Doubts over future of US Af-Pak representative

NEW DELHI: The US is yet to decide on the future of the office of the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan following the departure of its top official, creating confusion about its diplomacy in the region at a time when Washington is conducting a key review of the Afghan war.

Laurel Miller, an analyst from Rand Corporation who was the acting special representative, left the office on Friday along with her deputy.

This was followed by a string of reports that the post would be scrapped and the office merged with the state department’s South and Central Asian affairs bureau. “The secretary (of state Rex Tillerson) has not made a decision about the future of the office of the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan,” state department spokesperson Heather Nauert said.

Nauert said the state department will maintain the Afghanistan and Pakistan affairs offices, which currently report to the special representative, to “address policy concerns and our bilateral relationship with these two key countries”.

He noted that Tillerson had expressed skepticism about the role of special representatives during recent testimony to the house appropriations committee on foreign operations.

Tillerson had said there were more than 70 special envoys and representatives whose work may have actually weakened attention to the issues they were meant to address. He also said these offices stripped expertise from regional bureaus of the state department.

The office of the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan was created in January 2009 by former president Barack Obama, who named late diplomat Richard Holbrooke to hold the post.

Holbrooke had then upset the Indian government by seeking to include the Kashmir issue in the office’s mandate.