Washington
\nPresident Donald Trump will dispatch his top diplomatic and military advisers to Pakistan in the coming weeks, turning up the heat on a nuclear-armed ally accused of harbouring terror groups.<\/p>\n
Weeks after Trump angrily accused Islamabad of providing safe haven to \u201cagents of chaos\u201d, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to depart for Pakistan late this month.<\/p>\n
He will be followed by Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, according to US and Pakistani sources.<\/p>\n
The one-two punch is designed to drill home Trump\u2019s message that Pakistani state support for jihadist groups has to end, according to officials briefed on the visits.<\/p>\n
(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)
\nWashington has long been frustrated by Pakistan\u2019s willingness to offer cross-border safe havens to Taliban factions and armed Islamist groups fighting US troops and their Afghan allies.<\/p>\n
The relationship reached the breaking point in 2011, when president Barack Obama sent commandos into Pakistan in 2011 to kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who was living in a military garrison town.<\/p>\n
With little change since then, Trump came to office indicating that Washington\u2019s frustration had reached the point where something had to give.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars; at the same time, they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting,\u201d he said in an August address.<\/p>\n
But in the six weeks since Trump signalled that tougher tone, there have been precious few signs that the calculus in South Asia has changed.<\/p>\n
Mattis told Congress this week that he would try \u201cone more time\u201d to \u201csee if we can make this work\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo this point, we have not seen any impact on military-to military relations,\u201d said one Pentagon official, suggesting any change would not happen after Mattis\u2019 visit.<\/p>\n
Visiting Washington, Pakistan\u2019s foreign minister Khawaja Asif appeared unwavering.<\/p>\n
He lashed out at \u201chollow allegations\u201d about Pakistan harbouring terrorists as \u201cnot acceptable\u201d. \u201cThat is not the way you talk to 70-year-old friends,\u201d Asif said bitterly.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of accusations and threats we should cooperate with each other for the peace in the region,\u201d he said while confirming Tillerson\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n
While professing anger in public, Pakistani officials in private complain about receiving no concrete requests to target the Haqqani network or other groups.<\/p>\n
US officials have been reticent to share some intelligence for fear of tipping off targets with links inside Pakistan\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, a US drone killed three suspected militants in an attack on a compound in Pakistan\u2019s tribal region.<\/p>\n
Pakistani officials also complain of receiving mixed messages from the Trump administration, which is still struggling to find its feed under a mercurial commander-in-chief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington President Donald Trump will dispatch his top diplomatic and military advisers to Pakistan in the coming weeks, turning up the heat on a nuclear-armed ally accused of harbouring terror groups. Weeks after Trump angrily accused Islamabad of providing safe haven to \u201cagents of chaos\u201d, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to depart for Pakistan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7074,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7075,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7073\/revisions\/7075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}