The Taliban’s slaughter of at least 130 children at a school in Pakistan earlier this week has prompted outward signs of a thaw in the often icy relationship between Washington and Islamabad.
Whether the gruesome assault can melt years of built-up mistrust between the two countries, experts say, depends on whether the Pakistani government treats the attack as a game-changer and stops privately protecting some terrorist groups while publicly opposing all acts of terror.
“It depends on the attitude of the Pakistani government,” said Jonah Blank, a Pakistan expert at the Rand Corp. “If the Pakistani military takes this as just another attack in an ongoing struggle, then it won’t really matter.”
“If this is a wake-up call for the Pakistani military, if they decide maybe it’s not such a good policy to support some violent extremists and not others, then it could have a beneficial impact on its relationship with the U.S. and Afghanistan,” he said.
After the attack on the school Tuesday, U.S. officials, led by President Obama, expressed solidarity with the government of Pakistan against terrorism.
Obama also spoke with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by phone Tuesday night to express his “unwavering support for the Pakistani people in the aftermath of the attack.”
“The president underscored that the American people stand with Pakistan in the face of this tragedy,” according to a White House read-out of the phone call. “The two leaders acknowledged the shared threat from terrorism, and the president made clear that the United States will continue to support Pakistan in its fight against extremism.”
The Pakistani military immediately responded to the attack on the school with airstrikes against the Pakistan Taliban, officially known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan or the TPP. The TPP is at odds with the Afghanistan Taliban, which it views as a rival, and the group poses a much greater threat to Pakistan than it does to the U.S.
A Pakistani military envoy traveled to Kabul Wednesday to meet with the new president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, as well as the head of American and coalition forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Gen. John Campbell, to discuss strengthened intelligence cooperation in the wake of the school attack.
“This is all positive — they are doing what they have to do,” said Shamila Chaudhary, a former National Security Council specialist who now works for the New America Foundation. “Whether there is any real meat behind the discussions and public statements remains to be seen.”
It would be a good time, Chaudhary argued, for the Pakistanis and the Afghans to agree to collaborate on certain security concerns in exchange for giving the Pakistanis access to TTP safe havens across the border. In turn, the U.S. would also benefit from a more stable Afghanistan, which would make it easier for the ongoing removal of U.S. troops from the country.
For years, the Pakistani government has roundly condemned most acts of terror. But the U.S. government has accused it of only fighting militants that threaten Pakistan while secretly backing those who threaten Afghanistan and the U.S.
Still, the U.S. in 2013 resumed channeling $2 billion a year in military and economic aid to Pakistan after a brief hiatus when tensions escalated after the bin Laden raid.
“The fallback argument is that we need to sustain the level of aid because an unstable Pakistan is not good for anyone,” Chaudhary noted.
U.S. officials have long sought to influence Pakistan, believing that Islamabad can play a key role in helping dictate whether the Taliban will overthrow the elected government in Kabul once U.S. troops leave.
If the Pakistani government wants more support from the U.S. now, Blank and others argue that it needs to back up its words with actions against such groups as the Afghanistan Taliban and the Haqqani network, a terrorist organization with links to Pakistan’s intelligence service.
Earlier this year, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship showed some hopeful signs of improvement following years of tension over the 2011 U.S. raid that found Osama bin Laden hiding in Pakistan and killed him in a secret operation without informing Pakistani officials.
The U.S. for years had pressed the Pakistani government to target Haqqani leaders but believed the government was secretly backing the group as a way to retain leverage over Afghanistan, where Pakistan’s rival, India, holds considerable sway.
The Pakistani military earlier this year conducted an offensive against Haqqani headquarters in the tribal region of North Waziristan. U.S. military commanders credited the operation with fracturing the Haqqani network but also argued that Pakistani subterfuge was continuing because they said several Haqqani leaders were warned in advance and fled to Pakistani cities.
Still, they said the Pakistani strikes against Haqqani showed a new level of cooperation and boded well for future collaboration.
In turn, the U.S. carried out some of the airstrikes in late November against Pakistani Taliban strongholds in the remote border area.
A Nov. 24 U.S. airstrike in eastern Afghanistan narrowly missed TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah, who is believed to be now hiding and ordering terrorist attacks from across the border in Afghanistan.
A TTP spokesman said Tuesday the attack on the school was in retaliation for a campaign the Pakistani military launched against the Taliban in the northern Waziristan provinces, and warned that it was just the beginning of a new cycle of violence.
Even though the TTP is responsible for thousands of Pakistani deaths over the last few years, this week’s attack was personal for the Pakistani military. The Pakistani Taliban targeted the school in Peshawar where military officers send their children.
“They couldn’t have picked a more outrageous target,” Blank said.
The Pakistani government, he said, will likely ask the U.S. to order more drone strikes against the TTP as a favor because the group doesn’t pose a big threat to Americans or U.S. interests.
The U.S., he said, should only commit to more drone strikes if the Pakistanis demonstrate a commitment to stopping extremist activity inside its borders.
For instance, he said, among other things, the Pakistanis need to stop using artillery shelling along their border with India to cover for the infiltration of jihadi groups.
“This sort of activity should be reduced and cut off entirely,” he said. “This shelling goes on constantly and it’s not always obvious whether it’s a military-to-military exchange or if it’s initiated by the Pakistanis to facilitate infiltration.”
