[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.]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — In what 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, the United States and
Pakistan are lowering expectations for what the two nations will do together
and planning for a period of more limited contact.
The change described by
both Pakistani and U.S. officials follows a series of diplomatic crises over
the past year that strained an already difficult partnership based around the
U.S. goal of stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a reduction in
Islamic-inspired terrorism.
For Pakistan,
cooperation on that agenda was rewarded with billions in financial aid. The
change means less cooperation with Washington and a willingness to swear off
some aid that often made Pakistan feel too dependent, and too pushed around.
For the United States,
scaling down an expensive military and economic program that has not met
expectations could come at the cost of less Pakistani help in ending the war in
next-door Afghanistan.
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 incident an unprovoked attack.
Pakistan's loudly angry
reaction has, if anything, hardened attitudes in Congress and elsewhere that
Islamabad 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 kicked 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. fervor
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 has only grown, and spiked in 2011.
In Pakistan, 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's latest request and is expected to demand less generosity
and more strings over the coming year.
The U.S. official said
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 CSF
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 CSF 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 advisor retired Gen. Mahmud
Durrani.
He complained of
"second-hand helicopters that were badly refitted."
Less aid might propel
Pakistan toward greater financial independence, he 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.'"
___
Kathy Gannon is The AP
Special Regional Correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan and can be reached
at www.twitter.com/kathygannon .
Gearan reported from
Washington.
