[While the State Department’s restrictions apply only to diplomats assigned to the embassy in Washington and their family members, Pakistan’s restrictions apply to all American diplomats stationed anywhere in Pakistan.]
By Haroon Janjua and Gardiner
Harris
 |
|
An
anti-American protest in Karachi, Pakistan, in January. Diplomatic relations
between the
United States and Pakistan
are at their lowest level since President Trump’s term
began. Credit
Asif Hassan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
|
ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — Pakistan on
Friday placed travel restrictions on United States diplomats based in the
country, the latest in a series of retaliatory measures that threaten to plunge
already strained relations to their worst level in years.
The restrictions in Pakistan were imposed on
the same day that the United States barred diplomats working at the Pakistani
Embassy in Washington from traveling outside of a 25-mile radius around the
city without approval.
The United States has long complained that
Pakistani police and security officials frequently harass American diplomats
and their staff with traffic stops and citations that require considerable time
and effort to resolve. Six weeks ago, the State Department threatened to impose
a travel restriction on Pakistan’s Washington diplomatic corps if the
harassment did not end by Friday.
On Friday, American officials imposed the
restrictions.
In a letter from Pakistan’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs delivered to the American Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistani
officials said that they had established a fast-track mechanism on April 27 to
address American complaints about harassment but had yet to receive a single
complaint through it.
While the State Department’s restrictions
apply only to diplomats assigned to the embassy in Washington and their family
members, Pakistan’s restrictions apply to all American diplomats stationed
anywhere in Pakistan.
Pakistan imposed other restrictions as well,
including banning tinted windows on embassy cars and the use of diplomatic
plates on diplomats’ personal vehicles. Both sides said they would waive their
respective restrictions on a case-by-case basis.
“We have received official notification of
new restrictions placed on U.S. diplomats in Pakistan,” said Gregory McLean, a
State Department spokesman.
Asked whether the United States would respond
to Pakistan’s even tougher measures, Mr. McLean declined to say.
“We are in regular communication with our
Pakistani counterparts,” he said. “We do not discuss details of diplomatic
conversations.”
Security concerns have constrained some
travel by American diplomats in Pakistan, but the new limits make it impossible
for diplomats to leave some of the country’s major cities.
In January, the Trump administration
announced that it had suspended nearly all of the $1.3 billion in annual
security aid given to Pakistan, an announcement that came just three days after
President Trump complained on Twitter that Pakistan had “given us nothing but
lies & deceit” and accused it of providing “safe haven to the terrorists we
hunt in Afghanistan.”
The Trump administration has also sought to
strengthen ties with India, Pakistan’s bitter rival.
Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council, a
research group based in Washington, said the reciprocal travel restrictions
signaled “a further slide in this fraught relationship.”
Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador
to the United States who now serves as a fellow at the Hudson Institute, a
Washington-based research group, said in an interview that Pakistan had long
treated American diplomats with intense suspicion, assuming that most were
spies “because Pakistan’s own spy agency is so ubiquitous.”
Last month, an American military attaché was
barred from leaving Pakistan after his vehicle struck a motorcycle and killed
one of its riders in Islamabad, an accident that has received wide attention in
Pakistan.
Haroon Janjua reported from Islamabad, and
Gardiner Harris from Washington.