Beware of Americans…Bearing Gifts
By Shaukat Qadir
I am sure everyone knows this but merely to ensure we are on the same grid, a policy has one or more aims to be achieved in a specified period and spells out how the said aims will be achieved. While I have no intention of fleshing out a policy in this article, I will merely seek to emphasise the need for one and suggest what it should be aiming at. Pakistan has been without any policy since Ayub Khan’s decline in 1964!
Let us start by looking at what every ordinary citizen of any country, including Pakistan, wants. First and foremost is security: Not just security of life and limb or security from neighbouring enemies, but also food security, water security, job security, economic security, energy security etc. The list is long, and he/she wants to live in peace, so as to have the right to ‘pursue happiness’.
If this is all what we need, do we have any of these? Quite right, we have none! Why not? Because, apart from the rampant corruption at all levels of those in authority, we are engaged in a war that is sapping all our resources! Make no mistake, this is our war; the ‘enemy within’ poses an existential threat, greater than any external power does.
But why did this war begin? Why did the once loyal Mehsud, Afridi, and Mohmand turn against us?
If we hark back in time, in 2001, the Pakistani Pashtun and all Afghans were celebrating US intervention in Afghanistan. It would liberate them from Taliban oppression. Within a year, American arrogance, their suspicion of all Afghans, their utter disregard for local customs and culture, could result in only one thing: Another Afghan freedom struggle from an oppressive foreign force. The US called it a resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda! In time it did become that, because the US converted a legitimate struggle for freedom from an army of occupation into ‘Taliban linked to al Qaeda.’
To return to my question — as they did when Afghans sought their freedom from the Soviet occupation, the Pakistani Pashtuns bordering Afghanistan, girded their loins to assist their Afghan brethren. This time, Pakistan did not want them to. And in 2004, we decided to kill the most outspoken of those Pashtuns, a wazir called Nek Muhammad.
His murder was the watershed. We had a rebellion on our hands because we were preventing our tribal Pashtun from assisting their Afghan brethren in their freedom struggle against an army of occupation: The Americans, of course. So all Pakistan suddenly became American, kafirs, legitimate targets for religious fanatics to kill, and we are more vulnerable and accessible for them to target. So we are faced with an existentialist threat and we die. This was the first gift we got from the US.
Without tracing all the history, where do we stand today as far as the US is concerned? Anybody, who is anybody in the US, is baying for our blood. We are traitors to them and branded American-kafirs by our enemy within. Obama now tells us that when the Navy SEALs came to get Osama, they were “in sufficient numbers and prepared to retaliate to any response by the police or Pakistan’s security forces”.
They also gifted us Raymond Davis, hundreds of him. When we agreed to give him back, it was on the condition that all other Raymonds also leave. The CIA has not forgiven us and recent drone attacks are again killing more civilians than militants. If the Raymonds can no longer stoke unrest in Pakistan, the drones can!
As far as the promised financial aid is concerned, we receive a mere trickle, each time with another threat of severance if we fail to obey our Lords and Masters in DC. Even the Coalition Support Fund (CSF), intended to compensate a small portion of the expense incurred by the military in this war that has been forced on us by the US and Musharaf’s capitulation, is long overdue by well over a billion dollars.
The US has its own litany of complaints but we have ours. Isn’t it time to file for divorce?
Morning after in the courtyard of the Osama Bin-Ladin compound, following the US SEAL raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan
But I also listed what our people want; how can we get there? To start with, if we divorce the US, we can no longer be clubbed with it and theraison d’etre for our internal strife ceases to exist and, if the US pulls out of Afghanistan, claiming victory after Osama’s execution, the entire cause disappears!
If the US does not pull out of Afghanistan, which is more than likely, we can make the US increasingly irrelevant in Afghanistan. Those who read my explanation of why US Vice President Joe Biden rushed to Pakistan might recall the series of events listed by me which led to the (Burhannuddin) Rabbani Initiative, which also received a nod from our army chief, to find an Afghan solution to Afghanistan’s future.
All this will take time, but our war will be approaching a conclusion. It will no longer be open-ended. If Afghanistan can find its own solution and make peace within, our western borders are safe. If we mend fences with Iran and reopen negotiations with Tehran for the stalled oil pipeline, we will have cheap energy, which China is also offering. If we bring peace to Balochistan, China will immediately commence work on expanding the Karakoram Highway and the stalled rail link from Urumqi to Havelian. If that happens, commerce alone will suffice to infuse fresh life into our tottering economy.
