Since independence in August 1947, Pakistan’s relations with the United States have experienced numerous vicissitudes owing to their divergent interests, priorities and policies. Despite Pakistan’s joining of the US-led anti-Soviet alliance and India’s warm relations with the former Soviet Union during the peak of the Cold War, Washington did not want to make a commitment that could alienate New Delhi. The US priority always was to bring India into its camp. However, the Indian leadership’s refusal forced Washington to seek an alliance with Pakistan. The relations between Washington and Islamabad were not based on shared ideals but by circumstances. The US wanted to contain the former Soviet Union and Pakistan badly needed economic and military aid to resist Indian designs for a regional hegemony.

President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all US and NATO forces from Afghanistan has left the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with no option but to look for military bases to spy on Afghanistan, collect vital information about militant groups and conduct counterterrorism intelligence-based operations after the complete military pullout from Afghanistan. The military bases in Afghanistan are no longer available. Consequently, Pakistan and other neighbours of Afghanistan are now on America’s radar.

Let’s recall the earlier episode when such facilities were allowed to the US. An American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft taking off from the US base at Badaber (NWFP, renamed as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) was shot down by a Soviet Union surface-to-air- missile on May 1, 1960. Its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, an expert in flying the single-seat high altitude plane, successfully parachuted but was captured. The Americans were using the facility with President Ayub Khan’s permission. When grilled by Soviet agencies, Powers stated that he was on a CIA espionage mission and had taken off from a secret airbase in Pakistan near Peshawar. The aircraft was accumulating strategic information on Soviet military installations and nuclear capability by taking photographs from a high altitude.

The incident pushed Pakistan into a highly complex situation. At a diplomatic reception in Moscow, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reached out to Pakistan’s ambassador with a blunt threat saying that “he had looked carefully at the map, taken out a pen and drawn a big red circle around Peshawar.” He warned Pakistan’s policy-makers: “Don’t play with fire, gentlemen.”‘

Pakistan had provided Shamsi airbase to the CIA in Balochistan and it was used for drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions against anti-US militant outfits. On November 26, 2011, the NATO forces attacked two Pakistani check posts near the Durand Line. 25 Pakistani soldiers were martyred in the attack. After this tragic incident, Pakistan formulated new rules of engagement with the US. It also blocked the NATO logistical supplies into landlocked Afghanistan. In December, the CIA vacated Shamsi airbase.

In the Cold War rhetoric and the new geopolitics of tough trade competition, Pakistan needs to balance its policy.

Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda chief, was killed in his Abbottabad compound on May 2, 2011, on a moonless night when the US Naval Special Warfare Group conducted a high profile operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear. Pakistani leadership was kept in the dark about the operation.

After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington still requires military bases to continue its anti-terror combat mission, drone strikes and monitor the activities of the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The search for military bases under a new counterterrorism strategy has been launched.

CIA Director William Burns recently visited Pakistan. The main US objective now is that anti-US militant outfits should not acquire the strength to attack the US in future. The US agencies foresee the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. The bases issue has been discussed by the leaders of the two countries at several levels. The US defence secretary Lloyd J Austin has called the COAS and sought help for US operations in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal. Pakistani officials have told their American counterparts that US operations from Pakistan’s soil will not be permitted.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has categorically said: “Absolutely not. There is no way we are going to allow any bases, any sort of action from Pakistan territory in Afghanistan. Absolutely not.” In an article in The Washington Post, he wrote: “If… the United States, with the most powerful military machine in history, couldn’t win the war from inside Afghanistan in 20 years, how will it do so from bases in our country?”

Taliban, have warned: “We urge neighbouring countries not to allow anyone to do so. If such a step is taken again, it will be a great and historic mistake and disgrace.”

Pakistan’s participation in superpowers’ rivalry in the past has hardly served its national interest. It should be careful not to annoy its all-weather friend, China. Washington and Beijing, the two main orbiters of international order, appear to be on a collision course. Providing military bases to the US can cause a deterioration of relations with Afghanistan and damage Islamabad’s credibility in the comity of nations.

The airbase issue is a test for our policy-makers. Pakistan needs to strike a balance in its policy. After Pakistan rejected the US pressure to choose sides and downgraded relations with the US, it faced pressure through the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

The writer is a KP-based freelance journalist. His areas of interest are South Asian affairs and Afghanistan