The Kayani-Allen meeting held at Islamabad on Saturday reportedly failed to break the stalemate in the efforts to sort out the differences existing between Pakistan and the US over the reopening of the land route to Nato supplies. General Kayani was told that Pakistan should not expect to be invited to the Chicago summit where Afghanistan’s future would be decided unless it allowed the supplies to transit through. Neither would an apology be forthcoming from the US for the Salala incident that had taken the lives of 24 Pakistani soldiers, nor would the CIA stop the drone strikes. Besides, there were other options that the Pentagon had in mind. As a consequence of this development, the reset of Pak-US relations necessitated by a series of disturbing events continues to stand stalled. And the strain in relations between the two countries, following the particularly bad patch since the daylight murder of two Pakistanis by CIA contractor Raymond Davis over a year and four months ago, has persisted, giving rise to deep misunderstandings. The problem is that rather than trying to improve matters after this incident had been put out of the way, the US introduced other irritants in the equation, which are much graver than the Raymond’s affair. For instance, Pakistan was kept completely in the dark about the US intention to launch the May 2 raid of last year at Abbottabad. In the process, its sovereignty was blatantly violated and of what the divergences of opinion in the conduct of war on terror had left of the trust between the two governments and their intelligence agencies was further eroded. As if this was not enough to create bad blood, Nato helicopters struck at Salala checkpost.
The accumulated anger of the public across the length and breadth of Pakistan turned into a veritable outrage, driving an embarrassed government into a corner. It had little choice but to make the drastic move of cutting off the supply route for Nato goods. Perhaps, an immediate positive response from Washington to Islamabad’s demand for an apology would have settled the matter then. But the US arrogantly refused to do anything of the sort and when Parliament adopted the recommendations of its body on national security, it simply stuck to its guns. Later, Congressmen jumped in moving a strikingly hostile resolution on Balochistan and began introducing bills laying humiliating conditions unless the supply line was restored. And now comes the bait of Chicago summit and the implicit threat that Pakistan would be left out of the decision making process about Afghanistan’s future if it did not participate and that would be possible only if it meets the required condition.
As we have stated time and again in these columns, we must not waver in our stand of refusing to reopen the supply line, whatever the temptation and get out of the war on terror as soon as possible.