Haqqani, the director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, also said that getting the Pakistan policy right — including a review of the predicates for any aid — remains the key to US victory in Afghanistan. Donald Trump will have to embrace “unilateralism” against Pakistan as President Barack Obama did when it hunt down Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, a former Pakistani diplomat has said, arguing that USD 33 billion of US funding has failed to change Islamabad’s policy on terrorism. Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the US, also predicted that the Trump administration, which takes over in January, will downgrade Pakistan from its current status of a “major non-NATO ally”. “(But) under President Obama, the US did manage to hunt down Osama bin Laden in his safe house in Pakistan, without Pakistan’s permission. The Trump administration will have to embrace similar unilateralism if and when needed, in addition to the almost inevitable downgrading of Pakistan from its current status as a major non-NATO ally,” Haqqani said.

Source: Indian Express November 25, 2016 07:39 UTC