed for the same. One, therefore, found it rather intriguing that without any apparent trade-off, the US had unfrozen the frozen Kerry-Lugar-Berman (KLB) aid package and that, too, on the eve of the first ever Obama-Nawaz meeting, making the gesture appear like a confidence-building measure (CBM) for the benefit of the new government in Islamabad and the new leadership-in-the offing in Rawalpindi. But some pundits claim that the gesture was more of a last hurrah for the five-year package approved in 2009, which is not expected to be renewed after it expires in 2014. On the other hand, it was more than reassuring for Pakistanis that our government, on its part, seemed to have conceded not an iota of its honour in return, though there is no evidence that the conditions attached to the package (that had outraged our ghairat brigade when the KLB Act was passed) — that Pakistan’s military would remain subordinate to its elected government, that Rawalpindi would eliminate militants sheltering on Pakistan’s soil and that the government would provide US investigators access to personnel involved in nuclear research (meaning thereby, AQ Khan) — have been withdrawn by the US. Referring to these conditions, the then leader of the opposition and current Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, had said: “These are matters which have to be decided by us, the parliament and the government of Pakistan. If there’s external involvement, it does no good to us, our sovereignty.” And following a meeting of its corps commanders, the army had expressed “serious concern” over what it said were the “national security” implications of the aid package. The statement said that Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had also “reiterated that Pakistan is a sovereign state and has all the rights to analyse and respond to (national security threats) in accordance with her own national interests.”

However, for all the wrong reasons, the package was all but consigned to the limbo by the US within a year and by January 2011, the two non-Nato allies were hurtling towards a final split. The Raymond Davis case was too humiliating for our ghairat brigade and even more humiliating was the infamous Osama event and then the bloody Salala incident happened, prompting an enraged Pakistan to close the Nato supply route. But this desperate move also ended up in another humiliating setback as we agreed to resume the supplies in July 2012 on the very terms that had applied to the arrangement before the closure of the route. A furious US, annoyed at such a long hold-up of its consignments to and from Afghanistan, refused to reciprocate by unfreezing the KLB aid package.

The backlash to the KLB Act was fuelled by a widely held perception that President Zardari had bowed too easily to foreign demands. And now that the package has been restored without any publicly announced rehashing of the act to suit the sentiments of our ghairat brigade, one cannot but assume that pragmatism, rather than misplaced passion, has at last prevailed and the conditions listed in the KLB Act are no longer considered intrusive enough in Islamabad and Rawalpindi to say, no thank you, but thank you. With a well-equipped Afghan Army crouching across the Durand Line, Indian troops continuously harassing us across the Line of Control, the TTP blowing up defenceless targets almost on a daily basis, Baloch insurgency on the rise, Karachi in turmoil, the rupee on a slippery slope and no end in sight to prolonged power outages, things are likely to turn much uglier before the Afghan end-game begins. So, let us not grudge Nawaz Sharif a deal even if the resumption of the aid package is a price for safe passage of US hardware worth $80 billion from Afghanistan back home. Perhaps, in the trade-off, we have also agreed to an Indian role in Afghanistan’s stabilisation process post-2014. A far-fetched idea, but I would not be surprised if the businessman-turned-politician returns home with a done deal on drones as well.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2013.

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