Time to make new friends?

It took the killing of 26 Pakistani soldiers to make Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani act like a patriot. After the usual gurning, posing and gesticulatory flourishes, he told the Americans that they had two weeks to quit the Shamsi airbase. But I wish he, and the Chinese, wouldn’t keep harping on ‘protecting the country’s sovereignty’. Pakistan lost her sovereignty years ago when she leased out a part of Gilgit to China and allowed a free rein to western intelligence agencies to swamp the country with spies. Furthermore, and in 1992, Pakistan handed over a stretch of land containing an air force base in Balochistan to the UAE, ostensibly so that the falcons of the UAE and Saudi sheikhs could decimate the bird life of Sindh.

However, a puzzling question remains. How can a government, even an impoverished one, just lease out one of its air force bases to a third country, especially when a few years ago, that very country had allegedly financed the killing of Chinese engineers who were constructing the port at Gwadar? What makes this even more perplexing is that Pakistan has also been accused of financing the same militant groups that are being targeted by the drones that take off from the very same airbase that the UAE has subleased to the United States.

Dianne Feinstein of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, nevertheless, tried to pour oil on troubled waters by suggesting that if the Americans had made a mistake they should apologise. Moscow and Ankara made the right noises and China stepped into the toxic diplomatic dispute between Pakistan and the United States by expressing its “deep shock and strong concern.” Russia’s role in the melee is interesting. A few days after Pakistan had closed her borders to the passage of supplies for the Nato-led war effort in Afghanistan, the Russians as if on cue, threatened to close the alternative Russia-controlled northern distribution network. If both routes had been severed, the Nato/Isaf troops would have had a pretty rough time getting supplies. Could Pakistan be trying to make new friends?

The UAE sent a high-level delegation to Islamabad to persuade the government to reverse its earlier decision. But this time, it was President Zardari who stood firm. The latest US-Pakistan crisis is threatening to undo months of efforts to mend an increasingly frayed relationship and could also undermine the Obama administration’s strategy for gradually ending the war in Afghanistan. But most Pakistanis are sick of the Americans and would like the government to cut the umbilical cord. Some even have a profound admiration for Iran, a non-Arab country that is fighting for the rights of the Palestinian Arabs standing up to the western bullies with dignity and pride and a certain smug arrogance.

Gilani has spoken about reassessing the terms of the relationship with the United States and has called Pakistani ambassadors to Islamabad for a powwow to re-examine the global situation. This will be another waste of time, effort and money. All these diplomats need to do is to send in their views by email or the diplomatic pouch.

As a tailpiece, I recently met a Karachi businessman who was spewing anti-American sentiments at a business conference. When we broke up for tea I asked him where he had sent his two sons for education. “To the University of Oklahoma,” he replied. “Where else?”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2011.