Fatigued by a series of diplomatic crises over the past year, the
United States and Pakistan are redefining their troubled relationship,
stepping back from the assumption that common goals and shared interests
can trump mutual suspicion.
For Pakistan that means less
cooperation with Washington and willingness, and in some cases
eagerness, to swear off some of the American financial aid that often
made Pakistan feel too dependent, and too pushed-around.
For the
United States it means lower expectations in several areas, including
the crucial question of Pakistani help in ending the war in next-door
Afghanistan.
Overall it could be the biggest change in a decade in
a relationship that has been a mainstay of U.S. military and
counterterrorism policy since the 9/11 terror attacks.
Both U.S.
and Pakistani officials said the November killing of 24 Pakistani
soldiers in a NATO airstrike and Washington's refusal to outright
apologize for the deaths has been a game changer in a relationship
characterized by mistrust and mutual acrimony.
In the United
States, civilian and military officials have called the friendly fire
incident a tragedy caused by mistakes on both sides, but insist that
Pakistan fired first. Pakistan denies that and has called the airstrike
an unprovoked attack.
Pakistan's loud and angry reaction has, if
anything, hardened attitudes in Congress and elsewhere that Pakistan is
untrustworthy or ungrateful.
A senior Obama administration
official conceded that the deaths made every aspect of U.S. cooperation
with Pakistan more difficult, and that the distance Pakistan has imposed
may continue indefinitely. The official, like most others interviewed
for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of ongoing discussions.
Pakistan has already stopped
billing the United States for its anti-terror war expenses under the
10-year-old Coalition Support Fund, set up by Washington after the 9/11
attacks to reimburse its many allies for their military expenses
fighting terrorists worldwide and touted by the U.S. as a success story.
"From
here on in we want a very formal, business-like relationship. The lines
will be drawn. There will be no more of the free run of the past, no
more interpretation of rules. We want it very formal with agreed-upon
limits," military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told The Associated Press
in an interview in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.
Pakistan will
further reduce the number of U.S. military people in Pakistan, limit
military exchanges with the United States and rekindle its relationship
with neighbors, such as China, which has been a more reliable ally,
according to Islamabad. Earlier this year Pakistan signed a deal with
China for 50 JF-17 aircraft with sophisticated avionics, compared by
some, who are familiar with military equipment, to the U.S.-made F-16
fighter jets.
Pakistan retaliated for the friendly fire deaths by
shutting down NATO's supply routes to Afghanistan and kicking the U.S.
out of an air base it used to facilitate drone attacks in Pakistan's
tribal belt. Both U.S. and Pakistani officials expect more fallout, most
likely in the form of additional tolls or taxes on NATO supplies into
Afghanistan through Pakistan. There could also be charges for use of
Pakistani airspace, said some officials in Pakistan.
Pakistan also asked the U.S. not to send any high-level visitors to Pakistan for some time, the U.S. official said.
After
past crises, including the flare-up of anti-U.S. anger following the
killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in May, Pakistan had accepted
top-level U.S. officials for a public peace-making session rather
quickly. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the then-top U.S.
military official visited Pakistan less than a month after the bin
Laden raid, and pledged continued cooperation on several fronts.
U.S.
officials said they would like to mend fences quickly, but the senior
administration official and others said they assume there will be less
contact, fewer high-profile joint projects and fewer American government
employees living and working in Pakistan.
Since 2001, the U.S.
has pumped aid to the country under both Republican and Democratic
administrations with the expectation that Pakistan will be a bulwark
against the spread of Islamic terrorism. Anti-American sentiment in
Pakistan has only grown, and spiked in 2011. Both a military
dictatorship and the elected civilian government that followed it have
accepted the aid and pledged cooperation against terrorism and on other
fronts.
The mutual conclusion that each side can live with a more
limited relationship comes at a troubling time for Washington. It has
suspended drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas since the NATO
bombings, yet the unmanned drone is considered by many who are familiar
with the conflict to be one of the most effective weapons against
insurgents hiding in Pakistan's tribal regions.
With the clock
ticking until its combat withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2015,
Washington's battlefield strategy is to break the momentum of the
Taliban in order to improve its negotiating position at the table.
Pakistan is seen as crucial to the success of this effort.
Washington
needs Pakistani help to bring the Taliban to the table. Senior Taliban
leaders live in Pakistan, and mid- and low-level fighters who target
U.S. troops in Afghanistan slip across the Pakistan border to regroup
and rearm.
The United States has long pressed Pakistan to flush
insurgents out of tribal safe havens along the border, with minimal
success. While the Pakistan army denies giving direct aid to Taliban
groups, particularly the Haqqani network, it also says it won't launch
an offensive to kick them out.
With more than 3,000 Pakistani
soldiers killed and thousands more injured in border fights with
militants as part of the anti-terror war, Abbas said the Pakistan
military has grown weary of Washington's repeated calls for Pakistan to
do more.
Meanwhile some U.S. politicians are calling for an aid
cut off to Pakistan, arguing that the U.S. has little to show for
billions sent to Pakistan over the past decade. A total aid cutoff is
extremely unlikely, but Congress has already trimmed back the Obama
administration latest request and is expected to demand less generosity
and more strings over the coming year.
The U.S. official said that
the current political standoff has made the already difficult White
House argument to Congress even harder to make. That argument basically
holds that because of its geographic location, prominence in the Islamic
world, past willingness to hunt terrorists and its nuclear weapons,
Pakistan is a partner the U.S. may not fully trust but cannot afford to
lose.
Pakistani military officials said a U.S. aid cutoff would
suspend delivery next year of six refitted F-16 aircraft. Currently
Pakistan currently has 47 F-16s, a small percentage of a fighter wing
that also includes Chinese and European-made jets.
Abbas said U.S.
cash payments, made through the Coalition Support Fund, have been
erratic. In the last 10 years Pakistan's army has seen only $1.8 billion
of $8.6 billion in support funds. The rest of the money was siphoned
off by the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf to finance
subsidies and prop up his government.
Currently the U.S. is withholding another $600 million in support funds that was promised last year.
"The
equipment we have been getting from America over the last five years
has been almost a trickle," said former national security adviser
retired Gen. Mahmud Durrani.
He complained of "second-hand helicopters that were badly refitted."
Less aid might propel Pakistan toward greater financial independence, Durrani added.
"If
the money stops, we can get our act together and manage. It is not the
first time that American money has dried up and maybe we need to go cold
turkey. Maybe in the long term we will be saying, 'Thank God this
happened.'" AP