A Visit To India, A Lollypop To Pakistan

[Bang Galore]

What part of ‘Kabul-Delhi-but-not-Islamabad’ that Pakistani officials don’t understand?

· You can visit India every quarter, Mr. Obama, but coming next door without dropping by is an insult. Period.

· $64 billion in Pakistani losses, 5000 dead and a generation of Pakistani children orphaned by America’s war

· Pakistani officials visiting Washington without talking about this do not represent the views of the Pakistani nation


By AHMED QURAISHI

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Until recently, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who is considered a weakling in his own party, impressed his colleagues and opponents by showing them a framed picture of himself sitting with US President Barack Obama in the White House.

Insecure Pakistani politicians believe a meeting with a US president means enough backing to take on domestic opponents. Most visitors have seen the picture prominently placed in one corner of the Pakistani prime minister’s office. And none of them have missed the indirect message that Mr. Gilani wants his guests to leave with: that he’s a strong prime minister with powerful international friends.

But things changed after Oct. 20. That’s the day Mr. Obama walked in on a meeting between his top advisers and a whole bunch of Pakistani federal ministers attending a Pak-US Strategic Dialogue.

Pakistani ministers came out triumphant from the meeting. Someone quipped, ‘They went in as Pakistani ministers and came out as roving ambassadors for the Obama administration.’

They were all excited because the ministers now had their own version of a framed photo with the US president. Take this, premier Gilani!

All of a sudden, all of them began waxing eloquent about how benevolent the United States is when in reality they returned empty handed, except for a lot of sound bites and flashlights.

Part of this effusive behavior was how the Pakistani ministers defended Mr. Obama’s decision not to visit Pakistan when he’ll be landing in both Kabul and New Delhi this week.

The nearly-drooling ministers said Mr. Obama was kind enough to walk into their meeting and personally apologize for not visiting Pakistan. They said hr ‘promised’ to visit Pakistan sometime in 2011.

And that was it. That’s how our ministers glossed over what probably is one of the most telling signs of the US attitude and behavior toward Pakistan.

Washington has done nothing to benefit Islamabad in the nine-year alliance since 9/11. The only reason US officials loudly remind Pakistanis of the ‘aid’ given to Pakistan during this period is because no Pakistani official, civilian or military, had the guts so far to tell the Americans enough of their play on words.

Ten billion US dollars or so is peanuts compared to more than $64 BILLION in direct and indirect losses to Pakistan because of its decision to support the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. This is nothing to say of the 5,000 or so Pakistanis dead in America’s war that has given us nothing but a long line of Pakistani children orphaned by this war.

Often Pakistan shot itself in the foot to please its American ally. Like it did last week by signing on a revised trade agreement with Afghanistan. US diplomats were part of the Afghan delegation that negotiated the deal with Pakistan. Thanks to this ‘favor’ our government has done the Americans; around 80,000 Pakistani jobs will be lost over the near future to please Washington and its puppet government in Kabul.

After all this, India gets Obama’s first visit, along with Kabul, while Pakistan gets the lollypop of a ‘promise’ to visit Pakistan in 2011.

Let’s not mince words here and enough of the hypocrisy. Pakistani officials visiting Washington for the strategic dialogue who remained quiet on this point do not represent the views of the Pakistani nation. The least the US president could have done is to visit Pakistan first, Washington’s supposed major non-NATO ally. It is preposterous that he isn’t.

This is the latest in a long list of insults that Pakistan and its weak leaderships have been swallowing for nine years. Where to begin? Our ally decidedly created an anti-Pakistan puppet government in Kabul and then oversaw the emergence of anti-Pakistan terror groups on Afghan soil, like BLA. For years, CIA drones refused to target the so-called Pakistani Taliban and did so only when Pakistani military confronted CIA with evidence of a nexus between CIA agents in Afghanistan and the anti-Pakistan terrorist group. The icing on the cake was the US-India nuclear pact.

We wanted Mr. Obama to come here and meet the families of young Pakistani children who lost their fathers and mothers in hundreds of terrorist acts. Meet the families of our people in the tribal belt, those patriotic Pakistanis who lost their loved ones, their homes, their lives, because of CIA missiles carrying Pakistani ruling elite’s seal of approval. Not to mention the children of our soldiers who died defending the motherland, children who don’t have fathers to look after them in a country with weak social support systems.

After all of that, the US president and his staff and his cheerleaders in Islamabad have the gall to tell us we shouldn’t take his snub personally.

No one in Pakistan is bothered about him visiting India for whatever reasons. He can make quarterly visits for all we care. It is the deliberate snub to Pakistan that is not sitting well with most Pakistanis.

