
Trump embraces Pakistan: ‘Tactical romance’ or a new ‘inner circle’?
Al Jazeera
Trump hosts Pakistan army chief Asim Munir for an unprecedented White House lunch, as the US and Pakistan reset ties.
Islamabad, Pakistan – In his first address to a joint session of Congress on March 4 this year, after becoming United States president for a second time, Donald Trump made a striking revelation.
He referred to the deadly Abbey Gate bombing at Kabul airport in August 2021 – which occurred as thousands of Afghans tried to flee following the Taliban takeover – and said the alleged perpetrator had been apprehended.
The country he credited with the arrest: Pakistan. “I want to thank especially the government of Pakistan for helping arrest this monster,” Trump declared.
A little more than three months later, Trump hosted Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir for lunch at the White House on Wednesday — the first time a US president has hosted a military chief from Pakistan who isn’t also the country’s head of state. Munir is on a five-day trip to the US.
For a country that Trump had, just seven years earlier, accused of giving the US “nothing but lies and deceit” and safe havens to terrorists – and one that his immediate predecessor Joe Biden called “one of the most dangerous nations” – this marks a dramatic shift.













