On Pakistan, a More Muscular American Foreign Policy

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

It’s no secret that U.S. President Donald Trump thinks Americans have for decades been taken for a ride by fair-weather friends when it comes to foreign aid.

They are glad to take the cash, but become no-shows when asked to provide help when Washington needs it.

Pakistan is among the countries he considers freeloaders. In fact, it’s worse than that. 

Pakistan has for a long time been playing a double game, assuring Washington that it was doing what it could to tackle fundamentalist militancy while at the same time turning a blind eye to the many terrorist networks in the country.

Pakistan has actively worked at cross-purposes to Washington’s own foreign policies, from giving sanctuary to Osama bin Laden to providing aid, often surreptitiously, to various groups of Islamists, especially in Afghanistan and the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir.

It has also long been an open secret that its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Agency created the Afghanistan Taliban and that it tolerated contact between the ISI and commanders of the insurgency. 

In 2016, the then-Taliban leader Mullah Mansour was killed by a U.S. drone strike inside Pakistan. 

Washington also has charged Islamabad with supporting the Haqqani network militants, who are allied with the Afghan Taliban.

Not one to mince words, at the start of the new year Trump announced that America won’t be played for a sucker anymore. U.S. aid shouldn’t go to countries that harbor terrorists who want to harm Americans, he asserted. 

The United States has provided Pakistan with $33.4 billion in aid since 2002. Annual economic and security assistance peaked at more than $3.5 billion in 2011, but Washington has drastically cut funds to Pakistan in recent years. 

Still, the South Asian nation received $383 million in 2016, according to U.S. government data, and $742 million was earmarked for 2017.

Last August, Trump warned he would slash aid to Pakistan as punishment for giving sanctuary “to agents of chaos, violence and terror.”

These include pro-Kashmir movements that have been unofficially tolerated because of their public popularity. As well, the ISI has long been reported to abet Lashkar-e-Taiba, a radical anti-India militia accused of masterminding a terrorist siege in Mumbai in 2008. 

Organized by militant ideologue Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, it then rebranded itself as Jamaat-ud-Dawa and has recently established its first political party, the Milli Muslim League. 

“We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting,” Trump remarked, in announcing a new Afghanistan strategy. “But that will have to change.” 

He turned up the heat as 2017 was coming to a close. Trump presented a blueprint for the country’s national security policy on Dec. 18, and went out of his way to criticize Islamabad. “We make massive payments every year to Pakistan,” he stated. “They have to help.”

Vice President Mike Pence reinforced that message while visiting Afghanistan before Christmas, telling American troops that “President Trump has put Pakistan on notice.” 

So Jan. 1, 2018 arrived with one of Trump’s trademark tweets, as he lashed out at Pakistan. “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 and deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif responded by laying much of the blame on the rise of terrorist elements in Pakistan in the last 20 years on the United States. That didn’t go over too well in Washington.

In a follow-up, the Trump administration announced on Jan. 4 it will suspend most security assistance to Pakistan, expanding its censure over militant safe havens.

The administration had already previously announced it will delay $255 million in military aid to Pakistan.

Analysts say ties are likely to worsen in 2018. “The trend lines have not been good, and the tweet gives an indication of the turmoil that awaits in 2018,” remarked Michael Kugelman, the senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center.