Stop The Pakistan Bashing, Excellent article
 

[SIZE="6"]Stop Pakistan Bashing[/SIZE]

By Dr. Shireen M. Mazari

It seems that Pakistan’s strange tolerance of abuse heaped on it from external sources continues to make it a favorite whipping boy for all and sundry. The US, in its growing frustration in Afghanistan and its erroneous policy of sidelining the Pushtuns, continues to face armed challenge in that country. As the challenge continues from a new coalescing of Pushtuns of various hues, Pakistan is accused baselessly of harboring or lending support to the so-called terrorists. This accusation ignores the massive help Pakistan has given to the US at multiple levels, which has allowed the latter to capture many of the al-Qaeda members.

Instead, what has the US done in relation to Pakistan? It continues to call on Pakistan to “do more” for the war on terrorism, but allows India to have access to state-of-the-art weapon systems that directly destabilize the strategic balance in South Asia. It constantly pressurizes Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir and the so-called “cross-border infiltrations” but it refuses to ask India why it is so loathe to have international observers along the LoC for monitoring purposes to establish the veracity or otherwise of Indian accusations against Pakistan. The State Department and US NGOs are quick to condemn human rights abuses in Pakistan by non-state actors, but there is a strange silence on the Gujarat massacres in which the Modi government has been found culpable.

The latest example of the US policy in South Asia has come from Ms Christina Rocca on her visit to India where she obviously was vulnerable to Indian charms and made an unwarranted remark, once again attacking Pakistan on the LoC infiltration issue. Why she felt the need to do so in India can only be conjectured, but her silence on Gujarat - rather her efforts to defend the Modi government earlier on 20 March 2003, before the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee - was revealing of the great level of tolerance the US has for Indian abuse of human rights and other shenanigans. Perhaps the Indian Supreme Court’s strong censure of the Modi government may awaken a greater sense of fair play in Ms Rocca. But then Condoleeza Rice also defended the record of the BJP government when she was asked by the Indian newspaper The Hindu why the US had “not been more forthcoming in its criticism” of the Gujarat massacre. Her response was that the BJP government was “leading India well, and it will do the right thing.”

Nor is this all the affront Pakistan has to suffer while it acts as a frontline state once again for the US - this time in its war on terrorism. US intelligence documents, produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), declassified in a censored version last week, accuse Pakistan of helping al-Qaeda in the early nineties. In fact, they try to delink Pakistan from the ISI and accuse the latter of helping al-Qaeda! As one Afghan watcher, Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, told AFP, this report is “hilarious”. According to him “when the jihad was going on (against the Soviets), US airlines used to offer 50 percent rebate to Arabs who would volunteer to participate in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan.” The US obviously feels that it can whitewash its own role in the encouragement of bin Laden and the Taliban by simply lashing out at Pakistan once again and the ISI in particular because these are easy targets - given our penchant for accepting abuse from outsiders with a totally inexplicable equanimity. It would be far more useful for the US to come clean on its own role in the creation and support of bin Laden’s network and the Taliban’s rise to power. After all, Mr. Khalilzad himself was negotiating with the Taliban on behalf of UNOCOL (which, according to some sources, was provided the relevant data by the CIA) on the pipeline issue at one time when the US saw nothing drastically wrong with the Taliban.

Nor is this all the abuse being heaped on Pakistan by the US and some of its allies. Individual Pakistanis are constantly being accused of clandestine weapons and spares purchases and often the Pakistan government is accused of being an abettor in such transactions. Yet, there is no censure of India despite the fact that India was in league with the Saddam regime for years in terms of scientific cooperation. Nor has the US made a noise about the FBI’s capture of a group of Indians, led by Hemant Lakhani, who were selling 50 shoulder-held Russian surface-to-air missiles - the Igla - to be used against a commercial airliner. Imagine how the American and European press would have gone to town if this group of arms merchants were Muslims - especially Pakistani!


(The writer is Director General of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad)

[url]http://www.pakistanlink.com/Letters/...t03/26/02.html[/url]