The United States is hoping to insert a new discourse into its relationship with Pakistan by working hard to squeeze it on the terrorism question, but it is clearly not ready to alter the narrative that has held good for half a century. That is the
problem. Islamabad knows this, and it knows that Washington knows the score too. So when US secretary of state Hillary Clinton breathed fire in Islamabad last week, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s office made a particular point in a statement it issued — that “disagreements” between the two “partners” in the fight against terror should not blind them to the benefits that accrue “to both” from their strategic relationship.
Will this implied counter-threat from the Pakistan side give the Americans pause? That is what the world would like to know. A supplicant it may be, but the way things have shaped, Pakistan finds it near impossible to acquiesce in the US wish to insert a new element in the old narrative on which US-Pakistani relations are predicated. That is why Islamabad is loathe to chase out the Haqqani network from North Waziristan, from which that armed, battle-hardened extremist network operates against the Afghan government, Americans in Afghanistan, and of course Indians in that country.
The secretary of state made an unscheduled visit to Pakistan last week. In Kabul earlier, she exhorted the Afghans to revisit the idea of reconciliation talks with the Pakistan-based Taliban even after last month’s murder of Burhanuddin Rabbani, who led the talks from the Afghan side, causing President Hamid Karzai to break off engagement efforts. She also publicly said that Pakistan must decide whether it wished to be a part of the solution or the problem. Thus the stage was set for the storming of Islamabad.
Ms Clinton went to Pakistan with joint chiefs of staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and CIA director David Petraeus to show her government’s unified approach on a sensitive issue. She minced no words. She said: “For too long extremists have been able to operate here in Pakistan and from Pakistani soil.” She also urged Pakistan to “squeeze” the Haqqani network. She asked it to act “within days and weeks”, not months and years, and threatened the US would act unilaterally if Pakistan did not — meaning US forces wouldn’t hesitate to attack Pakistani territory to destroy the Haqqanis.
The Haqqanis are Afghans and Pakistan has the right to ask them to go back. But it won’t. The two are too closely linked, and implicated. In India, we might even expect a diversionary Pakistani military move to distract the Americans. The US hasn’t yet hit the right buttons to make its Afghanistan exit hassle-free.