ANALYSIS
“We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military” … Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State. Photo: Reuters
THIS was America’s $US700 million apology. In a war that has cost the US more than $US400 billion over more than a decade, it appears a trifling amount.
But the US was bleeding money over its border issue with Pakistan, and six months of Pakistani truculence showed no signs of abating. Since last November, when US helicopter gunships mistakenly attacked a Pakistan military checkpoint and killed 24 soldiers, Pakistan has refused to allow NATO trucks to cross the border with supplies for its war in Afghanistan.
Previously, about 40 per cent of NATO’s non-weapons cargo was trucked through the checkpoint. Bringing those stores via its longer, central Asian route was costing America $US100 million a month. At a sensitive time domestically for the war effort, it was not only the money that the US could not afford to burn.
Late on Tuesday, Pakistan finally heard the word it had been demanding from America: sorry.
”We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military,” the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, told Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, over the phone.
The apology – which was carefully scripted through days of emails and phone calls back and forth between officials – was what the Pakistanis wanted most.
But that aside, America got the better of the deal. Their trucks will now cross at the old rate of $US250 a container. The Pakistanis had been demanding $US5000 before settling at $US3000. The US was prepared to go no higher than $US1000.
America, too, conceded no ground on its controversial drone attacks in the border regions. Demands from Pakistan’s national security commission for the ”immediate cessation” of the unmanned Predator strikes were simply ignored.
The US backs its drone program. It sees no significant downside – in manpower, comparative cost or political capital – compared with any other type of military engagement.
In Pakistan, for all the symbolism of the apology, the new deal is being viewed as a capitulation, as American money and muscle getting its way again in an unequal relationship.
The Nation newspaper carried a cartoon showing Khar throwing the list of Pakistani demands of America into a grave marked ”Self Respect”. ”Bury this,” she says.
And the resolution of this impasse does not solve the broader enmity between the two countries.
Pakistan is still smarting from the global humiliation of Osama bin Laden being found hiding on its territory. The US was recently angered by Pakistan jailing for 33 years the doctor who helped the CIA find him.
Underlying it all is widespread Pakistani resentment of the US – a Pew Research survey recently found 74 per cent of Pakistanis believe America is an enemy – seen as a bully rather than an ally.
The US believes Pakistan is walking both sides of the street on terrorism: happy to take billions in US aid as an ally in combating al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Haqqani network, but secretly supporting, protecting, and even funding them.
Even with this particular diplomatic wound bandaged, the hundreds of trucks queued at the border are unlikely to rumble into life soon.
Like so many of the intractable, grinding disagreements between these partners, one problem solved only reveals another to be addressed.
NATO’s truck drivers are refusing to move until security is improved. Dozens of drivers have been killed, and hundreds of trucks torched.
The Taliban, from both sides of the border, has vowed to attack all of the trucks that move.
”We will not allow Pakistan’s routes to be used for the supply of lethal arms that could later be used against the people of Afghanistan,” a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ihsanullah Ihsan, threatened.
”Afghans are our brothers and we would not allow the US to take their supplies through Pakistan to kill innocent people.”
