On Balochistan: “Stick it to the Pakistanis”, said Americans

[v9s]

In the days before last week’s Congressional hearing on Balochistan, Dr C. Christine Fair, an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, was extremely critical of the proceedings, going so far as to call the hearing a “political stunt” and one of her fellow witnesses a “nut” in a series of Twitter exchanges.

At the time, Fair did not elaborate on what drove her to so publicly rebuke the hearing. It is only now that she is ready to set the record straight in defence of her statements amid what she calls “considerable harassment from some vocal members of the Baloch diaspora.”

The “stunt” heard round the world

According to Fair, her “political stunt” comment was prompted by a call from a sub-committee staff member. Fair had contacted him to solicit guidance for her upcoming testimony. In the course of their conversation, the staffer explained “we want to stick it to the Pakistanis.” The staffer further elaborated that the Pakistanis had been “killing our troops for ten years in Afghanistan.”

In Fair’s words, while she understood and even shared this person’s views on Pakistan’s relations with the United States over the past decade, this comment about the hearing made her “feel really uncomfortable about being roped into something that I would call a stunt. So, I wanted to make my position publicly known.”

Looking back on the comment, Fair is unapologetic: “Prior to accepting the request to serve as a witness, I was told this was a hearing about human rights violations and other issues needed to understand the various crises in Balochistan. But, based upon that brief phone conversation, I concluded that it wasn’t about human rights. Rather, it seemed that the people behind this hearing were pandering to diaspora politics just to tick off the Pakistanis at a time when the United States is trying to repair its tattered relationship with Pakistan.”

Fair’s comments did not go unnoticed. Elements of the Baloch diaspora, who Fair called “a bunch of extremists,” took extreme exception to the comments, especially on Twitter. In her words, they then “subjected me to an array of bullying and obnoxious assaults, many of which also tagged Congressman (Dana) Rohrabacher (R – CA).”

This avalanche of tweets protesting Fair’s participation in the hearing ultimately brought the matter to Rohrabacher’s office. On the Monday prior to the hearing, the staff member who had been coordinating with Fair reached out to her again to convey his displeasure: “He called to take a piece out of my hide. I requested that he explain to the Congressperson why I called the hearing a stunt, namely this staffer’s explanation that they wanted to stick it to the Pakistanis.” However, in her assessment, the staffer “did not have the testicular fortitude to explain the comment to Rohrabacher.”

A “nut” by any other name

Fair’s characterisation of Ralph Peters, a fellow witness, as a “nut” also rankled many proponents of Baloch interests, including at least one staff member affiliated with the hearing. According to Fair, during the aforementioned phone call, the angered Congressional staff member explained that he was taken aback that Fair dismissed Peters as a nut. He added that he had never previously experienced one witness attacking another before the hearing.

In recounting that exchange, Fair remains vivacious in her defence. She points out that she actually called Peters “a certified, flipping nut because only a nut would advocate the dismembering of a sovereign state based upon the views of one community in a province.” She then explains the reasoning for her steadfast opposition to Peters: “If this Congressional subcommittee remotely intended to try to use the hearing to put pressure on Pakistan for its human rights record in Balochistan, they should not have included someone who calls for the halving of their country.”

Biting the hand that invites you

Fair acknowledges that her comments were the impetus for the uncomfortable exchange with Rohrabacher at the hearing’s conclusion. Rohrabacher, who looked her straight in the eye and explained “this was not a stunt,” appeared perturbed by her pre-hearing comments. He therefore, used the hearing as the forum to issue his rebuttal.

While Fair admits that she “might not be invited back to give testimony again,” she does not regret her actions. From her perspective, she needed to signal her concerns because “this was a hearing designed by a collection of guys – and possibly a woman or two – who share a strategic image of how the Afghanistan and Pakistan postures should interrelate. While they reflect the general frustration in Congress with Pakistan taking US money and supporting terrorism, their views about dismembering Pakistan do not reflect the larger sentiment in Congress on Pakistan. Their statements struck me as incredibly provocative, did nothing to advance human rights in Balochistan, and made a US-Pakistan rapprochement much more difficult.”

