Pakistani press reaction to the Bush visit

Daily Times

VIEW: Why did he come at all? — Kamran Shafi

“Part of my mission today was to determine whether or not the president is as committed as he has been in the past to bringing these terrorists to justice, and he is,” said Dubya, and as if these damning words were not enough, added: “He understands the stakes, he understands the responsibility and he understands the need to make sure our strategy is able to defeat the enemy.”

I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but watching the gruesome sight live on TV I felt as if he had delivered an almighty kick to my solar plexus and regions below, knocking the very breath out of me. I swear if I hadn’t been reclining in my La-Z-Boy at the time I should have fallen to the ground. The Big General too, seemed to have been gobsmacked, for instead of immediately making a firm riposte he remained stock still, at a complete loss for words. It was only after Dubya, realising the severity of his remarks in the face of his host, asked Musharraf, “Do you want to say something to that?” that Musharraf said, astoundingly, “May I add to this, with your permission”, and then went on about Pakistan’s intentions and his own intentions, and strategising this, and strategising that.

Let's see what the "director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad" has to say..(BTW, is is true that mullah omar is going to the news?)

Pak-US relations: no room for illusions

President Bush's visit to South Asia was all one expected it to be, although the level of intimacy he achieved with India went far beyond expectations. In Pakistan, a lot of time was devoted to a visit that in the end produced little of long-term strategic value for the country -- no matter what spin one puts on it. But why do we always have expectations from the US when they consistently make it clear that these will be refuted. In the present context, the most painful example was the nuclear issue. Despite consistent statements from US officialdom -- right from the top down -- that Pakistan could never be treated to a deal similar to the Indo-US nuclear deal, we were being told by various utterances from Scherezade Hotel that we would be demanding such a deal and it could actually happen. A delusional air surely hangs heavy in various corridors here!

Hit and run

For all those bleating about the different treatment that Pakistan got from the Bush visit, it's time for a reality check. India is the world's largest democracy at over one billion people with one of the fastest growing middle class currently numbered around a mammoth 300 million. It is also one of the world's hottest economies with large global corporations bludgeoning each other to get a footprint in. While India has one of the largest militaries in the region, no general has ever intervened despite the blunders the civilians made.

Every nation in the world wants to get access for itscompanies to do business in India, and what makes their economy so compelling is the huge growth in purchasing power that the consumers across the border are experiencing. Throw in the rapid strides being made by Indian scientists in the fields of biotechnology, engineering, and of course software -- everyone wants a piece of the action. From a corporate perspective, if you're not in India you're missing the boat.

More from manto's rag..

EDITORIAL: Self-correction is in national interest now

Frankly, it is Pakistan’s set-in-concrete “theory of socio-political-military relationship” with India which has brought it to this sorry pass, where neither foreign policy nor internal consensus can be handled effectively. The macro attitude towards India has drifted away from realism, and Pakistani society has been indoctrinated to accept the inflexibility of “barrack-room” thinking as a part of its nationalism. Today, trouble with borders on both sides springs from the pursuit of this inflexible project of making India bend to Pakistan’s revisionist agenda. This revisionism has focused on Kashmir but textbook indoctrination has moved further than Kashmir, making the two countries’ coexistence ideologically untenable. That is why the world is not with Pakistan today and is trying to tell us that there are other ways of facing up to India than war and reliance on such national-security theories.

The Bush visit and after

INAYATULLAH

The Bush visit to India and Pakistan has served to clear the air in many ways. For one, it has formally set the seal on the distinction USA makes in regard to its relations with India and Pakistan. There is little doubt left in recognising that India is more to US than a strategic partner. The Old Fort Bush address in Delhi is a gushing acknowledgement of the new reality. How effusive the head of a sole superpower could be! Bush was telling India that the two together would be reshaping the world. The US President was thus on a mission to make a historic pronouncement. Also to go out of the way to forge opportunities with a view to strengthening the new global partner.
Notice needs to be taken of the fact that, unlike India, there was little of substance in the visit for Pakistan. If the expectation – a reasonable one at that – was that there would at least be some compensatory measures or gestures, like an investment agreement or some significant movement on Kashmir. No such thing happened. The hope raised about a Kashmir settlement in the US President’s pre-visit press briefing evaporated when Bush merely referred to the need for the two countries to sort it out bilaterally.
On the other hand, Pakistan has to ensure that no “crossborder” infiltration takes place any more. India can take its own time to pursue its agenda in the matter. Instead of talking to Pakistan it may start holding meetings with the Kashmiri leaders. The militants somehow have to be neutralised and tamed. As Kashmir is very much a part of the Indian Union, the problem will be overcome with the passage of time. Pakistan having thrown all its cards on the table even before the negotiations on the subject have begun, may well be reduced to the status of a spectator. It is for India to dish out its own version of self-rule or autonomy and some demilitarisation.

