US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta's habit of shooting from the hip doesn't sit well with Pakistanis. One has yet to figure out what he did really mean when immediately following the SEALs' raid on the bin Laden compound in May, he had accused the Pakistani authorities of being 'either incompetent or complicit', nor did he explain it afterwards.
Following the Afghan Taliban's attack on American embassy and Nato headquarters in Kabul on Tuesday, he warned Pakistan of incursions to snuff out so-called Haqqani network's safe havens. "Time and again we've urged Pakistanis to exercise their influence over these kind of attacks from the Haqqanis... The message they (Pakistanis) need to know is: we're going to do everything we can to defend our forces," he said. Not that the CIA-operated drones are not already targeting 'safe havens' - and instead quite often kill innocent people - it's the ring of a threat of incursion to his statement that seems to have earned Leon Panetta a stiff response from our Foreign Office.
In no uncertain words, the Foreign Office spokesperson Tehmina Janjua warned the United States to desist from crossing that red line: Pakistan's co-operation, she said, "premised on respect for the country's sovereignty." Secretary Panetta's bombast 'we are not going to allow these kinds of attack to go on' deserved a matching response, which has been given that Pakistan too is not going to tolerate attacks on its people from across the border where anti-Pakistan Taliban are sheltering.
Isn't it a cruel joke that as Leon Panetta was uttering his words, a Taliban suicide-bomber exploded himself at the funeral rites of a pro-government tribal leader killing more than 30 people and wounding twice that number? He had come from the safe havens located in the adjoining Afghanistan provinces of Kunar and Nurestan, which is now home to a whole lot of Pakistani Taliban who fled the military operation in Swat and other Malakand Division areas. That they enjoy local hospitality and the Nato high command looks the other way on their presence in that part of Afghanistan, there is no doubt.
Over the last three or four months, murderous attacks on Pakistani checkpost and border villages exacting enormous loss of life and property materialised from these safe havens. Rightly then the FO spokesperson has reminded the American official that there are sanctuaries across the border in Afghanistan also. The threat to our security from these safe havens being so strong that Pakistan had to secure Chitral by posting regular troops on the border. The issue of cross-border terrorist attacks is a complex issue and needs to be taken up in a co-operative mode. One may adjust to inequality of partnership in times of peace, but in war, the partners have to be treated as equal - otherwise the one suffering from a feeling of inequality would be reluctant to pull the full weight of partnership. Why should Washington overlook the hard fact that being a partner in the war on terror, Pakistan has suffered much more than the US.
The two sides should work to define the roles their respective intelligence agencies should play and how best intelligence sharing can be done. If Vice President Joe Biden is certain about the presence of Ayman al-Zuwahiri in Pakistan, one may ask why doesn't he ask the CIA to send one of its drones after the al Qaeda leader. The truth is that the American leadership is flustered, and the cause for its jitters is seemingly the endgame in Afghanistan that doesn't seem to be ending the way it had actually wanted.