Thanks to the American media we now learn that all 87 visas asked by the CIA have been granted by the Pakistan government. The media leak to this effect was made by the Washington Post on the day following Lieutenant-General Pasha's meeting with the acting CIA chief Michael Morell in Washington over the weekend. As to when these visas were granted, the newspaper obliquely hinted that the 'CIA-ISI relations began to improve almost two months before (this) meeting'.
An unidentified official is however quoted having said that 'all visas had already been issued'. In Islamabad, the Foreign Office spokesperson was equally enthusiastic about the warmth in the contacts between the two agencies, though she chose to remain equivocal on the issue and spent time denying the fact that bilateral ties had suffered a disconnect in their strategic perspectives following the incidents of the raid on Osama's compound and the double-murder by a CIA contractor in Lahore earlier this year. "We believe that strategic convergence exists between the two sides, which we are working to convert into a win-win outcome for both sides," said the spokesperson.
Somehow Pakistani officials are still, at least as of now, reluctant to openly admit that the CIA is back in the field - something the Washington Post indirectly suggested. If one recalls WikiLeaks' dig on Prime Minister Gilani, the paper also said both sides would also continue to "protest loudly in public, when the other side does something you don't like, but (will) keep working together in private because you have no choice". Under the new rules agreed between General Pasha and Michael Morell, the CIA will share with the Pakistanis 'more information about what its operatives are doing in the country'. The FO spokesperson did concede the 'sharing', but her spin to this was quite glossy: "We share values of democracy, upholding human dignity, which is a fundamentally Islamic concept, and human development".
One would have no quarrel with the argument that both Pakistan and the United States being victims of terrorism - be it in the form of 9/11 or the Taliban video showing execution of some 17 security personnel in Upper Dir - should join hands and work together to eliminate this curse once for all. Who can deny the fact that these extremists have played havoc with the lives of ordinary Pakistanis by exploding themselves in bazaars or market places, ransacking schools, attacking the country's security installations and thus literally bringing to halt everything that should go in the name of a normal life. If these two countries are working together to combat and curb terrorism and restore normality in the affected tribal region, nothing is abnormal about it. Such joint operations against common enemies are quite in vogue in inter-state relationships. That's normal between the members of the international community. Of course, in their joint endeavour, the two of them would supplement each other by employing their individual specialties and expertise in intelligence network or firepower or political clout. That was the kind of Pak-US co-operative matrix in the war against terror and had worked quite effectively till it ran into the roadblocks of the Raymond Davis saga and the Abbottabad raid. If the meeting at Langley has succeeded in reviving the ISI-CIA connection, as it seems it has, so much the better.
The hard fact is that no single country, even the mighty power like the United States, can single-handedly fight the phenomenon of international terrorism. Obviously, the ground realities as they tend to obtain in Pakistan, force us to seek international support to deal with terrorists and extremists. And in that we need help from all including the United States, as against injecting hostility into that equation. No one in Pakistan would like the country to become another Afghanistan by running afoul of the world public opinion. Given our political elite's consistent failure in realistically appreciating the strengths and weaknesses of our foreign policy and its lingering nonchalance, if not complete disconnect, the initiative to hold the fort has per force passed on to the armed forces. The military can do only as much; it's the responsibility of the civilian set-up to clothe the rough and tough of the foreign policy options into palatable choices before the nation.