A “New Day” for U.S.-Pakistan Relations: Now Here Is the Way

This is a joint post with Wren Elhai.Even in the wake of a successful U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue that saw significant agreement on what U.S. development aid to Pakistan should finance, key questions remain on how this aid should be delivered. Last week, CGD president Nancy Birdsall issued an open letter that makes four recommendations on how the United States can deliver large amounts of aid effectively in Pakistan.The first-ever U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue was carefully choreographed to convey a new tone of trust and partnership.  Images of Secretary Clinton smiling and laughing with Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi splashed across front pages of newspapers in Pakistan and the United States.  The Strategic Dialogue included discussions of what Secretary Clinton called “the full range of interest and concerns that matter to the Pakistani and American people,” including national security, but also education, agriculture, health, and economic growth. Energy and water took center stage in the development discussions, and the United States pledged new investments in Pakistan’s energy sector.  At the meeting's end,  Secretary Clinton declared “a new day” for relations between the two countries, and Qureshi called himself “a happy man and a satisfied man.”Pakistani citizens, however, remain skeptical.  After the meeting, analysis in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper pointed out that fewer than 20 percent of Pakistanis hold a favorable view of the United States, despite the pledge to triple U.S. development assistance.  Pakistanis worry that U.S. interest—and aid funding—may be short-lived.  The Dawn reported that “Pakistanis are looking anxiously at the July 2011 deadline set by President Barack Obama for U.S. forces to start pulling out of neighboring Afghanistan, fearing this will result in less interest in Pakistan.”  How should the United States deploy its aid resources to Pakistan to achieve results and to demonstrate to the Pakistan public that this “new day” for the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is more than just talk? In her open letter to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Nancy suggests four ways to do this:

1. Clarify the United States’ emphasis on the long-term priority of a more capable Pakistani state and a more prosperous and just society over the long-term, rather than on efforts to ‘win hearts and minds’ in the short term.
2. Make aid spending more transparent by sharing timely and complete information on program spending and disbursements.  We recommend creating a usable public website that shares ongoing reporting on aid spending with audiences in the U.S. and in Pakistan.  The Millennium Challenge Corporation and the administration’s Recovery.gov website, which tracks stimulus funds, can be looked to as models.
3. Work with the Government of Pakistan to identify a limited set of key development indicators for the next five years, and hoped-for annual progress against them.  To motivate innovation, learning, and evaluation, these indicators should be measurable, verifiable, publicly disseminated, and reported on annually. 
4. Be frank with Congress and the American people about the United States’ limited leverage to influence economic policy reforms, corruption and governance challenges in Pakistan.  On difficult economic policy and governance issues, the United States should join closely with major donors such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to encourage politically sustainable change in Pakistan. 

You’ll find the complete open letter here. The letter’s recommendations are based on input from the CGD Study Group on a U.S. Development Strategy in Pakistan.  You can learn more about the membership and purpose of our study group in this blog post or on the U.S. Development Strategy in Pakistan initiative page.