Worldview: Troubled time for U.S.-Pakistan ties

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Since Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistani generals have been consumed with rage.

U.S. officials don't believe the top Pakistani brass knew bin Laden was there. But the fact that the Americans carried off the raid without Pakistan's knowledge has humiliated the military and angered its public, to the point where essential military cooperation is in jeopardy. (Sadly, that anger is more centered on the violation of Pakistan's sovereignty than on the fact that bin Laden hung out undetected for five years only an hour from the Pakistani capital.)

So Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a sudden, unannounced trip here to try to salvage a relationship with a country whose cooperation is vital for a decent end to the war in Afghanistan.

Yet, as a tense Clinton made clear at a Friday news conference, unless the two sides can be more candid in private and in public, this crucial relationship will fail.

For the last couple of years, Mullen has repeatedly traveled to Islamabad to build closer ties with his counterpart, Pakistani military chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Clinton tried to do the same by pushing for more nonmilitary aid to Pakistan.

Despite a degree of military and intelligence cooperation, however, neither side ever fully trusted the other; deep resentments festered. Pakistan blamed America for botching the Afghan war, which pushed Taliban groups into its tribal areas and helped fuel militancy there. The United States blamed Pakistan for providing sanctuary for Afghan Taliban commanders and letting the militants cross back to kill Afghans and U.S. troops.

Neither side wanted to confront the other openly. The Americans didn't want to anger the Pakistanis, whose territory provides the main supply route for our troops in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis didn't want to bite (at least, too deeply) the hand that funds their army.

So the two sides never came clean with each other. The Americans fumed that Pakistan secretly protected Afghan Taliban leaders, while the Pakistanis complained that America failed to appreciate the cost of their war on Pakistani Taliban groups.

Meantime, Pakistani officials privately cooperated with the U.S. drone strikes against militants, even as they publicly denounced the strikes. Pakistani officials often portrayed the struggle against terrorists as America's war, not their own.