Magnificent Delusions (2 page)

But the willingness of my countrymen to believe the worst about their ambassador reflects a deeper pathology. Instead of basing international relations on facts, Pakistanis have become accustomed to seeing the world through the prism of an Islamo-nationalist ideology. Even well-traveled, erudite, and articulate Pakistani officials echo this ideology without realizing that holding tight to these self-defeating ideas makes little impact on the rest of the world; the gap is widening between how Pakistanis and the rest of the world view Pakistan.

Somehow, halfhearted and time-limited transactions rather than an honest dialog over shared interests seem to be the default pattern in US-Pakistan relations. For instance, as stated above, I found the two countries working toward very different outcomes in Afghanistan. I fear that the prospect of their alliance may end in acrimony once again.

The reemergence of democracy in Pakistan offers the hope that Pakistanis will someday be able to debate their national interests realistically and alter their national priorities so as to align more with those of the United States. If, however, the propaganda and the political strategies of the powerful Pakistani military continue to hold sway, alienation from the United States will remain inevitable. Additionally, Pakistanis are not likely to alter their priorities solely as part
of a bargain involving aid and arms from the United States. Moreover, both countries are wrong when they assume that even as they act at cross-purposes, they will eventually succeed in persuading the other of their own respective points of view.

Since its independence in 1947, Pakistan has debated its raison d'être. A vocal and powerful minority insists that the country was created to be an Islamic state, a semitheocracy governed by religious principles defined by those who support that vision. And in response to Pakistan's insecurity toward India and the fear of this much larger neighbor culturally if not politically reabsorbing Pakistan, many otherwise modern, educated generals, judges, and politicians have embraced this Islamist paradigm.

Because of this, Pakistan's short history as a nation has witnessed the demonization of many secularists as foreign collaborators and enemies of the national ideology. Furthermore, the country has failed to sustain economic growth, which has increased during times of cooperation with the United States, only to come to a halt during periods of estrangement. Pakistanis have seldom pondered why, after six decades of alliance with the United States, the country has not been able to build the kind of economy that other US allies such as South Korea and Taiwan have managed to create for themselves.

American critics of Pakistan point out that Pakistan has always pursued its own agenda, which seldom coincides with American interests, yet it repeatedly seeks US aid and arms without keeping the commitments it makes to acquire that assistance. As a result, the list of American grievances is long: Pakistan developed nuclear weapons while promising the United States that it would not; the United States helped arm and train Mujahideen against the Soviets during the 1980s, but Pakistan chose to keep these militants well armed and sufficiently funded even after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989; and, from the American perspective, Pakistan's crackdown on terrorist groups, particularly after 9/11, has been halfhearted at best.

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan is a tale of exaggerated expectations, broken promises, and disastrous misunderstandings. The discovery of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011 further and significantly undermined any hope of convincing
Americans that Pakistan was an ally, albeit one with its own concerns and difficulties.

Many have noted that radical Islam, Pakistan's military, and US-Pakistan relations have shaped Pakistan's history, and I have spent most of my life at the intersection of these three critical elements. As a Pakistani, I feel that my country cannot forever depend on external factors for its survival and progress and that my compatriots need to set aside their contrived narrative and face the harsh facts of recent history. Conversely, Americans must realize that their policies toward Pakistan have helped neither the United States nor Pakistan's people.

In his 1842 book
American Notes
, Charles Dickens described Washington, DC—a purpose-built capital—as a “City of Magnificent Intentions.” In this way Islamabad is similar to Washington, DC, as it is a new city with no history before the 1960s, when wheat fields and bushes were cleared in order to establish it as Pakistan's capital. And though these two cities' histories may parallel each other, Washington's magnificent intentions and delusions have often clashed with those of Islamabad. This book is an account of that clash. Although I have been witness to some critical events in US-Pakistan relations, this is not intended to be a personal memoir.

Chapter One

False Start

O
ne month after Pakistan's creation as an independent state in August 1947, the country's founder and first governor-general, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, sat down at his stately residence in Karachi, the Flagstaff House, for an interview with
Life
magazine reporter and photographer Margaret Bourke-White. His followers revered the charismatic Jinnah as the Quaid-e-Azam, the Great Leader. But his detractors blamed him for the violent partition of British India that had carved out the subcontinent's northwestern and northeastern provinces into a new Muslim-majority British dominion.

Most American journalists covering the events leading to Indian and Pakistani independence were less than sympathetic to the idea of Pakistan, and Bourke-White was no exception. But Pakistanis deemed her magazine particularly prejudiced against their newly born country because
Life
's sister publication,
Time
, had derided Jinnah as the “Pooh-Bah of Pakistan,” dismissed the country as “the creation of one clever man, Jinnah,” and described Pakistan's birth as “a slick political trick” when compared to the “mass movement” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi led for India's independence.
¹

After asking probing questions about Jinnah's plans for the new nation's constitution, Bourke-White sought his views of relations with the United States. Jinnah replied that “America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America.” He then told her: “Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed,” and went on to state, “the
frontier on which the future position of the world revolves.…Russia is not so very far away” He spoke of America's interest in arming Greece and Turkey and expressed the hope that the United States would pour money and arms into Pakistan as well.

