Shiv Sena MP Milind Deora recalls when his father helped US ditch Pak for India

For decades, Pakistan saw itself as Washington's indispensable ally. Then, somewhere between the Cold War, nuclear anxieties and a changing American view of the Indian subcontinent, that equation began to crack.

And according to Congress leader Milind Deora, his late father Murli Deora was among those working to crack it.

The claim surfaced in an unexpected place -- the comments section of a social media post about former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

Musharraf, in an interview, looked back at Pakistan's relationship with the United States with a familiar sense of betrayal.

"For 42 years, from 1947 to 1989 we were the most allied ally of the United States," Musharraf said, recalling Pakistan's role during the Cold War and its cooperation with Washington against the Soviet Union.

Then came the turn.

From 1989 to 2001, Musharraf pointed out, Pakistan went from being "the most allied ally" to "the most sanctioned ally." He pointed to the stoppage of F-16s, successive sanctions and the eventual US strategic shift towards India.

Pakistan, he said, had been "used for 42 years and then ditched".

That account prompted one X user to bring Murli Deora into the conversation.

The user pointed to Deora's friendship with late US Congressman Stephen Solarz, a Democrat who was deeply involved in Washington's South Asia policy, and argued that Solarz had played a vital role in the US shift.

The user's conclusion was blunt: "The pain of Gen Mushraff is understandable."

Milind Deora's response was equally clear.

"Absolutely," he said.

He then put his father directly into the story.

"Proud that my late father, Murli Deora, worked with US counterparts including late Congressman Stephen Solarz & Senator Larry Pressler to challenge the old US-Pakistan paradigm & advance a more balanced Western approach to the Indian subcontinent," Deora wrote.

It was a brief post, but it opened a much bigger window into a relationship that had once been central to American strategy in South Asia.

WHY WASHINGTON'S PAK EQUATION BEGAN TO CHANGE

Musharraf's version of the story places the rupture around the late 1980s and early 1990s. The broader US policy record shows why that period mattered.

During the Cold War, Pakistan was a crucial American partner in the effort to counter the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. US support for Islamabad expanded substantially in the 1980s. But at the same time, Pakistan's nuclear ambitions were increasingly becoming a problem in Washington.

That tension found its way into Congress in 1985, producing two amendments that Musharraf cited in the interview and that would become important in Washington's dealings with Pakistan: the Solarz Amendment, associated with Congressman Stephen Solarz, and the Pressler Amendment, sponsored by Senator Larry Pressler. Both sought to put the brakes on Pakistan's nuclear ambitions, but through different mechanisms.

The Pressler Amendment required the US President to certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device for American military assistance to continue. That certification eventually failed in 1990, bringing the suspension of US military assistance and new economic aid to Pakistan.

Solarz, meanwhile, was one of the congressional voices pressing Washington to confront Pakistan over its nuclear programme. As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, he raised questions over US military assistance to Pakistan and its nuclear ambitions.

And Solarz himself later described the old equation candidly: American support for Pakistan during the Cold War had generated resentment in India, while India's tilt towards the Soviet Union had, in turn, reinforced American concerns.

WHERE MURLI DEORA FITS IN

Murli Deora was not a US policymaker. But he had something that mattered enormously in the business of international politics: relationships.

An influential Congress politician, four-time MP and former Union minister, Deora developed an unusually wide network in Washington. His friendship with Solarz and Pressler was well known. In a 1998 interview with Rediff On The NeT, Milind Deora described his proximity to American political figures as having produced benefits for India.

The Shinde Sena Rajya Sabha MP is now drawing attention to that network decades later -- against the backdrop of one of Musharraf's old interviews that has gone viral.

While Musharraf described Pakistan as having been "used" and then "ditched", Milind Deora sees it, in part, as a paradigm that his father helped challenge.