Pak tries to outflank US and India in Kabul with China card

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Pak tries to outflank US and India in Kabul with China card​

WASHINGTON: The diplomatic form book shows that every time Pakistan is hauled up by its longtime patron United States, its leaders hare off to Beijing or Riyadh for solace and stash, comfort and cash. Small change in the script this time.

Shortly before the top American military official Mike Mullen virtually called Pakistan a terrorist state last week, a charge compounded by Wikileaks cables showing Washington's profound distrust of Islamabad, Pakistan's prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani hotfooted it to Kabul. There, flanked by his military supremo Ashfaq Kiyani and chief spook Shuja Pasha, he is said to have made an audacious pitch to the beleaguered Afghan President Hamid Karzai: Let's both ditch US and hitch our stars to China.

The development, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, has stunned Washington at a time US appears confused and vulnerable on the geo-political and domestic front, with big personnel changes in the Obama administration, a President seeking re-election, a struggling economy, and rising tensions across the world. There are cries of betrayal and disbelief at perceived Pakistani perfidy in some circles, with calls for re-ordering the relationship.

According to the WSJ account of the April 16 meeting, Gilani bluntly told Karzai that the Americans had failed them both, the US policy of trying to open peace talks while at the same time fighting the Taliban made no sense, and he should forget about allowing a long-term US. military presence in his country.

Gilani also reportedly said America's economic problems meant it couldn't be expected to support long-term regional development and argued that a better partner would be China, Pakistan's "all-weather" friend.

There is no word on whether Karzai, who has also been having problems with the Obama administration, took the bait. The Journal said Karzai was wavering on the overtures with pro and anti-American factions around him trying to sway him to their side.

But there is growing anger in Washington at Pakistan's gambit, which comes at a time Islamabad is living on US dole even as Americans tax payers are starting to question US munificence. Pakistan's finance minister Hafeez Shaikh was in Washington seeking to speed up US aid and another Washington-supported bail-out from IMF even as Gilani, shepherded by Kayani and Pasha, was trying to outflank America in Kabul.

Pakistan has expectedly denied the exchanges. "Reports claiming Gilani-Karzai discussion abt Pakistan advising alignment away fm US are inaccurate," the country's ambassador to the US., Hussain Haqqani tweeted on Wednesday. The Pakistani foreign office spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua termed it "the most ridiculous report we have come across."

But US experts are taking it seriously and there has been a flurry of analyses on what the Pakistani gambit could lead to. "Whether the article quotes Gilani accurately is not the central issue. There have been enough indications over the last year that Pakistan is not on board with the US. strategy in Afghanistan," said Heritage Foundation's Lisa Curtis, a former CIA analyst. "It is plausible that Pakistan has decided to start playing its cards with Afghan and Chinese leaders to try to achieve its own objectives in Afghanistan."

Some analysts feel the contours of the new great game in the region point to a confluence of interest between China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia on one side and India, US, Iran and Russia on the other side. But "China consolidates the former while the US splits the latter," says Nitin Pai, fellow at the Takshashila Foundation.

A more benign explanation offered by Americans for the Pak-Afghan tango and the deliberate leaking of its details by Kabul is that the players are trying to get the best bargain from Washington as US seeks to withdraw troops from the region. Yet, in a reflection of US. concerns about Pakistan's overtures, the commander of the US.-led coalition, Gen. David Petraeus, is said to have met Karzai three times since April 16 to reassure the Afghan leader that he has America's support and to nudge forward progress on the strategic partnership deal which will define their future relationship, including American bases and support.

Pakistan, for obvious reasons, resents and fears a pro-American, pro-Indian regime in Kabul that will keep out the Taliban yahoos that Islamabad and its axis backs.

