ISLAMABAD: Warming US ties with India are playing on Pakistani insecurities at a time when President Pervez Musharraf is under fire for the conduct of a “war on terrorism” forced on him by the United States.
Analysts say by the time US President George W. Bush arrived home on Sunday at the end of a South Asia tour, Pakistan had little new to show for an alliance with Washington that has pitted its army against its own people on the Afghan border.
To add to Pakistan’s chagrin, before coming to Islamabad Bush struck an accord in New Delhi to provide India with American know-how for its civilian nuclear programme.
“There was a sharp contrast between the treatment meted out to India and Pakistan,” said Talat Masood, a retired general turned political commentator.
Some analysts believe hardliners in the army could be growing impatient with both the conduct of the war on terrorism, and Musharraf’s inability to get more support from the United States in dealings with India.
Meeting media on Monday, President Pervez Musharraf played down rivalry with India, saying Pakistan did not share its neighbour’s “global and regional aspirations”.
“We are not in competition with India,” he said, declaring Pakistan’s priorities were defensive and the creation of jobs and reduction of poverty.
But Masood said the US aim to build up India as a regional counterweight to China would inevitably fuel Pakistani unease.
“Whether the fears of Indian hegemony are real or imagined, it has heightened Pakistan’s insecurities.”
Pakistan has lurched in and out of military rule in the 59 years since it sprang into being from the partition of India.
Both India and Afghanistan have regularly accused Pakistan of using militant groups to try to destabilise them.
Since joining a US-led war on terrorism in 2001 Musharraf has been the target of several assassination attempts, with several junior military men convicted of involvement in plots.
Following the furore over Danish cartoons of the holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the bloodshed in tribal regions has given Islamists more ammunition against Musharraf with an election due next year.
“The real agenda of Bush in Pakistan is to speed up military operations in the tribal areas,” Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of the six-party Islamist opposition alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, wrote in a local newspaper on Sunday.
“The height of misfortune is that our armed forces are on the warpath with their own nation,” wrote the MMA leader, who had spent Bush’s visit under house arrest to stop him leading protests.
Pakistan constantly seeks US support to make up for its own lack of firepower against a bigger, stronger neighbour, but the United States resists, as Bush did during his visit, any attempt to drag it into the core dispute over Kashmir.
Instead, analysts say, Washington pays for its influence with arms supplies and defence accords to please the Pakistan army.
Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of US security assistance. Washington has pledged $1.5 billion of military financing from 2005 to 2009, and last year said it would sell Pakistan the F-16 warplanes it has long wanted.
Diplomacy conducted on such terms lacks long-term vision, according to Hussain Haqqani, a former adviser to three Pakistani prime ministers, and now teaching at Boston University.
“Pakistan always looks on the (US) relationship in quid pro quo terms, expecting something in return,” said Haqqani. “India takes a longer view, building up relations at multi-dimensional levels and ends up getting more.”
Indeed, according to Haqqani, trying to keep up with the Indians has been Pakistan’s preoccupation.
“Pakistan never asked for civil nuclear agreement until India got one,” he remarked.
Bush gave Musharraf short shrift when he raised the possibility of getting a similar nuclear accord for Pakistan, even though it is just two years since its top scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted selling nuclear components to, among others, Iran.