Pak1stanFirst-A Visit To India, A Lollypop To Pakistan | Politics

 

[Bang Galore]

Mosharraf Zaidi: Pakistan’s narrative of insecurity and fear

The bitter truth is that there is no weapons system that the U.S. can sell, no assurance that the U.S. can provide and no warm embrace that the U.S. can offer that can make a transformational difference to national security in either Pakistan or India.

When it comes to the United States, Pakistan is an oft-spurned lover. In Islamabad, no discussion about Pakistan-U.S. relations can be complete without a blow-by-blow account of the occasions on which Pakistan, the supple and whimsical bride, has been left at the altar by the American groom — whose brooding machismo won’t allow it to commit to a long-term relationship.

Every time Pakistan has been in a jam with India, the U.S. has chosen to look the other way. Pakistan’s grouses with the U.S. can be acknowledged by everyone under the sun, but that acknowledgment won’t change U.S. interests in India.

Pakistani complaints about how it is treated by the U.S. have come to constitute the very foundation of Pakistan-U.S. relations. The real fuel to the fire that is burning a hole in the hearts and minds of Pakistanis (the hearts and minds that U.S. public diplomacy laboriously strives to win) is the blossoming courtship between the U.S. and India. As fading global American power seeks anchors in an increasingly multi-polar world, the growing perception that India — despite all its attendant and existential challenges — is going to be a vital economic power in the world, draws great attention in Washington.

The U.S.-India relationship, in the epic words of Right Said Fred has “legs that go on for miles and miles.” India’s place in the American calculus is stable, sustainable and deep-rooted. Why? Primarily because American interest in India is driven by qualities that India wants to be known for — trade, commerce, innovation, creativity, and enterprise. The dominant narrative of India in the U.S. is one of economic potential and hope. Pakistani envy at the strong roots of this organic relationship is understandable.

America’s interest in Pakistan is not driven by qualities that any country wants to be known for — terrorism, poverty, instability and conflict. The dominant narrative of Pakistan in the U.S. is of insecurity and fear.

Pursuing Indian hegemony in South Asia by economic, social and political means is but natural. Deepening those natural advantages is also consistent with the theme of a “natural alliance” between the US and India. However, there are limits to the utility of this depth. US-Indian defence cooperation, which has steadily increased over the last decade, is approaching something of a new dimension.

U.S. officials speak of military sales to India not just as commercial transactions, but rather as strategic choices, that enable cooperation and mutual areas of interest like counter-terrorism, maritime security, and proliferation issues. They talk of wanting to facilitate technology transfers through more licenses, and through relaxing export controls.

India is on the cusp of acquiring 10 C-17 military transport aircraft and hundreds of engines and other spare parts at a cost of $5.8 billion. Two U.S. firms are the front-runners for the $10 billion contract for 126 fighter jets that the Indian air force is buying.

Those planes aren’t being bought to assert air superiority over Nepal or the Maldives. Those noses mostly point westward, to where I live along with 180 million Pakistanis. They make me nervous. I can only imagine how nervous they make the boys in khaki in Rawalpindi. That nervousness has been at the beating heart of Pakistan’s behaviour in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, and allegedly in other places where former or current proxies of Pakistani policy have struck.

Some of the insecurities Pakistan harbours are natural, and will not go away. Forever the smaller nation carved out of what Sardar Patel lamented was the vivisection of Mother India, Pakistan needs to sustain an out-sized influence in the region in order to construct a national narrative of stability and security.

India’s ambitions and the U.S. appetite to whet and feed that ambition in terms of defence and security cooperation constitute unnecessary stimulants for Pakistani insecurity. The U.S. is routinely clobbered by Indians for providing military aid to Pakistan that Indians claim will be used against India. For Indians to make this complaint as India buys U.S. hardware expressly to counter whatever meagre (relatively speaking) resources Pakistan invests on its border with India is beyond just schadenfreude.

It is fundamentally counter-productive to Indian national security. We have already seen the impact that Pakistani insecurity, whether real or imagined, can have on India, on the region, and beyond. If U.S.-India defence cooperation stimulates further insecurity in Pakistan, why should we expect anything different?

The bitter truth is that there is no weapons system that the U.S. can sell, no assurance that the U.S. can provide and no warm embrace that the U.S. can offer that can make a transformational difference to national security in either Pakistan or India.

That transformational change in South Asia can only be achieved through the realisation and pursuit of a natural alliance, much more organic and productive than the one India and the U.S. pursue with each other. This is the natural alliance between Pakistan and India — two countries with shared language, culture, food, faith, and history. Two countries that are certainly on different trajectories, but that, by dint of geography and circumstance, share a common destiny.

Obama’s visit to New Delhi is a welcome sign that the U.S. government is not oblivious to India’s importance. However, India’s true arrival as a global power will not be marked by any country’s leader visiting India. Instead, it will be marked by the reception an Indian leader gets in Pakistan. Only when Pakistan welcomes an Indian Prime Minister to Islamabad and Karachi with the kind of pomp and circumstance that Obama will be afforded in New Delhi and Mumbai will we know the true measure of India’s soft and hard power.

