Barack Obama's Pakistan Problem

As the Obama national security team huddles for another day on its Afghanistan strategy and troop strength, U.S. policy to Pakistan is emerging as perhaps the thornier of the Obama administration’s regional challenges.

While the U.S. actually has a high degree of control in how it shapes its presence in Afghanistan and how many US troops and civilians it deploys on the ground, in the sovereign nation of Pakistan, it must work indirectly through foreign assistance and cooperation with Pakistani civilian and military authorities to try to influence Pakistan’s policy and hearts and minds towards US interests. In many ways, the nuclear armed South Asian Islamic nation, in whose ungoverned spaces are believed to reside core Al Qaeda and its top leadership, poses the more serious threat to U.S. national security.

A $7.5 billion assistance bill to Pakistan passed by Congress last week was intended to give the U.S. increased leverage in that more indirect effort to move Pakistan into the U.S. orbit.

But U.S. officials have been dismayed by bitter criticism of the bill by Pakistani military and civilian leaders in recent days, who charge the bill imposes conditions that infringe on its sovereignty.

In a meeting with top US commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Tuesday, Pakistan’s powerful Army chief Gen. Ashfar Parvez Kayani, reportedly railed at provisions in the bill aimed at trying to direct the Pakistani military towards a counterterrorism and counterinsurgency posture against the jihadi threat on its Afghan border, rather than beef up its strength against its traditional enemy India.