US-Pak ties at the crossroads after Afghanistan pullout
Journalist and Author
With the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the future scope and substance of the US-Pakistan relationship, an important consequential past engagement from the regional perspective, is again at the crossroads and a subject of wider discussion.
In the recent testimony before the Congress on the Taliban victory in Afghanistan, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “Pakistan has a ‘multiplicity of interests, [with] some that are in conflict with ours. It is one that is involved hedging its bets constantly about the future of Afghanistan, it’s one that’s involved harbouring members of the Taliban…It is one that’s also involved in different points [of] cooperation with us on counterterrorism’.”
Even before Blinken’s recent testimony, there had been much speculation within Pakistan on the US sidelining the country in the midst of important developments in Afghanistan, including the Taliban takeover of the country. The US’ cold-shouldering has left the Pakistani national security apparatus perplexed.
President Biden has had no direct communication with Pakistan PM Imran Khan, as of now. In a much-reported interview, which was considered as a veiled threat, National Security Adviser (NSA) Moeed Yusuf had told the Financial Times that Pakistan had other options if US President Joe Biden continued to ignore the country’s leadership.
On September 19, Imran Khan reportedly moderated the criticism by saying that Biden was being unfairly criticised for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, though he added that he wasn’t sure whether the US had any coherent policy on what it was going to do in the war-ravaged country. He also informed that the security chiefs of the US and Pakistan keep exchanging views about Afghanistan.
Much of the Pakistani military prowess owes to the US military support. Even though Pakistan has started importing Chinese weaponry in a big way, its US-bought weaponry is, by all expert accounts, of superior quality and often determining.
In the India-Pakistan military confrontation after the February 14, 2019, Pulwama attack, Pakistan had deployed the US-made F-16s during the aerial dogfight against the Indian Air Force, which put to use the Russian-made MiG-21 Bison. It was a Pakistani F-16 that had brought down the MiG-21 being flown by Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman on February 27, 2019.
The first stock of F-16s reached Pakistan in 1981. The year almost coincides with the start of the Afghan jihad that involved massive US financial and military supply to the mujahideen through Pakistan to evict the Soviet Union.
In the 1980s, the scale of the US attention on Pakistan can be gauged from the fact that Pakistan Television (PTV) had become the geopolitical manifestation of this alliance as the air waves broadcast a heavy dose of US entertainment along with programmes in Urdu, along with the government-sponsored Islamisation drive in Pakistan, which were watched by mass audiences.
Every evening, PTV News, which was watched by the Indian audience along the border areas because of the high-quality Urdu plays, displayed shots of the mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. PTV also had some of the best US programming, such as Sesame Street, aired in Pakistan in English in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the televised version of the famous novel of Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which gave viewers an interesting and vivid exposure to the brutal history of the slave trade and struggles of the African-American community in the US from the 18th-century until the present.
This heavy dose of US entertainment was going on simultaneously with and at the end of the then dictator Gen Zia ul-Haq’s government-sponsored Islamisation drive in Pakistan, which ended with Zia’s mysterious death in 1988. In fact, his Islamisation drive and US entertainment often had their own followers even within the same family, as it was mostly the urban, English-knowing families who could understand shows like Full House (which went on air at the tail-end of the Islamisation drive).
There was no contradiction between the two parallel trends at the time because of the political alignment between America and Pakistan and even with the Muslim world at large.
The Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was completed on February 15, 1989, brought an end to the US financial and military support to Pakistan. By the second half of the 1990s, India, with dividends of Manmohan Singh’s 1991 economic reforms clearly visible, became the prime focus of the US in South Asia.
In the 1990s, Pakistan got re-engulfed in the perennial battle of supremacy between the civilian side and military establishment, with the continuing proliferation of J&K-centric radical groups and support to the same taking place in the background. The 9/11 attacks brought back Pakistan on the US radar as military assistance from the US re-started, including the supply of new F-16s in 2005 and huge military aid in different phases, as Pakistan became an important multi-purpose US base in its war against terror in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Now with the Afghanistan mission over and the far-from-satisfactory experience of cooperating with Pakistani military in the last 20 years, there is not much left for the US in the relationship. Because of some issues, Pakistan may remain on the US radar.
First, the US counter-terrorism abilities in Afghanistan mainly hinge on drone capability, though the information has often proved to be faulty. Previously, the bases for drone attacks in Afghanistan were in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. Imran Khan has stated that it will never provide the US the bases as the Pakistani public is against such a move. For now, the US may maintain some channels with the Pakistani army to exploit it in the future.
Second, the Pakistan State’s continuing obsession with Kashmir is catalytic for radicalising a section of its youth and this trend is now seen as a source of threat to the western assets. In the recent past, a number of cells of J&K-centric militant outfits have been on the radar of the western world, a prime reason for the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) retaining Pakistan on its ‘grey list’. While China, Pakistan’s main regional partner, can ignore the reality to some extent because of its controlled political system and limited inflow of civilians from Pakistan, this luxury is not enjoyed by the relatively freer western countries.
Therefore, as the US and Pakistan make a new start by factoring in the past lessons, regional ramifications require proactive attention and follow-up.
