Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Khar has announced that she believes the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, seemingly getting worse year after year, has now been “fully restored” and is getting more positive by the day.
Pinpointing the “low” point of the relationship is virtually impossible after so many disputes, from the early 2011 Raymond Davis fiasco, when a CIA agent disguised as a consulate employee murdered two people on the streets of Lahore, to the end of 2011 when the US attacked a Pakistani military base, killing 24 people, then spent 6 solid months publicly debating whether or not to apologize for the attack.
2012 has plenty of bad incidents as well, but after the October 26 incident in which US officials detained Pakistani MP Imran Khan in Toronto and accused him of being a “Taliban supporter” for organizing anti-drone protests, there’s been a solid month without any new embarrassing incidents.
Khan’s estimation that this means the normalization of the situation doesn’t seem to be backed by anything other than the lack of specific crises at this particular moment. Given recent history, it seems unlikely this will last much longer.