Sitting in the relaxed atmosphere of a restaurant in South Dakota, I heard three people discussing current affairs. One suggested, “Maybe we should not trust Pakistan in the global war against terrorism.”
Just to keep the facts straight I must say that Pakistan should not trust the present administration in the United States. Why? Guess who saved U.S soldiers from slaughter in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993? It was the Pakistani army. Yes, Pakistanis saved the lives of many soldiers when they were trapped in that hell, waiting for their brothers to come save them. Twenty-five Pakistani soldiers also lost their lives in that rescue.
Was the United States there for the love of Africa or to do humanitarian tasks, under an umbrella of the United Nations? No, they were there because the oil companies such as Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips were exploiting Somalia’s oil reserves. Conoco’s Mogadishu office also housed the U.S embassy and military headquarters.
Without Pakistan’s contribution, the United States might never have been able to bring down the former Soviet Union. In the 1960s, U.S spy planes would fly from Peshawer, Pakistan, on spy missions against the Soviet Union. Once the missions were over, Pakistan’s help was forgotten. Again in the 1980s, with backing from the CIA, U.S. money and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s intelligence agency trained mujahideens to fight communists.
When people say, “They teach hate to their kids in the schools,” referring inevitably to a Muslim country, guess where some of those textbooks filled with hate come from? Made in the USA. Through a U.S. Agency for International Development project worth more than $50 million, the University of Nebraska-Omaha was given the task of designing textbooks for Afghan children. These textbooks, which were filled with the talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, served as the schools’ core curriculum in Afghanistan.
Instead of distrusting Pakistan, maybe we should not trust the present administration. Poor Bill Clinton was impeached just because he made love, whereas a warmonger walks freely in Washington after having made this world a terrible place to live.
Pakistan-U.S relations are very much like a hotel room in Las Vegas, available at an hourly rate: a use-and-leave situation.
Shariq Husain is a civil engineering graduate student. He welcomes comments at [email protected]