Dawn Magazine: 3/12/2006

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/dmag18.htm

Our beef with Bush

By Anjum Niaz

Bush brought zilch, and who is responsible? More on that later. Many a blossom bloomed and then lost its lustre. It was time-sensitive. The buds began to appear when George Bush confirmed his arrival in Pakistan. These buds started to open up as the visit drew closer. The night before Bush stealthily showed up on our soil, the buds turned into full blown analysts on America and its policies. I mean the pundits who sat in a huddle with the host in the middle before TV cameras second-guessing why, when, where and what Bush was carrying in his bag for us.

Each analyst and his anchor had a mouthful of wisdom to share with the viewers. Sitting on the other side of Atlantic with Europe and the Arab world in between, our gurus waxed knowledgeable on America. Not lagging behind were the op-ed pages of newspapers that spawned unending columns of writers posing as American experts/scholars.

Suddenly there was an information explosion in Pakistan.

Still, with our half-baked knowledge on all things American, the sleuths in the media got licked by the 700 strong American security men who fooled us into believing that George and Laura Bush were taking the Islamabad highway en route to go wherever they were camping for the night.

As darkness descended, so did silence. Not a car could be seen on the dual highway. Roads entering the highway were blocked with trees and police cars. The tall lamp posts stood sentinel, casting a spidery yellow light on the haunted highway. It was too quiet for comfort, too surreal for belief, as we waited for the VIP caravan to hurtle past any second. No one came. Bush had landed and whisked off on a helicopter to the American ambassador’s residence.

The decoy by the Americans had worked perfectly. Potential snipers and suicide bombers were taken on a wild goose chase and dumped by the wayside.

With Bush’s exit, TV pundits and writers are back. “We told you so,” is the line they are parroting. After the fact, that is.

The truth is that Bush is not America, unlike Musharraf, who sadly is Pakistan. There is more to America than Bush.

Do our illustrious writers and soothsayers here know how Pakistan and its people are viewed in America? Want to know? For the ordinary Americans, we don’t exist. Nor do they care. We only have an identity in very select circles like the right-wing think-tanks of Washington. And I have news for you. They don’t like us. One can tell these white male chauvinists to go to hell. But we can’t. They dictate the foreign policy to Bush and his White House.

Newsmaker

He came, he played cricket and flew away in the darkness of the night. Yes, that was basically the highlights of President Bush’s 24-hour long visit to Pakistan. Well, in between he met our president, held a press conference and attended a dinner. He said the mandatory words about us being an ally in the war on terrorism, made a casual reference to next year’s elections and gave a green signal to the construction of a natural gas pipeline across Pakistan from Iran to India.

Actually, those who expected much more from him have probably just got up from a long sleep and don’t know have a clue about how Uncle Sam operates. If anything, this South Asian visit was primarily to further US-India ties and Pakistan just happens to be in the neighbourhood so leaving without a courtesy call at Islamabad would have been rude. After all, the US still needs our help to nab Osama and Mullah Omar, besides President Musharraf’s help in keeping the religious factions here under a tight lid. Moreover Clinton too dropped in just for a few hours after he too visited India for a few days.

It was clearly India that Bush wanted to woo and he did with a nuclear deal. Need one add here that the US is opposing Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme while it has offered this deal to India despite the fact that it is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and in violation of its own laws.

Why all these Bush fires?
Iqbal Mustafa

With all that has been written about the heart-breaking (rather nose-smashing) visit of Mr Bush last week that has left almost everyone mortified, here and abroad, there is little room left to add anything. However, I would like to dilate upon the passions that the visit inflamed.

First, the inferences drawn by some observant commentators: The New York Times, in a scathing editorial on March 3, 'A pointless visit to Pakistan', sums up the visit by stating "The Bush-Musharraf summit meeting is one between two leaders far more interested in guns than butter." Fakir Syed Aijazuddin defines it succinctly as, "In Kabul, he gave Afghanistan the reassurances that it craved; in New Delhi, he gave India what it wanted; and in Islamabad, he gave Pakistan what it deserved."

Referring to Mr Bush's comment that India and Pakistan are two different countries with different needs and different history, he surmises, "At a stroke, he severed the gristle of history that has connected the two nations. He has liberated them from each other, like amputated Siamese twins, and told them to learn to lead their lives separately."

Kamran Shafi does not wear any velvet gloves when he writes. He has dissected every move, gesture and inflection of what every one saw on TV with a Freudian scalpel. He took a special offence to General Musharraf asking Mr Bush's permission to speak at one point during their live press conference. Ayaz Amir's tone has been unusually low key and stoic. He states, "Bush may have done Pakistan no other favours but for this shift of focus he deserves our thanks. While we may have badly needed this splash of cold water on our faces, all in all the Pakistani reaction is still a bit strange and not a little tinged by something that can only be called paranoia."

