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By targeting the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, where mostly western diplomats, businessmen and journalists stay or “hang out”, in one of the worst terrorists attacks in Pakistan, the terrorists have sent out a clear message to both the Pakistan and the US governments.

The immediate provocation for this heinous act, in which 60 people, including the Czech Ambassador to Pakistan, lost their lives, is obviously the American government’s decision to carry out attacks on Islamic ultra targets within Pakistan on the Pak-Afghan border without informing either the Pakistan government or its all powerful Army. On September 4, the US Special Forces based in Afghanistan carried out attacks on “high value” targets in Waziristan near the Pak-Afghan border. The only targets these raids managed to kill were 20-odd Pakistani tribals, including several women and children.

This caused deep hatred and anger not only within the tribal areas and border regions of Pakistan, which consider the Taliban and other Afghan extremists on the run from the US-Karzai combine their “brothers”, but also within the entire country. Even Pakistanis, who have nothing in common with the Islamist extremists who have made their country a safe haven for terrorists of all hues, are livid that these attacks were carried on unilaterally by American forces with their government having no clue about them.

One does not have to be in Karachi or Lahore to know what the chattering classes had to say about these attacks. The script would go something like this: “We have to only blame ourselves and our successive spineless governments for reducing our country to this sorry plight. The US seems to look at Pakistan as the next Afghanistan or Iraq. Would they dare to do any such thing in India?”

It is the last sentiment that is galling to most Pakistanis. As the Bush administration wooed India on the civil nuke deal and held India’s hand through the turbulent waters of the Nuclear Suppliers Group meet in Vienna last month, Pakistanis could watch only with envy and, perhaps, even resentment, the unfolding events.

Around the same time that the NSG group in Vienna gave India a waiver, the US Presidential hopeful, Barrack Obama, stepped up rhetoric against our neighbour, chiding it for having used huge amounts of US aid meant to counter terrorism for exactly the opposite — fomenting terrorism in India.

The razing to the ground of one of Islamabad’s landmarks makes it clear to anybody who still had any doubts about the direction in which the troubled Islamic nation is headed. Those who have known Pakistan and its politics, flung every now and then between democratic and military rule for a decade or two, also know the love-hate relationship Pakistanis — both the ruling classes in and out of uniform as well as ordinary mortals — have had with the US.

For long years now, the dream of the upper middle-class, or even wealthy young Pakistanis, has been to secure higher education in an American or British university and then find a good job there. The opportunities those countries had provided — the past tense is linked to the mess in the American financial system that is resulting in decisions by the Bush administration to rescue failed giants and pass the buck from Wall Street to the Main Street, as the cliché goes — were a haven for bright young minds troubled by the irresponsible behaviour of their politicians and the ever power-hungry Pakistani Army.

But 9/11 changed a lot of that as the hysteria that followed in the US tarred with one brush almost the entire Muslim community, particularly those who had immigrated from Islamic countries such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. When even Sikhs from India were targeted in the hate wave that followed the WTC attacks, the plight of young Pakistani men in the US could well be imagined in those days. A good degree of the chill that must have gripped the hearts of young Asian Muslims, particularly those from Islamic countries, has been captured beautifully in the Pakistani film Khuda ke Liye which has made waves in India.

It is the story of a modern Pakistani family that is passionate about music; both the sons are talented musicians. The younger one gets brainwashed by a hatred-spewing Maulana and joins his jihad-brigade and ends up in the border areas of Afghanistan; the elder one ends up in a music institute in Chicago, falls in love with an American woman and marries her.

But his nightmare soon begins; he is picked up for questioning after 9/11, his tormentors torture him till his scribbling over his prison cell walls change from “I love USA” to “I love USAMA”. He ends up a mental wreck and only after a huge campaign to free him, is released and sent back home.

Several Pakistanis I know urged me to watch the movie, and it was surprising to find at the local DVD lending library a huge waiting list for it! Once you watch the movie, you can understand why it has become such a rage with middle-class Pakistanis.

But moving to the real world, Pakistan seems heading for trouble on all fronts. The manner in which Mr Asif Ali Zardari has grabbed with both hands the political opportunity triggered by his wife and former Pakistan President, Benazir Bhutto’s brutal assassination, has left even his close associates surprised. The beleaguered Pakistan Muslim League (N) chief, Mr Nawaz Sharif, who has blown hot and cold on his alliance with Mr Zardari’s PPP, has been outmanoeuvred at almost every step.

Undoubtedly, Mr Zardari and his country will have to pay a price for their sin of accepting funds and encouragement from the US to train the Afghan mujahideen to wage a war against the Soviets when they occupied Afghanistan. Later, as the Taliban ousted the Soviets and took control over the land, Pakistani administrations hobnobbed with them, as the nexus came in handy to keep the pot boiling in Jammu and Kashmir. Only after 9/11, the then Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf, as an ally of the US in its “war against terror”, had to do a dramatic about turn and disown the Taliban.

But it was too late to take the entire country on board; by then, the US was seen as an enemy of Islam by hardcore fundamentalists in Pakistan, particularly in the border and tribal areas, where it is common knowledge that the writ of the Pakistan government does not run.

Since then, the US has attacked Iraq and created a mess there, made enough threatening noises against Iran, all the while placating and pampering Israel, and reduced Afghanistan to a ghost of the once proud and prosperous nation it was.

Small wonder then, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, that forms the border with Afghanistan, have rolled out the red carpet for the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists. It is widely believed that Osama bin Laden is being hosted in one of these areas and that is why the Americans will keep bombing/raiding the region, ignoring all the hollering that comes from Islamabad on “territorial integrity and sovereignty”.

And every such attack will bring vows of revenge and suicide bombings from the Islamic ultras and their friends from Afghanistan who enjoy a free run of FATA. Mr Zardari will have to do a tight-rope walk between the growing terrorism at home and the contempt and impatience the Americans seem to be developing about his ability to reign in the terrorists and put his country on the road to growth and development.

More Stories on : Terrorism | Rasheeda Bhagat

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