Pak-US Relations

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National Security Advisor Moeed Yousaf was only doing his job when he told a foreign radio channel that Islamabad and Washington were “engaged in a positive dialogue to reduce mistrust that overshadows their relations”, of course, but, indeed, there is now greater engagement than just a few months ago. And it’s still not completely clear why the Americans distanced themselves from Pakistan all of a sudden, except perhaps that they felt frustrated about the way in which they had to beat a hasty and embarrassing retreat from Afghanistan and went right back to blaming Islamabad for their problems. With time, though, they are realizing that they are going to need Pakistan because Afghanistan remains a very big concern; hence the de-escalation, of sorts.
Last time Moeed Yousaf got himself into trouble when he talked about US President Joe Biden not telephoning Prime Minister Imran Khan. He had to retract that statement later when he felt the heat. Hopefully this time he’ll prove to be more accurate. But surely the American media can do better than give centre stage to Trump-era Republican hawks, like former US national security advisor John Bolton, who can’t stop harping about Pakistan’s nuclear program. This stunt, too, has long been exposed as the number-one fallback plan whenever our friends in Washington have nothing better to justify their desperation with. It is amply clear that there is no problem with the security of the country’s nuclear arsenal, its principal deterrent, and it doesn’t even whip up the kind of frenzy anymore that these war-mongers would like.
It’s much better for all stakeholders, which means more countries than just Pakistan and America, to concentrate on the business at hand and try and make the Afghan transition successful. For that arranging aid and grants, not blaming each other, is required. There, too, Washington will find that it is its policy of blocking money into the country and freezing its assets abroad that is the biggest reason for the unrest, strife and even deaths in Afghanistan. Therefore, the sooner Washington takes a step back from its isolation, the better for everybody in the whole region.