In response to these answers, Bourke-White wrote disapprovingly: “In Jinnah's mind this brave new nation had no other claim on America's friendship than this—that across a wild tumble of roadless mountain ranges lay the land of the Bolsheviks. I wondered whether the Quaid-e-Azam considered his new state only as an armored buffer between opposing major powers.”
²

This account of Pakistani thinking within weeks of its creation offers perspective into the vagaries of US-Pakistan relations over the last six-and-a-half decades. Amid frequent Pakistani charges of American betrayal, few Americans remember that Pakistan initiated the US-Pakistan alliance primarily to compensate for its economic and military disadvantages.

At the time when Jinnah described Pakistan as a country that was the “pivot of the world,” the United States had given little thought to the new nation and its possible role in international security. Although the US embassy was the first diplomatic mission to open for business in Karachi, fewer people staffed the building than the number posted in the US embassy in Cuba at that same time.

Oblivious to American disinterest, however, Pakistanis had high expectations of one of the world's two superpowers. Bourke-White wrote that government officials would say to her: “Surely America will build our army” and “Surely America will give us loans to keep Russia from walking in.” But neither she nor the Pakistani officials she spoke to saw signs of Soviet infiltration. “They would reply almost sadly,” she said, “as though sorry not to be able to make more of the argument. ‘No, Russia has shown no signs of being interested in Pakistan.'”

Several months before Jinnah sat down for his interview with Bourke-White, he had addressed American diplomats about his expectation that the United States should help Pakistan build its economy and military in return for Pakistan mobilizing Muslim nations against the Soviet Union. At that time, May of 1947, the country was
still an idea, and discussions about partitioning India had not yet concluded when Jinnah sat down for a one-and-a-half-hour meeting with Raymond Hare of the State Department's Division of Middle Eastern and Indian Affairs as well as Thomas Weil, second secretary at the embassy in New Delhi.

According to the two diplomats' account of the meeting, Jinnah told them that the establishment of Pakistan was “essential to prevent ‘Hindu imperialism' spreading” into the Middle East. In his vision the Muslim countries “would stand together against possible Russian aggression” and would look to the United States for assistance.

But Americans wondered how Pakistan could be an American ally without a shared interest. They pointed to “frequent jibes” against US “economic imperialism and dollar diplomacy” in
Dawn
, the newspaper Jinnah founded to advance the cause of Pakistan. Jinnah responded with an explanation that foretold Pakistan's future interaction with the United States, stating that the
Dawn
editors “simply reflected” the attitude of Indian Muslims in general toward America, and he “added jokingly ‘they had to make a living'.” He said that he realized that the US government was “probably open minded” about Pakistan; nonetheless, “most Indian Muslims felt Americans were against them.” Jinnah cited two reasons for this view: first, he said, “because most Americans seemed opposed to Pakistan,” and second, because the “U.S. government and people backed Jews against Arabs in Palestine.”
³

Jinnah's expectation of US aid for Pakistan, American officials' concerns about anti-Americanism, and Bourke-White's cynicism about Pakistani objectives around the time of the country's inception together seem like the prologue to a story with many repetitions. The
Life
correspondent discerned in Pakistan a persistently voiced “hope of tapping the US treasury,” which led her to wonder “whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan's own uncertain position as a new political entity.”

Ultimately, in Bourke-White's opinion, “it was more nearly related to the even more significant bankruptcy of ideas in the new
Muslim state—a nation drawing its spurious warmth from the embers of an antique religious fanaticism, fanned into a new blaze.”
⁴

T
HE FIRST ANTI-AMERICAN
demonstration in Pakistan was reported from Karachi in May 1948. In the years that followed, during the 1950s and 1960s, mobs continued to attack US official buildings in Pakistan. In 1979 a hostile crowd burned down the US embassy in Islamabad—the only US embassy to ever be completely gutted because police did not arrive in time to protect it. The September 1982 issue of the
Journal of Conflict Resolution
carried an article by Pakistani civil servant Shafqat Naghmi in which he analyzed keywords used in the Pakistani press between 1965 and 1979 and subsequently found evidence for widespread anti-Americanism dating back to the beginning of the study.

But this roller-coaster ride of US-Pakistan relations cannot be understood without understanding the circumstances of Pakistan's creation, the worldview of its elite, and the miscalculations by both American and Pakistani leaders that have made the two countries military allies amidst mistrust and without really being friends.