As long as it doesn't occur in Pakistan, it simply doesn't
care.
There is an exasperating ambivalence about radical Islam and
the terrorism it encourages in Pakistan. I saw it when I traveled there as a
foreign correspondent 20 years ago and I continue to see it in the way Pakistan
is behaving today.
Take, for example, the outrageous treason conviction of Dr.
Shakil Afridi by a Pakistani tribal court this past Wednesday. Dr. Afridi was
sentenced to 33 years in a Peshawar prison for having assisted the United
States in trying to uncover the location of Osama bin Laden last year under the
guise of a vaccination campaign in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
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| Dr. Shakil Afridi |
Was it the fact that the good doctor helped the U.S. root
out and kill the world's most wanted terrorist or the fact that he embarrassed
the Pakistani government and military establishment by revealing bin Laden was
essentially residing in the Pakistani government's backyard--and that they
possibly even knew it?
Then there is the issue of the closed supply routes through Pakistani
territory to Afghanistan in protest to the US aircraft that killed 24 Pakistani
soldiers along the Afghan border last November. Never mind that some of the soldiers
were seen firing at NATO and U.S. forces across the border--how dare the U.S.
respond in such a barbaric fashion?
The Senate appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid voted
to cut aid to Pakistan by 58% in fiscal 2013 from the request by the
administration.
The senators voted $1 billion for Pakistan, including $800
million in foreign aid. However, funding for the Pakistan Counterinsurgency
Capability Fund was limited to just $50 million, and that money was tied to the
supply lines’ reopening, said Senator Lindsey Graham, the panel’s top
Republican. The committee then voted for a symbolic but token $33 million cut
in aid -- a million for each year of Dr. Afridi's sentence.
“We’re not going to be giving money to an ally that won’t be an ally,” Graham told reporters.
Indeed, some US
lawmakers suggest that Pakistan is in league with terrorists rather than with
the United States.
"We need
Pakistan, Pakistan needs us, but we don't need Pakistan double-dealing and not
seeing the justice in bringing Osama bin Laden to an end," said Sen.
Graham, who pushed for the additional cut in aid said, while calling Pakistan a
"schizophrenic ally."
Lawmakers on the House side have been less kind. California
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said: "This
is decisive proof Pakistan sees itself as being at war with us."
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| NATO Supply Trucks Backed Up At Afghan Border |
Pakistani government officials say the 33-year prison
sentence for Dr. Afridi is payback for way the U.S. went about getting bin
Laden, and they shrugged off criticism of the verdict by telling America to
stop “over-reacting” and “take a deep breath.”
“You got Osama bin Laden...but we're not happy with the way
it was done. We didn't like that," a Pakistani official told reporters.
A statement released by Rep. Rohrabacher said when it came
to Pakistan: "There is no shared
interest against Islamic terrorism...Pakistan was and remains a terrorist
state."
Rep. Rohrabacher is dead on in his assessment. That the U.S.
continues to be so naive in its relationship with Pakistan--or, more likely, that
it is willing to overlook Pakistan's perfidious behavior in deference to
political and diplomatic expediency--is infuriating.
Conventional wisdom among the diplomatic corps in Washington
is that we mustn't alienate the Pakistani's because we need them in our efforts
to prop up the Afghani government and to keep the Taliban at bay.
Of course that assumes the Pakistanis actually care about
propping up a pro-American government in Kabul or controlling the Taliban.
The fact is, they don't. The fact is, once Americans pull
out of Afghanistan don't be surprised to see the Pakistanis looking the other
way as the Taliban reassumes power.
After all, the last thing Pakistan wants is a militant
Taliban along its borders.
As one Pakistani official told me years ago: "With you Americans it is always the same.
You come to a country, you nation build and then you leave. But what about the
people you leave behind? What about their neighbors? We have to live with the
consequences of your failed policies."
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| No Love for the U.S. in Pakistan |
Perhaps the only thing to do is to allow diplomats to be
diplomats and allow Congress to pound
the table and withhold the dollars the Pakistanis so desperately need.
Of course, the U.S. would be wise to heed the words of that
great Beatles song: "money can't buy me love."
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