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| Image: Flickr User - U.S. Department of State |
By Robert M. Hathaway
Nawaz Sharif’s time in Washington will cover a range of issues at the center of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.
When Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif meets with U.S. President Barack Obama this week, he will find an administration and a city that is rapidly losing interest in his country except insofar as Pakistan can help extract the United States from the Afghan quagmire.
Afghanistan will dominate the discussions between the two leaders. For once, Pakistani and U.S. interests in Afghanistan are broadly aligned. Pakistan applauded Obama’s decision last week to slow the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Both countries want a peaceful and stable Afghanistan. Both want the Afghan economy to anchor growing regional trade. Neither wishes to see the Islamic State expand in Afghanistan, or Afghanistan revert to its pre-2001 status as a safe haven for extremists plotting overseas terrorism.
Nonetheless, Afghanistan offers tough challenges that may make it difficult to translate these shared interests into on-the-ground successes.
Most immediately pressing is the upsurge of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. Many of these originate from bases in Pakistan. Several notable attacks have been carried out by the Haqqani network, long a client of the ISI, Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency. Reports that an ISI officer was among those killed when the United States mistakenly attacked a Medicins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz earlier this month have reinforced Afghan suspicions that Pakistan is the mastermind behind the violence that has rocked Afghanistan this year.
Read the full story at The Diplomat