Friday, March 29, 2024
 
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F-16s: US Shocker to Pakistan



By Allabaksh


The whole of Pakistan, from the poorly educated highly radicalised man on the street, to the hedonistic wealthy elite and the swaggering pampered generals, is mighty angry with the US for withholding subsidy on the sale of eight F-16 precision jet fighters. Washington has put on hold the transfer of this lethal flying machine that Pakistan says is essential for fighting terrorists in its tribal areas but in reality needs them in its relentless pursuit of ‘parity’ with India.

What has really riled Pakistan is that the F-16 setback has come at a time when the US-India ties have been growing at a fast pace. At the same time, the US remains suspicious of the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan, even obliquely talking of robbing Pakistan of its ‘crown jewel’. Both the State Department and the Pentagon are putting pressure on the GHQ Shura in Rawalpindi to rein in the Haqqani Network, the ISI proxy on the Afghan theatre.
The rather unexpected US refusal to sell the fighter jets unless Pakistan pays the full amount of $700 million is a clear indication that the world’s most powerful country with which Pakistan has a long history of alliance wants them to ‘do more’ to eradicate terror from their soil. The US has through this gesture also told the Pakistanis that it does not believe in their assurances about fighting terror without making a distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorist.
In other words, Pakistan continues to be viewed as a breeding ground of terror, something that India has maintained all along. It exposes the hollowness of the oft-repeated Pakistan allegation that India defames it by calling it a sponsor of terror.
Not knowing what to do to get the US jets without raising full money from its own (scarce) resources, Pakistani officials are resorting to their familiar bravado, telling the US it was not its colony and so on. Perhaps on a clue from the all-powerful military, some Pakistani commentators have directed anger at President Barack Obama and the many critics in the US.
One of their shrilly gripes is that the US and the world refuses to see that Pakistanis have made more ‘sacrifice’ than any other country, going by the number of terror victims. Pakistani claims need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Besides, the question is that the terrorists who killed the Pakistanis are Pakistani creations.
Similar is the Pakistani lament that the US forced it into raising a force of terrorists to fight the Soviets who had invaded Afghanistan. The fact is that Pakistan, then under the military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq, accepted the US offer of “peanuts” money and arms with both hands. The reason was that Pakistan suddenly saw a great opportunity to use terror against India with the help of money and fighting equipment supplied gratis by the US.
After the Soviets were driven away from Kabul, Pakistan could have wound up its terror factories but it did not because they had not achieved their main objective of using terrorists to destabilise India.
Of course, everyone in Pakistan is now blaming India for blocking the sale of military equipment. However, there is a new ‘villain’-- a Pakistani, a former ambassador to the US, who, in Pakistani eyes, is so powerful that he can do virtually anything to harm his motherland!
Still, there is a lurking hope in Pakistan that the jet deal will get through without Pakistan having to stretch its already meager financial resources. The begging bowl will go round Saudi Arabia perhaps, or maybe the Americans themselves have second thought as they so often have after chastising Pakistan for its many sins. This hope is linked to the next US administration which will not be in office till January next year.
The Pakistanis may be miscalculating if they think that the next US administration, whether led by Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump, will surely restore the jet deal for the sake of good relations with a country the US is never tired of describing as vital for the stability in Afghanistan. This US view pleases the Pakistanis no end because it gives them the license to continue with their mischief against India.
Where the Pakistanis make another mistake is that their relation with the US is a two-way traffic. The US might need them to meet its own goals in the region, but for Pakistan, friendship with the US is an existential necessity. In recent years Pakistan has had to put up with many US snubs and insults; beyond making some hue and cry it was unable to do anything else. As now, Pakistan had asserted its ‘sovereignty’ when US helicopters had traveled several hundred miles into its territory from Afghanistan in pursuit of the Al Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden. Pakistan quietly swallowed the blow to its ‘sovereignty’ and ‘pride’. Not doing so would have left Pakistan an orphan.
The boastful Pakistanis refuse to see how they are viewed in the US. The move to block the sale of F-16s would not have come had there not been an overwhelmingly negative image of Pakistan as a double-dealing and ungrateful ‘ally’ who gladly takes money and arms from the US and then kills its men and women. In the last 15 years, the US has pumped in nearly $30 billion in aid to its ‘ally’ in South Asia, more than Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friend China.
Many in the US are angry that the subsidized jet sale was shown as part of ‘humanitarian’ aid to Pakistan which has a deplorable record in suppressing various forms of freedoms, including religious freedom. It is the most dangerous place for journalist; it is also the third most dangerous place for women in the world. DNA cannot be used as evidence in rape cases; it requires four male witnesses to prove the charge.
Much of the society in Pakistan is radicalised. Their textbooks preach hatred for non-Muslims. After Afghanistan, Pakistan has the poorest literacy rate in Asia. The campaign to eradicate Polio has failed because the volunteers are killed by fanatics who consider polio vaccination as an un-Islamic practice. It is the land where a teenage boy cuts his hand because he misheard the preachers query whether he loved the Prophet. His father declares he is very proud of his boy!



(The writer is a freelance journalist based in Kashmir)



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