Zardari rejects Obama’s AfPak strategy

President Asif Ali Zardari has rejected the Obama administration’s strategy of linking the policy on Pakistan and Afghanistan in an effort to end a Taliban insurgency and bring stability to the region.

US President Barack Obama earlier this year appointed senior diplomat Richard Holbrooke as his special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan in a move intended to address these two states as a single arena of conflict.

‘Afghanistan and Pakistan are distinctly different countries and cannot be lumped together for any reason,’ Mr Zardari said in an interview with the Financial Times on the anniversary of his first year in office.

Mr Zardari’s comments reflect Pakistan’s unwillingness to be aligned in a joint policy framework with neighbouring Afghanistan, an approach referred to as ‘AfPak’. The president and his senior officials draw a distinction between a Pakistan with functioning institutions, diversified economy and a powerful national army, and Afghanistan, a state shattered by decades of conflict and ethnic divisions.

Ending the Taliban insurgency raging on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is only likely to be achieved by concerted military action by Nato forces fighting in Helmand and Kandahar and Pakistan’s army in Waziristan and other tribal areas along the border. Military experts say Taliban leaders travel across the Durand Line, the colonial era border, to avoid military pursuit.

Mr Holbrooke’s two-country mandate was also a recognition of Pakistan’s historic role in supporting the Taliban regime ousted from Kabul in 2001, and Islamabad’s former doctrine of ‘strategic depth’ into Afghanistan in case of a conflict with arch-rival India.

Mr Zardari said Mr Holbrooke had brought a ‘unique focus on relations with Pakistan’ and acknowledged the emphasis President Obama had put on Pakistan’s economic and energy needs.

The appeal by the husband of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for individual, rather than joint, focus comes ahead of a high profile meeting with President Obama and Gordon Brown, the UK’s prime minister, in New York later this month and a visit next month to Islamabad by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state.

At these meetings, Mr Zardari is expected to appeal for more financial assistance to Pakistan, which he says is essential to ending the menace of terrorism.

‘Pakistan does not have the luxury of time. Given the severity of the internal security challenge the country is facing, it is critical that the economy is provided a strong stimulus as quickly as possible so that the maximum number of jobs are created in the shortest time,’ he said.

‘If international aid flows are delayed beyond the next few months, the country will be forced to cut development spending as well as the provision of critical social services. You can then imagine how big a setback that could be for the global war on terror.’

Many analysts say Pakistan and Afghanistan have a shared history and were badly affected by geopolitical shifts in the 20th Century