Trump Is Playing a Dangerous Game With Pakistan

In Lahore and Karachi, American flags were burned in front of TV cameras after President Trump’s decision on Jan. 4 to withhold $2 billion of security aid from Pakistan to punish it for allegedly harboring terrorists. The country’s government issued angry statements claiming no insurgents were being given sanctuary and that the U.S. wasn’t fully appreciative of the thousands of Pakistani soldiers killed fighting militants.

The rancor isn’t new. The U.S. relationship with Pakistan, which deepened during the Cold War, is both strategic and troubled. The complications increased with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when the U.S. funneled arms and cash through Pakistan’s main spy agency to the Afghan guerrilla resistance—the mujahedeen. Among the foreigners who flocked to the chaos in Afghanistan was Osama bin Laden. Since Sept. 11, the U.S. has given Pakistan billions of dollars in military aid and continued to rely on it as a main supply route into Afghanistan. Yet despite its assistance capturing and killing many senior al-Qaeda leaders, Pakistan has been routinely accused of continuing to support militants carrying out attacks on Afghanistan and India. Bin Laden hid in Pakistan for years before being killed in a Navy Seal raid in 2011.