Following the recent debacle at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), it appears that the US is in rather more of a conciliatory mood than Pakistan. After all, on the same day that much of the western and Indian media had been fielding speculative reports, passed off as confirmed fact, that we would once more be grey-listed — Washington floated a compromise to take the bilateral relationship forward. This involves foregoing the previous American demand that we actively flush out all safe-havens from inside our borders and in favour of a far more reasonable option that would see us just ‘nudge’ members of the Haqqani Network gently across the border. The idea being that US troops supported by the NATO war machine backed up by Afghan forces will then do the needful. So far so good except that the Pakistani security establishment denies the existence of such militant camps. Theoretically speaking, however, if we were to agree this would surely do away with the need for the ongoing US drone programme targeting this country. Though of course many Pakistanis still do not quite understand how it is still in place given the military establishment’s insistence that the National Plan of Action has successfully dismantled most, if not all, militant infrastructure. But Pakistan had none of these questions on its mind. It was visibly still smarting from what it sees as New Delhi’s fingerprints all over the attempts to have this country put back on the terror financing list. Thus just a day after the nail biting turn at FATF, the Army’s focus was not turned towards our western border but our eastern one. Which is why the American, British, French, Chinese, Turkish and Indonesian Defence Attachés were taken on a field trip along the LoC. All the better to point out Indian military aggression in terms of repeated ceasefire violations as well as human rights violations that target civilians. This may or may not mean that Islamabad is taking seriously the Indian Army Chief’s recent threats of surgical strikes as retaliation for the attack earlier this month on a military camp on the other side of the border. New Delhi contends that Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) was behind this; complete with support from the Pakistani state. Yet it remains to be seen whether the foreign envoy jaunt will yield any positive results. After all, Beijing is the only country to have a vested interest in security in that area. As for the US, it remains fixated on Afghanistan for reasons that may be less than altruistic. Even the Brits have received requests from Kabul to send in more troops. Meaning that their priority is not across our eastern border except in terms of propping up India to counter a rapidly rising China. Thus while we can to a certain extent appreciate the move in terms of PR, the truth remains what it has always been: a return to the world body to resolve once and for all the issue of water access. Yet for this to happen Pakistan will face the uphill task of recasting the Kashmir conflict as it really is: a war of self-determination, natural resources and not religion. And while we doubt this will ever happen — this is certainly one mainstreaming project that we could get behind. * Published in Daily Times, February 25th 2018.