President Barack Obama has been re-elected with acclaim from most Muslims of the world except Pakistan, where opinion polls showed that people liked him less
than his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.
Such sentiment could also
be caused by them remembering with distaste the developments of the past
two years, indicating a breakdown in Pakistan and US relations. The
seeping down among the Pakistani people of the bad blood between the
Pakistan Army and the US administration plus the Pentagon was bad policy
here, given its position of relative weakness in the region. It is our
good luck that the US has shown more flexibility in this crisis of
relationship than has Pakistan and President Obama will engage with us
as of old and probably try to better understand our point of view.
The military is now pragmatic and handles the relationship as
transactional, which in Pakistan’s lexicon is an unworthy way of
relating between two parties. It wants the US to understand that in any
endgame scenario in Afghanistan, it would be a folly to ignore Pakistan’s interest.
This kind of approach is not necessarily a promising way of looking at
the future of Pakistan-US relations because of the element of dare
contained in it. A more realistic formulation would have been better
suited to the one adopted now: Pakistan has some strong cards in its
capacity to spoil the endgame unless it is allowed a significant share
in the power map of post-withdrawal Afghanistan. Needless to say, the US
and its allies were not happy about the cards played by Pakistan even
when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.
Analysts say that the US will play tough this time around, using
drones more effectively and retaining some special force in Afghanistan
to prevent a repeat of 1998, when the Northern Alliance was annihilated
by the Taliban and al Qaeda was given a free hand in planning a
terrorist assault on the US. Some say that since, after the withdrawal,
the US will need Pakistan less than Pakistan will need the US, this
toughness will be a realistic policy orientation. No doubt, Pakistan
will need US help when it comes to rescuing its economy from its
nosedive pattern under the savage treatment meted out to it by the
Taliban and their affiliated groups. Multilateral institutions that lend
to Pakistan for its development projects and balance of payments will
act only after receiving approval from the US and its allies. And
Pakistan has to pay back the old loans with interest, the total
amounting to more than the dollars it has in the kitty.
Any realistic assessment of the situation in Pakistan will recommend
cautious trimming of the intensity with which America is hated. An
aggressive foreign policy on the part of the weak state, dogged by
internal security problems, will be difficult to roll back. This
happened repeatedly in 2011 and 2012, when Pakistan tried to punish
America but had to retreat in each case of display of ‘honour’. Such
action brings about the psychological syndrome of self-hatred. The
Pakistani media is overloaded with this dangerous trend of hating the US
while having to play ball with it. No one outside Pakistan advises it
to do what it is doing, not even the Chinese, who normally stand by
Pakistan. The slogan ‘it is not our war’
has hurt our interests in the region. It should not have been allowed
to spread as a national expression, especially as the military realises
that what it faces in Swat, Bajaur, Mohmand Agency, South and North
Waziristan is very much Pakistan’s war.
Pakistan has to change its posture, just as it wants the US to change
policy in favour of its interest. Its main weakness is a lack of
control of the strategic assets that it plans to use as an instrument of
its Afghan policy. Its internal weakness in the face of the Taliban —
to whose thinking the country submits in many alarming ways — undermines
its external posture. Pakistan, it is now clear, cannot fight the
terrorists, to whom it is steadily losing more and more cities, without
international help. It is time to realign Pakistan with the rest of the
world, especially those states that are critical to the survival of its
economy.