 

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Pakistan Urged Afghanistan to Distance Itself From the West, Officials Say


KABUL, Afghanistan — With Afghan discussions under way about the future involvement of the United States in the country and the prospect of long-term military bases, the Pakistani government has urged Afghanistan to distance itself from the West and tie its future more tightly to that of China and Pakistan, according to Afghans and Americans who are knowledgeable about a meeting between the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
During a landmark April 16 meeting here in Kabul, for which the most powerful figures in the Pakistani government flew to Afghanistan, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan suggested that Afghanistan needed to look to China, a power in the ascendance, rather than hewing closely to the United States.
"There was a mention of China in the meeting, China as a country, as an emerging economic power, and that maybe we should reach out to a new global economic power," said an Afghan official knowledgeable about the meeting. "And there was the suggestion that Afghanistan and Pakistan should strengthen relations."
"You couldn't tell exactly what they meant, whether China could possibly be an alternative to the United States, but they were saying it could help both countries," the official said, referring to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The official asked not to be named because of the delicacy of the subject, which he was not authorized to speak about publicly.
The focus on China makes sense because it is a great power that would be acceptable to Afghanistan as an ally in ways that Russia never could be because of its history as a hated occupier of Afghanistan during the 1980s. And, from Pakistan's point of view, China provides a counterbalance to India, its archenemy.
The effort to draw Afghanistan away from the United States and toward China was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, and it was one of several proposals floated by Pakistan at the meeting, according to the Afghan news media. In Afghanistan, a number of Pakistan's other supposed proposals have gotten far more notice — although it is not clear that they were portrayed accurately or proposed at all.
All the leaks, however, reflect the fears of different Afghan factions about the direction of Afghanistan's policy. One supposedly leaked list of Pakistan's proposals stated that the Pakistanis had asked that members of the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally based in Pakistan, be given a share of government power. People close to the Afghan government emphatically denied that Pakistan requested anything like that. "It's ridiculous," said a government official.
Another proposal apparently brought up again was an offer from Pakistan to train the Afghan National Army, said an American official knowledgeable about the talks, but who also did not wish to quoted by name because of the delicacy of the subject.
On Tuesday the Pakistani government released a statement saying that it rejected the "baseless assertions" made in the Wall Street Journal article and that "it fully supports an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned process for peace and reconciliation," as well as "the key role of the United States in promoting stability, peace and harmony in Afghanistan."
The statement noted that a trilateral meeting of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States was scheduled to be held in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, early next month, with the purpose of having "strategic coherence and clarity."
Stepping back, the jockeying seems reminiscent of the 19th-century Great Game days when larger powers sought to claim and influence Afghanistan. Then, Russia and England were vying for power. Today there are many more geopolitical actors: the United States, China, Iran, Russia, India and above all Pakistan, with which Afghanistan has close ties and deep enmities.
Pakistan, more than any other country, has leverage over Afghanistan's future because so much support for the insurgency in Afghanistan emanates from Pakistan's tribal areas and because Afghanistan is landlocked and will always be reliant on Pakistan for supplies. If the Pakistani government moved decisively to halt the insurgent activity, the war in Afghanistan would be greatly diminished.
For now the Afghan government is weighing the Pakistani requests, according to people close to the government and to its opponents. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a onetime presidential opponent of President Hamid Karzai, who served as Afghanistan's foreign minister and has been allied with the United States, said he saw this as a moment when Afghanistan was faced with a choice about which way to go. He said that he had some knowledge of what was discussed at the meeting and that the Pakistanis had brought a document with them that outlined their thinking.
"They said that the goals of the United States are confusing and uncertain, the American force is not reliable, and their power is not a reliable power," Dr. Abdullah said.
That perspective is influenced heavily by Pakistan's increasingly negative view of the United States, said Mr. Abdullah — a point echoed by other officials knowledgeable about the meeting.
"One of the schools of thought in the Pakistani establishment is that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is not for the stabilization of Afghanistan, but is for seizing Pakistan's nuclear assets in due time," Mr. Abdullah said.
However, the critical question for Afghanistan is what would it get out of closer ties with Pakistan and more distance from the United States, he said. "They have failed to recognize Afghanistan as a sovereign country," he said, referring to Pakistani government officials. "They still consider it as their back yard."
"There isn't anything in it for Afghanistan," he added. "It doesn't talk about the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, so it's like giving Pakistan a protectorate role vis-à-vis Afghanistan," he said.
People close to the talks said Mr. Karzai was considering Pakistan's points carefully, but had not yet committed to most of them and viewed them with caution because of Pakistan's long history of destabilizing Afghanistan through its support for the Taliban.
"The discussions were a good start; there are many issues to be discussed," said an official close to the talks. "Of course it's a long way to go because in terms of our past experience with Pakistan, we would need to see some serious, pragmatic steps."

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