It has been a year now since United States President Donald Trump took office and the only consistency from him each morning is that his Twitter account contains a daily musing that the 280 characters amount to a character assassination of an individual, group, sports team or nation. And in recent days, Pakistan has been the focus of such a Twitter tirade over what the president believes is its “doing nothing” and that Washington had foolishly given $33 billion (Dh121.37 billion) in aid over the past 15 years and that it had become a “haven for terrorists”.
It’s hard to know what drove Trump’s tirade. Just as there’s “fake news”, this would fall into the category then, if there is such a thing, of “fake accusations”. The reality is that the US, during its 15 years’ involvement in Afghanistan, has found Islamabad to be an important and significant partner in the fight against the Taliban, and Pakistan’s role in countering terrorism has been underscored previously by former US presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama over the past 15 years and, should Trump care to remember, by he himself three months ago, praising Pakistan for being a steadfast ally. It seems as if his own words have been forgotten by the president.
The reality too is that just three days before the last year came to an end, the spokesperson for the Pakistan army had said that there was no longer any organised terrorist structure in place for Al Qaida in Pakistan, and that the aid received by Islamabad represented the cost of defeating the terror group there. Pakistan has indeed done its job in defeating Al Qaida. The US, however, is far from completing its mission and re-stabilising Afghanistan.