Magnificent Delusions (8 page)

Following Jinnah's death, a
Time
magazine article titled, “That Man,” described Pakistan's founder as a “man of hate” and “the best showman.” It accused Jinnah of being double-faced, stating, “He would stalk into meetings wearing his ‘political uniform'—native
dress with a black astrakhan cap—and whip the Moslems into a frenzy. Sometimes, in his fury, his monocle would pop out of its socket. After meetings, he would go home, change to Western clothes and be again the suave Western lawyer.”
Time
then suggested that “Jinnah's passing might release a new wave of fanaticism which even he would have opposed” and “that his political heirs might seek the final solution for insolvent, disorganized governments: war.”
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The Pakistani media's reaction to this article was ferocious. The Urdu press claimed that the article reflected American malice against Pakistan, and an English-language article by Ghulam Moinuddin, a senior civil servant, described the news magazine as “American gutter press” and suggested that “Some wretched malicious Hindu must have said these things to [the]
Time
Correspondent in India and he swallowed it and so did his editor at home.”
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Reflecting what would become a pattern of psychological warfare aimed at US diplomats, policy makers, and journalists, Moinuddin's rebuttal then became personal: “Why does this type of American behave so towards us? What wrong have we Muslims or Pakistanis done to them? A friend who has been in America suggests to me that the sex life of some of the American reporters in New Delhi and some American female editors in the land of sexy “dates” may have something to do with it. Another friend suggests that all this is due to Jewish money and influence.”
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Pakistani public opinion was being shaped against the United States long before US foreign policy provided Pakistanis a reason for anti-Americanism.

An implicit threat then followed Moinuddin's ad hominem attack. The people who have maligned our leader, he contended, were the same people who “malign the Russians. No Russian newspaper has slandered us so. They seem to be lots more decent that way.” In other words, if Americans did not learn to respect Pakistan and its people, Pakistan would turn to the Russians, who had not hurled any criticism or insult toward this new country. The Soviet Union, however, had not changed its conduct (or lack thereof) with Pakistan: not only had the Soviets not criticized Pakistan or its founder; they in fact had yet to show any interest whatsoever in the world's most populous
Muslim country carved out of the British Raj. Pakistan was eager to play the Soviet card when seeking American attention, but to do that they needed Moscow's interest.

Based on the State Department's assessment that India was the more important of the two new dominions, President Truman sent an invitation in mid-1949 for Prime Minister Nehru to visit Washington. Pakistanis saw this as a slight; they expected to be treated at least equally to India. Liaquat, in particular, had invested heavily in developing rapport with US diplomats, but now he felt he had nothing to show to the Pakistani people for his pro-American stance. There had been no progress in Kashmir, aid had failed to flow, and now the Americans preferred Nehru over him as their first South Asian state visitor.

Liaquat's efforts, however, had not been in vain. In his book
The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000: Disenchanted Allies
, career diplomat Dennis Kux detailed how American diplomats in Karachi admired “the small band of overworked, highly motivated, and idealist civil servants who struggled to establish their new country.” Further, junior diplomats had access to government leaders, including Liaquat, and were invited to social functions without regard to rank or status. “The gregarious prime minister enjoyed entertaining at his home, at times asking American guests to remain for late-night jazz sessions, during which Liaquat enthusiastically beat the drums,” Kux noted. “It was hard for the embassy staff not to empathize with the Pakistanis and their view of the troubles with India over Kashmir and other issues.”
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But the assessment in Washington was clearly different. Thus, US diplomats' personal ties with their Pakistani counterparts possibly caused Pakistanis to hold exaggerated expectations that were crushed when Nehru received precedence over Liaquat in Washington.

Liaquat then decided to respond to what he saw as an American snub by pretending to turn to the Soviet Union, even though Pakistan had no formal relations with the other world superpower at this time. Pakistan's ambassador to Iran, Raja Ghazanfar Ali, leveraged his personal ties with his Soviet counterpart in Tehran to seek an invitation for Liaquat from Moscow. The ambassador arranged a meeting
between Liaquat and the Soviet charge d'affaires, Ali Aliev, at dinner, where Liaquat conveyed his interest in visiting the Soviet Union. Aliev managed to secure an invitation, which was transmitted and accepted through Ambassador Ghazanfar Ali in Tehran.
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Soon after the invitation Pakistan and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations.

Although the Soviets did nothing to arrange a trip and Liaquat never went to Moscow, the news of an invitation had the desired result. Soon after Nehru's visit to Washington, Truman approved an invitation for Liaquat that George McGhee, assistant secretary of state for Near East Asia, delivered before the year's end during a visit to the region. The first Pakistani official to meet McGhee, Finance Minister Ghulam Muhammad, told him that the United States had to appear to treat Pakistan at par with India; it was “of the utmost importance,” McGhee related, that Liaquat was accorded a reception equal to what Nehru received.
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Muhammad also attempted to convince the United States of the importance of creating an Islamic economic bloc, an idea Jinnah originally introduced. McGhee responded by pointing out that Islamic countries' economies were not complementary. Thus, cooperation between countries producing more or less similar goods from primitive agricultural economies, he elaborated, would not yield substantial gains.

“I did not believe that religion in itself provided a basis for a separate economic grouping,” McGhee wrote later. He also noted that Muhammad shared details of his speech at the recent Islamic economic conference hosted by Pakistan but that he had edited out anti-Western statements he had made. The American diplomat did not call out the Pakistani official on that doublespeak, instead holding out the promise of economic aid.

