THE PAK-USA BONHOMIE

America has been the world super power right from the end of second world war. The Britain had lost its power and two major poles emerged as super powers. One was USA and the other was the USSR. However, after disintegration of the USSR, its powers got diluted and USA became the one and only pole in the world map with great powers and discretion.

This article is mainly focused on the Pak-USA relations. We have seen now a days that the relationship between these two nations are not quite good. USA has come closer to India and neglects much of the issues raised by Pakistan. But, this was not true some time before.

Let's go through some issues one by one:

THE AFGHAN PROBLEM

When Taliban was ruling the Afghanistan, the tensions between USA and Taliban led to a war between these two nations and eventually the rule of Taliban ended and a so called democratic government was established in Afghanistan by the USA. Why it happened is well known to the whole world(The Osama Bin-Laden issue). However, Taliban was not completely destroyed and kept guerrilla warfare on against American forces in Afghanistan. Slowly, Taliban got strong again because of the weak nature of the Afghan government, over reliance on unreliable America, weak public outreach, and weak top leadership. USA came into Afghanistan to end the conservative and undemocratic rule of Taliban and establish a proper democratic government and leave the country. It never happened, and more so, it will not be inappropriate to say that USA failed miserably. It has mobilized so much money, man power, weapons, etc for such a long time, but, all in vain. Taliban has always held its place. And now the situation is, USA is negotiating with Taliban directly without any consultation with so called "democratic government" to leave Afghanistan. However, this is not going well as you are well aware of.

THE USA-PAK ANGLE

Now, where does Afghanistan come into play between USA and Pakistan? Well, the thing is, Pakistan has a very strong hold on Taliban. Why? Well, it is a long story, and we will talk about it when we will talk about Taliban. Now, to do anything in Afghanistan, concurrence of Taliban is necessary or else they will not let anything happen properly. Apparently, they are ruling about 50% of Afghanistan. When cold war was on between USA and USSR, to increase its dominance in the region, USA was keen to use Afghanistan as a buffer and mobilize proxies in the region. So, it needed the support of Taliban then. At present, of course, USA doesn't want Taliban to exist at all, but then, situation was different. So, USA wanted the support of Pakistan which would help it solve the Afghan problem. So, USA started using Pakistan. It started to export tons of advance weapons, technology, manpower, money , etc to the Pakistan in lieu of its dominance on Taliban. Pakistan was happy because of its sudden boom in economy and advantage over India. After cold war ended, the relevance of Afghanistan for USA also ended, and so was the interest on Pakistan. Slowly, USA reduced the amount of help it was giving to Pakistan and cut down the resources it was spending in this region. However, it never let the Pak completely go because Pak was still important for USA for different kinds of issues in the region.

THE PAK-AFGHAN ANGLE

Now, not only USA, but Pakistan has also its own role to play in Afghanistan. Pakistan always supported the rule of Taliban in Afghanistan because of many reasons.

First, Pakistan has a strong dominance on Taliban, so the rule of Taliban in Afghanistan will enable Pakistan to influence decision making in the region and essentially will make the Pakistan a larger player in south Asia. This will also have a larger impact in India which we will discuss later.     

Second, Taliban is a highly conservative regime, so it will support the Pakistan on its so called Islamic vulnerability stand in the region.

Third. It will create a buffer for Pakistan to enter west asia and north asia and strategically important for export of good and services in the region.

So, Pakistan is secretly lobbying for Taliban but still showing an innocent face to USA and getting aid from it.

CURRENT SITUATION                                  

Now, current situation is, Pakistan is showing itself as a supporter of USA's stand on Afghanistan but secretly supporting Taliban and showing its dominance to USA through Taliban that it still holds a key position in the region and any change or assertion on its stand will cause a great loss to USA. While USA is well aware of it, it is not paying attention to these things but still don't want Pakistan to go away because it's still strategically placed and may be used by USA anytime to manipulate the scenario in the region. So USA keeps nudging Pakistan on a variety of issues time to time but do not let it fall completely just in case.

CONCLUSION

While it may seem that the Pakistan is the main culprit here but the USA has much larger role in all this. USA has been and will be using Pakistan and Afghanistan to manipulate the dynamics in Asia and South Asia. Pakistan will continue to assert its dominance and get as much support and aid as possible from USA.

USA should leave the region and stop manipulating policies of different countries in the region and Pakistan should stop sponsoring terrorism in the region and instead of supporting conservative and undemocratic parties, it should endeavor to establish peace and tranquility in the region.