“We are making absolutely no effort to begin a process to designate Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism”, the daily quoted a Senior Administration Official as telling journalists in a background briefing in Washington. The official added that if anything, ‘they (Pakistan) have been an extremely valuable ally in countering extremism and terrorism, and we are committed to continuing and maintaining and increasing that coordination and cooperation’.
Now, as Chidanand Rajghatta, TOI correspondent in the US capital reported, the Obama administration’s contention doesn’t gel with what Pakistan’s own civil society and media have been saying about the country’s slide into extremism. There are copious commentaries that tell the world terrorism in Pakistan enjoys the patronage of the government, the military-intelligence, and the judiciary though not necessarily in that order. There is enough reason for Washington to revisit its approach since Pakistan has not hesitated to brazenly crack down on people who had helped the US smoke out Osama bin Laden from his safe hideout in Abbottabad. A doctor who had played a key role in establishing the coordinates of the hideout is languishing in jail.
Washington plays its own deception games in Pakistan as the Raymond Davis episode revealed. Pakistan often enough not only matches but also outdoes its benefactor from the days of Cold War to the present day War on Terrorism. There is no denying that the Pak-US relations are complex and tricky.
Problem is successive administrations in Washington have preferred to play along with Islamabad and allowed its dalliance with terrorism as long as American core interests are not badly undermined, and it is able to have its way in furthering its security and strategic interests.
The drone attacks are a case in point. Till Raymond Davis and Dr Afridi happened and Osama bin Laden became history, Islamabad had no problem in allowing the drones to operate from its very soil to target its very own terrorist nursery on the border with Afghanistan. For domestic consumption, both Islamabad and Rawalpindi went into denial mode and raved and ranted about sovereignty violation by the wily Americans.
Take the Haqqani designation. The branding was criticized by Pakistan with officials and government leaders asserting that it would ‘negatively impact America’s future relations with Pakistan’. But were not the leadership in the loop? They were very much because in the run up to the declaration there was a flurry of diplomatic activity and several top ranking military officials had visited the Pakistani capital.
The ISI chief paid a visit to Washington. As the Times of India said quoting an unnamed American official, ‘the administration had previewed the Haqqani designation with senior civilian and military leadership in Pakistan for several weeks’ and ‘they did not express concern about this designation’.
It can, therefore, be no one’s case that Washington is not aware of the ground reality in Pakistan. More so, since a Mike Mullen who was the chief of American forces in Af-Pak region had described long while ago the Haqqani Network as a ‘veritable arm’ of the ISI.
The Fai saga, as the lobbying for Pakistan’s Kashmiri cause, showed, ISI is active under the very nose of CIA illegally funneling money to whoever served its interests in the American media and lecture circuit. Yet, the US of America is unprepared to go against its friend in South Asia who had helped it in targeting Red Soviets and in gaining access to the high table in Beijing.
This is clear from the clarification that in plenty of countries, “We (Americans) have had groups designated and it’s never made any difference in terms of our deliberations regarding the bilateral relationship with that country, except of course to strengthen our resolve to work with them to deal with their extremism problem”
