Source: Carnegie
Web Commentary, October 17, 2001
The US battle for Pakistani hearts was lost before it began, and the battle for minds is in the balance; but beyond that is the question of will, or in other words the question of if or when the anger of Pakistanis at the US and British campaign might boil over into protests which would threaten the existing Pakistani regime and the objectives of the allied war.
So far, the protests have been muted by local standards, and restricted both in geographical scope and violence. To be brutally honest, half a dozen or so dead at the hands of the police is not a large number in the Subcontinent. Nor has the anger of the demonstrators led them to physical assaults on Westerners here—not a matter of great significance in terms of US strategy, but it matters to my colleagues and me. The only personally unpleasant experience I have had here (other than the usual worldwide ones with taxi drivers who are the direct products of an unsanctioned union between Beelzebub and a troop of mentally defective kleptomaniac baboons) was with a thoroughly westernized guide at the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore who accused me of "treating all Pakistanis like terrorists" by way of an attempt to pressure me into hiring him. Otherwise, all my interlocuteurs, whether on the streets and bazaars or in the drawing rooms, have been careful to accompany any anti-American and anti-British statements with the words, "Of course, we're not saying this against you personally." And this has been the experience of other Western journalists here as well.
This is striking, because such statements have been many and intense. Indeed, bitter criticism of the US here is just about universal, as is public hostility to the allied campaign in Afghanistan. Privately, things are a bit more varied. Two groups are happy in principle to see the Taliban hammered: liberal English-speaking members of the elite, and members of the Shia minority (perhaps as they gain more of a voice here, large numbers of ordinary women may join these groups). The reasons for the attitude of the secular intelligentsia are obvious. As for the Shias, in recent years they have been subjected to vicious sectarian terrorism by Sunni extremist groups linked to the Taliban. The Shias also have a certain tendency to reflect Iranian attitudes, which include strong hostility to the Taliban and a certain sympathy for the allied campaign. But even in private, these groups too accompany their remarks with bitter asides about the hypocrisy, arrogance, brutality and double standards of US and British policy.
This is also true of the English-language press here—the Urdu-language press is of course much more extreme—which to judge by my conversations and interviews reflects pretty accurately the prevailing mood among the English-language elites. Press comments have been overwhelmingly, often bitterly critical of the US-led campaign, and have contained a small proportion of insane anti-US and anti-Israel conspiracy theories, including the poisonously mendacious idea that Jewish workers at the World Trade Center were all absent on the day of the attack.
Unfortunately, I have not only read this in the press but also heard it from a couple of supposedly educated and civilized interlocuteurs, as well as on the streets. Acute dislike of Israel, and of Israeli behaviour and Israeli occupation of Muslim holy places , and of US support for this, is the single most important reason for these anti-American attitudes, but they are also fuelled by the usual range of sentiments to be found across much of the developing world and indeed to some extent in Europe. As so often, all these attitudes have gone to build an architecture of hatred, into which every new development can be seamlessly fitted. Thus several people I interviewed on the streets declared in one form or another that "All over the world, America is against Muslims! America and her allies persecute Muslims in Afghanistan, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Kosovo?" When I pointed out that in Kosovo and Bosnia, the US actually protected Muslims against their Christian persecutors, the speakers had the grace to look bewildered - but I don't suppose this mood lasted for more than a few seconds after I left the scene. Even "Margalla Chatter", a local news column from Islamabad-Rawalpindi, in the Dawn newspaper on October 15th, wrote the following, in words which are archetypal for the mood of most of press comment:
"No matter how insignificant the opposition is in this country to the US-led coalition against international terrorism, every Pakistani, including perhaps President General Pervaiz Musharraf, is dying a little every day as the US aircraft and missiles pound the hapless people of Afghanistan. Pakistan, which has always prided itself on being the champion of Muslim causes the world over, is being viewed by Muslims the world over as a country engaged in a war against another Muslim country if not against Islam itself?.
And for all its troubles Pakistan's economy is getting the bashing of its life. Having been declared as part of the war zone, the shipping costs of exports and imports have gone up steeply?One hears a lot of talk of generous assistance being contemplated by the US, Europe, Japan and the multilateral aid agencies. But so far there has been nothing?"
Doubts about long-term US and allied generosity are also very nearly universal, fuelled by what are perceived to have been betrayals in the past. One senior retired general, with rare objectivity and honesty, did say the following to me:
"Right from the beginning of Pakistan, the Pakistani-US relationship has been one where the US has said something, and we have chosen to hear something quite different. In the 1950s, we joined CENTO and SEATO in the belief that the US would help us against India—while in fact the US had been absolutely clear and honest about the fact that these treaties were only against the Soviet Union and Communism. It was the same with US help in the 1980s. The US always made it clear that support for Pakistan was in the context of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, to help us defend ourselves against that threat. We chose to believe that they had made long-term commitments to support our economy, help us against India and so on. Today, the US is not saying that it will cancel all our debts, back us over Kashmir or whatever. We should listen to this, and not raise our expectations to the point where we feel betrayed again."
But this kind of objectivity is very rare—and, it must be pointed out, the General was speaking not for attribution. The vast majority of Pakistanis believe that the US has let them down very badly in the past, and this makes them very skeptical about US behaviour in future.
Unless the US shows that Musharraf's stance has produced real economic benefits for Pakistan, this attitude could begin to pose serious problems and lead to growing protests against the regime here. For the Pakistani economy is in a dreadful state, and in the views of many ordinary people their woes have been exacerbated by illegitimate Western sanctions and harmful IMF and World Bank pressure. (As to the truth of US aid during and after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, for my own part I'd say the following: the aid was indeed parsimonious compared to the vast scale of the problems which the Afghan War created for Pakistan. Moreover, when the Soviet occupation ended, most of the aid stopped, whereas the problems continued or even got worse - and have now spread to the US with devastating consequences. On the other hand, most Pakistanis forget two inconvenient facts. The first is that oil-rich Arab states, and especially Saudi Arabia, were far more interested in spending their money to promote viciously sectarian national and religious agendas than they were in helping ordinary Afghans; and secondly, a good deal of the Western money that was given was stolen by Pakistani officials.)
The real risk here is that economic discontent and universal though hitherto passive anti-Americanism will begin to run together with the islamist protests we have seen so far, transforming these from narrow sectarian and ethnic protests into a true mass movement against the regime. This would be especially dangerous if it took place in the context of a run-up to elections which Musharraf has announced for a year from now (assuming that it is still possible that some form of US military involvement in Afghanistan may continue into the second half of next year). Then, Musharraf would be faced with the choice previously faced by the Algerian generals—of whether to go ahead with the elections and risk sweeping gains for the islamists, or cancel them and risk even bloodier protest on the streets. Possibly tending towards civil war in some areas.
At present, this threat is still somewhat remote. If as a Pakistani colonel told me, "My heart tells me that we should support Afghanistan and refuse to help America in this war", he also said that "But my head tells me that Musharraf is right, and that from the point of view of Pakistan's own national interests we have no choice but to follow the present policy." However, no one who knows this part of the world would put a lot of money on heads winning indefinitely against hearts—or rather, that's the whole point. We should put a lot of our money on the side of President Musharraf and the heads, and then they will probably win.
