Critical Triangle continues...

Evidently the Pakistan Army was still not willing to accept the right of civilians to debate and define national interest.

By June 2009, the Pakistani Taliban had come too close to Islamabad for comfort and the army launched operations in the Swat valley.

The Washington Post read this as the beginning of a strategic shift in Pakistan’s mindset. A security official was quoted as saying “there is a realisation that the threat to Pakistan in modern times in not Indian divisions and tanks, it is a teenaged boy wearing a jacket full of explosives.” However within a few months, the debate had returned to India being the prime threat.

In the fall, US National Security Advisor, James Jones, arrived in Islamabad with the specifics of the “grand bargain” that Biden had proposed on his visit. The core of this was “new patterns of cooperation between and among India, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

This new grand bargain was apparently based on then candidate Barack Obama’s essay in Foreign Affairs where he claimed “I will encourage dialogue between Pakistan and India to work toward resolving their dispute over Kashmir and between Afghanistan and Pakistan to resolve their historic differences and develop the Pashtun border region.” Included in the package was an indication that America would nudge India towards talks on Kashmir. But the carrots also came with a stick; Jones indicated that “US strategic interests lay east of Afghanistan.”

The Pakistani response was a 50 page rejoinder from Gen Kayani, which according to Ambassador Haqqani was a repeat of President Ayub Khan’s note to Eisenhower in 1959, repeating old clichés and the severity of the India threat.

To be continued....