When a US Senate delegation, headed by Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin, called on Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last Monday, he stressed the need to bridge the existing trust deficit between Pakistan and the US.
For his part, the PM assured the visitors of his government's sincere efforts to build upon what he described as 'traditionally cordial bilateral ties, spanning over 60 years.' The problem though is that the relationship of trust that our government has been trying to build is not based on the principle of reciprocity.
It is more in the nature of a client state allowing a big power to take advantage of itself in the hope of receiving some monetary rewards and some reflected glow. Missing from the relationship is the element of mutual respect. No wonder, the Prime Minister was seen urging the US to ensure disbursement of the long overdue Coalition Support Fund payments as he went on to repeat the old request that the US provide drone technology to Pakistan, and share credible and actionable intelligence about suspected Taliban and al Qaeda operatives with Pakistani intelligence agencies.
He also asked for the removal of Pakistan's name from the list of countries for whom the US recently introduced full body scanning measures. Doing so, he told the Senate delegation, would significantly improve Washington's image in this country. As regards the new screening measures, perhaps, we should not get oversensitive about them. For, there is a real security threat.
The US decided to introduce new intrusive screening after a Nigerian national, Umar Farouk Abdulmattalub, who had received training in Yemen, tried to blow up a plane during a Christmas Day, Amsterdam to Detroit flight. The Nigerian could have killed 289 people aboard the flight. Nonetheless, no Pakistani national has ever been involved in a terrorist attack in the US or any of the European countries.
The British government, which has faced actual terrorist bombings in one case and thwarted some others, acknowledges that it faces home-grown terrorists. Religio-racial profiling surely is uncivilised and unacceptable, but if it helps avert loss of human life, it may not be such a bad thing to do. But it does not guarantee detection.
America's own security experts say finding explosive material hidden in passenger undergarments, as in the case of the Nigerian bomber, is like finding a needle in a haystack, given the volume of incoming passenger traffic. And, further, that certain types of explosives can dodge even scanning machines.
Religio-racial profiling can only aggravate the existing sense of anger and humiliation in the Muslim world - generated by George Bush's wars of aggression - without ensuring security. Remember Richard Reid, the 'Shoe Bomber', who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001? He was a Briton with a Christian name.
So long as the root cause of this trouble - political injustices, worsened by the US's wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan - remains unresolved, the 'enemy combatants' will continue to find ever new ways to attack their chosen targets in the US and other Western countries.
Sad as it is, the Prime Minister's request about sharing of drone technology was more of lament than a demand. The US does not trust Pakistan enough to give it the requisite technology or even actionable intelligence, but expects us to quietly accept the avoidable 'collateral damage', also asking our soldiers to do the fighting and dying for it. Drone strikes have increased in frequency and ferocity despite our government's public protests.
From their remote control centres, the Predator drones' CIA operators have killed about as many Pakistani civilians as the nine-year long war in Afghanistan has American soldiers, making more and more people irate and willing to join the militants to avenge the deaths of their near and dear ones.
Our rulers, in fact, trust the Americans more than they do their own people. Until the truth was revealed by American publications, they kept it from the public that the drones, indiscriminately targeting our people, fly out of bases located inside Pakistan.
They also tried to cover up the presence of armed American guards, belonging to the infamous Black Water security agency - now known as Xe Services - which is actually a mercenary army. These guards have been running around all over the country engaged in activities of which there is no official explanation. At first, press reports about the presence of the private security contractors were firmly denied.
The cover of secrecy was blown when incidents started to surface of local police trying to check vehicles with prohibited tinted glass windows, bearing fictitious licence plates and carrying armed Americans, and the occupants of the vehicles refusing to submit to police search.
The police had to let them go on the telephonic intervention of some government high-ups. At least in one reported incident, the Americans roughed up a local officer who insisted on doing his duty. These people are not diplomats enjoying immunity from police stop and search operations.
They are simply private contractors who have no business violating the laws of the land with impunity. Those at the helm may not mind the humiliation of our own security men at the hands of members of a foreign mercenary army, but the people do. In fact, the public and the media have wider concerns as well about the activities of these unofficial Americans.
They are apprehensive that the men might be here to create chaos and confusion, and use the same as a pretext to destroy the country's nuclear assets. That may be a far-fetched theory, but it cannot be dismissed out of hand, considering that the American media have consistently been raising the spectre of Pakistan's nuclear assets falling into the hands of pro al Qaeda extremists.
Despite local resentment, armed Americans, of unspecified status, have gone on to cock a snook at the people of this country. Which other government would let another country to do this? So far, there is no other example except of occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our government has placed its unconditional trust in America, which is why, the latter is taking advantage of it, and the entire nation. In order to bridge the trust deficit, the Prime Minister talked about this government needs to change the terms of engagement, with the US, from give-and-give to give-and-take, as well as respect for our national dignity.
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