Faisal Shahzad’s anti-Americanism – by Pervez Hoodbhoy
The man who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square was a Pakistani. Why is this unsurprising? Because when you hold a burning match to a gasoline tank, the laws of chemistry demand combustion.
As anti-US lava spews from the fiery volcanoes of Pakistan’s private television channels and newspapers, a collective psychosis grips the country’s youth. Murderous intent follows with the conviction that the US is responsible for all ills, both in Pakistan and the world of Islam.
Faisal Shahzad, with designer sunglasses and an MBA degree from the University of Bridgeport, acquired that murderous intent. Living his formative years in Pakistan, he typifies the young Pakistani who grew up in the shadow of Ziaul Haq’s hate-based education curriculum. The son of a retired air vice-marshal, life was easy as was getting US citizenship subsequently. But at some point the toxic schooling and media tutoring must have kicked in.
There was guilt as he saw pictures of Gaza’s dead children and related them to US support for Israel. Internet browsing or, perhaps, the local mosque steered him towards the idea of an Islamic caliphate. This solution to the world’s problems would require, of course, the US to be destroyed. Hence Shahzad’s self-confessed trip to Waziristan.
Ideas considered extreme a decade ago are now mainstream. A private survey carried out by a European embassy based in Islamabad found that only four per cent of Pakistanis polled speak well of America; 96 per cent against.
Although Pakistan and the US are formal allies, in the public perception the US has ousted India as Pakistan’s number one enemy. Remarkably, anti-US sentiment rises in proportion to aid received. Say a good word about the US, and you are labelled as its agent. From what TV anchors had to say about it, Kerry-Lugar’s $7.5bn may well have been money that the US wants to steal from Pakistan rather than give to it.
Pakistan is not the only country where America is unpopular. In pursuit of its self-interest, the US has waged illegal wars, bribed, bullied and overthrown governments, supported tyrants and undermined movements for progressive change. Paradoxically America is disliked more in Pakistan than in countries which have born the direct brunt of its attacks — Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Why?
Drone strikes are a common but false explanation. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi implicitly justifies the Times Square bombing as retaliation but this does not bear up. Drone attacks have killed some innocents but they have devastated militant operations in Waziristan while causing far less collateral damage than Pakistan Army operations.
On the other hand, the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong were carpet-bombed by B-52 bombers and Vietnam’s jungles were defoliated with Agent Orange. Yet, Vietnam never developed visceral feelings like those in Pakistan.
Finding truer reasons requires deeper digging. In part, Pakistan displays the resentment of a client state for its paymaster. US-Pakistan relations are transactional today but the master-client relationship is older. Indeed, Pakistan chose this path because confronting India over Kashmir demanded big defence budgets. In the 1960s, Pakistan entered into the Seato and Cento military pacts, and was proud to be called ‘America’s most allied ally’. The Pakistan Army became the most powerful, well-equipped and well-organised institution in the country. This also put Pakistan on the external dole.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, even as it brought in profits, deepened the dependence. Paid by the US to create the anti-Soviet jihadist apparatus, Pakistan is now being paid again to fight that war’s blowback. Pakistan then entered George W. Bush’s war on terror to enhance America’s security — a fact that further hurt its self-esteem. It is a separate matter that Pakistan fights that very war for its own survival and must call upon its army to protect the population from throat-slitting fanatics.
Passing the buck is equally fundamental to Pakistan’s anti-Americanism. It is in human nature to blame others for one’s own failures. Pakistan has long teetered between being a failed state and a failing state. The rich won’t pay taxes? Little electricity? Contaminated drinking water? Kashmir unsolved? Blame it on the Americans. This phenomenon exists elsewhere too. For example, one saw Hamid Karzai threatening to join the Taliban and lashing out against Americans because they (probably correctly) suggested he committed electoral fraud.
Tragically for Pakistan, anti-Americanism plays squarely into the hands of Islamic militants. They vigorously promote the notion of an Islam-West war when, in fact, they actually wage armed struggle to remake society. They will keep fighting this war even if America were to miraculously evaporate. Created by poverty, a war culture and the macabre manipulations of Pakistan’s intelligence services, they seek a total transformation of society. This means eliminating music, art, entertainment and all manifestations of modernity. Side goals include chasing away the few surviving native Christians, Sikhs and Hindus.
At a time when the country needs clarity of thought to successfully fight extremism, simple bipolar explanations are inadequate. The moralistic question ‘Is America good or bad?’ is futile.