The visiting US Assistant Secretary of State then told a press conference in Karachi that the “U.S. is becoming increasingly aware of the importance of Pakistan and of our relations with Pakistan.” This resulted in again kindling Pakistani officials' hopes of becoming an American ally. But others were not convinced.
Pakistan Times
ran a cartoon of McGhee as a Yankee spider wearing a black top hat and
smoking a cigar in his web as he attracted Pakistani leaders to their fate, whereas the
Civil and Military Gazette
's cartoon showed Uncle Sam offering Pakistan an empty hat labeled “Foreign Policy,” while India was given a hat full of trade agreements and dollar loans.

M
EANWHILE, PAKISTAN STARTED
preparing for Liaquat's trip by creating military shopping lists. Ghulam Muhammad along with Defense Secretary Iskander Mirza undertook most of this preparatory work. Both Muhammad and Mirza were civil servants who later became heads of state and played a crucial role both in US-Pakistan relations as well as in Pakistan's subsequent evolution as a national security state.

Mirza sought Sherman tanks, tank spare parts, radar equipment, and recoilless guns, among other things, preferably as direct aid because the country could not afford to spend its limited hard currency reserves on acquiring these commercially. He was aware that the United States had been reluctant in the past to supply Pakistan with military materiel and assumed this was because “America was doubtful of Pakistan's attitude towards communism.”
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In his view, if only Liaquat would clearly spell out where Pakistan stood in the East-West conflict, the Americans would almost certainly loosen their purse strings.

But the State Department's forty-one page briefing memorandum for the White House ahead of the Liaquat visit offered a very different picture. “The entire South Asian region is of relatively secondary importance to the US from a military point of view,” it pointed out, adding that one possible value of Pakistan might be as location for US aircraft in event of war with the Soviet Union. But the memorandum emphasized the need not to openly voice the United States' lack of interest in the region “since it negates our oft-expressed interest in helping the region for economic reasons.”
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Consequently, as the Pakistanis were overemphasizing their commitment to the anti-Communist cause to secure American interest,
the Americans were likewise pretending to be attentive even though their interest was less than what they publicly stated.

This brief for the president explained that “Liaquat was well disposed toward the US and ‘Western ways'” but had to contend with “strong local opinion which still considers western nations imperialistic.” America's relations with Pakistan were basically friendly, it said, while listing US policy on Palestine, “leniency towards India in the Kashmir dispute,” and “favoring India at the expense of Pakistan” as irritants. According to the brief, Pakistan's economic requests thus far had “seemed impracticable,” and the United States could not “make available to Pakistan any large quantity” of military equipment because other countries facing greater threats than Pakistan needed that equipment.

On May 3, 1950, Truman and several cabinet members received Liaquat and his beautiful wife, Ráana, when they arrived at Washington's National Airport. They stayed in the United States for a full three weeks, one week less than Nehru's four-week trip almost a year earlier. In Washington there was the full range of formalities associated with state visits: a formal state dinner; addresses to the two houses of Congress, though not a joint session; a press conference at the National Press Club; a dinner hosted by the secretary of state and a reception given by Ambassador Ispahani.

The
Washington Times-Herald
covered the secretary's white-tie dinner on its social pages, boasting the headline, “Came and Conquered.” Separately, Assistant Secretary of State McGhee was impressed by Liaquat's ability to consume alcoholic drinks, forbidden by Islam, without appearing to have drunk at all. But Liaquat's social successes in Washington had to be kept a secret from his own people back home.

Only a few months had elapsed since the prime minister had committed his government to making Pakistan's constitution subservient to Islamic values. His ability to hold his drink, impressive in Washington, would have destroyed his reputation in Karachi with the mullahs who supported his
Objectives Resolution
in Pakistan's legislature. The resolution declared that Pakistan would be an Islamic
state run by men according to God's law. “He was a big, strong, confident man with considerable international stature,” McGhee enthused, saying that he found Liaquat to be “a man you could do business with.”
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The personal qualities of Liaquat and his wife—“he brimming with smiles and she bursting with energy and exuberance”
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—overcame difficult political questions. Liaquat criticized the United States at the University of Chicago, saying that it “was interested only in the possibility of a war with the U.S.S.R. and not in the peace of the world.” He wanted America both to increase its aid for the people in the East and to play a more active role in Kashmir, “the most dangerous dispute facing the world today.” But these remarks were deemed insignificant, and McGhee described them as attempts to assuage neutralist public opinion in Pakistan.

McGhee, the official who was responsible for policy toward South Asia, formed favorable impressions of both Muhammad and Liaquat. “They understood how much help they needed if their new state was to survive their keen competition with India and make a go of it,” the assistant secretary noted. He liked that the Pakistanis sought US aid on US terms and promised support to help the United States build defenses against global communism. To McGhee and some others in the administration, “Compared with the wishy-washy neutralist Indians, they were a breath of fresh air.”
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But there was little substantive discussion on Pakistan's wish list, and Liaquat generated a lot less enthusiasm in Washington than Nehru had. The Senate lacked a quorum when the Pakistani leader arrived to address it, and the proceedings were delayed by half an hour.
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Further, according to Kux, Truman did not even have a business meeting with the prime minister, and a session between Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Liaquat scheduled for after the state dinner “did not take place because the State Department protocol officer failed to inform the Pakistanis.” Although Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State General Omar Bradley met Liaquat at the Pentagon for functional meetings, they merely noted Pakistan's interest in obtaining arms instead of giving even a nominal response.
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