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| Indo-US ties, reception to Modi rattle Pakistan | | Islamabad fears us sanctions | 
By Manzoor Ahmed
The Pakistani Establishment, both military and civil, have been rattled by the growing proximity between India and the US and the “rock star-like” reception Prime Minister Narendra Modi is receiving during his America tour.
More ominously, Pakistan is worried at the return of the US economic sanctions, like it had happened under George Bush Senior administration in the 1990s and had continued under Clinton.
Pakistani media reports complain that their Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif proved no match to Modi at the United Nations where the only thing he did, as per the insistence of the civilian hawks and the military establishment, to raise the Kashmir issue and call for UN intervention.
They are sore that this did not cut much ice. While Modi was all over New York and later, California, meeting big corporate honchos and hard-selling India as an investment destination, all that Nawaz had was the UN platform and then a quiet dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Even the meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry did not yield much result. Kerry did urge both India and Pakistan to hold talks, but did not buy the Sharif line on Kashmir.
“What is Sharif doing?” The Nation demanded. It called Modi “an astute politician with the ability to outsmart rivals and he is aiming for the "political and military dominance of India".
AFGHANISTAN FACTOR
There is acute concern that like it had done after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in the early 1990s, after which it needed Pakistan less and less, the United States is once again getting tough with Pakistan, now that most of the American troops have withdrawn from Afghanistan.
The blame is on the US for forsaking Pakistan that it does not need much and raising the terror bogey in the joint statement issued at the end of Kerry’s talks with India’s Sushma Swaraj. Pakistan has been specifically mentioned – adversely – in the statement and so are Pakistan-based militant outfits.
In a critical editorial on the Indo-US Joint Declaration, Dawn newspaper (September 25) expressed concern that “Not only did Pakistan earn an explicit reference — “call for Pakistan to bring to justice the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attack” — but so did Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Haqqani network and the so-called D Company.
“Over and on top of that, there is specific condemnation of the Gurdaspur and Udhampur militant attacks earlier in the summer — attacks that India blames on Pakistan-based militants.”
Setting aside emotions on US-Pak relationship, the newspaper noted that the bilateral ties are “essentially transactional” and that Islamabad has “nothing to offer” to Washington. This is despite the fact that the US is the largest business partner of Pakistan and also makes some investment in Pakistan.
“Because national security here has been militarised, there continues to be a degree of security cooperation between the US and Pakistan. But there is little real understanding, sympathy or even interest in Pakistan in the US beyond the narrow security-based relationship,” the newspaper said, ostensibly with reference to the fading cooperation on Af-Pak.
It is concerned because as the editorial puts it, “Pakistan has few friends in the US Congress, suggesting more episodes such as the recent withholding of a portion of CSF funds may be on the cards.”
This is a far cry from the era of Gen. Ziaul Haq when top officials of the US Pentagon and State Department and even top military generals were on good terms with the Pakistani leadership.
The real question comes at the end of the editorial: “this country and its leadership need to ask themselves a hard question: why does Pakistan continue to be such a hospitable place for extremist and militants elements that threaten the region and friendly countries further away?”
(The author is Kashmir based Journalist)
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