Of a strategic alliance

In July 2012, Moody's Investors Service had downgraded Pakistan's foreign and local-currency credit ratings from B3 to Caa1, while the short-term rating remained unchanged at 'not-prime' and the outlook 'negative'. Consequently, Pakistan's Country Risk perception suffered another blow.
Moody's report made only veiled references to the escalating security risk without pointing to the elements and factors escalating this risk to rise. Moody's wasn't expected to discuss the drivers of this risk in depth but it is sustained bad governance that is 'the' factor causing the economic slide.
Escalating security risk is rapidly eroding investor confidence, and Pakistan's President is on record having said that sectarian killings could "undo Pakistan". Yet, little has been done to increase the number of law enforcers or to add to their detective and protective gadgetries. Besides, no one talks credibly about the elements and factors causing lawlessness, crime, and terrorism to reach levels that threaten the very existence of Pakistan. All we hear are biased, irresponsible and unsubstantiated allegations and explanations.
But in a TV talk show last week, the head of a liberal political party referred, though mutely, to external influences that are ensuring via terrorism that Pakistan doesn't benefit from the natural resource reserves buried below the ground in Balochistan and tribal areas of the KP province.
Next, a Nobel peace prize winner and hero of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, pulled out of a seminar (which Tony Blair was scheduled to attend) because he could not sit with a man who had committed "heinous war crimes".
The Archbishop called for Tony Blair and George W. Bush to be hauled before the International Criminal Court for initiating and perpetuating their "war on terror" that has only "hardened the hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world".
The question he posed is hard to answer. He asked "Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and the Judeo-Christian worlds closer together in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?"
Pakistan too is fighting the Western 'war on terror' and paying a price for it as do the misguided in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria by destroying their countries, which convinces more of their people that the real aim of the 'war on terror' is to incapacitate resource-rich Muslim states. None of these recent anti-US converts supports terrorism that turns humans into monsters who take pride in being snapped with the heads of the human beings they slaughter in the name of Islam because in Islam no sin is bigger than killing the innocent, no matter what their faith.
But then they see that the so-called 'defenders' of peace and equality who launched the 'war on terror' keep committing this mega sin everyday with impunity calling the slaughter 'collateral damage' reflecting a ruthlessness mindset that is luring the ordinary towards the terrorists.
This is what former US President Jimmy Carter warned about when he wrote that "instead of making the world safer, America's violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends." But realists like him and Ron Paul have been sidelined.
The clever-by-half strategists sitting in the Pentagon don't see how their tactless actions are fuelling terrorism though these strategists now rely increasingly on un-manned flying weapons - the drones - that can be launched coolly from the US. This is what Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes as the scenario wherein "leadership and morality are indivisible." Unfortunately, however, he vividly describes the scenario prevailing in most 'US strategic ally' countries in the Muslim world, Pakistan being one of them.
The US knows it better than anyone else what natural reserves are buried beneath the ground in Balochistan and KP's tribal areas, because its satellites that keep orbiting this planet with zero regard for a nation's privacy while the UN remains silent on the issue.
The US (Pakistan's strategic ally) also knows how exploration and recovery of Pakistan' natural resources could transform Pakistan's fate from a beggar state to a self-sufficient, in fact a donor state, although the US has the capacity to assist Pakistan in materialising this outcome.
What the US prefers is holding back even the reimbursement (pennies compared to Pakistan's war losses since 1980) of the expenses Pakistan incurs on behalf of the US in assisting its 'war on terror'. Given this treatment, shouldn't Pakistanis doubt being a 'strategic' US ally?
Today, Pakistan's one of the biggest problems is the energy and power shortages that together are the largest contributor to its burgeoning trade deficit (and the cause of its external borrowings and depreciation of the Rupee) due to its rising oil and LNG import bill.
In 1980, if Pakistan hadn't become a proxy for the US intervention in Afghanistan, and concentrated on exploring and utilising its natural resources, even without US help it could have recovered these resources at least to the extent of making it self-sufficient. The politically troubled dictator General Zia agreed to make Pakistan the US proxy in Afghanistan in return for being 'legitimised'. This highly Pakistan-destructive deal proves that, even before its 'war on terror' began, how 'strategically' Pakistan was used by its great ally - the US.
That 'strategic' use of Pakistan continues though, courtesy disclosure of connections between the US and British secret services and the Balochistan Liberation Army, even Rehman Malik (part of a strongly pro-US regime) now publically blames these connections.
US Senators routinely seek Pakistan being crushed under more economic sanctions (that began in 1974 when it went for the nuclear option to counter a similar threat from India), but rarely support moves to stop Pakistan's slide into the category of 'failed states'. Some show of concern for a 'strategic ally'!
Policymakers in the US don't realise that given their treatment of the allies beginning 1952, no patriotic regime in the world would want to become a US ally; any regime that opts for it would be rated as 'suspect' because the US has made 'alliance' sound like a danger signal.
Reason: such 'allies' are characterised by their mal-administration of the state that escalates economic imbalances, corruption, poverty, crime, social chaos, and ethnic and sectarian divides to a point where masses lose faith in the very concept of the law, justice, government, and the state.
That's not all; the wealth of their nations that these pro-West regimes steal is invested in the US and Europe without any questions being asked. But once ousted from power, the ill-gotten wealth of these proxies is confiscated. Remember the fate of Shah of Iran, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, Ali Abdullah Saleh, etc.?