Barkha Dutt<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
How seriously should one take President Trump\u2019s tweets? His first tweet of 2018, calling out of the \u201clies and deceit\u201d of Pakistan, had pretty much all of India whooping in approval. Trump\u2019s remarks on Pakistan\u2019s failure to act against the terrorist groups it has cultivated, and his administration\u2019s subsequent announcement that it would be freezing nearly all of its millions of dollars in security assistance to Pakistan, was a \u201cgotcha\u201d moment for New Delhi.<\/i><\/p>\n
For years, Pakistan\u2019s deep state (controlled by its all-powerful military and covert agencies) has used terrorism as an instrument of asymmetric warfare both in India and Afghanistan. For Indians, Trump\u2019s tweet and the suspension of funds was a moment of vindication. But the unfortunate reality is that publicly shaming Pakistan, as Trump has done, and even the cuts in security aid have very little real impact on a country whose skin has grown comfortably thick from rhetorical battering. Pakistan survives in the smug belief that after the United States\u2019 grandstanding is done and over, Washington will eventually turn to it for mopping up its half-finished mess in Afghanistan. Holding back the dollars every few years is just a nip and tuck, when what\u2019s really needed is a surgical uprooting of terrorist support systems inside Pakistan.
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The former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, agrees. \u201cPakistan\u2019s military has convinced itself that it is acting in Pakistan\u2019s national interest and that pursuing that interest is more important than U.S. aid. An aid cutoff may not be the huge price that would force Pakistan to change a policy of terrorism that is now three decades old. President Trump would have to go farther than an aid cutoff to force Pakistan\u2019s hand,\u201d he told me, arguing that any \u201climp U.S. response would simply say to Pakistan that it does not have to change.\u201d
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It is telling that (notwithstanding the temptation to gloat) India\u2019s foreign ministry avoided any hasty comment on Trump\u2019s Twitter rant. A high-ranking Indian official who works on Afghanistan told me, \u201cIndia has itself always highlighted the deceit and duplicity with which Pakistan has actually nurtured and protected various terrorist groups while pretending to be an ally in the war on terror. It is good to see that the international community is no longer being taken in by Pakistan\u2019s lies, false narratives and propaganda. Putting an end to terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens in Pakistan is essential to bringing peace to Afghanistan and the region.\u201d
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But Indian officials are aware that while Trump\u2019s bombastic outburst gives the impression of a dramatic first-time tectonic shift in policy, American military aid has been scaled back from Pakistan several times in the past, including most recently during the Obama years. In 2011, the Obama administration suspended $800 million of military aid two months after U.S. Navy SEALs took out Osama bin Laden in a residential compound just three hours away from Pakistan\u2019s capital, Islamabad. In 2015, $300 million of the Pentagon\u2019s Coalition Support Funds were made conditional on Pakistan acting against the Haqqani network terrorist group in Afghanistan \u2014 Pakistan\u2019s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, has long been accused of patronizing and protecting the group.<\/i><\/p>\n
Frankly, none of it has worked.
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Last year, Husain Haqqani co-wrote a paper with Lisa Curtis (who today serves as part of the Trump administration) asserting that Americans need to stop viewing Pakistan as an ally. \u201cThe new U.S. administration should recognize that Pakistan is not an American ally. It has engaged in supporting the Afghan Taliban, who have killed American troops and their allies in Afghanistan,\u201d they wrote in the Hudson Institute paper, going on to say that the United States must \u201ckeep the option of using unilateral action (including drones) to target Taliban targets in Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban safe havens in Quetta and elsewhere should no longer be safe.\u201d This unambiguous reference to the possible use of U.S. force and hot pursuit of terrorist havens inside Pakistan is the most direct clue to what Haqqani and others mean when they say that aid cuts by themselves will be mostly ineffectual.
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Trump\u2019s stance on Pakistan could also have implications for the U.S.-China proxy war in Asia, as Pakistan moves closer into China\u2019s embrace. This week, right after Trump\u2019s tweet, Pakistan\u2019s central bank gave the green light for using the yuan, instead of the dollar, as a currency for bilateral trade with China. Beijing brings more than $60 billion in investment and infrastructure, prompting the question of whether Pakistan is now effectively a Chinese vassal. More critically, will the slashing of U.S. dollars to Pakistan\u2019s military change anything substantively?
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How Pakistan responds to Trump\u2019s threats will come down to whether the United States is willing to stay the course in Afghanistan and fundamentally change its policy. The United States would have to end its dependence on Pakistan as the main supply route for NATO troops to landlocked Afghanistan. It would have to commit to using the more expensive and complicated northern route via Central Asia or spending much more flying in supplies. It would also have to work harder at getting the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table. A failing, inconclusive war in Afghanistan or any U.S. abandonment of the country will only result in a brazen Pakistan, indifferent to Trump\u2019s threats.
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The United States also needs to use its leverage to strengthen Pakistan\u2019s civilian leadership instead of its army\u2019s remote-control rulers. This week, ousted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif called on his country to reflect on its lack of credibility on the world stage, reminding people that he had asked military commanders to isolate militants. But democratically elected civilians have never been able to take control of Pakistan\u2019s security policies.<\/i><\/p>\n
From an Indian perspective, while Trump\u2019s actions score well for Indian diplomacy, no one doubts that U.S. self-interest, not principled concerns about Pakistan\u2019s patronage of terrorist groups in Kashmir, triggered this outburst. In November, American lawmakers dropped a provision that conditionally linked aid to Pakistan to a crackdown on the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group responsible for a spate of attacks inside India (including the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai). The bill voted into law retained the clause on linking U.S. aid only to Pakistan\u2019s curbing of the Haqqani network in Afghanistan.<\/i><\/p>\n
This free pass to Pakistan on some terrorist groups, while expecting it to act against others, is part of the schizophrenia that has defined U.S. policy. Trump\u2019s tweet exposes Pakistan\u2019s double standards on terrorism. But the United States needs to examine its own.
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Barkha Dutt is an award-winning TV journalist and anchor with more than two decades of reporting experience. She is the author of \u201cThis Unquiet Land: Stories from India\u2019s Fault Lines.\u201d Dutt is based in New Delhi.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
The Article was First Published on Washington Post<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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