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| General Raheel Sharif (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Ankit Panda
General Raheel Sharif will visit the United States this week, with a broad agenda.
Pakistan’s chief of army staff, General Raheel Sharif, will be spending the next five days in the United States. Sharif, who is not related to Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who also recently visited the United States, will meet with a range of senior U.S. officials. The general’s agenda will focus on a range of issues, but will almost certainly include a status report on the Pakistani military’s performance in Operation Zarb-e-Azb, Pakistan’s position on Afghanistan’s sputtering peace and reconciliation talks with the Taliban, and, perhaps the most furtive of all issues, the feasibility of a nuclear agreement with the U.S. government that would bring Pakistan into the fold as a “normal” nuclear-armed state. Sharif last visited the United States in November 2014.
Sharif is set to meet with a wide cast of U.S. officials. According to Voice of America, the general will meet with Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Vice President Joe Biden, CIA Director John Brennan, Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, and his effective counterpart in the U.S. military, General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Sharif and U.S. officials will run the gamut of the U.S.-Pakistan security relationship. The two countries are allies, but the relationship faces a number of pressure points. Specifically, the United States provides reimbursements to Pakistan from the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) for its efforts in fighting terror groups, including the Haqqani network. Earlier this year, reports emerged that the U.S. would suspend a CSR reimbursement tranche amid the U.S. defense department’s refusal to certify that Pakistan’s military was doing enough to fight the Haqqani network. In Washington, Sharif will be eager to repair perceptions and convince U.S. officials that Pakistan remains committed to fighting terrorists within its borders.
Read the full story at The Diplomat