The state of bilateral relations between the US and Pakistan that used to be one of the most faithful allies of Washington, remains in a rather sorry state after Trump’s insulting New Year’s tweet, that left Islamabad thoroughly outraged. Specifically, Trump chose to make his first post in 2018 about Pakistan, noting that:
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 & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!
However, the scandal didn’t stop just there, as the head of the press service of the Department of state Heather Nauert slammed Islamabad with allegations that it wasn’t doing enough to put an end to the spread of terrorism. According to this official figure, from now on Pakistan must “earn” the financial support that the West was providing it to keep terrorists at bay. In turn, the sitting United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley rushed to clarify that the withdrawal of any support that Pakistan was getting was in no way connected to its decision to support the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Washington’s unilateral decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. However, you can’t really hide an elephant in plain sight, as it’s obvious that Washington got mad at Pakistan for its commitment to the defense of its fellow Muslims at the international stage. One can recall how Nikki Haley would send out a total of 180 letter of intimidation in late December in bid to force sovereign states into changing their positions on the issues of Jerusalem.
The Pentagon specified that Washington froze at least 900 million dollars allocated to Pakistan for it to be able to carry on its anti-terrorist operations. This explanation was given on 5 January, by the official representative of the office of military cooperation of the Pentagon Patrick Evans, commenting on the decision of the administration of President Donald trump to suspend aid to Islamabad in the field of security.
According to Evans, this decision affects the support provided along the lines of the Pentagon through the Fund support coalition (FPC), while specifying that the US Congress has allocated 900 million dollars to Pakistan, however it wouldn’t receive this sum now. In addition, the United States decided to withhold 255 million dollars that was promised to Pakistan in the 2016 fiscal year under the foreign military assistance. Those funds were supposed to be spent on the acquisition of American-made weapons.
As a response to such steps Islamabad, that is a principal US ally in Central and South Asia and a nuclear power, has decided to challenge Washington for the first time in the history of bilateral relations. Speaking at the Islamabad Institute of Strategic Studies, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan announced that his country is planning to suspended all large-scale military operations conducted together with the Pentagon and American intelligence services. These actions coincided with another demonstrative gesture of Pakistan: the Supreme Court of the Pakistani city of Peshawar “out of medical concerns” decided to release from prison the Sufi Mohammad, the founder and leader of the Pakistani radical group Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, that used to fight invading NATO in Afghanistan in 2001.
In interviews with American media sources, unnamed Pakistani officials point out that Islamabad is planning to close a number of transit routes that are used to deliver American men and equipment to Afghanistan, realizing that there is no real alternative to those . One of the commanders of the Pakistani Air Force also suggested that Pakistan’s airspace could be blocked for American military aircraft, including drones.
In turn, Pakistan’s opposition leader Imran Khan urged the government to reduce the level of Islamabad’s relations with the United States, adding that Pakistan must be in a great hurry to get rid of an excess of US diplomatic, non-diplomatic and intelligence personnel operating in Pakistan in order to establish diplomatic parity in accordance with international legal norms.
In his interview for the Guardian Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi declared himself mystified by US threats to cut off funding, saying that US financial assistance was “very, very insignificant” and that Pakistan was “on the forefront of the war on terror. He would add that:
I am not sure what US aid has been talked here,as the aid in the last five years at least has been less than 10 million dollars a year. It is a very, very insignificant amount. So when I read in the paper that aid at the level of 250 million dollars or 500 million or 900 million dollars has been cut, we at least are not aware of that aid.
It should be added that American military assistance to Pakistan first started in 1954 under Eisenhower and lasted for almost eleven years, in which the United States provided over 800 million dollars to Pakistan, averaging nearly 75 million dollars every year. However, in 1965, following an arms embargo imposed on Pakistan, President Lyndon Johnson ended US military aid to Pakistan after the outbreak of the first India-Pakistan war. For the next sixteen years, until 1982, Pakistan received little to no support from the United States.
In recent years, bilateral relations between Washington and Islamabad have been deteriorating rapidly as the Obama administration announced new cuts in the assistance Washington was providing to Islamabad in 2016, depriving the latter of 300 million dollars in aid However, while expressing its dissatisfaction with the level of bilateral cooperation with Islamabad, Washington wouldn’t dare to take really radical steps until this year’s notorious tweets made by Donald Trump.
It’s clear that America’s support over the last six decades has failed to transform Pakistan into an obedient puppet of Washington. In fact, it has made Pakistan more resolute in pursuing its goals. Although Pakistan has weathered previous US aid cuts, each past episode in the bilateral relationship has driven the partnership more towards an irreparable trust deficit. The first event that created a Pakistani distrust of the United States was in 1962 during the Indo-Sino border conflict when the Kennedy administration decided to provide India with military assistance.
This year Pakistan is going to conduct general elections, which is going to be pretty unfortunate for Washington. With the persistent growth of anti-American sentiments that was boosted by the recent statements and actions of the Trump administration, any politician who would dare to make concessions to Washington would be perceived as a “traitor” of national interests.
It is noteworthy that despite the difficulties experienced by the Pakistani economy, according to the estimates of a number of international organizations, the year 2017 has actually become the best one in country’s 70-year history, with the GDP growth nearing 4.7%. This allows us to speak of Pakistan as a state that is not going to be treated as a US client regime anymore, no matter how much pressure the US would try to apply on Islamabad.
Therefore, it is too late to impose financial sanctions against Islamabad, which Washington is up to now. The Islamic Republic has long found its wellbeing in its regional allies, that will help it to compensate any financial losses suffered through Washington’s steps. After the release of the new US strategy on Afghanistan and South Asia, experts began to talk about the fact that the recent actions of Americans and the further cooling of relations with the United States involuntarily pushes Pakistan into the embrace of Russia and China, which in the long term can lead to a change to a radical shift in the balance of forces in the Asian region. Considering that Islamabad needs external assistance, it will be happy to receive it from Moscow and Beijing, which are not in Washington’s fan club these days as well.
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
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