ISAS Briefs

The recent US Drone attack that made bull’s eye and killed the target, the Taliban chief in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud, also caused a huge collateral damage. An unintended consequence was a return to the doldrums of the tricky and unstable US-Pakistan relations, which was slowly but surely being restored by painstaking efforts on the parts of both Washington and Islamabad. The newly-elected Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had travelled to the United States, and following his interaction with the American leadership, a thaw in the relations between the two sides was discernible. Sharif had just obtained the assurances of a US$ 6.6 billion bail-out from the International Monetary Fund for his country’s stalled economy. The US also committed itself to disburse US$ 300 million to Pakistani hands, as a tranche of the US$ 1.6 billion in military assistance promised but held back by the Congress.