Trump turns on Pakistan
HENRY Kissinger rightly noted that it’s often more dangerous being an ally of the United States than its enemy. The latest victim of this sad truism is Pakistan, a loyal ally of the US.
President Donald Trump last week ordered some US$344 million in US aid to Pakistan to be cut off. He accused Pakistan of deceiving the US and providing a haven to Afghans battling US occupation forces.
Outwitted in Afghanistan, US generals, Pentagon bureaucrats and politicians have been trying to cast blame on anyone they can find, with Pakistan the primary whipping boy. Next in line is the Haqqani network, which is blamed for most US military failures in Afghanistan, though its active combat role is modest.
Why has Washington given billions in aid to Pakistan? In 2001, it decided to invade Afghanistan to uproot the Pashtun resistance movement, Taliban, which was blamed for the 9/11 attacks. The Pashtun warriors Reagan had hailed as “Freedom Fighters” became “terrorists” once the West wanted to occupy Afghanistan.
But invading land-locked Afghanistan was an awesome undertaking. US troops had to be supplied through Karachi, then up mountain roads and across the torturous Khyber Pass. The huge amount of supplies required by US troops could not be met by air supply. It cost US$400 a barrel for a gallon of petrol delivered to US troops in Afghanistan, and as much as US$600,000 a sortie to keep a single warplane over Afghanistan. Without 24/7 air cover, the US occupation force would have been quickly defeated.
Invading Afghanistan without Pakistani cooperation would have been impossible. Pakistan at first refused to let US armed forces cross its borders. But as Pakistan’s former military leader General Pervez Musharraf told me, “the US put a gun to my head and said let US troops enter and use Pakistan or ‘we will bomb you back to the Stone Age’.”
That was the big stick. The carrot was US$33 billion to secure communication lines. Pakistan briefly closed them in 2011 after US warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan could do it again unless Washington stops treating it like an enemy state.
Trump and his men don’t understand that Pakistan has national security interests in Afghanistan. Thirty million Pakistanis are ethnic Pashtuns. They dominate Pakistan’s armed forces. Another 1.4 million Pashtun are refugees in northern Pakistan. Narrow-waisted Pakistan sees Afghanistan as its strategic hinterland in a next war with old enemy India.
The US-installed regime in Kabul blames Pakistan for its failures. Its powerful Communist-dominated intelligence agency routinely spreads untruths about Pakistan, claiming it supports “terrorism”.
Today, one hears threats in Pentagon circles that the US may begin bombing “Taliban sanctuaries” (villages) and then send in air mobile US troops. This would make the longest war in US history even longer. Washington can’t seem to accept that its military machine was defeated in Afghanistan.
It’s also clear that the US has not given up its ambition to neutralise or destroy Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Attacking socalled terrorist enclaves in northern Pakistan would offer a perfect cover for a major US assault on Pakistan’s nuclear complexes and dispersed storage sites. India and Israel have long been pressing the US to attack Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure.
Any major US moves against Pakistan will push it closer to Beijing and expand Chinese influence in the region. China is unlikely to allow old ally Pakistan to be torn apart. Unlike the US, China remembers its old friends.
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