The United States and Pakistan are like an incompatible couple who can't help bickering when together while well aware that divorce is not an option. The awkward joint appearance of US President Barrack Obama and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for a press briefing after their White House meeting on 23 October, when they declined to take questions from reporters, aptly summed up the troubled relationship. This dysfunctional kinship, however, is moving towards a climax as the US withdraws forces and equipment from Afghanistan primarily through Pakistan.
The bottom line is that the glue holding the two countries together consists of more negative than positive elements. Washington needs Islamabad in its ongoing war on Islamist terrorism - a desperate necessity at least until the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan. And cash-strapped Pakistan is humiliatingly dependent on handouts from Washington and US-sanctioned International Monetary Fund loans.
This dependency exists against the background of mutual Pakistan-American mistrust at the popular level.
A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center shows that only 11 percent of Pakistanis have a favorable view of America. An earlier survey by the Pew Center and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace revealed that only 10 percent of Americans have a great or fair amount of trust in Pakistan. It also showed that 97 percent of Pakistanis familiar with US drone strikes held a negative view of them. "Those who are familiar with the drone campaign also overwhelmingly (94%) believe the attacks kill too many innocent people," stated the report. "Nearly three-quarters (74%) say they are not necessary to defend Pakistan from extremist organizations." In stark contrast, a survey by the Washington Post-ABC News in February 2012 found that 83 percent of Americans supported Washington's drone attacks.
Reflecting popular opinion, Sharif, appearing next to Obama, said "The use of drones is not only a violation of our territorial integrity but they are also detrimental to our efforts to eliminate terrorism from our country." His government was committed to bringing them to an end, he added.
Obama left Sharif's words - delivered at the brief briefing in a tone so soft that reporters strained to hear him - stand alone, and refrained from making any related statement of his own. Strikingly, the word "drone" was missing in their 2,500-word joint statement. By contrast, the term "terrorism" appeared 13 times and "nuclear" 10 times - not in the context of parity with the US-India civil nuclear agreement that Sharif wanted, but in the context of "nuclear terrorism."
Well practiced in the art of politically expedient leaks, the Obama administration disarmed Sharif's protest on the drones - on which he had secured all party backing in Pakistan's National Assembly - by briefing Greg Miller and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.
On the day Sharif met Obama, the Post published their story. Citing hitherto classified documents of the US Central Intelligence Agency and Pakistan's diplomatic memos, Miller and Woodward showed that, contrary to its vociferous denunciations of drone strikes for years, Pakistan's government had clandestinely endorsed the campaign and received classified briefings on the attacks and casualty counts.
However, over the years the campaign has widened. Initially it was directed at "high value" Al Qaeda targets, and their number was limited. Between December 2007 and September 2008, during the presidency of George W. Bush, there were only 15 such attacks. In contrast, their number rocketed to 117 in 2010 under Obama, when Asaf Ali Zardari of the Pakistan People's Party was his Pakistani counterpart. So far, according to Pakistan's Defense Ministry, since 2008 the United States has launched 317 drone strikes in Pakistan, resulting in 2,227 deaths, including 67 civilians.
These attacks are set to continue despite the fact that the 18 October report by Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, concluded that they violate international law. With that died any chance of a peace agreement between the Pakistani government and the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan - or TTP, the Movement of Taliban in Pakistan - an umbrella organization of militant Pakistani jihadist groups.
