Daily Times

Donald Trump isn’t a man who believes in doing things by half. On the same day that a US current affairs magazine splashed on its front cover the cheeky image of the ‘Lazy Boy’ president, lounging on a Joey-from-Friends chair, snacking while channel surfing — the apprentice-president was said to be considering firing his commander in Afghanistan.

While the move may or may not have been prompted by the desire to tweet some more about #fakenews — it seems that frustration over American troops’ apparent failure to win the longest war in US history was behind the development.

This is not the time for Trump to show himself to be a Man of Action. It is time for him to try on for size the guise of Man of Strategy. Meaning that a change of guard is hardly going to turn the tide against a resurgent Taliban and an emerging ISIS. Especially given that the former has been described on and off for the last 16 years as resurging.

However, what this does represent is good news for Pakistan. Or slight vindication at the very least. For it was just last month that Washington moved to withhold Coalition Support Funds reimbursements, while also slashing scheduled repayments for the next year. The reason being that Pakistan is doing insufficient to crack down on the Haqqani network within its borders.

Yet the above is based on conventional wisdom. This may or may not be the best way to respond to Trump’s murmurings. Pakistan needs to remind that the most powerful army in the world has not been able to take on and crush the insurgency in Afghanistan. Some think tanks in the US have acknowledged that the Taliban may not be up for negotiations given that they control more of the country — 60 percent by some estimates — than at any time since the Afghans were promised liberation and Enduring Freedom by George W Bush.

So what should Pakistan do?

It should view this as an opportunity and send the Haqqani network packing. Because this is the right thing to do in terms of national as well as regional security. And then it should let the Americans and Afghans deal with them. Next, it shouldn’t get its head turned by talk of border unrest between India and China. That is, it should not see this as a chance to meddle in New Delhi’s interests next door. If anything we should be calling for peace in the region as we cannot be embroiled in yet another regional conflict. Pakistan needs to find a way to secure peace in Afghanistan that would enable us to reap the benefits of CPEC and turn the country into a trade hub. It would entail taking bold decisions and revising our India centric security policy.*

Published in Daily Times, August 5^th 2017.