Next US leader must revamp Pak policy

The 43-page report sets out recommendations for new US policies in the areas of Pakistani domestic politics, counter-terrorism and domestic security, regional relationships and US aid to Pakistan.In the domestic arena, the US needs to be patient with the new elected govt, help build up democratic institutions and support broad reforms, it said.

The report calls upon the US to ‘develop, invest in, and implement a far-reaching public diplomacy programme that emphasises common US and Pakistani interests in combating extremism, creating prosperity, and improving regional relationships instead of highlighting the struggle against extremism in Pakistan as part of the Global War on Terrorism’.

‘Just as the US was too slow in gauging the public disaffection with former President Pervez Musharraf before the 2008 elections, it must not too quickly lose patience with Pakistan’s elected leaders’, it said.

In the security sphere, the report urges Washington to boost support for Pakistani civilian institutions that can oversee military and intelligence agencies, who often operate autonomously and have used Islamic militants as a foreign policy tool against India and Afghanistan.

‘The US should seek to adjust Pakistan’s cost-benefit calculus of using militants in its foreign policy’, it said.

Military assistance should be used to transform parts of the Pakistan Army and the Frontier Corps, which operate in border tribal areas, into effective counter-insurgency forces, it added.

On regional relations, the report recommends naming a senior US official responsible for promoting better ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan, whose animosity hampers cross-border counter-terrorism efforts. Similar efforts are needed to encourage the India-Pakistan peace process, it said.

‘US diplomatic initiatives toward Pakistan must also demonstrate that a convergence of US, India, and Afghanistan interests on terrorism does not mean the three countries are colluding against Pakistan’, the report said.