Pakistan: an Inseparable Ally of the United States

By Masud Wadan for VT

The United States and Russia’s hostility is nearly a century old. In 1947, after Pakistan split from British Indian Empire and reborn into an independent nation, it just became an ideal state for both superpowers.

In this race to approach Pakistan, the United States overtook the USSR, and for the U.S., it was an axis that really paid off. Though it has been through ups and downs along half the century, both have somehow paid great service to each other.

Within years into its birth in 1947, Pakistan has joined many international forums, to which the U.S. was already a member. The two countries’ alliance is not one decade old or two, it is far aged. The duo’s alignment began when United States started to cast eyes on the region.

After the cold war, this cooperation went back to wane until the Soviet incursion in 1979, which, in Western agenda, caused to place a heavy weight behind Pakistan’s role and kicked off a seemingly immense flow of funds and weapons into Pakistan’s extremist parties.

In the midst of the 1965 and 1971 wars with India, Pakistan was left unhelpfully behind, but after the USSR and India teamed up, the time was ripe for the United States to aid Pakistan against the bloc.

Pakistan, over its slippery survival, was in extreme desire of handshake with a powerful country over the latter half of 20^th century. Pakistan is fortunate over having evolving into a nuclear-armed state.

The two allies further warmed to each other when the Soviet Union first set foot in Afghanistan. It was the existentiality of Pakistan that allowed the United States to compel its challenging chief enemy, Russia, to pack up and get lost from Afghanistan.

The regional war is not over and Pakistan is taking up new roles in the battleground and hence Washington needs Islamabad more and more, not to mention abandonment.

Though this Asian ally of the U.S. might have encountered slashes in military aids or withholding of F-16 fighter jets by the U.S. Congress, it is not perpetual. Islamabad is the largest recipient of the U.S. foreign military aids, even as the insurgency is on surge.

In 1981 alone, the United States approved USD 3.2 billion in military and economic aids to Pakistan to rapidly cope with its security challenges. Even if they fall apart, an offer of this big amount can mend their relationship.

Washington’s rapprochement to India is not certain to underline its indifference to Pakistan. Some global analysts opine the United States draws to India over Pakistan’s double-game in fighting terrorism. India can never ever play Pakistan when it comes to the Afghan war.

In the recent, the U.S. Congress has reprimanded Pakistan in many sessions, questioning its modest anti-insurgency combat in return for steeply high military aids. But, above the congressmen, there are few individuals who really run things and have eyes on the world.

Even the U.S. presidential contestant Donald Trump will not be able to stand by his over the top agenda, one of which is taking up of a solemn policy towards Pakistan.

On the other hand, it was extensively misinterpreted that the assassination of Mullah Mansoor has rubbed salt into the two allies’ so-called rifts. In the wake of the attack, the Western media rushed to boast of another hunt-down, though the true motive of incident went untold.

If the United States is to kill a Taliban leader for being a global threat which could go so farther into Pakistan’s airspace, then why it doesn’t strike scores of plain terrorist strongholds within meters to border in Pakistan.

When it can take risk to pass over the red line and surprise Osama Bin Laden or Mullah Mansoor in their security, then why it doesn’t unilaterally move into Haqqani’s hotspot that it constantly raise as a major threat in Pakistan.

In a speech last month, President Barrack Obama announced the United States is in no intention to make change to its Pakistan policy. While making announcement about the new withdrawal plan of the U.S. forces, President Obama called on the regional countries to refrain from providing safe havens to terrorists, yet he didn’t point to Pakistan or any other country.

In the wake of pullout of the Soviet forces in 1991 and the following barbarities at the hand of Jihadists that took over Kabul, the United States turned a deaf ear to Afghan war and handed it over to Pakistan while it was engaged in many other grand plans in the world.

This course went on until the fall of the Taliban regime. The delivery of this big job to Pakistan means it was a highly trustworthy ally to the United States, and so is now.

In the India-Pakistan war of 1971, the United States moved to join Pakistan to strike the balance of power with India-USSR bloc. Therefore the unity of Georg W. Bush or Barrack Obama with Pakistan was not a surprising issue.

Near the end of full withdrawal of international forces in 2014, the United States donated much of the modern military hardware and weapons it used in Afghanistan to Pakistan, while it proclaims it bolster Afghan military with necessities.

The dislocation of so many arms from an already needy country into the one that it denounces as dishonest in anti-terror war unveils that the United States’ any anti-Pakistan rhetoric is prevailed by its back door policy that is difficult to grasp.

The proximity in the two power’s ties can be perceived in the leniency of the United States to Pakistan’s multilateral relationship with China, whom it considers an irreconcilable state. The two immediate neighbor’s overland economic corridor (CPEC) that connects China’s Kashgar and Pakistan’s Gwadar port is something that could sour its alliance with the United States, but it didn’t.

This is while for Pakistan it is also deadly critical to maintain a current affinity to the United States, at least to stand up against its rival, India.  A minimal advancement in the U.S. and India relationship is extremely outrageous for Pakistan’s military and civilian governments.

The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest visit of the United States and concluding of some important agreements predictably drew obsessive remarks from Pakistani officials.

As every decision about Afghanistan’s internal or external major measures needs to pass through the U.S. panel and as the international liberty of Afghanistan is in the clutches of the U.S., so the trilateral agreement of Chabahar would never become real if the U.S. gave red light.

The accord could have been turned down by the U.S. at the behest of Pakistan, but it was for the United States’ recent major deals with India that allowed the economic agreement to run on smoothly; otherwise it might have joined the lengthy list of failed efforts.

The West is prepared wholeheartedly to execute “potato small” impulse from Pakistan.

Above all, there has been an upswing in the diplomatic relations between the two states which is quite different and surprising one. According to reports, the State Department of the United States has announced that it ranks Pakistan among 38 visa-free nations, which comes as a reward for “paying lip service”.

State Department Secretary John F. Kerry has declared its reason as payment of sorts for Pakistan’s struggles in war on terror. But for real victims of this war, it is hilarious.

This is a history-making counteract to the ground realities, as the violence and strife is skyrocketing in parts of Afghanistan.

The supply of heavy arms to the northern Afghan provinces is weighing down on the desperate neighborhoods of farmers. The skies over those regions are in control of Pentagon and NATO.

Reliable reports assert that the U.S. and Pakistani helicopters are actively used in the dead of the night to carry arms. The arrival of Pakistani helicopters into the northern Afghan provinces is on tide.

Locals report of helicopter’s noise into the night, which is confirmed by observing groups that the helicopters are heavily supplying the Taliban and Islamic State fronts with arms.

To counter the West-armed Taliban, Iran and Russia are struggling to not fall short of arming their own corps to excel in combat.

Taking singularly this war into account, the U.S. would never twist its head to Pakistan. Afghanistan is where both countries’ interests coincide.

Yet the world media recently over blew that Pakistan has been casted off by the U.S. It has to be noted in one sentence that it is just confined to rumor and speech.

Pakistan now has nuclear arsenal that makes it heavyweight and place it in the row of powerful countries, which the United States treats carefully. Any untimely retreat in relations with Pakistan or Pakistan’s defection to an anti-Western coalition may lead to an abrupt halt of the entire activities that drives the West’s prospects in the region.

____________