Af Pak - Criticism

Criticism

The term has been widely criticized in Pakistan. Amir Taheri writes that Holbrooke's use of the term has been resented by many Pakistanis, who see Pakistan as "in a different league than the much smaller and devastated Afghanistan." Clifford May writes that it is disliked by Afghans as well.

Pakistani journalist Saeed Shah who is a contributor to The Guardian newspaper mentioned that the international community have always had Pakistan and India bracketed together, and Pakistan always had, and still in some ways, compares itself with India. This is due to the fact that Pakistan was a part of India before 1947. Pakistanis have never compared themselves with Afghans. He mentions that the United States has lumped Pakistan with Afghanistan under "Af-Pak", a diplomatic relegation, while India is lauded as a growing power. This is a key reason why Pakistan is seeking a nuclear deal with the US as "parity" with India.

In June 2009 former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf criticized the term in an interview with Der Spiegel:

I am totally against the term AfPak. I do not support the word itself for two reasons: First, the strategy puts Pakistan on the same level as Afghanistan. We are not. Afghanistan has no government and the country is completely destabilized. Pakistan is not. Second, and this is much more important, is that there is an Indian element in the whole game. We have the Kashmir struggle, without which extremist elements like Lashkar-e-Taiba would not exist.

As seen by Pakistan, India "should have been" part of a wide regional strategy including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir. However, the Indian government disposed of this proposition with ease. Answering questions at a June 2009 press conference in Islamabad, Holbrooke "said the term 'Afpak' was not meant to demean Pakistan, but was 'bureaucratic shorthand' intended to convey that the situation in the border areas on both sides was linked and one side could not be resolved without the other." In January 2010 Holbrooke said that the administration had stopped using the term: "We can't use it anymore because it does not please people in Pakistan, for understandable reasons."