Arrogant U.S. Misses the Message From Pakistan’s People
By A Khokar • Oct 30th, 2009 • Category: Politics • 12 CommentsThere has always been in American foreign policy circles, a virus called ‘arrogance’, caused by the hereditary assumption that Americans know better than others. Surprisingly, this does not always prove the case, but the condition seems highly resistant to treatment, even by experience.
There seems a high probability that the disease has struck Obama administration policy circles dealing with Pakistan. (leaving aside the case of American relations with Afghanistan.) This administration came to office with a conviction that the Afghanistan problem is a problem because it actually is— a Pakistan problem, Pakistan being a large country possessing nuclear weapons and a great many Pashtuns, assumingly who are the people from whom Taliban are recruited.
Afghanistan is a country with one-sixth Pakistan’s population, with a great many Pashtuns too, harbouring only a 100 or so members of al-Qaida (if we are to believe the American national security adviser, Gen. James Jones) whereas popular opinion in Washington is that Pakistan is rife with them, and the country on its way to becoming a “breeding ground” for terrorists who wish to invade the West, blow it up with nuclear weapons obtained from Pakistani stocks, and establish a new global terrorist caliphate amid the ruins.
It is unknown whether the visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Pakistan shares so alarmed a view, but she will hear a lot about the damage American pressures are doing to Pakistan, and how fearful the Pakistan populace is, not of the Taliban and al-Qaida, but of the United States.
According to a New York Times article this week, from Jane Perlez in Islamabad, the new fighting there against Islamists “has pleased the Americans, but it left large parts of Pakistan under siege, as militants once sequestered in the country’s tribal areas take their war to Pakistan’s cities. Many Pakistanis blame the United States for the country’s rising instability.”
A recent and serious poll in Pakistan found that 11 percent of the Pakistani respondents say that al-Qaida is the greatest threat to Pakistan today, 18 percent said India, and 59 percent said the United States. This was in August, before the most recent offensives of the Pakistan army against the Islamists in Waziristan and the Swat Valley, and the retaliatory city bombings that subsequently have taken place.
A vocal part of the Pakistan population clearly doesn’t want the United States in the country, and it doesn’t even want the aid the United States is sending. A notorious fact in the past has been that civilian and popular opposition to the U.S. was based on the assumption that American aid was meant to keep military governments in place and buy military cooperation with American policy in the area.
This time, it’s the Pakistani army that doesn’t want the $7.5-billion aid package that the Obama administration has put together; the aid is denounced as meant to interfere in the country’s internal affairs—as indeed it is.
The civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari, generally thought to be put in place by Washington, “is seen as slavishly pro-American (as well) as unable to cope” with the current situation says Jane Perlez of N Y Times.
The country’s interior minister Rehman Malik was hit with stones by students when after a blast he visited the International Islamic University last week, and it is said that in retaliation the government closed all the schools and universities in Punjab, the most populous province (being reopened gradually since Monday, Oct. 26), “a move that affected Pakistani families like never before.”
To judge from the public statements of Obama counsellors, Pakistan is seen as the great danger in the region, with erratic politics and nuclear weapons—and an active Islamist revolt thereby having the potential to create (according to Obama’s adviser Bruce Riedel), “the most serious threat to the United States since the end of the cold war.”
This would seem why the U.S. wants a government under US thumb to compel the army to fight the Islamists (their own peoples) on their home territory even if this alienates the army and sows hatred of America.
Why Pakistan may not be allowed to deal with its own issues alone, which has a solid civil service and an excellent army, to act in defence of its own security rather than let the U.S. impose its own ideas?
And will this government of Pakistan—–will ever rise to the occasion and possibly see their oppressors in their eyes squarely and put forward their terms that suit Pakistan’s national intersts?
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“There seems a high probability that the disease has struck Obama administration policy circles dealing with Pakistan. (leaving aside the case of American relations with Afghanistan.) This administration came to office with a conviction that the Afghanistan problem is a problem because it actually is— a Pakistan problem, Pakistan being a large country possessing nuclear weapons and a great many Pashtuns, assumingly who are the people from whom Taliban are recruited.
Afghanistan is a country with one-sixth Pakistan’s population, with a great many Pashtuns too, harbouring only a 100 or so members of al-Qaida (if we are to believe the American national security adviser, Gen. James Jones) whereas popular opinion in Washington is that Pakistan is rife with them, and the country on its way to becoming a “breeding ground” for terrorists who wish to invade the West, blow it up with nuclear weapons obtained from Pakistani stocks, and establish a new global terrorist caliphate amid the ruins.”
I would make that assumption too, after seeing recent attacks. Terrorists have penetrated and attacked the most sensitive gov’t installations, if you still think that Pakistan is a safe place then you need help.
You call Americans ” arrogant”. I call them MOST FOOLISH. I just cannot understand their logic. They gave Pakistan a FREE HAND in Afghanistan after the Russians were booted out with Your help.You installed a regime led by Mullah Omar and had soldiers called TALIBAN who were trained and LOYAL to Pakistan. This regime believed in ISLAM in its purest form as taught in your madrassahs.They just rremoved all female education, enforced full hijab, stoned to death adulterers and drug pushers.Infact they installed a mini Saudi arabia without its petrodollars.
But your nation got greedy and ARROGANT that inspite of recognsition from only THREE COUNTRIES OF OIC ie PAKISTAN, UAE, AND OFCOURSE SAUDI ARABIA. The Afghanistan under Taliban did NOT RECEIVE RECOGNSITION FROM EVEN OTHER iSLAMIC COUNTRIES OF OIC.
They just blasted BAMIYAN BUDDHAS which i saw and felt PAIN LIKE THEY BLASTED OUR TAJMAHAL OR MADURAI MEENAKSHI TEMPLE. Pakistan DID nOT stop this nor EDUCATE THEM IN THEIR MADRASSAHAS. I read recently a comment by one ex Foreign Minister of Taliban regime. He said he opposed the bamiyan destruction BECASUE ALREADY THE STONE IDOLS WERE HUMILIATD BY CUTTING THEIR NOSES!!!!!!.hE JUST COULD NOT UNDERSTAND HUMAN HISTORY NOR HIS OWN HISTORY.HE was blinded by the education of his ISLAM IMPARTED IN YOUR COUNTRY.
Why should socalled arrogant America give $ 7 billion to your country to have this type of civilian democracy?Why?Why Not leave the country to itsPATRIOTIC ARMY as you know it? Why women education?Why not allow them to do as they pleased. But this $ 7 billion for taking away your sovereignity is what makes we in india furious at these FOOLISH AMERICANS because we are your neighbours and we know this socalled aid is for Pakistani Army only so that they can continue the killing of Idol worshippers. WE IN INDIA CALL THESE KERRY LUGARS AS FOOLISH AMERICANS.
Johann, even now these Pakis don’t agree that Pakistan was at fault all these years in regard to their India policy.
Every article of theirs blames their leaders about how they messed up Pakistan, so it is safe to assume that it is THEIR leaders who created the hostilities with India, encouraged terrorism and created the distrust with us for their own personal gains.
When their Banana Republic could not even sustain democracy, how could they have made responsible decisions regarding India? So do you Pakis agree that all the wars imposed on India are due to the idiotic and irresponsible acts of your leaders?
Dear Johann and Jai Ho!,
I bear repeating it here that you both seems to be of opinion that US is dishing out some aid and is saying that we take it or leave it. No—- that is not the case. It is war and cost of war which is being discussed between two allies and not some aid.
Pakistanis are of the opinion that every country in the US war against the terror (NATO and others) their armies are participating in this war; they are adequately been compensated or paid by US toward their cost effects (including India). Here in Pakistan; this is a matter between two allies (US- Pakistan)that Pakistan is fighting as front state in the war and consequently this country has suffered a lot. As per estimate which US also accepts; Pakistan has suffered a loss of some 80 Billion plus an insurmountable anarchy which has engulfed the entire country like a wild fire. 7.5 billions Being offered by K-L bill or now being trumpeted by Hillary on this accounts as compensation by US—- is just a peanut.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has come to Pakistan on a good will visit. Whether she meets the anchors of our freewheeling media that unlike the countries in our neighborhood where humanity is suffering in miseries—— and have no voice of their own— or that she meets the students in Lahore university; she is our guest. But where ever she has gone —–every where she got the real feel of our nation pulses that this nation is not for any subjugation that US may think of.
But with every visit of any US emissaries ———one feels a real change—– in somewhat lowering of their haughtiness found in US as their hereditary.
Jai Ho!,
The ugly face that India is bearing in the subcontinent; it is because she is victim of its own Chankia’s mythology which says that all the immediate neighbour are the enemies and special friendship be cultivated with all others—— lying across these neighbour.
It is for sure that India does not want to see a potent Pakistan as her neighbour and is all out since its inception to undo it but as I said some time ago:
If all the wishes and dreams of vultures were to come——-true, there would have been no living cow walking on this planet.
India has to put up or shut up
Johann,
May it be Iraq, Afghanistan, Middle East and now Pakistan—or earlier it was Vietnam, Korea, Lagos, South American states like Chilly or Mexico or Honduras. Through out the history USA has been fighting wars and reducing these poor defenseless countries to rubbles. There has been no repentance. No remorse for destroying this planet or bringing miseries to million of people that after every destruction they only met failures and defeat.
To sum up; It can not be called any sort of Foolishness on their part that USA do not considers it as such. ‘There are no Friends or Enemies; just (US) Interests’; says Henry Kissinger.
Well said,A Khokar.USA is only concerned about its own interests,what they are offering via aid is not an iota of what we have lost during the war.Obama is nothing but Black Bush!
Mzia,
Well no place on this planet earth can be said as a safe place that death is certain and reaches us where we are.
Yes; the matter of concern may be that there is a situation of law and order which has become precarious for the time being.
In South Waziristan the dens and sanctuaries that these ferocious evil people have been using for decades to launch their subversive activities are about to be smashed and Insha Allah the land of all the evils called— FATA is soon going to see the light of peace and serenity. The culprits from this area are not only trying to retaliate but will come up with all their subversive tactics and methods where the will of the people and forces is affected and that they loose heart. They will bring up lot many more atrocities like bombing and targeting the common people live so that in turn they may save their own lives and sanctuaries and also their Norco and arms smuggling business which is the life line of their survival.
This evil which has infested our society so badly has to be eliminated and its remnants eradicated through and through.
In a world of their own
One almost feels sorry for the US as it attempts to gain traction with Pakistan. A common claim: we helped the US drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan and were then abandoned. This is disingenuous. Pakistan knew that the US was legally bound to sever ties if it persisted with its covert nuclear programme. It persevered and forced the US to walk away. The John Kerry-Richard Lugar bill provides generous and, compared to past aid packages, remarkably condition-free military and civilian assistance to Islamabad. Yet it was treated as a means to convert Pakistan into the indentured servant of the US.
A deepening trend in Pakistan is a national sense of delusion about the nature and origins of the problems that afflict the country. Unfortunately, the country’s leaders have come to believe in these delusions or propagate them for short-term political gain. Just as is the case with individuals, conspiratorial thinking and a bias towards fantastic narratives is born from a sense of powerlessness and disenfranchisement. Pakistanis seem to accept that they are in a sinking ship but prefer to blame the leaking hull on unknown swimmers rather than their unwillingness to plug holes. This is not a surprise.
To look too closely at themselves would require Pakistanis to acknowledge that the militants now waging war against them are their own creation, that they have guided their country away from a modern States’s inclusive polity and that if their sovereignty today is mortgaged to Washington, Beijing and Riyadh, it is because of their fruitless attempt to match India in every field.
Countries that require therapy rather than mere material assistance are not beyond a cure. Unfortunately, the cure often comes after a complete political and social collapse. Or a more controlled revolution where an older establishment is replaced with the mindset of a new order. But even this requires Pakistanis to accept that their problems are largely of their own order. There is evidence this is starting to happen. The question will be whether this awareness will be overwhelmed by the strength of the delusions. If so, Pakistan’s troubles will be beyond the ability of aid or arms. A failed State first occurs when people begin to blame everyone but themselves for their problems.
Recent history in Pakistan is similar to events in Iran during the rule of the Shah. Both leaderships were strongly backed by the US, and were involved in widespread repression or attacks on their own people. Both regimes followed policies that were deeply unpopular domestically. In Iran, this led the revolution of 1979 which created an Islamic Republic. Could something similar happen in Pakistan?
http://watching-history.blogspot.com/2009/10/future-of-pakistan.html
Johann: Eloquently said!
That’s why it is a serious myth, misunderstanding of pakistan when some one says “pakistan army is the reason for pakistan’s problems”.
Pakistan army is merely a reflection of the violent, militaristic mindset of their society. Each and every war with India was cheered on by the “moderate” public including the Bengali genocide until defeat came. Same in 1999.
After reading some pak blogs including this one…paks are completely out of touch and are in a very schizophrenic delusional mindset.
We naively think they will turn around every time. Even now there is no evidence. Situation is bleak.
@HT
“”"A failed State first occurs when people begin to blame everyone but themselves for their problems.”"”
Well said. This is the exact situation in Pakistan.