[Recently, in a reversal of a longstanding policy, American diplomats held face-to-face talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar without Afghan government officials present. It was a significant shift in American strategy toward the Taliban in Afghanistan, and analysts said Mr. Khan’s victory could now set up Pakistan to play the role of spoiler in the peace process.]
By Eric Schmitt
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Imran
Khan, the presumptive prime minister of Pakistan, has voiced past support for
the
Taliban’s fight in the 17-year conflict in Afghanistan and has accused the
United
States of recklessness in its use of drone strikes on suspected
extremists
in Pakistan.CreditAamir Qureshi/
Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
|
WASHINGTON — The rise of Imran Khan, a former cricket star
who is Pakistan’s likely next leader, could complicate new talks between
American diplomats and the Taliban about ending the war in Afghanistan,
officials said, fraying an already strained relationship between the
nuclear-armed Islamic nation and the Trump administration.
Tensions between Pakistan and the United States were
exacerbated in January when the Trump administration suspended nearly all
American security aid to Islamabad.
But the relationship threatens to be further inflamed by Mr.
Khan, who has voiced past support for the Taliban’s fight in the 17-year
conflict in Afghanistan, calling it “justified.” He also has accused the United
States of recklessness in its use of drone strikes on suspected extremists in
Pakistan, signaling he wants them to stop.
Mr. Khan tempered his harsh anti-American language with an
olive twig, if not a branch, in his victory speech last week.
“With the U.S., we want to have a mutually beneficial
relationship,” Mr. Khan said. “Up until now, that has been one-way — the U.S.
thinks it gives us aid to fight their war.”
Recently, in a reversal of a longstanding policy, American
diplomats held face-to-face talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar without
Afghan government officials present. It was a significant shift in American
strategy toward the Taliban in Afghanistan, and analysts said Mr. Khan’s
victory could now set up Pakistan to play the role of spoiler in the peace
process.
“The U.S. doesn’t care much about Pakistan right now, but
that issue will rise to the top,” said Shamila N. Chaudhary, a former State
Department and White House official who oversaw Pakistan issues during the
Obama administration.
“Khan and the Pakistani military will want Pakistan to have
a very strong role in shaping Afghanistan’s future,” Ms. Chaudhary said. “I
don’t think the U.S. is angling for Pakistan to have a strong role.”
Still, “the U.S. needs Pakistan’s acquiescence, if not
cooperation,” said Laurel Miller, a senior foreign policy expert at the RAND
Corporation, who was a top State Department official with responsibility for
Afghanistan and Pakistan in both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Administration officials and independent analysts voiced
doubt that Mr. Khan will have much say in the issues that currently concern
Washington about Pakistan: its extremist groups and steadily growing nuclear
arsenal, as well as Afghanistan.
Those are the domain of Pakistan’s powerful military and
intelligence agencies, which critics say influenced the elections in Mr. Khan’s
favor. Mr. Khan is still trying to gather enough support to form a majority
coalition in Parliament, but the Pakistani news media is already calling him
the prime minister in waiting.
“His ascension will have little impact on U.S.-Pakistani
relations,” Ms. Miller said. “The situation in Afghanistan, the nuclear issues
— those are tightly controlled by the military establishment.”
The State Department has responded tepidly to Mr. Khan’s apparent
victory.
“The United States takes note of yesterday’s election
results in Pakistan,” a State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said last
week in a statement that condemned violence at polling stations and allegations
of elections rigging.
Much of what kept these habitually sparring allies together
over the past two decades is no longer a top priority, analysts said.
Al Qaeda is not the threat it once was in the Pakistani
tribal areas along the Afghanistan border. In each of the past three years, the
United States has carried out fewer than 10 drone strikes in Pakistan, down
from a high of 117 in 2010, according to the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies’ Long War Journal.
At the same time, the number of American troops in
Afghanistan has dropped to about 15,000 from more than 100,000 at the height of
war more than a decade ago. The Pentagon relied on moving many of its war
supplies through Pakistan but is much less dependent now.
Even before American military and intelligence operatives
tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, American officials
chided Pakistan’s military and intelligence agency as harboring or turning a
blind eye to militants.
“Both sides need each other much less than they did in the
past two decades,” said Seth G. Jones, who heads the Transnational Threats
Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Advances in the relationship have been few under the Trump
administration, which in January suspended as much as $1.3 billion in annual
aid to Pakistan — an across-the-board freeze that was the most tangible sign
yet of Washington’s frustration with the country’s refusal to crack down on
terrorist networks operating there.
The decision came 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 aid suspension underscored how quickly ties with
Pakistan deteriorated after Mr. Trump took office.
But it mirrored several previous rifts between the countries
over Pakistan’s role as a sanctuary for extremist groups — a role that has poisoned
Islamabad’s up-and-down relations with Washington since the terrorist attacks
of September 2001.
Administration officials emphasized at the time that the
freeze was temporary and could be lifted if Pakistan changed its behavior.
That has not happened, despite repeated urging by top
American officials that the Pakistani government cut off contact with militants
and reassign intelligence agents with links to extremists — a goal that
Republican and Democratic administrations have pursued for years with little
success.
Much of the aid earmarked for Pakistan is now being
allocated elsewhere, State Department officials said on Tuesday.
There have been a few recent bright spots in the
relationship. Last September, with the help of American intelligence, Pakistani
commandos rescued an American woman, Caitlan Coleman; Joshua Boyle, her
Canadian husband; and their three children.
But analysts and diplomats say it is more likely that Mr.
Khan will move Pakistan much closer to the expanding sphere of China, a
neighbor that he has praised conspicuously as a role model and that Islamabad
increasingly relies on for aid to shore up its weak economy.
Last week, Mr. Khan’s party tweeted in Chinese — apparently
for the first time — about “strengthening and improving” ties with China.
Whether the relationship remains in traditional diplomatic
and security channels or is elevated into Mr. Trump’s realm of personal
diplomacy remains unclear.
“I think Trump and Imran Khan would get along fine if they
get the chance,” said Vikram Singh, a former top State and Defense department
official in the Obama administration who is a senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress, a liberal think tank.
“Each country resents its ongoing dependence on the other,”
Mr. Singh said, “but ultimately, the U.S. and Pakistan need to find ways to
cooperate despite deep mistrust.”