WASHINGTON, Dec 23: Pakistan’s policies are not driven by any strategic over-reach to Afghanistan and this is appreciated in both the US and Afghan capitals, says Ambassador Sherry Rehman.

Ambassador Rehman, who recently completed her first year as Islamabad’s envoy in Washington, told Dawn that the United States and Pakistan had a “joint strategic motive” for stabilising the region.

“As Pakistan would be the first to suffer the fallout of Afghan conflict, the US would not like to reverse all development gains in an irresponsible exit, or leave Afghanistan with a security vacuum,” she explained.

Ambassador Rehman said that although relations between the United States and Pakistan had improved greatly, sometimes it “becomes very challenging” to promote Pakistan here, particularly in the face of a fairly hostile media narrative.

“As you know, the smallest negative news item from Pakistan becomes a headline here,” she complained.

The ambassador said that Pakistan was taking extra care to demonstrate it was engaging at the highest levels with a broad base of Afghan leaders and groups, and that Kabul was secure in Pakistan’s friendship and motive.

“Perhaps now they see on the ground that Pakistan is not driven by any strategic over-reach in its approach to Afghanistan,” she said.

“History is a painful teacher, but we only profit if we don’t repeat at least what is in our control. And as many empires have seen, Afghan territory can only be governed by Afghan leaders.”

Highlighting recent positive changes in Pakistan’s relations with the United States, the ambassador said: “Cooperation defines the working dynamic between the two governments right now, as opposed to the stalemate we saw last November.”

All interactions between the two governments, she noted, were mediated with full transparency, unlike before. Significant progress had been made on IEDs, “something slowly but increasingly acknowledged by the US administration, although I am not sure the full briefing has filtered down to congressional committees who audit our region”.

The ambassador said that now US officials were also acknowledging that Pakistan “demonstrates an appetite for change, and on many fronts, try to walk the talk too. It is not as if we say one thing, and do another”.

The Pakistani envoy insisted that credibility was key in all diplomacy, as in the hyper-media global environment, the age of empty posturing was over.

Pakistan has also succeeded in making US interlocutors understand that “in terms of policy execution the gap between commitment and capacity is not easy to bridge”.

Ambassador Rehman said that Pakistan was an important country in its own right and would like the US to engage with it on the basis of its inherent strengths and potential.

“Our job is to … have Pakistan and its compulsions, its changing democratic texture, better understood,” she said.

The future of core foreign policy agendas of the two countries will be determined by societies investing in each other’s people, business and human resources, not solely by states engaging with each other, she said.

Ambassador Rehman said her job also required her to “intensively engage with all players in Congress, irrespective of their views and try to bring a combination of information, persuasion and strategy to a very busy powercapital.”