Guest Column | Trump Card

Radhavinod Raju

The pre-dawn airborne NATO attack on two Pakistani posts on the AF-PAK border in Mohmand Agency on November 26, resulting in the deaths of 26 Pakistani soldiers, has given the Pakistan government a chance to re-set their ‘strategic’ partnership with the United States. The attack has once again raised serious question marks on the US-Pakistan strategic relationship, and their war on terror.

One of the actions Pakistan had threatened to take was to boycott the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan which was to take place on December 5. Pakistan carried out the threat by boycotting this important Conference, though over a hundred countries participated and renewed their commitments for peace, stability and development of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s proxies, the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Omar, headquartered in Quetta, also boycotted the Conference. If the aim of the Conference was Afghan reconciliation, then the Conference failed to achieve its principal aim. Apart from boycotting the Bonn Conference, the other major actions taken by the Pakistanis was to block the supplies to the US and ISAF forces which passed through Pakistan, and are extremely vital for their operations in Afghanistan, asking the United States to vacate the Shamsi Air base in Balochistan from where the Drones were being operated against the al Qaeda and Taliban militants, mainly in North Waziristan and also in South Waziristan, and the decision to revisit the terms of their engagement with the United States and NATO/ISAF ‘on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual interest and mutual respect’. The Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said that “our willingness to cooperate with the international community on counter-terrorism has not been understood in its proper perspective. The notion to give Pakistan a ‘to do’ list and the mantra of ‘do more’ have caused immense resentment.”

Around this time, India and Afghanistan entered into a strategic partnership with provisions for training the Afghan security forces in India. This has certainly not gone well with the Pakistanis. T