Monday, May 16, 2011

Pakistani involvement with the US goes back a long way to the times of the Partition when the separate states of India and Pakistan were created out of what before simply was the Subcontinent. India went on to play a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement, which, as was an open secret, was actually a pro-Soviet leaning organization of states, rather than the "Neither East-Nor West" movement it professed to be. So Pakistan saw itself cornered into a gradually tightening relationship with the United States, yet to become a world power.
Pakistan may have missed out when it was not present at the 1954 Bandung conference of Non-Aligned countries, important in its momentum as the first congregation that brought together virtually all countries from what today is called the Global South.

In 1979, in a still bipolar world, Soviet Russia invaded Afghanistan and Pakistan got even more bogged down in its alliance with the US, as Pakistan was at the front-line of the US effort to support the war effort of any opposition to the Communists, including the Taliban. Ultimately Pakistan pays a heavy price for this, since thirty years on the Taliban are still active in the area. When, angered by occasions such as the killing of Osama Bin Laden, they cannot reach the American superstate to avenge themselves, they blow up the targets of the collaborating Pakistani government instead, claiming civilian lives. The first bomb blast ten days after Osama Bin Laden's death killed 15 in Peshawar.

While "Death to America" graffiti abound in Pakistan, and seeing outside forces as the originators of all that is deficient in one's country is a short-cut logic all too often applied, the general climate has been more and more wary of foreigners for the past few years. Local journalist love to snap a picture of international correspondents talking to police (this can happen for any reason, even asking the way), and publish them the next day with a headline saying "Potential spies interrogated by Police" or something similar.
But the reputation of foreigners in the country has already been especially low since January 2011, when CIA agent Raymond Davis killed two civilians in the Pakistani city of Lahore and was subsequently shipped out into his home country without trial or punishment. Most Pakistanis' longing for a sense of justice can only be satisfied with an extradition of the man, a step the US is unwilling to take.

Behind this background, the Pakistani public feel more indignation at the violation of their national sovereignty that the US operation represents, than joy at the fact that a great terrorist has been caught.
Since Osama Bin Laden's death, outside "agencies" are now definetely in the minds of many Pakistanis, and even ordinary tourists get to feel this.
If I just may compile anecdotes: Hotel owners seem to be visited by agencies demanding details about their clients daily now, and because of this extra-hassle I even got turned down by two of them. When haggling for a student price I apparently got so badly insulted, my local host talked for two days about how outrageous their behaviour was (luckily for me, my ignorance of Urdu made me feel less offended than him...).
On a Sufi festival my local companion said he had to repeatedly tell the crowd gathering around me I was German, not American, in order to appease them, and never in former years, he said, had the crowd been like this disagreeable with other foreign friends of his. I don't know, he may have been exaggerating...

As for anecdotal evidence, the only American traveller I met hated Pakistan after a week here, "not just officials or police, even just the people on the bus were really hostile".

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