Fair also notes that Congressmen Rohrabacher and Louie Gohmert (R – TX) bear significant responsibility for undermining the hearing before it was ever held. She points to the Congressmen’s pre-hearing OpEd, which suggested the United States should openly support an independent Balochistan, as setting the wrong tone for a hearing purportedly on human rights.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/18/stick-it-to-the-pakistanis.html

 

[Developereo]

Friends of Pakistan are fighting a losing battle in America. The overriding feeling there is that Pakistan is an enemy. Some will say it's because of terrorism, but I think the real decider is geopolitics. The powers-that-be have come to the conclusion that Pakistan is an obstacle to America's geopolitical goals, so there's really nothing Pakistan can do to get on America's good side.

 

[livingdead]

Friends of Pakistan are fighting a losing battle in America. The overriding feeling there is that Pakistan is an enemy. Some will say it's because of terrorism, but I think the real decider is geopolitics. The powers-that-be have come to the conclusion that Pakistan is an obstacle to America's geopolitical goals, so there's really nothing Pakistan can do to get on America's good side.

Before friends of pakistan losing batting in america, friends of america have already lost battle in pakistan, long time ago.
No matter how much pro americans in pakistan try, they are perceived as enemies of pakistan.
It was only a matter of time that such feeling is reciprocated.

 

[Awesome]

Full Article:

C. Christine Fair: Rohrabacher's "Blood Borders" in Balochistan

On February 9, 2012, the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs convened a hearing on "Baluchistan" [sic], chaired by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R - CA). I, along with Messrs Ralph Peters, T. Kumar, Ali Dyan Hasan and Dr. M. Hosseinbor, testified as a witness in that hearing.

When I agreed to participate, I was told that the hearing was intended to be a general introduction to the various crises in Balochistan, their causes and the impact of these issues on U.S. interests. However, as the date of the hearing neared, I learned that the event would serve other purposes.

When I sought guidance about the precise issues I should discuss in my testimony, the committee staff member told me, in some exasperation, that "we want to stick it to the Pakistanis." He continued that for a decade the Pakistanis have been killing us in Afghanistan. While I fully agreed with the sentiment behind his remarks, I grew concerned that the hearing was not genuinely motivated by concern over the human rights challenges confronting the residents of Balochistan. Instead, this was an opportunity to interfere in the administration's ongoing efforts to develop a policy towards Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan.

Barely a week later, Congressman Rohrabacher introduced a Resolution "Expressing the sense of Congress that the people of Baluchistan, currently divided between Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country." Needless to say, this non-binding resolution does not reflect the sense of Congress and no Congressmen have embraced the measure. However, this resolution and the preceding hearing did much to rankle Pakistan and render any rapprochement between Washington and Islamabad (not to mention Rawalpindi) even more difficult.

Many members of the Baloch diaspora who support an independent Balochistan have been extremely excited by these developments. Unfortunately, there are reasons to suspect that Congressman Rohrabacher's actions are not inspired by any genuine concern over ongoing human rights violations perpetrated against, as well as by, the Baloch inhabitants of the province.

There are multiple reasons for my skepticism. First, prior to the hearing, Congressmen Rohrabacher--with Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX)--had already penned an opinion piece in which he suggested that the United States should lend its"....support for a Balochistan carved out of Pakistan to diminish [Pakistan's] radical power". Second, the integrity of the hearing was immediately undermined by the inclusion of Mr. Ralph Peters, who in 2006 argued for the dissolution of Pakistan in a buffoonish essay, "Blood Borders," in the Armed Forces Journal. Specifically, he called in that piece for a "Free Baluchistan." How could an independent observer conclude that the hearing was anything but an attempt to promote the belief in Pakistan that the world's most powerful parliament was seeking to undermine its territorial integrity?

