I’m a ghairatmand Pakistani

Didn't the Americans create these terror­ists in the first place? It’s only fair that they pay for it.

I can stomp on a Nato flag, burn a poster of US President Barack Obama, maybe even make a paper drone and strap it to my T-shirt in protest of drone attacks — but you’ll never see me march down the street against the Taliban.

My friends are just like me; many of them have changed their Facebook profile pictures to one that bears, in bleeding font, the slogan “We condemn the attack of Nato on Pakistani soldiers”; some have made “Angry with Nato (insert angry emoticon here)” their BlackBerry Messenger Status. With us, “Go, America, Go” and “Crush America, Hate America” banners are all the rage. But we were silent when the Taliban avenged Osama bin Laden’s death by killing 89 Frontier Constabulary recruits this past May.

I don’t know when I became this selective about my condemnations, but as far as I remember, my ghairat has always been like a hormonal teenager ready to unleash itself at the prod of a finger. And God help the world if that finger is white; I hate American fingers; they’re too friendly with those Israeli and Indian fingers that I’ve sworn to hate forever, and they’re the puppet masters in this great game for oil (wait a minute, you really thought the War on Terror is a war against militancy? Poor, deluded you).

Now I know you’re going to tell me ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds’, because America gives us millions of dollars in aid every year. But does that mean that they own us? That they’ve purchased our sovereignty and can fly drones or SEAL Team 6 through our airspace to kill ‘high-value targets’ on a whim? Kudos to them for getting bin Laden, but how dare they criticise our beloved army and imply that it protected him? Not only did that incident make us look like fools, it was the beginning of this grand conspiracy to malign our armed forces and military. Like an ISI official said after the raid, “We’re good, but we’re not God.” Ever since then, these blasted American news agencies began a slander campaign against our military, furthering the American crusade to make us look like terrorist sympathisers. Aren’t these Americans the ones that created these terrorists in the first place? It’s only fair that they pay for the mess they helped create when they wanted these jihadis to fight the Soviets they hated so much.

After all these months of distorted facts from the foreign press and vehement denials by our beloved army, the decision by cable operators to block the BBC is a welcome move to defend our ghairat. Who the hell do these British journos think they are, making a documentary that questions Pakistan’s commitment in its war against militancy? Could they not show sensitivity at a time when these Nato butchers have slaughtered our soldiers? Our local channels may have shoved cameras into the faces of grieving families of target killing victims, but they’ve played Noor Jehan’s “Ae Watan Ke Sajilay Jawano” enough times this week to make my heart melt and forgive their earlier thoughtlessness.

I’d like to point out here that we should believe only what the Pakistan army tells us. Think about it, have the khakis ever lied to us? Is there anyone who is more patriotic than our generals? If they hate Nato, I hate Nato. If they aren’t friends with Amercia, neither am I…

I would go on endlessly, but this Nadeem F Paracha tweet sent my mind in a whirl: BARKING NEWS: ‘US relaxes visa policy for Pakistanis.’ Hey, where did everybody go? Who’s going to burn this bloody flag? Come back.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2011.