Two Pakistani Views on the Current Crisis in Post-Osama Assassination US-Pakistan Relations

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.’...

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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 which 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?...

For the rest of these two articles by Pakistani journalists SHAUKAT QADIR and YASMEEN ALI in ThisCantBeHappening!, please go to: ThisCantBeHappening!