Unfortunately, this is not the first geopolitical exploit Mr. Rohrabacher has orchestrated. In January of 2012, he and Mr. Gohmert, among other Congresspersons, held a controversial meeting in Berlin with several representatives of the now defunct Northern Alliance. The goal of the meeting was to undermine the administration's current, if difficult and tentative, negotiations with the Taliban. In the Op-Ed already mentioned, Rohrabacher and Gohmert called for a new "Constitutional Loya Jirga, or convention, that will draft a new constitution enshrining federalism as the new form of government. This would break the Taliban's ability to dominate Afghanistan by strengthening those communities opposed to the return of the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies."

This author agrees that the current Afghan constitution, which reflects the interests of the United States and was written as the U.S. was hastily forging its shambolic policies towards Afghanistan, is inappropriate for Afghanistan today and even agrees that the suggestion makes much sense. However, this initiative by a select number of Congressmen, who do not represent the American Congress, harmed the administration's policy towards Afghanistan and its efforts to extract the U.S. from a deadly and flawed counterinsurgency policy that has borne few fruits. Worse, it inflamed the Afghan government, which saw this move as a deliberate effort to usurp its own primary place in negotiating Afghanistan's future. Needless to say, the fixation with the warlords of the Northern Alliance belies an astonishing ignorance about these men's involvement in war crimes and appalling human rights violations (such as the shocking practices of child rape and child concubinage (bacchebazi). While the Taliban are widely seen as violent and illegitimate actors who have killed tens of thousands, for some reason the militias of the former Northern Alliance have managed to distance themselves in the American mind from their own violent and repugnant pasts.

The Obama administration has been busy trying to limit the repercussions of Rohrabacher and Gohmert's machinations. The State Department has had to bear the brunt of Pakistan's considerable and justified anger over Congressional meddling in what is clearly an internal affair-even if that internal affair is appalling. (Can anyone imagine a comparable hearing on the Indian counterinsurgency campaigns in Kashmir? In each case the actions of the state involved raise uncomfortable questions for the United States.) Given that the duo has limited support in Congress for their efforts to change policy towards Afghanistan or Pakistan, and given also that such efforts have been repudiated by the administration, it remains to ask why they continue to pursue this folly.

The most facile reading is that Rohrabacher and Gohmert are genuinely frustrated, both with failed U.S. policy in Afghanistan and with the fact that Pakistan, while continuing to benefit from a variety of U.S. assistance programs, provides support for a wide array of terrorist groups opposed to U.S. interests. (Both Pakistan and the United States disagree on what the amounts transferred are, where they go and how they are used.) If this is indeed their motivation, I share their vexation. But seeking to force U.S.-Pakistan relations to a breaking point does not serve U.S. interests, or Pakistan's for that matter. After all, no matter how much Pakistanis resent the United States, U.S. support at the IMF is critical to keeping Pakistan afloat despite its severe fiscal problems.

A more cynical interpretation of Rohrabacher and Gohmert's actions might involve the desire for access to natural resources in both Afghanistan and Balochistan. In light of this suspicion, one must ask who paid for the Berlin conference? What private sector entities may have a vested interest in pushing this strange, orphaned agenda?

There are no ready answers to these questions. However, I can say with some certainty that the hearing and the Resolution that followed it have much more to do with partisan politics, and possibly resource-grabbing, than with any interest in the ongoing human rights crises in Balochistan.

C. Christine Fair is assistant professor in the Peace and Security Studies Program in Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Follow her on Twitter at CChristineFair. Her testimony can be found here.

Follow C. Christine Fair on Twitter: Christine Fair (@CChristineFair) on Twitter

 

[Awesome]

We must make ourselves well aware of the realities in Washington. They already perceive us as an enemy and yet pretend to play nice upfront. They wanted to "Stick it to the Pakistanis" and here we are on the cusp of reopening the partially closed supply route, and extending military re-engagement to fight their war.

For people who wanted to "Stick it to the Pakistanis".

Guys we need to create noises now before these people once again engage us to the subservience of the United States.

 

[A1Kaid]

We must make ourselves well aware of the realities in Washington. They already perceive us as an enemy and yet pretend to play nice upfront. They wanted to "Stick it to the Pakistanis" and here we are on the cusp of reopening the partially closed supply route, and extending military re-engagement to fight their war.

For people who wanted to "Stick it to the Pakistanis".


Guys we need to create noises now before these people once again engage us to the subservience of the United States.

What do you suggest be the response?

 

[Awesome]

What do you suggest be the response?

Since the intention was only to piss us off, pass a resolution for Texas's independence

The bigger issue I want to raise is that why are we against going into a mode of military re-engagement with the US after it clearly views us as the enemy.

 

[A1Kaid]

It all has to do with a weak and corrupt Govemment, their interest and the nation's interest are parallel (that is they never converge). This is why Pakistan doesn't really go into a defensive mode. We have been propagated with lies by military officials and even geniuses like Rehman Malik who said Pakistan can't shoot down the drones, or Pakistan can't do that can't do this.

As for now Pakistani military should boost troop levels in Balochistan to fight any miscreants there..

 

[Y2A]

It all has to do with a weak and corrupt Govemment, their interest and the nation's interest are parallel (that is they never converge). This is why Pakistan doesn't really go into a defensive mode. We have been propagated with lies by military officials and even geniuses like Rehman Malik who said Pakistan can't shoot down the drones, or Pakistan can't do that can't do this.

As for now Pakistani military should boost troop levels in Balochistan to fight any miscreants there..

Ties between Pakistan and US though were instigated by the political leadership back in 50s but ever since the direct connection of GHQ and PENTAGON has overwhelmed every thing else, current corupt political structure is just a face saving for military estaiblishment which is still calling the shots on foreign affiars, they were never incharge nor they could be in near future, 60 years or so of national history is filled with more disastress mistakes commited by military estaiblishment than compare to any civil structure, so potraying civilian vilans and closing eyes towards incomptiencies of military is rather half hearted approach of unvelaing the path of solution.

 

[Y2A]

And to my pro-independence Baluch Friends...

Before falling into American trap...take a look at "suport" US provided to various freedom fighters...start from koreans, south vitnames, Afghan Mujaheedeen's of 80s, kurds, angolans list goes on....US used them like tissue paper to achive their strategic goals than dumped them...

South Koreans still live in fear, south vitnam is history.. they had to merge with their arch rival veit congs in quest for life, kurds are wandering nation exploited many times by US..so before jumping in US's lap just take a moment of breath and think about what exactly better for baluchs as nation...

Pakistan is best possible rational option for baluchs of Pakistan..of course with accepting the rightfull demands of people of baluchistan...not of some sardar sitting in zeurich...

 

[lem34]

What upsets me is that the signs have been there for decades that America is not and never will be a friend of Pakistan. Some time ago when I joined this forum I put lots of articles exposing American's lies etc and a senior member pm and asked me to not put so many articles and that did deter me to an extent.

I still don't understand why so many Pakistanis still defend or try suggesting that we accommodate Americans.

 

[VCheng]

Well, one could wait and see what happens in Baluchistan, if matters are beyond one's understanding at present. Sometimes waiting helps, no point in getting upset.

 

[lem34]

Well, one could wait and see what happens in Baluchistan, if matters are beyond one's understanding at present. Sometimes waiting helps, no point in getting upset.

Yes lets wait and see what happens

 

[fd24]

Well, one could wait and see what happens in Baluchistan, if matters are beyond one's understanding at present. Sometimes waiting helps, no point in getting upset.

yes indeed - we need to wait and see...........

 

[lem34]

yes indeed - we need to wait and see...........

Yes that is a good idea lets wait and see