[On Thursday, Pakistani newspapers featured a photo of Trump and Modi hugging goodbye, along with anxious headlines and a testy statement from Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry that called a joint statement by the two leaders “singularly unhelpful” in achieving stability and peace in South Asia and said it “aggravates an already tense situation.” The ministry also said that China had endorsed Pakistan’s view.]
By
Pamela Constable
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Visiting
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, and Pakistan's adviser on foreign
affairs
Sartaj Aziz leave after a news conference in Rawalpindi, Pakistan,
on
June 25. (Anjum Naveed/AP)
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The words from
Pakistan’s top foreign policy adviser could not have been clearer. At a news
conference welcoming China’s foreign minister to the Pakistani capital this
week, Sartaj Aziz declared, “Pakistan’s relations with China are the
cornerstone of our foreign policy.
It was a blunt signal of change by a country
that has long been a key ally and aid recipient of the United States, from
their Cold War alliance against Soviet meddling in Afghanistan to a more
recent, uneasy partnership in the fight against Islamist terrorism in the
region. Today, Pakistan continues to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in
U.S. annual support.
But Islamabad’s political pivot from
Washington to Beijing, already its dominant investor and increasingly important
global interlocutor, is hardly surprising, experts said.
Pakistani officials have been worried for
months that the Trump administration will put heavy pressure on their
government, possibly by cutting aid or even declaring it a “state sponsor of
terrorism” — a giant black mark — because of complaints by Afghan officials, U.S.
military officials and members of Congress that Pakistan continues to harbor
anti-Afghan insurgents.
At the same time, Islamabad has been
concerned about Washington’s emerging friendship with India, Pakistan’s much
larger, nuclear-armed rival and neighbor. This week’s upbeat state visit to
Washington by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was received
enthusiastically by President Trump, raised new alarm bells here.
On Thursday, Pakistani newspapers featured a
photo of Trump and Modi hugging goodbye, along with anxious headlines and a
testy statement from Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry that called a joint statement
by the two leaders “singularly unhelpful” in achieving stability and peace in
South Asia and said it “aggravates an already tense situation.” The ministry
also said that China had endorsed Pakistan’s view.
Pakistan was especially upset that Modi and
Trump spoke about the importance of reining in regional terrorism — referring
indirectly to Pakistan’s alleged support for anti-Afghan insurgents — but
ignored Pakistan’s denunciations of human rights abuses by Indian forces
against protesters in the contested border region of Kashmir, as well as its
charges of Indian support for anti-Pakistan militants.
“Those who seek to appropriate a leadership
role in the fight against terror are themselves responsible for much of the
terror unleashed in Pakistan,” the Foreign Ministry said, referring to India.
Pakistani commentators suggested that Washington, in turn, was trying to please
India by suddenly placing Syed Salahuddin, the longtime Pakistan-based leader
of a Kashmiri Muslim rebel group, on a list of global terrorists. Interior
Minister Chaudhry Nisar said the United States had begun “speaking India’s language.”
Pakistani officials and commentators also
expressed concern about new agreements between India and the United States on
sales of Predator drones and other American defense equipment as well as
commercial aircraft. Pakistan has had a long-standing military and intelligence
relationship with the United States, and it has fought three limited wars with
India since the 1960s.
But the more immediate concern for Pakistan
is Afghanistan. In recent months, as the Trump administration debates policy
options in the region, Pakistani officials have attempted to shake Afghan
accusations of promoting cross-border insurgents and have been quick to send
sympathetic messages for Afghan terrorism victims, but so far their gestures
have been rebuffed.
At this point, officials in Washington appear
likely to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan but have given few hints about
how they will approach Pakistan, amid a chorus of calls for them to punish or
isolate it. India, in sharp contrast, is a close ally and benefactor of
Afghanistan, which is appreciated in Washington but seen by Pakistanis of all
political stripes as a direct threat to Pakistan’s influence.
“Trump has no business giving India an
interventionist role in Afghanistan when, unlike India, it is Pak that shares a
border with Afghanistan,” Imran Kahn, the leading political opponent of
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, tweeted Thursday. The joint statement by
Trump and Modi, he said in a follow-up tweet, “has removed the fig leaf of
morality and justice in U.S. foreign policy.”
Frustrated that the world fails to see its
point of view and that Washington may be pulling away from a relationship that
Pakistan considered permanent if strained, Pakistan has now enlisted China’s
help as a mediator with Afghanistan, the main issue that brought Foreign
Minister Wang Yi to Islamabad this week, after first stopping in Kabul.
In the news conference here, Wang said
Pakistan was playing a “vital role” to bring peace and stability to the region,
and a spokesman for his office declared that Pakistan has been “at the front
line of the counterterrorism fight.” Aziz, in turn, described Pakistan’s
relationship with China as “strategic,” multidimensional and “all-weather.”
Some Pakistani commentators have warned that
Pakistan is becoming too economically dependent on China and has pinned too
many hopes on a relationship that may be driven largely by Beijing’s search for
profitable investment returns and for platforms to display its global
influence.
But so far, China’s foray into the
mistrustful thicket of Afghan-Pakistani relations appears to have been low-key
and helpful. It previously helped advance proposals by Pakistan to arrange
peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, though they
eventually foundered, and it is now undertaking some shuttle diplomacy between
the two capitals.
Wang’s recent visits to Kabul and Islamabad
led to three-way statements calling for greater cooperation on a variety of
topics, a crisis mechanism to avert confrontations, a three-way dialogue among
the countries’ foreign ministers, and a revival of the Quadrilateral
Coordination Group that originally tried to arrange the Taliban peace talks.
Given the terse and angry tone of recent
exchanges between Afghan and Pakistani officials, such small steps and bland
language sound almost like a diplomatic coup.
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