Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Pakistan ‘increasingly frustrated’ with US

I look for China to take not only Gwadar Port but all of Pakistan.
#msg-4419898

According to the NYT correspondent, “Privately, Pakistani officials, from top generals to seasoned diplomats, bemoan the American-led invasion of Iraq, saying it reinforced suspicions that the principal interest of the United States was in controlling oil and protecting Israel.

The report argues that whatever the cause, Pakistani perceptions of the United States’ efforts to combat terrorism and of President Bush are “startlingly dark”. According to a public opinion survey conducted by the Pew Research Center earlier this year, only 16 percent of Pakistanis support the campaign against terrorism. More than 50 percent said it was motivated by the United States’ desire to control Middle East oil, dominate the world and take aim at Muslim governments seen as hostile to America. Only seven percent of Pakistanis said they had a favourable view of Bush. Sixty-five percent said they had a favourable view of Osama Bin Laden.

-Am

Pakistan ‘increasingly frustrated’ with US

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: There is evidence of growing Pakistani frustration with the United States because of Washington’s failure to resolve festering disputes in the Muslim world, according to a dispatch in the New York Times on Monday.

The Rawalpindi-datelined story by David Rhode quotes the chief spokesman of the Pakistan Army, Major General Shaukat Sultan, “seated in his plush new office,” as saying that unless America resolves disputes in the Muslim world, their fallout would continue.

“OK, tactically we are getting hold of people here and here and here, but then what’s the end? Until the time you shut down the factory, you will keep picking up the products. You don’t shut down the factory until you resolve the disputes,” Gen Sultan said. He said the US failure to do so is undermining whatever Pakistan has done in the war against terrorism.

According to the NYT correspondent, “Privately, Pakistani officials, from top generals to seasoned diplomats, bemoan the American-led invasion of Iraq, saying it reinforced suspicions that the principal interest of the United States was in controlling oil and protecting Israel. “General Sultan’s fortress-like new office and his frustration with American policy symbolise the quandary of Pakistan’s leadership over the American-led anti-terror effort. Pakistan’s army and government are enjoying the fruits of billions of dollars in American aid, but they are hunted by Islamic militants themselves.”

The report says that such are the problems in Pakistan that even with American help, they cannot be solved, as independent Pakistani analysts affirm. “No one is quite sure what policies, if any, would end support for Islamic militancy. And the failure of General Musharraf’s army-dominated government to restore full democracy, crack down on hardline religious schools that spread militancy and reform a dysfunctional and xenophobic public education system have also contributed to the problem,” writes the correspondent.

The report argues that whatever the cause, Pakistani perceptions of the United States’ efforts to combat terrorism and of President Bush are “startlingly dark”. According to a public opinion survey conducted by the Pew Research Center earlier this year, only 16 percent of Pakistanis support the campaign against terrorism. More than 50 percent said it was motivated by the United States’ desire to control Middle East oil, dominate the world and take aim at Muslim governments seen as hostile to America. Only seven percent of Pakistanis said they had a favourable view of Bush. Sixty-five percent said they had a favourable view of Osama Bin Laden.

The NYT piece, quoting Pakistani officials and Western diplomats, said that the government is also facing an enemy that is far different and far more ethereal than the one it expected. Instead of emerging as a mass popular movement that could be confronted with dialogue or arrests, Islamic militancy has been driven underground in Pakistan and has metastasised into a small, loosely knit covert movement linked by an enthralling Islamist ideology, according to Pakistani officials. A stalemate, in a sense, has emerged, with the militants unable to carry out spectacular attacks, but the government unable to eradicate the militants.

“Adding to the complexity of the problem, the angry poor are not the only ones drawn to militant Islam, according to Pakistani intelligence and law enforcement officials. Arrests in the past year have uncovered small numbers of doctors, engineers, college graduates and military members who have joined or aided small cells of militants,” the report adds.

Pakistani officials told the New York Times that simply arresting or killing Al Qaeda’s senior leadership would not stop the spread of militancy. What is needed instead is a broad-based American-led military, political and social effort to eliminate Muslim political grievances and poverty. Gen Musharraf’s objective of cultivating “enlightened moderation”, the report said, quoting the president’s aides, was a direct attempt to offer young Muslims an alternative to militant Islam. The general’s critics point out, according to the newspaper, that while he makes speeches that are pleasing to Western ears, his record is mixed. When aggressive reforms threaten his grip on power in Pakistan, the general adopts half measures, they say.

Former General Talat Masood, who has become the most quoted Pakistani “political analyst” in Western newspapers, while applauding Gen Musharraf’s proposed policies, said that the new efforts would fail like past ones as long as military officials continued to fill government posts and stifle political activity. He said if Gen Musharraf was to succeed, he must practise the “enlightened moderation” he preaches.

The report said some of General Musharraf’s aides have undermined his cause. Pakistani journalists have repeatedly accused Gen Sultan, the military spokesman, of making false and exaggerated claims about the arrest of Al Qaeda suspects. They say that on several occasions, Gen Sultan has declared civilians mistakenly killed by the Pakistani Army to be militants linked to Al Qaeda. Gen Sultan has also shown an eagerness to blame others. Asked about the source of militancy in the country’s remote tribal areas, where thousands of young men have taken up arms alongside foreign militants, he made no mention of the Pakistan government’s “historic neglect” of those areas, the poorest and most backward part of the country.

“The factory is not really in the tribal areas,” he said, referring to the conditions that turn young men into militants. “The factory is in Afghanistan. If the situation in Afghanistan is stabilised, this will cool down.”

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_2-11-2004_pg7_34