In days of yore, one recalls the 1960 episode of the quadrennial mega-events called American Presidential Elections. The candidates were the charismatic John Kennedy on the left and the worldly-wise Richard Nixon on the right. In those days, an issue of the satirical Mad magazine depicted the two candidates campaigning over a list of US States, one of which was called ‘Pakistan’.
So close, for better or worse, was our alliance thought to be with what is today the world’s sole superpower. No approval or disapproval is implied. I merely state facts. My object in this little essay is to sketch the varying Pakistani attitudes over the years towards the immense American superpower.
When Pakistan was born in 1947, the US was the fourth country (immediately after Britain, India and the USSR) to extend formal recognition to our new country. When the Kashmir dispute arose, America unequivocally supported Pakistan and sponsored the Security Council Resolutions of April 1948, June 1948, March 1950 and March 1951, which continue to form the basis of our position on Kashmir. This happened during the time of President Truman, whose Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave Dollar support to Pakistani exports, permitting us to retain Rupee parity when the Pound (to which the Rupee was pegged) fell. US commodity aid under PL-480 and later under USAID programmes, also commenced under President Truman.
[quote]The 'golden years' of President Ayub saw the Harvard Group of economists guiding our Planning Commission[/quote]
The administration of President Eisenhower, acting through its famous Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, invited Pakistan into the CENTO and SEATO pacts. This brought massive military assistance to Pakistan and contributed enormously to the equipping of our armed forces at negligible cost to us. The “golden years” of President Ayub saw the Harvard Group of economists, led by Dr Gustav Papenek, guiding our Planning Commission and helping generate the economic breakthroughs for which those years are rightly remembered. The period of the Harvard Group crosses the administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.
Am I suggesting that all this generosity was for altruistic reasons? By no means. Individuals know friendship, generosity, affection. Nations do not. They only, and correctly, know interests. And Pakistan and the US were both perceived to have a powerful common interest in containing the ambitions of Soviet and Chinese Communism. Pakistani heads of government, especially Liaquat, Bogra, Suhrawardy and Ayub, exhibited unashamed enthusiasm towards all things American, an enthusiasm echoed at the time at most levels of Pakistani society. The Islamic right wing, led by the Jamaat-e-Islami, was by far the most zealous supporter of the American points of view.
When this scribe attended Government College Lahore, a few of us non-conformists regarded ourselves as pro-Third World left-wingers and toted around iconic portraits of Mao Zedong and Che Guavera. This is before Zulfikar Ali Bhutto stormed into a lead role on Pakistan’s political stage. One night, three of our fellow students went around the city painting “Yankee, go home” graffiti on walls. The ham-fisted authorities saw a vast revolutionary conspiracy brewing, so mindlessly pro-American were the reflexes of the time. It seemed to them as if the launch Gran’ma was landing or the Winter Palace was about to be besieged. A whole lot of us were rounded up and beaten. The heavy-handed establishment attitude presents a dramatic contrast to the kind of graffiti that is tolerated everywhere today.
[quote]If Chinese warmth towards Pakistan is based on their enmity with India, that situation is long over[/quote]
However, a watershed was reached with the 1965 war. For whatever correct or incorrect reason, the US was popularly perceived as having failed to adequately support Pakistan. As a result of our then recent flirtation with China, being on the political left was suddenly no longer unpatriotic. This period saw the emergence into high prominence of left-wing political leaders like Bhashani, Mujib, Wali and, of course, Bhutto. The solidly pro-American Islamic right wing was co-opted into an anti-Left fighting force by the Yahya regime.
The ‘pro-China’ leftism of the Bhutto regime remained uneven. An unstable coalition of students, labour, peasants and rural potentates, struck periodic unviable compromises with cunningly shifting establishment elements. Against this coalition, there formed a more determined reactionary combine (big business, small business, army and clerics), which stayed together, overthrew the first PPP government and brought in the long night of the Ziaul Haq regime. Common strategic interests vis-a-vis Afghanistan brought American support to Pakistan under Zia in 1979, as well as later under Musharraf in 1999.
Pakistani activists burn a US flag at a protest in Peshawar
However, Pakistan came to a point where the hordes of savage killers, spawned by the CIA-Army-Mullahs combine, took on an entity of their own. The lives and property of citizens were attacked, and the sovereignty and very existence of the state of Pakistan were attacked. Clearly, the US and Pakistan had a mutuality of interests in combating this virulent common enemy. Therefore, the US continued to pump more and more money into Pakistan: over 11 billion dollars in the Musharraf years and several billion-dollar packages (including the Kerry-Lugar Bill) that continue today. This is not to mention the direct Defence Aid, the ISAF Support Funds, specific project aid in areas like education and power, and support before multilateral entities like the IMF and the World Bank. The irony is that, despite the commonality of strategic interests, despite the massive dependence on Aid dollars, both the man on the Pakistani street and our opinion-leaders across the political spectrum spew out continual vitriol against all things American.
Let it be understood that one advocates neither unqualified support for nor mindless rejection of a Pak-US alliance. One points only at the contradictory – and irrational – patterns of attitudes over the years. Instead, one constantly hears the refrain about our ‘all-weather friend’ China being an alternative to the USA as a source of all Good Things. But, as I stated above, nations do not know friendships, ‘all-weather’ or otherwise. They only, and correctly, know interests. One is hard put to identify what such overwhelming common interests between China and Pakistan might be.
If, as Realpolitik used to suggest, Chinese warmth towards Pakistan is based on their enmity with India, that situation is long over. Today, the Chinese President is visiting India, negotiating the deepening of an already sound, trade-based relationship. This is immediately after having cancelled his trip to Pakistan. The symbolism of the gesture is blatantly obvious to any but the most ideologically blinded. Are you listening, Mr Sartaj Aziz? Mr Imran Khan?
