Hillary’s Tour to Pakistan- “We don’t really trust your country!”

  By Majed Iqbal- US secretary of state Hillary Clinton completed her three day tour of Pakistan in the last week of October attempting to win the hearts and minds of a population which has become instrumental to Americas War on Terror.

Many Pakistani commentators dubbed her visit as a ‘charm offensive’ to re-build that ‘trust deficit’; a long overdue initiative to ease tensions with the Pakistani masses that have been having second and third thoughts about their ‘use and abuse’ partnership with the US since its inception in 2001.

The tour saw concentrated efforts in dialoguing directly with the public on a range of issues which the people of Pakistan were thinking about on Pakistan- US relations.

Hillary Clinton’s “people to people” diplomacy — with journalists, students and common people, which included town hall meetings in a “no holds” barred question and answer session at a university in Lahore were part of a new packaging.

This was possibly an approach to re-build that trust in an open and transparent way, a somewhat ‘revolutionary’ step away from more clandestine approaches with Government ministers and opposition figureheads to manipulate political will.

Clinton, who professes deep personal affection for Pakistan and its people, was aiming to be cautiously optimistic in her visit to maybe change as many hearts and minds among Pakistanis.

“I’m going to try as hard as I can. But ultimately, we have to have actions between the two of us. Words are not enough,” she said at a women’s gathering.

Clinton got straight to the point; expressing disbelief that no-one in authority knew where al Qaeda leaders were hiding out.

“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she told a group of newspaper editors during a meeting in Lahore.

However Hillary Clinton realised that it wasn’t as simple as asking a question like this which in her mind should have stoked these journalists and editors to use their positions in media to pressurise the government to do more for America and its fight on the war on terror

She soon realised this on her tour where every time she tried to win over Pakistanis during with her charm, people fired back a polite but firm message “We don’t really trust your country”.

No matter how hard Clinton tried to reassure audiences in Lahore and Islamabad with talk of providing economic aid where it’s needed most, Pakistanis seized on her visit as the perfect moment to lash out at a U.S. government they perceive as arrogant, domineering and insensitive to their plight.

At a televised town hall meeting in Islamabad, the capital, on Friday, a woman in a mostly female audience characterized U.S. drone missile strikes on suspected terrorist targets in north western Pakistan as de facto acts of terrorism. A day earlier in Lahore, a college student asked Clinton why every student who visits the U.S. is viewed as a terrorist

The opinions Clinton heard weren’t the voices of radical clerics, insurgents, Taliban supporters, extremists or politicians with anti-U.S. agendas. Some of the most biting criticisms came from well-mannered university students and respected, seasoned journalists, a reflection of the breadth of dissatisfaction Pakistanis have with U.S. policy toward their country.

In those voices what rang clear was a sense that Pakistan was paying a heavy price for America’s “war on terror.”

“You had one 9/11, and we are having daily 9/11s in Pakistan,” Asma Shirazi, a journalist with ARY TV, told Clinton during the Islamabad town hall meeting.

Clinton’s visit came at a time when Pakistanis’ suspicions about U.S. intentions in their country are at an all-time high.

A five-year, $7.5-billion aid package to Pakistan recently signed into law by President Obama stoked much of the animosity. Measures in the legislation aimed at ensuring the money isn’t misspent have been perceived by Pakistanis as levers that Washington can use to exert control over their country.

The reactions of the ordinary citizen of Pakistan of Americas relationship with Pakistan may have surprised US officials on the tour. This was not the expected outcome.

The very people dissenting against America should have been the ones praising America’s campaign in Waziristan, they should have been supporting the drone attacks on ‘insurgents’, they should have been cheering on and championing the arrival of Private US security firms in Pakistan like Blackwater.

It was these people who America wanted on their side- after all they were the moderates. They were the ones who hate the extremists. America was cleansing Pakistan of these extremists. So logically, my enemy is your enemy? Unfortunately for America, this has proven wrong.

People in Pakistan have clearly voiced that turbulence in their country and the weekly blasts and bombings in their country were due to American interference in the nations politics.

What remains more questionable is silence on any discuss=ion by Hillary on the Pakistani government and the “un-stinting support” for US operations in Pakistan, a term which was coined by Musharraf in 2001. Both Dictatorships and Democracies in Pakistan have seen strengthening relations between the countries despite the master–slave set up and the uproar against this by the Pakistani public.

There was complete silence of America on Musharraf’s Rule so long as he executed American Foreign Policy designs in the region. This continues with Zardari today in the Af-pak strategy, a war which has used the Pakistani army to kill its own citizens and leave millions displaced from the war-torn regions.

What Hillary saw, heard and felt in her tour was not just directed at America, but to all the Political parties in Pakistan and the present Government who profess to have the interests of the nation at heart.