It all starts if we divorce the US, now!
Our problem is that our political leaders have convinced themselves that before they are elected in Pakistan, they have to be selected in DC. May I suggest, if you must be selected somewhere, get yourself selected in Beijing instead. The only capital that has, while you were cowering in your palaces or gallivanting overseas, issued a warning(unsolicited by us) to the US: “Don’t dream of repeating May 1 in Pakistan again”.
So, do it now. Before the people rise up, as they are doing in Arab countries, and shout, “Enough — kaafi ho gaee”!
SHAUKAT QADIR retired as a Brigadier from the Pakistan infantry in 1999. He was the founder, vice president and, briefly, president of a think tank. He now divides is time between teaching, studying many subjects, including journalism, and baby-sitting his grandchildren. He was a regular writer for the late Far East Economic Review, and is an occasional contributor to The National in UAE and to Pakistan’s Express Tribune, where this article originally appeared on May 12.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Who should protect whom?
By Yasmeen Ali
The British Express, in its May 15th edition, carries an article by Marco Giannangeli, reporting on an alleged decision of US to deploy troops in Pakistan if the nation’s nuclear installations come under threat from terrorists seeking revenge for Osama Bin Laden’s death. A loud whoop has gone up from the political pundits who had stated that this was the ultimate purpose of “Osama Drama”. That it was always the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan that the USA had been after, that the rest was plain hogwash! Giannangeli goes on to say that the plan will be put in action without the consent of President Zardari.
Now wait. Some questions need to be addressed here.
The US was attacked on 9/11, right? The aircraft went right under the noses of whosoever the noses belonged to, into the twin towers of the Trade Center in New York City, with not one, but two, planes hitting the towers, causing both to collapse, leaving many dead both in the plane and in the targeted buildings. Yet the US never contemplated asking UN, NATO or any other country’s military forces to deploying their troops, with feet on American soil, to guard their nuclear booty. Why on earth not? Al-Qaeda are after every American right? They are totally racist, right? So does it not make sense that America’s nuclear arsenal must be protected from future terrorist attacks and possible takeover by the terrorists?
Then comes the twist in the story:
How come the terrorists will attack Pakistan’s nuclear installations, but will not attack US nuclear installations when it is the USA who is their target? And remember, it is USA which took out Osama bin Laden? Certainly the US has claimed that Pakistan neither had anything to do with the Abbottabad operation nor was even aware of it until it was over. Besides, does Washington think that the terrorists, after stealing our nuclear arsenal, will somehow transport their cache of weapons all the way from Pakistan to US, under the noses of whosoever the noses may belong to and target America? After all, if an intelligence failure of the proportion of 9/11 could happen, this can happen too, no? As Hollywood shows us, fantastic things are possible! So America is driven by fear to destroy the world, for something that hardly has a chance of happening. Or perhaps leaders in Washington are recalling the event a few years back when five fully-armed nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were loaded onto a B-52 at Minot AFB in North Dakota and flown across the entire US, landing at an Air Force base in Shreveport, Louisiana, all without the knowledge of anyone in the official military chain of command. Following American logic, should not other worried nations send in troops to secure America’s poorly guarded nukes?
By the by, hard as I tried, I could not come across a law that allows any nation, be it the US or any other, to have troops with boots on ground on another country’s soil, to “protect” anything of theirs without their consent. Is this a prelude to the invasion of “the trusted ally,” as some political pundits have been predicting for long?
A friend of mine, when reading this news by in the Express, wrote to me, suggesting, “When rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it”. Another wrote, “No, no. Mumbai was attacked right? How come the US is not afraid of Delhi losing their virginity…er.. booty? They have had eight secessionist movements in India already, no?” But then, he is serenely reminded of the support America lends India in the region.
Fanning more hatred, what is the end? Or, is there an end?
I am reminded here of what a great man said about America. That great man was President Theodore Roosevelt, who said, “This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.”
Had he lived today, he would have surely have included the entire world in his sage statement!
Yasmeen Ali is a Pakistani attorney who lives in Lahore. She offered this article, which ran in her own blog, PakPotpourri2, exclusively to ThisCantBeHappening! for publication in the US. She may be reached at yasmeen.a.9@gmail.com.