Pakistan is a country of growing, indeed crucial, importance to the
United States and to the rest of the world. Three years ago President Barack
Obama called me a few days after his inauguration and asked me to chair an
urgent interagency review of policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan. He said
that no issue on his foreign policy agenda was more important than the fate
of Pakistan, which he rightly has described as the epicenter of the global ter
rorist threat today. Two years later Obama would send American SEAL com
mandoes into Abbottabad, Pakistan, to kill al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin
Laden, in an operation carried out without the advance permission or even
knowledge of the Pakistani government and army. It would be a defining
moment of the Obama administration.
Pakistan was high on his agenda even before his call to me. The terrorist
attack on Mumbai, India, in November 2008, just days after Obama’s election,
was the first major international crisis on the newly elected president’s watch.
That attack was staged from Pakistan’s biggest city and major port, Karachi.
Obama stepped up drone attacks on terrorist targets in Pakistan dramatically
right from his first days in office. Today U.S. drones attack terrorist targets
inside Pakistan frequently, often twice a week.