Best of all, in my opinion, was the animated cartoon caricature of George Bush shown by GEO TV on 4th March several times titled 'Bush Bush hota hai'. That just captured the underlying reality of Pak-US relations to a tee. Humour indeed is a funny way of saying serious things. Bush came through like a doctored simpleton that he really is. As the most powerful man in the world, he agreed to accept General Musharraf's invitation to sneak into the best-protected bunker in the world.

Two beleaguered leaders acted out a pantomime of their individual authorities behind fortified walls, safe from all the mounting dissent around them for their perplexing ability to start bushfires (no pun intended) without any clue about how to put them out. The endearing personal rapport between the two leaders is perhaps based on this uncanny ability -- birds of a feather. There was a sad irony in the two champions of democracy hiding behind ironclad security to keep those very people at bay for whom they profess to be risking their lives and careers.

It is interesting to note that this is not the first time Pakistan has been let down, even snubbed by the US. It happened in mid sixties after the 65-war misadventure. It happened in the seventies when Mr Bhutto referred to Mr Jimmy Carter as 'that peanut farmer from Georgia.' It happened again after the Geneva Accord over Afghanistan in late eighties. President Clinton's visit in the late nineties was staged to put Pakistan in its place and we obliged by changing traffic rules for his limousines and giving him free access to a live television broadcast, like a presidential address, while he refused to be photographed with a democratically elected cabinet.

So what is different this time that is making us blow our tops off? Quite obviously, the Indian parallel stands out so starkly. I nearly choked when I heard President Musharraf admonish that we should not be India-centric. It reminded me of the cowboy who picked up a hot horseshoe, just out of the furnace and having burned his hand dropped it in frenzy. The Ironsmith laughed and asked, "Kin' of hot, ain't it?" The cowboy tipped his hat back and said nonchalantly, "Nopes! Just don't take me long to look at a horseshoe."

Having spent half a century developing 'India-specific' weaponry systems at a huge social cost that has left the country at the brink of destitution in civic terms, the Commander in Chief of our armed forces tells us not to be India-centric. It is black comedy! The militarisation of the civilian mind over five decades has turned Pakistan's raison d'être into a negation of India.

For all these years, we have lived with an illusion that there is some modicum of parity between the countries. Military has talked about a 1:3 numerical deterrent and such nonsense for long. Our nuclear programme owed its birth to the loss of East Pakistan and in response to the Indian nuclear development programme. In 1998, we conducted the nuclear test in response to the Indian explosion. Every development strategy, these days, begins with slides of cross-country comparison charts beginning with India. There is a mad rush of delegations to visit India on every little issue like which end to feed the cows from for a better dairy strategy. For all India's strength and our weaknesses, we had one saving grace on our side -- favours of US power.

Now Mr Bush has pricked our bubble of assumed parity. In the earlier years, illusion of parity had some grounds but since the early nineties when India has marched on towards globalisation of its economy and grown into an emerging world player, we held on to a belief in the myth of parity; India has only been pretending it. On March 3, 2006, we came to face the bitter truth that we stand orphaned. Mr Bush redefined our relationship with the US as 'cash on delivery' basis for services rendered.

This has happened at a time when public opinion about US is at its lowest watermark ever. To be fair to General Musharraf and his government, public sentiment against US as a country is only skin-deep. We hate America only as far as it is denied to us. Let US embassy adopt an open visa policy, and before you could say Pakistan Zindabaad, half of the population would have jumped ship. The General's problem is, as I wrote last week that he wants to walk in the middle of the road, which is always a dangerous zone in highly polarised situations.

The world is coagulating into secular and non-secular halves. The dilemma with us in Pakistan is that we host an overbearing presence of what General Musharraf is referring to as 'extremists' these days, nurtured over decades through militarisation of minds and bigoted school syllabi while now we desperately seek to walk in step with the secular side of the world.

India, China, Malaysia, Turkey, Morocco and Arab Emirates do not carry such baggage. They have a more predictable and stable relationship with the secular world. Countries like ours would remain in internal turmoil with unstable external relations for times to come.

We do not need George Bush to create bushfires in our courtyard. We have enough kindling wood in our intellectually confused political thought for self-inflammation. As for slights, no one can humiliate you without your consent!

The writer is a consultant for agro-economy and organisational management

America and our strategic calculus
Dr Farrukh Saleem

Should we be afraid of the truth? One, America, while making clear that her strategic priority is India, still wants Pakistan to remain under America's tent. Two, America will not -- and cannot -- pressurise India to settle Kashmir on Pakistani terms. Three, we don't have a military solution to Kashmir. Four, we have lost a lot more than gained through our strategy of 'bleeding India' in Kashmir. Five, our dream of military parity with India is just that. Six, if our military objective is 'to liberate Kashmir at an opportune time' then our current defence allocation of Rs223 billion is peanuts (we need maybe 20 times that much every year for the following 50 years). Seven, if the State of Pakistan exists for the welfare of Pakistanis then a defence allocation of Rs223 billion will keep us oceans away from our goal.