Long before he said he would stop the Ukraine war within a day of becoming president, Trump said he would get Dr Shakil Afridi out of prison in two minutes: “I would tell them, ‘let him out,’ and I’m sure they would let him out.” But nine years and some months after Trump’s boast, Afridi, the CIA eye who helped US hunt down Osama bin Laden, remains in a Pakistani jail. Did Trump forget to tell the Pakistanis, or did they refuse to humour him? The answer can shed some light on his baffling flip-flop relationship with Pakistan.FlopIt’s baffling because Trump’s original attitude towards Pakistan left no room for a relationship at all. “Get it straight: Pakistan is not our friend,” he tweeted in December 2011. And again in Jan 2012, before asking in June that year, “When will Pakistan apologise to us for providing safe sanctuary to Osama bin Laden for 6 years?! Some ‘ally’.”FlipPakistan has never apologised, but within five months of Op Sindoor, PM Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir have wormed their way into Trump’s good books by dangling before him goodies like a Nobel nomination, a rumour of oil, and a box of rocks.The latest from our neighbours is that they have delivered a batch of “enriched rare earth elements and critical minerals” to a firm in the Midwestern state of Missouri.They should have said “sample” because there’s no way sea freight will reach Missouri from Pakistan in less than a month – the MoU was signed only on Sept 8. More than these, what’s softened Trump to putty is fulsome praise. Munir recently claimed Trump saved “millions and millions of lives” through his alleged intervention in Op Sindoor.FlopBut go a long, long way back, like 40 years, when Trump wasn’t 40 yet, and only once married. He already had a dim view of Pakistan as a prospective rogue nuclear state, and to pre-empt that, he told Ron Rosenbaum this in a 1985 interview: “You start off telling them, ‘Let’s get rid of it.’ If that doesn’t work you then start cutting off aid. And more aid and then more. You do whatever is necessary so these people will have riots in the street, so they can’t get water. So they can’t get Band-Aids, so they can’t get food.“FlipYet, after railing for Decemberades, late in 2017 he had a change of heart: “Starting to develop a much better relationship with Pakistan and its leaders.”FlopBut just two months later, he changed his mind: “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & Decembereit, thinking of our leaders as fools.” Also: “We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he (Osama) was living there…We no longer pay Pakistan the $Billions because they would take our money and do nothing for us, Bin Laden being a prime example, Afghanistan being another.”FlipIf the past five months are a sign, Trump seems to have got over his old mistrust of Pakistan completely. Heck, he’s practically kissed them with a 19% tariff. Whether this relationship is of the blood-is-thicker-than-water type, or of the oil-is-thicker-than-blood type, time will tell, but with Afridi still in jail, it’s a fair bet that Sharif-Munir is stringing Trump along.How’s that? Maybe they take him for one of their own. There was that old conspiracy theory about him being a local boy, remember? According to Pakistani channel Neo News, Trump was born Dawood Ibrahim Khan in Waziristan, in 1946, and brought to US in 1955 after his parents’ death in a car crash.If only it were true, it would explain so much. For instance, the liberties Pakistan takes with readouts of its Trump meetings. It claimed in December 2016 that Trump had told then PM Nawaz Sharif, Shehbaz’s elder brother: “You have a very good reputation. You are a terrific guy”, and Pakistan is a “fantastic country, fantastic place”, although the US version said nothing of the kind.After last week’s closed-door meeting, on which US kept mum, Pakistan claimed Trump showed “open support of Pakistan’s role in counter-terrorism and emphasised the need to further increase security and intelligence cooperation”.But it might be that Trump himself has bought into the myth of his Pakistani origin. Which would explain why he hankers for Bagram, which is 50 minutes by air from Waziristan. And isn’t Pakistan the model for what he wants US to be? Army out in cities, opponents in jail, no rights worth the name, and best of all, nobody to stop him from a third – and fourth and fifth – term in office!
