Pakistan warned the US it risks losing an ally if it continued to accuse Islamabad of playing a double game in the war against militancy, escalating the crisis in relations between the two countries.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was responding to comments by Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, who said Pakistan’s top spy agency was closely tied to the Haqqani network, the most violent and effective faction among Taliban militants in Afghanistan.
It is the most serious allegation leveled by the US against nuclear-armed and Muslim-majority Pakistan since they began an alliance in the “war on terror” a decade ago.
“You will lose an ally,” Khar told Geo TV in New York in remarks broadcast yesterday. “You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan, you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people. If you are choosing to do so and if they are choosing to do so it will be at their [the US’] own cost.”
Mullen, speaking in a US Senate testimony, alleged Haqqani operatives launched an attack last week on the US embassy in Kabul with the support of Pakistan’s military intelligence.
The tensions could have repercussions across Asia, from India, Pakistan’s economically booming archrival, to China, which has edged closer to Islamabad in recent years.
A complete break between the US and Pakistan — sometimes friends, often adversaries — seems unlikely, if only because Washington depends on Pakistan as a route to supply US troops fighting militants in Afghanistan, and as a base for unmanned US drones.
Pakistan relies on Washington for military and economic aid and for acting as a backer on the world stage.
However, support in the US Congress for curbing assistance or making conditions on aid more stringent is rising rapidly.
The unilateral US Navy SEALs raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May took already fragile relations between Pakistan and the US to a low.
Relations were just starting to recover before the Kabul attack. Both sides are now engaged in an unusually blunt public war of words.
The dangers could be enormous if Washington fails to arrest the deterioration in relations with Pakistan.
At stake are the fight against terrorism, the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and — as Islamabad plays off its friendship with China against the US — regional stability.
“Anything which is said about an ally, about a partner, publicly to recriminate it, to humiliate it, is not acceptable,” Khar said.
The US has long pressed Pakistan to go after the Haqqani network, which it believes operates from sanctuaries in North Waziristan on the Afghan border.
Pakistan says its army is too stretched fighting its own Taliban insurgency, but analysts say Islamabad regards the Haqqanis as a strategic counterweight to the growing influence of old rival India in Afghanistan.
The Haqqani network, Mullen said, is a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.
The charges come amid mounting exasperation in Washington as US President Barack Obama’s administration struggles to curb militancy in Pakistan and end the long war in Afghanistan.
Mullen, CIA director David Petraeus and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have all met with their Pakistani counterparts in recent days to demand Islamabad take action against the Haqqani network.
Any Pakistani offensive against the Haqqanis would be risky. The group has an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 seasoned fighters at its disposal and analysts say the Pakistan Army would likely suffer heavy casualties.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS