The present state of US-Pakistan relationship is strongly characterized by a blame game, with one party holding the other responsible for any adverse development. In fact, it is the US that has been playing this game with unmatched vigour over its profound policy failures in Afghanistan. The blunders that it committed in this part of the world in many ways surpassed those that it committed in the Middle East following the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan still has a strong presence of not only US troops but those also from other Nato country. How ironic that the world's sole superpower remains clueless about any resolution of the Afghan issue is concerned. The Nuri al-Malkis and Haider al-Abadis of Afghanistan have turned out to be more ineffectual than their Iraqi counterparts. Washington continues to suspect the intentions of a county that is willing to play the most meaningful role towards efforts bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan. No one but the recent and present US presidents should be held responsible for the aggravation of the situation in a landlocked country where Washington has been fighting the longest-ever war in American history, with no success to show for its Afghan misadventure. Allowing India greater space in a war-torn country is a blunder that the Trump administration committed right in its infancy. That chickens coming home to roost is a reality staring the US in its face.

Containing China and supporting India is a policy that has already led to a diminishing of the United States' influence in South and Southeast Asia in the weeks and months that have preceded US Central Command (Centcom) commander General Joseph Votel's visit to Pakistan to prepare ground for the visit of Defence Secretary James Mattis next month. He met all those who matter in the armed forces: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Zubair Hayat, Chief of the Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI chief Lieutenant-General Naveed Mukhtar. Although General Votel has been quoted as saying by the US embassy that he "stressed the [Trump] administration's message that Pakistan must prevent all militants from operating within and across its borders." He has no answer - plausible or implausible - to some searching questions: Why should the United States expect Pakistan to "do more" if it has itself already taken certain policy decisions that are inimical to the Pakistan's strategic and economic interests, such as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor? Why does Washington continue to be in utter denial about the uncounted sacrifices that Pakistan has been rendering in the global war on terror? Why is it always portraying the Coalition Support Fund - which is reimbursement of Pakistan's own expenditure on the war on terror - as a US dole? As an ISPR quotes General Bajwa telling General Votel that Pakistan's committed efforts for peace in Afghanistan are not being reciprocated. Isn't the US aware of the safe havens the beleaguered government of Ashraf Ghani has allowed to exist in the Afghan areas bordering Pakistan from where the terrorists belonging to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the ISIS and their ilk cross into Pakistan to wreak havoc in various parts of this country? The presence of terrorist safe havens in Afghanistan is such an established fact that the Foreign Office Islamabad doesn't even have to point out time and again. Not if the report of the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction itself confirms that more than 43 percent of Afghan territory is not under the control of the Afghan government, which "provides opportunity for all kinds of terrorist groups to use [their] bases as sanctuaries for terrorist activities and Afghanistan's neighbours, including Pakistan, [which] are seriously affected by this situation."

There is little doubt the US-Pakistan relationship is "headed south," to use Americanese here. The biggest lessons for nations come from adverse situations. The US and Pakistan are still in a position to salvage their old relationship that has always been based on mutual strategic interests. But the resolution of this objective will remain elusive in the presence of mutual doubts and suspicions. Even the most pious efforts aimed at securing peace in Afghanistan will keep failing in the absence of mutual trust.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017