Ambassador Haqqani's Delicate Balancing Act

Tacstrat

"What we have are two competing narratives, both simplistic and one-sided,"Husain Haqqani says. "The Pakistani narrative is American betrayals. The American narrative is Pakistan's untrustworthiness."

As Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Haqqani is caught between the two. After a trio of recent headline-grabbing attacks in and around Kabul, Adm. Mike Mullen, departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged that the insurgent group responsible for them "acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency." Haqqani was berated at the White House for Pakistan's failure to crack down on insurgents operating from inside its territory. Yet he remains disconcertingly calm. "One has to see what one can do to reconcile the narratives," he says. In Washington, Haqqani explains Pakistan's priorities to the Americans, while he urges Islamabad to understand U.S. concerns. After a United Nations speech by Pakistan's new foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, warning the U.S. to "respect Pakistan's red lines," Haqqani's cool response was: "We must also remember America's red lines."

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