How often the American politicians turn up at the Pakistan embassy in Washington to hear a Pakistani official tell them like what to do now that the Immigration Bill is stuck in the Senate or how to fence the El Paso-Columbus sector of the border with Mexico? Perhaps, never; the American politicians would consider it unpatriotic to present themselves at a foreign mission and receive advice on what is exclusively their internal matter.
But that is not the case in Pakistan. Quite often, our political leaders have arrived at foreign missions to receive 'enlightenment' on issues which are purely domestic in nature, what to talk of writing letters to foreign governments seeking leverage on national issues.
Only the other day a score of important leaders from both sides of the political divide benefited from the insights that visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher presented to them on the current political tensions in Pakistan. He then visited Quetta and is said to have repeated the same exercise.
Surprisingly, Deputy Secretary of State John D Negroponte came on the heels of Richard Boucher. These visits in quick succession tend to stand in sharp contrast to the long overdue Pak-US strategic dialogue that Pakistan has been asking for, bringing out the mismatch of priorities nurtured by the two countries.
On the face of it, visits of both the US officials appear to be beyond the framework of normal diplomatic relationship and are focused on political developments in Pakistan. There seems to be an anxiety on the part of Washington to secure political survival of its ally in the war on terror, which in Pakistani perspective means fighting the Taliban, like President Musharraf does. There best bet would be to see that President Musharraf wins the general elections at the head of a coalition of moderate forces, including Benazir Bhutto's PPP.
At the same time they are mindful of the possibility that anti-Musharraf movement may suck in liberal leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan and nationalist leaders in smaller provinces, besides the MMA. This indeed is a dicey situation, forcing the Americans to strike a neutral posture, that is, while eulogising President Musharraf for his unstinted support against terrorism they also keep reminding him of his 'pledges' to shed the uniform and hold free and fair elections.
But all this is the American perspective. What should be of the Pakistanis' that is for them to decide - independent of the advice and guidance from the Big Brother. First of all, it should be clear to all of us that the one-point agenda that governs the American foreign policy in the post-9/11 international context, is its war against terrorism. This war is spread allover the globe, at some places it is a hot war like in Iraq and Afghanistan and at others it is cold war like in Iran, Syria and Sudan.
Democracy, human rights and press freedom are, of course, are of great interest to the American civil society, particularly the media, but as for the US government these take the back seat unless the game plan is the 'regime change'. How come the news of Pakistani leaders having conclaves with a middle-ranking US officials has been taken as a routine affair? Is it because we take it for granted that behind every political change it is always the American hand?
Ideally, our leaders from both sides of the political divide, should have told the US embassy host 'thank you for the invitation but we cannot come'. If democracy, human rights and media freedom had been of such a great value to successive US administrations, General Suharto would not have ruled Indonesia for more than one-third of a century, Shah of Iran would have fled long before he did and most of the monarchies in the Gulf would have been by now budding democracies.
Undeniably, the United States is the sole superpower and its reach for delivering both malevolence and benevolence is global. But equally important is that we are a sovereign people and we should make our own decisions, good or bad.