WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama made headway Tuesday in forging a strategic partnership with Pakistan as a key to achieving success in Afghanistan, but it will take time to dispel mistrust, analysts said.
The president, for example, must still overcome nuclear-armed Pakistan's suspicions about rival India's aims in neighbouring Afghanistan and about whether Washington will become a true long-term partner with Islamabad.
In a speech televised nationwide, Obama billed an ‘effective partnership’ with Pakistan as one of the three ‘core elements’ for defeating extremism, along with increases of both troops and civilians in Afghanistan.
He told cadets at the West Point military academy in New York state that success in Afghanistan was ‘inextricably linked’ to the US partnership with Pakistan.
Obama said the United States is trying to prevent a cancer — one that has also ‘taken root’ in Pakistan's border region — from again spreading through Afghanistan, which provided the bases for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
‘The president did not go into the same detail on Pakistan as Afghanistan, and the political sensitivities on both sides preclude this,’ Anthony Cordesman wrote in a commentary for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
‘He did, however, lay out a clearer position than in the past,’ said Cordesman, a civilian military expert who was in Afghanistan over the summer to advise the US military.
‘We are committed to a strategic relationship with Pakistan for the long term,’ Cordesman said.
The commitment is manifest through a 7.5-billion-dollar aid package for the next five years and through US efforts to win further international support, he said.
In helping Pakistan tackle energy, water and related economic crises, he said, the United States will boost ties with the Pakistani people and decrease the appeal of the extremists.
US support for broader economic reforms will put Pakistan on a path to longer term economic stability and progress, Cordesman added.
Washington will also help Pakistan build on its military successes against militants to ‘eliminate extremist sanctuaries that threaten Pakistan, Afghanistan, the wider region and people around the world,’ he said.
Kim Barker, an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations, praised Obama's speech but said Pakistan still needs to be assured about the wisdom of giving up any support for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
‘Is the United States going to stick around long enough to make it worth it for them to abandon their former friends?’ Barker told AFP.
‘Because if the US leaves and India fills the void in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis are very nervous about that,’ she said.
Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department analyst on Pakistan and Afghanistan, told AFP that Obama's speech broke new ground in showing Pakistan that Washington would become a reliable partner and not abandon it.
‘We are asking Pakistan to do some tough things, but at the same time we want to make it possible for it to do these things,’ Weinbaum said. ‘This is a long-term relationship.’
Weinbaum said that, based on his official contacts, national security adviser General Jim Jones sent a letter to Islamabad to show Washington wants a long-term relationship that meets Pakistan's needs as well.
‘We are not gong to walk away as we have in the past,’ he said, summing up the new approach.
Richard ‘Ozzie’ Nelson, who served with the US military in Afghanistan before becoming a CSIS analyst, welcomed the speech.
‘The president's commitment to an enhanced partnership with Pakistan is encouraging and certainly a step in the right direction,’ he told AFP in an email exchange.
‘However, it will take time to rebuild trust between the US and Pakistan and to see the results of this policy,’ Nelson said.
‘President Obama also will have to ensure that the troop surge does not inadvertently undermine his goals regarding Pakistan. US and Nato operations under this plan could drive Taliban forces into western Pakistan,’ he said.
‘This actually could destabilise Pakistan and would run counter to the president's goal of stabilising Pakistan,’ he added.
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