LAHORE: Senior journalist and analyst Zahid Husain’s new book ‘No Win War: The Paradox of US-Pakistan Relations in Afghanistan’s Shadow,’ was launched at the Afkar-e-Taza ThinkFest Online, where the author in conversation with Dr Huma Baqai of IBA Karachi opined that the US-Pakistan alliance after 9/11 was a transactional relationship, not a strategic partnership.
According to a press release, at the outset Zahid Husain explained that the Pakistan-US relationship was more out of expediency and compulsion than anything else. “The US-Pakistan alliance after 9/11 was a transactional relationship, not a strategic partnership,” he remarked. He then explained that while US-Pakistan cooperation against al-Qaeda was very effective, it “was missing when it came to taking action against the Taliban leadership”. Husain further explained that “the US didn’t have any understanding of the country when it went to war in Afghanistan”, which mainly led to it being bogged down in the country. Zahid Husain, who has been covering Afghanistan for decades, then mentioned that Pakistan had been asking the US for a broader peace settlement in Afghanistan since 2005, when the Taliban began to regain territory in eastern and southern Afghanistan, to no avail.
Zahid Husain explained that Pakistan’s later support of certain Afghan Taliban, especially the Haqqani network, stemmed from the perceived threat of Indian presence in Afghanistan. “The Pakistani military establishment viewed the expanding Indian presence in its “backyard” as a serious threat to the country’s own security,” he noted. Commenting on the 2008 surge by the US forces in Afghanistan, Husain exclaimed that it was a flawed strategy. “Obama’s biggest blunder, perhaps, was to give 18-month deadline to the US troops for completing their counter-insurgency objectives. That deadline reinforced the confidence of the Taliban that the time was on their side,” he opined. “This mistake of declaring a deadline is again being made by President Biden,” he underscored. Zahid Husain then charted the deteriorating relations between Pakistan and the US, which now not only hinged on different policies on Afghanistan, but also US behaviour towards Pakistan, where the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, the Salala incident and the killings by Raymond Davis, deeply soured relations. “There was nothing much left in the partnership wrecked by allegations of ‘double game’ and ‘deceit’, he argued.
Speaking about the Doha talks, Husain agreed that they had shown that Pakistan still had clout over the Taliban and that a peace agreement with them was the only way out, but called it “transitory”. “The growing strategic alliance between the United States and India and China-Pakistan axis reflect the emerging geopolitics, and this affects the Afghan peace process critically,” Zahid Husain concluded.