There is little doubt that the US has committed acts of aggression, as in Iraq, and maintains the world’s largest military machine. We know that it will make a deal with the Taliban if perceived to be in its self-interest — even if that means abandoning the Afghans to bloodthirsty fanatics. Yet, it would be wrong to scorn the humanitarian impulse behind US assistance in times of desperation. Shall we write off massive US assistance to Pakistan at the time of the earthquake of 2005? Or to tsunami-affected countries in 2004?
In truth, the US is no more selfish or altruistic than any other country. And it treats its Muslim citizens infinitely better than we treat non-Muslims in Pakistan.
Instead of pronouncing moral judgments on everything and anything, we Pakistanis need to reaffirm what is truly important for our people: peace, economic justice, good governance, rule of law, accountability of rulers, women’s rights and rationality in human affairs. Washington must be resisted, but only when it seeks to drag Pakistan away from these goals. More frenzied anti-Americanism will produce more Faisal Shahzads.
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
Source: Dawn, 8 May 2010
US puts blame on Taliban for NY bomb plot
By Anwar Iqbal
Monday, 10 May, 2010
John Brennan, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, talking about the Times Square bombing attempt on CBS’s “Face the Nation” in Washington Sunday, May 9, 2010. – Photo by AP.
PAKISTAN
Pakistan – A nursery of modern jihad?
Pakistan – A nursery of modern jihad?
WASHINGTON: If Pakistan failed to take appropriate actions against the Taliban, the United States will, US Attorney General Eric Holder said on Sunday as he and other American officials firmly blamed the Pakistani Taliban for a failed attempt to blow up a bomb in New York’s Times Square.
“To the extent that it does not, we will, as Secretary Clinton indicated, take the appropriate steps,” said Mr Holder when asked to explain her earlier statement.
In an interview recorded on Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that if a successful terrorist attack was traced back to Pakistan, the consequences for that country would be “very severe”.
Several senior US officials and lawmakers appeared on television talk shows on Sunday, spelling out how the United States planned to deal with the consequences of last week’s failed bombing attempt.
On May 1, Faisal Shahzad, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, tried to blow up petrol and propane tanks secreted inside a Nissan Pathfinder parked just yards from the heart of Times Square.
Initial media reports claimed that Faisal learned making bombs at a terrorist camp in North Waziristan.
But later two senior US officials – Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and chief of the Central Command Gen David Petraeus – said they believed he was a ‘lone-wolf’ who drew his inspiration from the Taliban but had no formal links to the group.
This assessment, however, had changed by Sunday, when Attorney General Holder and President Barack Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said very firmly that the group known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan was behind the attack.
The “accusation should increase pressure on the Pakistan military to attack the organisation in its bastions in the lawless tribal region of North Waziristan”, observed The New York Times.
Mr Holder, however, played down the prospect of a direct US military action in Pakistan, pointing out that in connection with the Shahzad investigation, “they had been extremely aggressive, they’ve been cooperative with us, and I think we have been satisfied with the work that they have done”. The United States, he added, wanted to “make sure that kind of cooperation continues”. In separate interviews to two US television channel, Mr Brennan minced no words in blaming the Taliban.
“It’s clear that Faisal Shahzad was working on behalf of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, that’s the TTP. That’s a militant terrorist organisation within Pakistan that is closely allied with Al Qaeda,” he said.
“He was trained by them. He received funding from them. He was basically directed here to the United States to carry out this attack.”
Mr Holder also backed him, saying: “We’ve now developed evidence that shows the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack.” The TTP, he said, “directed this plot;” was “intimately involved” and may have also financed it.
US intelligence officials believe that the TTP has joined forces with Al Qaeda and may be hiding some of its senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden, who was the motivating force behind the 9/11 attack.
Mr Brennan also emphasised that the United States was getting “good cooperation from our Pakistani partners” and was “hopeful we’re going to be able to identify any other individuals that were involved”.
Asked what motivated Faisal to join the Taliban, Mr Brennan said: “He was captured by this murderous rhetoric of Al Qaeda and the TTP that looks at the United States as an enemy.”
This, Mr Brennan said, was “a distorted view of what we are doing, first of all. And secondly, it’s a very distorted view of Islam”.
Yet, he conceded, a number of individuals – Shahzad, Najibullah Zazi and others held in the United States – had been taken in by this rhetoric.
