US a betrayer, says Pakistan
Pakistani officials have denounced the Trump Administration’s decision to suspend military aid, while members of the opposition have called for retaliation.
In one of the harshest actions in years between the troubled allies, the Trump Administration moved on Friday to block an estimated US$1 billion in military assistance, at the end of a week that began with the president accusing Pakistan of years of ‘‘lies and deceit’’.
US State Department officials said they were holding back the aid as an incentive for Pakistan to take ‘‘decisive action’’ to rid its lands of terrorist safe havens.
‘‘Working toward enduring peace requires mutual respect and trust along with patience and persistence,’’ Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said. ‘‘Arbitrary deadlines, unilateral pronouncements and shifting goalposts are counterproductive in addressing common threats.’’
Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said the US was now neither a friend nor ally, but ‘‘a friend who always betrays’’.
Pakistan’s opposition, meanwhile, called for concrete actions to retaliate against the US.
Opposition leader Imran Khan said Pakistan should ‘‘delink’’ itself from the US after its humiliation ‘‘by an ungrateful Donald Trump’’. Khan has called for Pakistan to expel some US diplomatic personnel and cut off supply routes for US-led coalition forces from the port city of Karachi to Afghanistan, as well as closing its airspace to US forces.
Analysts fear that the escalating tension could have a long-standing impact on regional security and the US’s ongoing efforts in Afghanistan, where troop levels now stand at 14,000.
The Trump Administration’s move came after what a senior State Department official called ‘‘numerous conversations’’ with the Pakistanis over several months, along with visits by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis.
The US has repeatedly pressed Pakistan to do something about Taliban and Haqqani network militants operating inside Pakistan, which launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Much to the ‘‘immense’’ frustration of the US, Pakistan continued to deny that there were terrorist safe havens in the country and that they had little leverage over them, the official said on the condition of anonymity.
‘‘We cannot continue business as usual with the Pakistani government if they are not going to partner with us.’’
The US State Department has also placed Pakistan on a watchlist of countries failing to protect religious freedom, a modest gesture that falls short of the more severe designation ‘‘Countries of Particular Concern’’ accorded to nations such as North Korea and Iran.
Officials said the designation was due to harassment of religious minorities and tolerance of violence centering on Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry yesterday rejected the designation, saying it was criteria.
Pakistan and the US settled into an uneasy alliance after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, with Pakistan arresting al Qaeda operatives and allowing drone attacks inside its airspace. But the relationship has grown more contentious since 2011, when US Special Forces killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a raid in the military garrison town of Abbottabad.
A senior Administration official said the total amount of military aid being suspended was about US$2b, including US$900 million designated to reimburse Pakistan for fighting militants.
The US has given Pakistan more than US$20b in reimbursements and military assistance since 2002, but that aid has diminished over the years, to the point that Pakistani officials have insisted that its suspension will have a minimal impact.
‘‘The suspension is arguably more significant as a signal of Washington’s discontent than as an act of financial deprivation,’’ said Joshua White, an Asia analyst who was director of South Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the Obama years.
Mattis said he was not concerned that Pakistan would turn to China to fill the vacuum, or curtail America’s ability to get supplies into and out of Afghanistan. During high tension six years ago, Pakistan closed the land routes into Afghanistan for several months.
Mattis said the US was still working with Pakistan, ‘‘and we would restore the aid if we see decisive movements against the terrorists who are as much of a threat against Pakistan as they are against us’’. not based on objective