Mosharraf Zaidi: Pakistan’s narrative of insecurity and fear | Full Comment | National Post

 

[Markus]

But Pakistan really have no options here. They have to follow the American line.

 

[Aslan]

A logic followed brilliantly by Bush and being copied in a better way by Obama, Cameron and the indians.

 

[Developereo]

People are missing the point.

Obama's visit to India is not to please India, but for domestic American politics. He is visiting the two countries that represent a sour note in American domestic policy: the Afghan war and jobs outsourcing. He aims to show solidarity with the troops in Afghanistan, and to get some Indian money pumped into the American economy, i.e. jobs.

 

[amigo]

We are such statements-pron by now. Old lies repeated again and again doesnt affect us much.

bcoz u ppl live in ur own dreamy world.......

 

[Spring Onion]

A logic followed brilliantly by Bush and being copied in a better way by Obama, Cameron and the indians.

hehehehehe BUT when was the last time BUSH, Blair types have been exposed to victory in the wars

 

[Spring Onion]

People are missing the point.

Obama's visit to India is not to please India, but for domestic American politics. He is visiting the two countries that represent a sour note in American domestic policy: the Afghan war and jobs outsourcing. He aims to show solidarity with the troops in Afghanistan, and to get some Indian money pumped into the American economy, i.e. jobs.

agree.

And one more thing his visit was exaggerated badly by Indians and now they are coming to ground

 

[Aslan]

hehehehehe BUT when was the last time BUSH, Blair types have been exposed to victory in the wars

lol I didnt say it worked to perfection it didnt for the guy in the pic and nor will it work for these guys.

 

[Ishan]

People are missing the point.

Obama's visit to India is not to please India, but for domestic American politics. He is visiting the two countries that represent a sour note in American domestic policy: the Afghan war and jobs outsourcing. He aims to show solidarity with the troops in Afghanistan, and to get some Indian money pumped into the American economy, i.e. jobs.

India is Not a Cash Cow Country Like Saudi Arabia That America Can Feed Only For Some Billion $$$$ Contracts

Importance of India is Much more Than Some Billion Dollar Contracts tht America may Any way get it and it does not need Obama To Come Here

Long Term Strategic Intrest , A Democracy and Counter Weight to China , A Growing Triilon Dollar Economy at 9% Every Year and thts What Attracts America to India as Well..

 

[Aslan]

India is Not a Cash Cow Country Like Saudi Arabia That America Can Feed Only For Some Billion $$$$ Contracts

Importance of India is Much more Than Some Billion Dollar Contracts tht America may Any way get it and it does not need Obama To Come Here

Long Term Strategic Intrest , A Democracy and Counter Weight to China , A Growing Triilon Dollar Economy at 9% Every Year and thts What Attracts America to India as Well..

 

[Markus]

People are missing the point.

Obama's visit to India is not to please India, but for domestic American politics. He is visiting the two countries that represent a sour note in American domestic policy: the Afghan war and jobs outsourcing. He aims to show solidarity with the troops in Afghanistan, and to get some Indian money pumped into the American economy, i.e. jobs.

How much can US earn from India? How many jobs can Indian military projects create in US?

I am sure the Saudi Arabia orders will be far more beneficial than the Indian ones.

But the point here is more than defence deals. US now recognises India that India as the ONLY counterweight to China in the region and hence wants to increase its influence over here.

I do agree that they are doing for themselves but then aren't we suppose to be that way, dont all nations think for themselves first?

 

[TaimiKhan]

But Pakistan really have no options here. They have to follow the American line.

Had we been towing American line, by now80% of the army would have been in tribal region, American losses on the other side may have been low, which i seriously doubt, and US would have been preparing for Afghan exit, with a powerful pro-US & India Afghan govt in place with no worries of getting routed by Taliban.

Since, nothing of this sort has happened, it can clearly show, we are not fully towing American line.

But i guess its hopeless to tell that to you guys.

 

[Developereo]

How much can US earn from India? How many jobs can Indian military projects create in US?

It's more about perception than reality.

American jobs are going to India, not Saudi Arabia, and Obama is coming to show people that he is going to get something in return.

 

[Aslan]

How much can US earn from India? How many jobs can Indian military projects create in US?

I am sure the Saudi Arabia orders will be far more beneficial than the Indian ones.

But the point here is more than defence deals. US now recognises India that India is the ONLY counterweight to China in the region and hence wants to increase its influence over here.

I do agree that they are doing for themselves but then aren't we suppose to be that way, dont all nations think for themselves first.

Mind you with a correction india is not the only counter weight rather have sold her self as one. And whether it can hold her own in a fight to the end against China is still left to be seen.