“It’s a very murderous, venomous type of agenda that they have. Unfortunately, there are individuals who are attracted to that, and we have to find them, we have to stop them before they are able to carry out these attacks,” said Mr Brennan when asked if there would be more arrests in the United States.
Neither Mr Holder nor Mr Brennan indicated what new information led them to the firmer conclusions about the role of the Pakistani Taliban.
Meanwhile, the US media reported that as part of its strategy for dealing with this new threat, the Obama administration was urging Pakistan to increase its efforts for combating militants.
The media noted that the chief US commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, met the Pakistani army chief in Islamabad recently and urged him to hammer North Waziristan and deal with allied terror groups based in Karachi, the New York Times reported.
The Obama administration was also trying to persuade the Pakistani government to send American development to the tribal areas where militancy thrived, and into Karachi, where the Americans believed radical Madressahs were popular, the report said.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/06-pakistani-taliban-behind-failed-new-york-attack-us-rs-01
Editorial: A dire threat
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has threatened that if a future terror attack against the US is traced back to Pakistan, there will be “severe consequences”. Ms Clinton’s statement, given in an interview to CBS, comes on the heels of the failed bombing attempt in Times Square. The accused, Faisal Shahzad, is a naturalised American citizen of Pakistani origin. “I think that there was a double game going on in the previous years, where we got a lot of lip-service but very little produced,” was how Ms Clinton described the previous regime’s double-faced stance on taking out the militants. She appreciated the incumbent government’s cooperation and commitment but said that the US “wants and expects more”. Though Ms Clinton tried to water down her ‘warning’ by praising Pakistan’s efforts in the war against terror, the subtext of her statement cannot be ignored. In fact, the threat is very serious.
The US has not made any bones about how seriously it takes threats to its internal security. When the Twin Towers were attacked in 2001 by al Qaeda, the US launched an attack on Afghanistan where the terrorist network’s leadership was based. In this backdrop, we should not take Ms Clinton’s warning lightly. US Attorney General Eric Holder has made it clear that the Pakistani Taliban were “intimately involved” and “directed this [bombing] plot”. According to reports, US military commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal urged General Kayani to launch a military operation against the local Taliban and al Qaeda in North Waziristan. The Pakistani Taliban have already wreaked havoc in our country, but their global terrorist aims should be a cause of concern for the government and the army. In the past we have either not paid much attention to their ties with global terrorist networks or have turned a blind eye to these collaborations. Now that a terror plot has been uncovered in the US and the involvement of our local Taliban is suspected, there should be no procrastination on this front.
The Musharraf regime was not successful in hoodwinking the US administration when only the al Qaeda members were handed over to American authorities while the Afghan Taliban were provided safe havens in Pakistan. The “do more” mantra was done to death back then. After some successful military offensives in the recent past, we heard less of it but Mr Shahzad’s links to the Pakistani Taliban and in particular his reported training in North Waziristan has made it incumbent on us that we do not sit back complacently. The Haqqani network, considered an ‘asset’ for Pakistan in its ‘strategic depth’ policy in a post-US Afghanistan, has been given a free hand for far too long now. Haqqani has not only given a safe haven to the al Qaeda leadership in North Waziristan but is also involved in providing assistance to the Punjabi terrorists; the Asian Tigers being a formidable example. Reading between the lines, it can be safely asserted that Ms Clinton wants us to go after the Haqqani network. In case we fail to do that, the US has a number of options. It can bomb North Waziristan itself, intensify the drone attacks, bring boots on the ground, or declare war against Pakistan in the worst-case scenario. We cannot afford any of these options given how heavily dependent we are on American aid, both economic and military. Thus it is time for us to let go of our reluctant posture on North Waziristan and take some concrete action before the US does something sinister.
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\05\10\story_10-5-2010_pg3_1
I think its the time America/Americans should understand that Pakistan is well protected Nuclear state not like Palestine of Afghanistan. so they should be careful about choosing words and threatening Pakistan. They must realize if they do attack Pakistan, Pakistanis will not be silent they will definitely respond and respond strongly….they must stop playing dramas and must concentrate on their own problems.
I think its the time America/Americans should understand that Pakistan is well protected Nuclear state not like Palestine or Afghanistan. so they should be careful about choosing words and threatening Pakistan. They must realize if they do attack Pakistan, Pakistanis will not be silent they will definitely respond and respond strongly….they must stop playing dramas and must concentrate on their own problems.