TRUMP’S TWITTER WAR ON PAKISTAN
US diplomats usually resort to metaphor to couch their disappointment with Pakistan’s double standards in the war on terror. In 2011, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called out Islamabad’s duplicity as “rearing snakes in your backyard, expecting they’ll only bite your neighbours”. Donald Trump, not known for diplomatese, began the New Year with possibly the harshest indictment of Pakistan by a US President. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” Trump tweeted on January 1.
US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, followed Trump’s tweet by accusing Pakistan of playing a ‘double game’ and confirmed that the US would be withholding $255 million in military aid. Amid escalating tension, a shell-shocked Islamabad began a
Twitter fightback. The Pakistan government said it had suffered losses of $123 billion and 50,000 civilian casualties in the war on terror. Foreign minister Khawaja M. Asif tweeted his doubts about Trump’s figures, suggesting a US-based audit firm be hired at Pakistan’s expense to verify it. In a January 3 press conference, former PM Nawaz Sharif slammed Trump’s comments, terming them ‘sad’ and ‘non-serious’ and asked PM Shahid K. Abbasi to devise a strategy to end the country’s reliance on US aid.
Trump’s angst has to do with the fact that his new Afghan strategy—adding 4,000 more soldiers to the 11,000 US troops in Afganistan—risks failure in the face of Pakistan’s non-cooperation to move against Taliban sanctuaries on its territory. A fact General John Nicholson, commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, stated plainly to the US Congress in June. The public acrimony notwithstanding, the US and Pakistan share a symbiotic relationship in Afghanistan. The US needs Pakistan’s land and air corridors for accessing landlocked Afghanistan. Alternative routes like Iran are either hostile, or, like the CIS countries Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, unviable. Islamabad may have swapped the US with China as its new best friend, but Beijing is unlikely to replace US aid.
India’s MEA is yet to respond to the Trump tweet but its diplomats see in Trump’s indignation a vindication of its attempts to put Pakistan in the doghouse for not acting on terror. New Delhi has watched the mainstreaming of terrorists in Pakistan with dismay. Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, accused of masterminding the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, walked out of detention last November to float the Milli Muslim League, which will contest the general election this May.
The Modi government’s diplomatic freeze with Pakistan began after the January 1, 2016 attack on the Pathankot air base by four Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists, just a week after PM Modi’s Christmas Day visit to Islamabad. Little seems to have changed since. Pakistan’s National Security Adviser, Lt. General Nasir Khan Janjua (retd), met his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval in Bangkok on December 25 for back channel talks. The meeting was followed by a group of JeM terrorists targeting a CRPF camp in Pulwama on New Year’s eve, killing four troopers. A sign that the more things in South Asia appear to change, the more they remain the same.
Islamabad has swapped the US with China as its new best friend, but Beijing is unlikely to replace US aid