Masood Hassan on how the US sees India and Pakistan

Neither here nor there

Masood Hasan

Where are we going if we are going anywhere at all? President Bush, addressing the Asia Society just prior to leaving for his trip to India and Pakistan, spoke at considerable length on February 22, forcefully and emphatically. The first half of his speech -- no, it was more like 85 per cent of his speech -- was focused on India as he reviewed our neighbour's remarkable progress. Fact after impressive fact came forth and the US president made it very clear that here was a nation that was a serious and committed partner in fields too diverse to cover in this column.

What came across was a partnership of two great nations, trading and exchanging technology and products across the board, both committed to a long-term partnership – some initiatives going beyond the year 2050. This was not the senior partner talking down to the junior partner -- this was a partnership of tremendous promise and respect. The US president made it abundantly clear that the US saw India as a great and lucrative market, and the exchanges between the countries a way forward for both the people of India and the United States. It was a clear, candid and strong commitment that the president expressed, with pride and satisfaction. One can perhaps only imagine how the Indians who dominate the Asia Society must have felt as indeed the millions who saw the address live on television.

But we are not Indians – not yet anyway – and as a buffeted, confused believer in Pakistan whose slender faith in this nation is put to the test every day, it was with great trepidation that I waited for the president to turn to Pakistan. As was to be expected, there was virtually nothing to show for the great trading partnerships between our country and the United States and there was no mention of any significant gains made in the fields of economic activity, technology transfer or rising trade graphs. Instead, predictably, Pakistan's reference point was only one as far as the United States was concerned -- terrorism. The president spoke about this one single factor alone and traced the brief sequence of events from the time we recognised the Taliban, then quickly ditched them (strategic turnaround I recall was the euphemistic term coined by Islamabad) at the time of that famous phone call post-9/11, when we caved in and became front-line allies (again) in the US war on terror.

This was the core subject that the president's address to the Asia Society touched on and there was a thin bit of icing on the cake here and there, but to any one listening to the broadcast, the difference was even starker than chalk and cheese. The tenor of his voice, the open admiration in his assessment of India, the excitement at the rapid strides India has made and continues to make was as clear as the pure water they serve in crystal goblets in Islamabad. In one reference, the president mentioned Air India's order of 68 wide-bodied aircrafts from Boeing, the largest single order in the history of civil aviation in India. This was a business partner talking with pride about his business partner. The Indians eat Domino pizzas, wash clothes in Whirlpool machines, use GE technology and run an IT empire that is the stuff dreams are made of. What do we do? We burn KFC, steal the food, trash the restaurants, loot Citibank ATMs, torch Japanese motorbikes and cars, burn Norwegian investments, destroy four ambulances and a fire tender, set on fire our Assembly building -- a veritable historical icon of our past -- and create economic mayhem in a country where sugar sells for Rs40 per kg and gasoline at God knows what price last week. As far as the US president's tight summarisation was concerned, and he did not have to mention it, there is simply no comparison between the two countries. Depressing stuff.

But relax and rejoice because the hardworking moral brigades are not sitting around belching after another round of cholesterol-loaded halwas and puris. Twenty-two parties, no less, are taking to the streets on February 26 to join in the MMA march against the publication of the caricatures or whatever the wacky Danes printed and then reprinted until the whole world sat up and took notice. Not only are these boys going to cruise on every street they can find but they are going to do it peacefully, which is akin to asking camels to start looking pretty. The protestors want the government to send back all the ambassadors of the countries where the caricatures were printed and while they are at it, to kindly hand over all the people involved in this ghastly business, to be arrested and sent to an Islamic country (of their choice?) where they can be appropriately beheaded. However, the good news is that rumours about Qazi Hussain Ahmed abandoning his US properties, asking his children to renounce their green cards and return home to serve the motherland are highly exaggerated. The good Qazi has instead told them to keep the flag flying high and stay on to fight Satan.

Mr Butt, not of Butt Sweets, has announced in Lahore that the government should free all those picked up the other day, drop all charges and make no attempt to block their processions or else the local government would be held responsible. This is good thinking because there is nothing nicer than holding someone else responsible. The funny thing is that the way the Pakistan government has behaved so far indicates that perhaps it is, after all, the sole guilty party that published the caricatures. The MMA has vowed to carry on protesting until all the newspapers apologise and promise never to repeat this again. Strikes have been announced for just about most days of the week with a biggie on March 3 -- beware the ides of March and a 'million march' on March 5. After that, since you can't have too much of a good thing, the MMA Supreme Council will repair to Quetta and have another session there to plan more strikes.

In the meantime, the country continues to lose face and suffer very heavy losses. Every Muslim is angry about what happened and we have done all the protests we need. What is the point of more? Is it that there are people who still think the message hasn't gone through? The joke doing the rounds is that all that the enemies of Pakistan have to do is print one caricature a day and in a few weeks' time Pakistan will be wiped off the map. There is a law of diminishing returns at work here -- the more these strikes go on, the more we will damage ourselves. While I applaud the MMA and its related brethren for their fire-belching defence of their religious creed, it would be a dream scenario were they to exhibit the same passion for the rising poverty, the pitifully small allocations given to education and health and the absence of justice in the country where they also live and thrive. On such issues there is stony silence -- and that is why all this public show of piety does not cut much ice with anyone at the end of the day.