Counterterror, trade access and help on Kashmir: New study suggests key steps to boost Pak-US ties

The US and Pakistan can overcome strains in their bilateral ties and build a sustained partnership through some key steps like bringing transparency to counterterror work, realising greater American market access for Pakistani products and easing Islamabad's regional concerns with encouragement for progress towards Kashmir settlement, says a new study.
Authors of the report "Pakistan and the United States at a Strategic Crossroads," argue that Pakistan remains vital to counterterrorism success in the region and underscores the need for supplanting transactional nature of US-Pakistan relationship with genuine partnership based on common interests.
"The two nations cannot continue the patterns of the last decade, an era of transactionalism and hidden agendas cloaked in the language of a "strategic partnership" that represented neither a genuine partnership nor a strategic approach to mutual challenges," Peter Bergen, director at the New America Foundation and Michael Mazarr, a professor at the US National War College, wrote in the report released Thursday.
The study wonders at Pakistan's inherent strengths that remain at work even in the face of heavy odds and acknowledges that the oft-repeated predictions of the South Asian nation's fall have time and again proven false. But, it notes, the scale of challenges facing the country cannot be discounted. Yet, the country has a lot of positives to build on.
"It is true that forecasts of a "collapse" of Pakistan have repeatedly proven wrong; and while it is difficult to know why, hard-to-measure pillars of stability counteract sources of destabilisation. Slowly accumulating positive trends get little notice amid generally negative analyses, but rising standards of living (at least until recently); a powerful "grey" economy, including remittances; the emergence of an independent judiciary and a free (if raucous) media; the electoral failure of religious parties; a civilian government about to complete its full term; energetic military responses to extremist movements in Swat and South Waziristan, which have involved nearly 150,000 troops and cost the Pakistani military over 3,000 combat dead; steadily growing public rejections of extremism and the Taliban; these and other realities suggest some areas of strength on which to build."
Contrastingly with routine reports, which in their simplistic assessments conveniently overlook Indian context to the Afghan problem and seek to blame Islamabad for most of the ills afflicting the region - the study appears to be a comprehensive attempt to put things in the regional perspective. It draws on recommendations by Pakistani experts who were part of the study group.
Commenting on the tense state of bilateral relations in the backdrop of Raymond Davis episode and discovery of a unilateral American action against Osama bin Laden hideout in Abbottabad, the main authors contend that any further rupture in relations between the two countries would mean placing crippling constraints on American aid, ending dialogue and curtailing co-operation on attacking terrorists.
"Pakistan is the second most populous nation in the Muslim world and is armed with nuclear weapons. The United States cannot allow such an important country and an ally of the past three decades to become an enemy. "In fact, the two nations have many interests in common. The US counterterrorism program in South Asia would be crippled without Pakistan's help. And fostering a stable and prosperous Pakistan would reduce the risks of a nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan, which has been a central goal of American statecraft since the late 1990s," co-authors Bergen and Mazarr wrote in a piece for CNN website. The study proposes a "new basis" for a revised yet lasting US-Pakistan partnership: a collaborative agenda for Pakistan to take its place as a major power in a modernising South Asia.
"This concept, which we developed together with a study group of Pakistani economists, journalists and former government officials as well as their American counterparts with considerable experience in Pakistan, calls for actions within Pakistan to build the social, political and economic basis for this vision, as well as a US commitment to support this agenda with critical actions - on trade, peacemaking and technical support."
One important step would be a shift from a relationship in which the US sends aid to Pakistan to one in which the emphasis is on trade that benefits both sides. Textiles constitute 60 percent of Pakistani exports, half its manufacturing output and a third of its industrial employment. Yet Pakistani textiles make up less than 4 percent of US textile imports.
The report recommends a new effort to reduce the disproportionately high American tariffs on Pakistani textiles as well as parallel programs to enhance US and international foreign direct investment in a range of Pakistani industries as an alternative to most US civilian aid, which theoretically could amount to as much as $1.5 billion a year if all the aid available to Pakistan was actually disbursed.
Efforts to lower taxes on Pakistani textiles have foundered in the past because of opposition in Congress and from US manufacturers, but if this effort was tied to reduced US aid, it might have a better chance of being implemented. On security matters, extremism and terrorism threaten both nations.
Yet there is a tendency for both sides to operate in secret, the author say, referring to support in Pakistan for militant groups that kill American soldiers in Afghanistan and US covert operations in Pakistan and drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal regions. "This only sets the stage for public outrage when secret activities are revealed without being grounded in the fundamental strategic justification, the shared threat that warrants working together.
"Pakistani concerns about civilian casualties and infringements of their national sovereignty caused by American drones could be addressed with a more transparent drone program, perhaps involving the public release of some drone video footage, as well as more public explication about why certain individuals have been targeted by drones, all done more clearly under Pakistani government guidance," the report proposes.
Pakistan must also get its house in order economically through improvement in tax revenue collection and better growth rate. The report also recommends initiatives to accelerate trade throughout South Asia. Improved trade with India represents a natural source of potential growth for Pakistan and a way to ease tensions between the two states.