Obama, Zardari, Karzai Hold Talks

The US President Barack Obama met Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House on May 6, 2009. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha was a part of Zardari’s delegation.

Obama urged them to jointly tackle the threat posed by the Taliban in their countries. Neither Zardari nor Karzai are seen likely to be able to deliver on American requests, but the Obama administration is aware of its limited options in the region.

The meetings come in the backdrop of growing concern about Pakistan’s ability to stand up to the Taliban, which recently moved within 100 km from Islamabad. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman told Holbrooke lawmakers were “deeply concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan” and that Pakistan appeared to be at a “tipping point”. Ackerman put it more bluntly. “Pakistan's pants are on fire. ... Pakistan’s leaders, rather than recognising and moving to address the urgent danger to their constitution and country, instead seem convinced that if left alone or attack piecemeal, the Islamist flame will simply burn itself out. That hope is, at best, folly,” he said.

Ways to Fight Terrorism
Obama said that the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan are co-operating in the effort to defeat Al-Qaida and its terrorist allies. He said that the three nations are cooperating in new ways to fight terrorism and to improve the lives of Pakistanis and Afghans. The US President the Governments must cooperate in fighting insurgents who control parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan and “deny them the space'' to threaten local residents or Americans.

Obama and Vice-President Joseph Biden held separate bilateral meetings with Karzai and Zardari in the Oval Office. The crucial two-day meetings were kicked off when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard C Holbrooke, met Zardari and Karzai.

Unenviable Task
However, unlike in 1999 when Nawaz Sharif, and later General Pervez Musharraf, was in a position to speak for Pakistan, Obama has the unenviable task of dealing with two heads of state floundering in the fundamentalist sea that engulfs them. Indeed, neither Karzai nor Zardari seems even remotely equipped to deal with the crisis staring them in the face. But they remain the only, even if fading, symbols of sanity that the international community can appeal to.

While the US is realistic enough to realise that Zardari may not be able to deliver, there is also the recognition that he, and his ilk, is America’s last hope for upholding its strategic interests in the region. Understandably, therefore, the US is engaging simultaneous options. On the one hand, Washington is hosting Zardari. On the other it is using back-channel diplomacy to secure for Sharif an effective voice in the Zardari Government.

Economic Aid
Again, on the face of it, the promise of a $ 7.5 billion aid to Pakistan sounds impressive. However, it comes drowned in the deafening clamour among American lawmakers to compel Pakistan to make good on its counter-terror promise.

“We are simply asking the Pakistanis to keep the commitments they have already made to fight the terrorists who threaten our national security and theirs, and that they make some progress doing so, with progress defined very broadly,” asserted Howard L Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, when US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke testified before his committee.