LAHORE: Although the United States was amongst the first few nations that established diplomatic relationship with Pakistan on October 20, 1947 or just two months and six days after the country’s inception, the largely interest-based bilateral ties between Washington DC and Islamabad have had an extremely bumpy ride during the last seven decades.
It goes without saying that this bilateral relationship has been bitterly hostile at times and a high level of mistrust has largely dominated the proceedings. Since 1947, as research conducted by the “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” shows the United States has dished out nearly $70 billion to Pakistan under various heads and for multiple reasons, ranging from curbing terrorism to health and education, etc.
The aid numbers have undoubtedly waxed and waned from time to time as US geopolitical interests in the region have been shifting quite often. However, while peaks in aid have followed years of neglect, the financial assistance from Washington DC to Islamabad has witnessed suspension or cuts at crucial moments too!
(References: The Greenbook or the US Overseas Loans and Grants: Obligations and Loan Authorizations, eminent American media outlets and a Congressional Research Service document titled "Direct Overt US Aid Appropriations and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan")
Research shows Pakistan had played a crucial role in arranging the 1972 Richard Nixon visit to China, which had led to normalization of ties between the two estranged countries. The US and China were at daggers drawn in 1972. In 1979, the US had raised concerns over Pakistan’s nuclear programme. In 1990, the Pressler Amendment had required the then US president to certify before the Congress that Pakistan did not have nukes. It had created a stir. The US was not happy with Pakistan’s nuclear tests of May 28, 1998. The world super power was also least amused when Nawaz Sharif was ousted in a military coup by General Musharraf in 1999.
In recent years, as a result of the CIA contractor Raymond Davis firing incident in Lahore on January 27, 2011, the May 2, 2011 secret American operation in Abbottabad which had resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden and then the November 26, 2011 NATO attack on Salala Check-post on the Pak-Afghan border that led to deaths of 28 Pakistani soldiers, the ties between the two countries under review had become increasingly strained. And then successive US administrations have demanded in vain the release of Dr Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who had run a fake vaccination campaign leading to the raid on bin Laden's Abbottabad compound in May 2011.
In February 2015, the 2016 US State Department budget for international affairs had recommended approximately $900 million for Pakistan, out of which $500 million were for countering terrorism.
A lawmaker from California, Dana Rohrabacher, had said that America's biggest friends were those who consider America's enemy their enemy. He added that the man (Dr Shakil Afridi) who helped America find Osama bin Laden was held in jail in Pakistan. In response to the congressman, former US Secretary of State John Kerry had said that the matter was raised before the then Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari and prime minister Nawaz Sharif (while he was in power) that keeping Afridi in jail was an injustice and against principles that the US upheld.
Then, we all heard in May 2016 that the US Congress, which had withdrawn funds for an F-16 deal to force Pakistan to act against the Haqqani network just a week before, was considering another cut in a bid to persuade Islamabad to release Dr Shakil Afridi. It was also in May 2016 that Pakistan had condemned Donald Trump’s “ignorant” claim that he could force Islamabad to free a doctor who helped the CIA track down Osama bin Laden.
Donald Trump was a US presidential candidate at that time and was yet to be elected to lead the world super power.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the then interior minister, told Donald Trump through media that Pakistan was not a colony of the United States, asserting that the country would itself decide the fate of Shakil Afridi. Another bone of contention between Pakistan and the United States is the Lahore-based cleric Hafiz Saeed, whose organization Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), along with other proscribed outfits, has been prohibited on Monday from taking donations from companies and individuals.
The Indian NDTV has reported: “Pakistan has banned 'Tehreek-e-Azaadi Jammu and Kashmir', a front for terrorist Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa, amid international pressure to act against terror outfits and their funding. Tehreek-e-Azaadi gained prominence as a Jamaat-ud-Dawa front when it held rallies and displayed banners and streamers across Pakistan on February 5, days after Hafiz Saeed was put under ‘house arrest’ for 90 days in Lahore. The JuD front was put on the list of "proscribed organisations" on June 8, 2017 ‑ a fortnight before the meeting of Financial Action Task Force in Spain, according to a list available on the website of Pakistan's National Counterterrorism Authority.
In April 2012, The United States had first placed a $10 million bounty on the head of Hafiz Saeed. The then US Undersecretary of State, Wendy Sherman, while addressing a gathering at the Aspen Institute on her maiden visit to India, had said that both Hafiz Saeed and his brother-in-law, Abdul Rehman Makki, carried a bounty on their heads. The reward was announced for the capture or furnishing information which could lead to their capture.
Hafiz Saeed is and was considered by the US and India to be involved in orchestrating the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks under the alleged tutelage of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Pakistan had banned the Lashkar-e-Taiba in January 2002, and its charity group, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a month after the November 2008 suicide terror assault on Mumbai. Hafiz Saeed had at one point been placed under house arrest but was freed in November 2017 by the Lahore High Court which said there was no evidence that he was involved in any wrongdoing.
Reacting to the release, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert had said the Lashkar-e-Taiba group was a designated foreign terrorist organisation responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, including a number of American citizens. "The Pakistani government should make sure that he is arrested and charged for his crimes," she was quoted as saying.
Years 2014 and 2015 had witnessed both Pakistan and America treading on the road to rapprochement as the United States had used drone missiles to strike Pakistan's most-wanted militants like Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah in November 2014, though the key militant had managed to survive.
According to the Washington Times, Lt Gen Joseph Anderson of the US Army had admitted that Pakistani military’s Zarb-e-Azb operation against militants in North Waziristan had ‘fractured’ the Haqqani Network ‑ long accused by the United States of having a safe harbor in Pakistan.
Apart from the above-mentioned happenings which led to serious tensions between Islamabad and Washington DC, following are some of the major incidents that marred Pak-US ties:
a) Several incidents of violence against American officials and US diplomats stationed in Pakistan turned the relationship sour. In November 1979, rumours that the United States had participated in the seizure of the Masjid Al-Haram, the Grand Mosque in Makkah, provoked a mob to attack the US Embassy in Islamabad. The Chancery was set ablaze, resulting in a loss of life.
b) In 1989, an attack on the American Center in Islamabad had resulted in the killing of six Pakistanis in crossfire with the police.
c) In March 1995, two American employees of the US Consulate in Karachi were killed and one wounded in an attack.
d) In November 1997, four US businessmen were brutally murdered while being driven to work in Karachi.
e) Pakistan tested its nukes on May 28, 1998 in retaliation to Indian nuclear tests conducted a fortnight earlier. This proved a major setback for the never-so-exemplary Pak-US ties.
f) In March 2002, a suicide attacker had detonated explosives in a church in Islamabad, killing two Americans associated with the embassy.
g) Unsuccessful attacks by terrorists on the Consulate General in Karachi in May 2002 also heightened the Pak-US diplomatic tension.
h) Another bomb was detonated near American and other businesses in Karachi in November 2005, killing three people and wounding 15 others.
i) On March 2, 2006, a suicide bomber had detonated a car laden with explosives near a vehicle carrying an American Foreign Service officer to the US Consulate Karachi. The diplomat, the consulate’s locally-employed driver and three other people were killed in the blast, while 52 others were wounded.
j) In September 2008, an explosives-laden truck exploded at Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel, allegedly killing US Embassy personnel.