With Washington’s churlish behaviour to Islamabad’s whole-hearted support and cooperation in the war on terror, it was but natural that sooner or later serious rethinking about the entire gamut of US-Pakistan relations would take place. That Pakistani authorities, having been bitten both by the Raymond Davis case and the reward for acceding to pressure for his release the US gave in the form of a vengeful drone attack on a peaceful jirga at Datta Khel in North Waziristan, are currently engaged in the exercise of a review of bilateral ties is a welcome sign.
If anything, they have woken up much later than they should have.Even before Davis’ trigger-happiness shot down two innocent Pakistanis, the US had afforded plenty of evidence of its sheer contempt for Pakistan’s vital interests. The ceaseless drone attacks in violation of our sovereignty and murdering our citizens with impunity; the constant and baseless charge of playing the double game of fighting one group of militants and siding with another; the enervating pressure to do more; mere lip-service recognition of our sacrifices, both of men and material, directly resulting from our involvement in the war on terror – a policy that is charged with these prominent inputs should have made our leadership realise the delusion of an “abiding” American friendship they were living under. And as these instances did not prove strong enough for that realisation to dawn and our leadership continued to bear the pressure, insults and humiliation flowing from the above US strategy, the White House under George W, Bush went the whole hog curry favour with India, violating international law to sign the so-called civilian nuclear deal with it, helping it gain influence in Afghanistan, conniving at its misuse of the diplomatic space there to the harm and chagrin of Pakistan by instigating insurgency-like situation in Balochistan and FATA. The ‘peace-promoting’ Obama followed the hawkish course set by the neocon Bush with greater vigour. – Nation
