Our Quote of the Day comes from the Pakistani paper “Dawn,” which in a piece by Cyril Almeida argues that the uneasy relationship between the United States and Pakistan will remain the same. Here’s part of it:
With all the hand-wringing and ‘what ifs’ going around in recent days, you would think nobody has a clue how the Pak-US relationship is likely to play out in the days ahead.
Rubbish. Most of the answers can be guessed quite easily.
Will the Americans carry out another unilateral OBL-style mission to take out a highest-value target in Pakistan? Of course.
If they figure out where Mullah Omar and Ayman Al Zawahiri are, the US will take them out pretty much like how they took out OBL.
Mullah Omar is the spiritual leader of the Afghan Taliban, a part of which the Pakistani security establishment thinks will help ensure the Indians don’t encircle us through their Northern Alliance proxies.
Who really thinks the Americans are going to, in a nod to our ‘sovereignty’, plan a joint operation to take out Mullah Omar if they find he’s in Pakistan?
And Zawahiri? If the Americans didn’t trust us with the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda, why would they trust us with the brains of the outfit?
What you will get, though, is a bagful of obscure ‘high-value targets’ swooped up in joint raids, giving Pakistan some cover to
argue that it is in a partnership of equals with the US.Will the Americans continue to funnel money towards the Pakistan military and will the Pakistan military continue to accept the money? You bet.
Listen carefully to the signals coming out of DC and you’ll pick up on concerns that Pakistan’s fiscal situation may not allow the army to continue operations against the Pakistani Taliban if the US pulls the plug on military financing.The logic is straightforward enough. Pakistan isn’t going after the bad guys that bother the US, but at least it is going after some bad guys.
Better something than nothing, particularly since the militants here have increasingly evinced an ‘internationalist’ outlook.
As for the security establishment still pocketing fistfuls of dollars, ask yourself this, in all the orgy of petulance and anger and even self-flagellation, have you heard even an anonymously mumbled stray word suggesting the ‘humiliated’ armed forces
would reject the dollars and toys being funnelled their way?This, after all, is the same security establishment that went into paroxysms when the Americans tried to funnel money towards the civilians via Kerry-Lugar.
So money will continue to flow and it will continue to be pocketed.
What about Afghanistan? That too will continue more or less as it has been, i.e. with a halting convergence on an end state acceptable to the Americans, the Taliban and Pakistan.
Ultimately, the situation in Afghanistan is controlled by two factors:
Go to the link above to read the rest.
h/T RealClearWorld
UPDATE: Pakistan feels the issue is territorial sovereignty. CNN video:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.