Khaled Ahmed - Pakistan’s new normal
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has finally "normalised" Pakistan's relations with the US, after two years of rupture caused by an incident on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and the killing of Osama bin Laden in the garrison city of Abbottabad. America has issued aid of $1.6 billion, which it had previously blocked, because it wants to get equipment worth $37 billion out of Afghanistan in 2014 with Pakistani help. The big success of Sharif's visit to the US, according to Islamabad, was the resumption of the Pakistan-US strategic dialogue by March 2014. Washington's Stimson Centre has described America's reception of Sharif as "red carpet".
But back home in Pakistan, the "nation" did not want to normalise its relations with the US, unless it stopped its drone strikes against the Taliban-al-Qaeda combine. An all-party conference strengthened Sharif's hand on the drone-related demand because the Taliban, which is the most hurt by the drones, want them stopped. Pakistan thinks the Taliban will not exploit the free run that it will have in the tribal areas if the drone attacks stop by consolidating its hold there, but will sit down honestly to talk peace with Islamabad.
The other issue that arouses passions in Pakistan is the release of Aafia Siddiqui, who was convicted and sentenced to over 80 years in prison by a New York court. On the FBI list of al-Qaeda terrorists for years, this brilliant Pakistani student in the US was lured into terrorism and ended up divorcing her first husband in order to marry a relative of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Aafia has become an icon of Pakistani hatred for America. The Taliban, too, wants to swap an American who was kidnapped from Lahore for her.
The joint statement at the end of Sharif's meeting with US President Barack Obama was positive. It mentioned many energy-related projects that America has undertaken in Pakistan and expressed the latter's intent to enhance the economic dimension of the bilateral equation. The media reported that Pakistan, starting 2001, has received $26 billion from America, out of which $17 billion was soaked up by the Pakistan army. Pakistan's proud "trade not aid" slogan, which Sharif adopted, may be ignored by an increasingly protectionist Washington.
By any objective yardstick, the visit was good for Pakistan. The Americans wanted to repair the relationship because of the transit facilities that Pakistan offers for the US-Nato withdrawal in the short term, and for regional security over the long term. Pakistan is important for the latter because of the nuclear weapons that may fall into the hands of al-Qaeda if the country succumbs to the Taliban onslaught. But those back home in Pakistan were disappointed.
The media thought that Sharif was not defiant enough, did not tell the Americans to get off Pakistan's back and failed to repeat the shameful national media concoction that the Taliban was not killing innocent Pakistani civilians — America and India were through their mercenaries. A state-funded Pakistani film showing in cinema halls these days actually depicts the killers as Indian agents, not as the Taliban.
The Pakistan daily, The News, commented on the film: "Tipped as one of the most expensive films in the history of film-making in Pakistan, with funds supposedly coming from the coffers of military's information wing, ISPR, there was much hype about Waar... Previously, the military was accused of influencing Pakistan's print and electronic media (and more recently, social media as well) through various means but their sponsorship for this film shows that it is now eager to expand its influence to the film industry as well.".. read more:
