While the governments in Washington and Islamabad seek ways to deepen co-operation, their general mood of mistrust can undermine those efforts, according to a commentary.Amit Pandya of the Stimson Centre writes that prominent Pakistanis gathered at a meeting arranged by the centre recently expressed anger and a sense of alienation vis-Ã -vis the United States. "There was an almost unanimous sense that the US, up to the most senior levels of policy-making, evinced no understanding of Pakistani conditions and limitations, and that our demand that 'Pakistan must do more' is misplaced." A retired government official said, "If things go on as they are I will have no choice but to consider myself a Taliban, and I will not be alone among Pakistanis like me." Many believe that the US has a simplistic and binary sense of the opposition of "terrorists" and political stability; and that this has led to adoption of policies that have exacerbated the sources of recruitment by armed insurgents.
Distraction: According to Pandya, Pakistani opinions vary about the value of negotiations with armed groups, some calling themselves Taliban and others identified by various degrees of puritan and extremist religio-political agendas, in the North West Frontier Province and in the Tribal Areas. Some Pakistanis believe that it is futile to negotiate with any armed groups, others that a segment of insurgent groups is implacable, yet others believe that negotiations need to be a key part of a strategy of political stabilisation and of the restoration of politics over military instruments of governance. Pakistanis think Washington misses or misunderstands the complex continuities of political affiliation and clan loyalty between those involved in armed activity and those involved in politics. The US obsession with defeat of armed insurgents on the frontier, in this view, is a distraction from the pressing need for political stabilisation of the new government, and the need to allow that government to respond to the parlous economic situation of the country. There is also a sense that the US, over the past year of turmoil, did not support the Pakistani aspiration for an independent judiciary and the rule of law, as embodied in the widely popular "lawyers' movement". There is more than passing reference among Pakistanis to the fact that the armed insurgencies on the frontier also reflect a breakdown of the rule of law, and emulation by armed groups of a more widespread contempt for the rule of law observed throughout the society, particularly among the country's rulers, Pandya writes.