Magnificent Delusions by Husain Haqqani Read Free Book Online

concerns about India,” he stated. “But we do not want to be part of arming you against India.”
    Obama also said that the United States did not believe that India wanted to attack or threaten Pakistan any longer. He said he knew history and realized that at some point Pakistan may have been justified in its fears of India. “But I want you to hear it from me,” he went on, “that they are focused on economic development.” Zardari summed up his talking points about why Pakistan still viewed India as a threat, and then added, “We are trying to change our worldview. But it’s not going to happen overnight.”
    That summer Pakistani troops moved against the Taliban in the Swat Valley after they had come relatively close to the Pakistani capital. The pretext of a lack of national consensus vanished as cable news stations “suddenly” discovered videos of Taliban atrocities. TV commentatorsand newspaper editorialists changed their stance; instead of describing the war against terrorists as an American war, as they had done so far, they finally spoke of the threat to Pakistan from terrorism.
    â€œFinally, the mind-set has changed,” the Washington Post quoted a retired security official as saying. The paper described him as someone “who often reflects military thinking.” His next quote was: “There is a realization that the threat to Pakistan in modern times is not Indian divisions and tanks, it is a teenaged boy wearing a jacket full of explosives.” 10 The prospect of Pakistani seriousness in counterterrorist and counterinsurgency operations heartened US officials.
    In response, the United States mobilized a sizeable relief effort for those displaced by the fighting. Once the fighting was over, the Pakistan army received favorable press in the United States. Soon, requests for military equipment followed, and a few months later the momentum dissipated when domestic politics and a long-drawn battle with Pakistan’s Supreme Court distracted the civilian government. The army returned to its previous debate about whether terrorism had replaced India as the new existential threat to Pakistan.
    In the fall Clinton arrived in Pakistan for a three-day visit. Her well-choreographed visit included many public events, including town hall meetings with students, civil society leaders, women, and Pashtun elders. She answered tough questions from Pakistani journalists and asked some difficult ones herself. 11 Clinton’s visit was the second effort from a senior US official to confront the myths and conspiracy theories that had fed anti-Americanism in the country; her husband, Bill, had made the first through his televised address to the Pakistani people during his five-hour visit in 2000. She expressed surprise that no one in Pakistan knew Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts.
    Clinton described the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid as a demonstration of American “goodwill towards the people of Pakistan,” noting that “it does not help when we do something like this, and people question our motives.” 12 She asked the government to “do more to shut down Al Qaeda,” but she also spoke of the need to broaden the relationship.
    Soon after Clinton’s visit Jones, the national security adviser, brought a letter from Obama to Zardari, offering that Pakistan and the United States become “long-term strategic partners.” The letter laid out elements of the “grand bargain” that Biden had spoken of a few days before Obama’s presidential term began. The letter even hinted at addressing Pakistan’s oft-stated desire for a settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
    Obama wrote that the United States would tell countries of the region that “the old ways of doing business are no longer acceptable.” He acknowledged that “some countries”—a reference to India—had used “unresolved disputes to leave open