From Abbottabad to Trump: The unbroken chain in U.S.–Pakistan military relations

Published 29 July 2026 · india

On a chilly evening in January 2006, enroute from Islamabad to Muzaffarabad in my host’s hatchback car, we passed through a small town called Abbottabad

On a chilly evening in January 2006, enroute from Islamabad to Muzaffarabad in my host’s hatchback car, we passed through a small town called Abbottabad which is part of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Abbottabad for all practical reasons is an extension of Pothwari-speaking area of Pakistan, which includes Islamabad-Rawalpindi area and northern Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. He stopped the car briefly to buy its famously sweet oranges, and I thought nothing of it. That fleeting roadside moment was my first and last encounter with a place that five-years-later, would dominate global headlines. On May 2, 2011, while travelling from the United States to India, I switched on my seat-back television mid-flight and heard President Obama announce that the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, had been killed there bringing to an end a decade-long, meticulously executed search. Instantly, I was reminded of that journey. Also read | U.S. CENTCOM chief Gen. Michael Kurilla terms Pakistan a ‘phenomenal partner’ in counter-terrorism That the U.S. Operation Neptune Spear to hunt down Osama took place deep inside Pakistan, far from the Afghan border, was a telling reminder that in future relations between Washington and Islamabad would always be shadowed by a measure of mistrust. The facts of the preceding and following decade also hinted that. As the United States waged its war in Afghanistan and pursued Osama Bin Laden (OBL), a complex partnership emerged between the two countries. Karachi, Pakistan’s key port city, became the hub through which American logistics were landed before making their way to Afghanistan. Misunderstandings frequently arose, with the U.S. questioning Pakistan’s sincerity and, on several occasions, American personnel and supplies were looted or ambushed, highlighting the fragile and often tense nature of the alliance. Pentagon and the Pakistani military’s enduring relationship After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Biden administration, it was widely assumed that Pakistan’s strategic as well as tactical importance to the U.S. had ended for long apart from the mistrust owing to OBL killing. Economically, it offered little leverage, and with Afghanistan no longer a priority for counterterrorism, Washington’s focus appeared to shift elsewhere. In this context, the renewed U.S.–Pakistan engagement, epitomized by visits of General Asim Munir to the U.S., including a luncheon meeting with President Trump has surprised many and become a subject of global discussion, including here and elsewhere with numerous popular Western publications also covering the development. Several factors have been cited for the recent turnaround in U.S.–Pakistan relations: the discovery of rare earth minerals, the potential deployment of Pakistani troops in Middle East to serve the U.S. interests, Pakistan-centric developments in cryptocurrency, which reportedly may involve one of the U.S. President’s sons or Pakistani diplomatic corps ability to charm President Trump. While all of these factors may or may not have some relevance, a less discussed but enduring element is the relationship between the Pentagon and the Pakistani military, which never fully disappeared and often comes to the surface during Republican-led administrations in the U.S. This dynamic requires a detailed unpacking as this is critical to the understanding of some of the present developments. Also read | India, Pakistan both partners of U.S. with different points of emphasis: Biden administration In international affairs, our analyses are often shaped by our own conditioning — the lens formed by the place and perspective from which a piece is written.