Stabilising Pakistan main US goal, says Biden
WASHINGTON: Stabilising Pakistan and defeating Al Qaeda are America’s main strategic interests in South Asia, US Vice President Joseph Biden said on Tuesday. He stressed the need for a long-term partnership with Pakistan.
In an interview to MSNBC television channel, Mr Biden also emphasised the need to work with Pakistan to undo the Haqqani network and defeat the Pakistani Taliban.
Also on Tuesday, The New York Times reported that the US and Pakistan were at odds over the Haqqani network, which is headed by a militant leader called Sirajuddin Haqqani, because Islamabad has turned down Washington’s demands to help dismantle the terrorist outfit.
The report claimed that while the Americans believed the network was responsible for attacking US forces in Afghanistan, Pakistanis saw this group as a ‘strategic asset’.
In his interview to MSNBC, Mr Biden pointed out that in his policy speech on Dec 1, President Obama had clearly laid out US national interests in the Pak-Afghan region: ‘Defeating Al Qaeda and stabilising Pakistan.’
While explaining how the administration planned to achieve those objectives, Mr Biden said that over the next two years, the US would provide ‘more direct assistance to Pakistan as it relates to stabilising their economy, building their infrastructure, as well as getting them to move on our mutual interest, which includes the Haqqani network and includes the Taliban in Pakistan’.
Mr Biden acknowledged that achieving those objectives was ‘a hell of process’ but the US was determined to succeed.
One of the participants of the talk show interrupted Mr Biden to suggest that defeating Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was also one of America’s main objectives in that region.‘Al Qaeda’s not in Afghanistan,’ said the US vice president.
His response led to a discussion on how US policy-makers insisted that their main strategic interests were in Pakistan, yet they were spending 50 times more money in Afghanistan.
Asked to explain why, the vice president said: ‘Yes. And our focus should be Pakistan and Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.’
He then explained that those were America’s strategic interests but ‘we would be in real trouble if a vacuum is created and there’s chaos in the government and Afghanistan falls’.The consequences of such a failure were unfathomable, he added.
‘No one knows what the Iranians do with that. No one knows what the Pakistanis do with that, no one know what the Russians do with that, no one knows what the Chinese do with that, no one knows what the Indians do with that.’
That’s why, Mr Biden said, he believed that the US troop surge in Afghanistan would also help stabilise Pakistan. The Americans were in constant contact with the Pakistanis on this particular issue, he added.
The best way to deal with extremists in that region, according to the US vice president, was to allow the natural process of events to continue.
‘If I had (said) a year and a half ago … that Gen Musharraf was going … to step down without bloodshed, there was going to be an election that took place without bloodshed, not particularly the greatest candidates in the world, but an actual election — a peaceful transition,’ nobody could have believed it, Mr Biden observed.
Within the same period, he added, the Pakistani army, for the first time in its history, moved in force into Fata, and worked with the US to get rid of Baitullah Mehsud.
‘Are they doing enough? No, but it’s amazing … how reality has a way of intruding on people’s plans. When they (the Taliban) went and took the Swat Valley, all of a sudden the Pakistanis went, whoa, they’re 60 clicks from Islamabad!’
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