Walter Russell Mead: The Roots of Pakistan’s Rage
[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com]
It’s been one disaster after another this week in Pakistan. The WikiLeaks documents opened raw wounds in Pakistan’s agonizing relationship with the United States. A plane crash on the outskirts of the capital of Islamabad killed 152 people. UK Prime Minister David Cameron ostentatiously attacked Pakistan for exporting terror and ‘looking both ways’ in the fight against religious extremism as he visited New Delhi to promote British trade with India. And now the worst monsoon floods in a century are ripping through the country, with more than 1,100 known dead already, and possible casualties in isolated and cut off communities several times as high. More rains are on the way as I write; rainclouds are sweeping in toward Islamabad across the Margalla Hills as the people downstream in Sind brace for swollen rivers to burst their banks.
Unusually, the United States has been a bit player in this latest deluge of disaster. While some Pakistanis suspect official involvement in the WikiLeaks, nobody much blames the US for the plane crash, or for David Cameron, or for the monsoon. But the longer I stay here, and the more people I meet, the more I understand that the gulf between Pakistani and American perceptions and priorities is deep. For both sides, the alliance is vital, but for both sides the alliance right now isn’t working particularly well. While American pundits and politicians express doubts over Pakistan’s loyalty and its longtime links to radical extremists, Pakistan is on the boil with conspiracy theories about sinister American plots and feelings about the US run the gamut from bewildered disappointment to burning rage.
I came to Pakistan already well versed in some of the standard American complaints about the alliance; being here has been one long crash course in Pakistan’s complaints about the US. They aren’t, in my opinion, all well founded, but they are important and they deserve to be heard. Over my next few posts, I’ll first lay out some of Pakistan’s concerns as I’ve come to understand them, then lay out American concerns about Pakistan — and then make some suggestions about what, given the tension between these two dissatisfied allies, we can do.
For better or for worse, this is a basic part of my method in trying to understand what is going on in the world. In countries like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Cuba in the 1990s, across the Arab and Islamic worlds in the last ten years and here in Pakistan now, I do my best to try to understand what it is that people object to in American foreign policy and, at times, American culture and life. Before I arrive, especially on a first visit, I’ll read up on the history and on contemporary issues and try to get a sense of the economic situation. On the basis of that reading I’ll come up with some working hypotheses about what is going on, or going wrong, in the relationship. Once on the ground, I spend as much time as possible absorbing the local news media, interacting with journalists, officials, students, intellectuals and diplomats to test and refine my hypotheses. I keep at this until I find that more and more of the local people I meet with think that I ‘get it’, and it’s at that point that the conversations get really interesting.
In Islamabad, Pakistan’s purpose-built capital picturesquely sited at the foot of heavily wooded hills, I’ve been meeting with students and academics at Pakistan’s premier national university Quaid-i-Azam, journalists, analysts, and senior military officials — some with links to the ISI, the shadowy Pakistani intelligence agency cited in the WikiLeaks documents and other sources as the contact point between the Pakistani government and various extremist and violent groups. I’ve visited think tanks like the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute (SASSI), had tea with retired cabinet officers, argued with Pakistani journalists and quizzed US diplomats to get their views on the most troubled international partnership in America’s alliance system.
I’ve still got more people to meet and more to learn, but at this point — about halfway through the trip — four big issues stand out among the problems that Pakistanis describe in the relationship. It would take a whole book, and a lot more experience and knowledge than I have, to give a comprehensive picture of what Pakistanis think about the United States, and people have different ideas about how and why the US has done Pakistan wrong, but these four concerns come up over and over again...
Read entire article at American Interest (blog)
It’s been one disaster after another this week in Pakistan. The WikiLeaks documents opened raw wounds in Pakistan’s agonizing relationship with the United States. A plane crash on the outskirts of the capital of Islamabad killed 152 people. UK Prime Minister David Cameron ostentatiously attacked Pakistan for exporting terror and ‘looking both ways’ in the fight against religious extremism as he visited New Delhi to promote British trade with India. And now the worst monsoon floods in a century are ripping through the country, with more than 1,100 known dead already, and possible casualties in isolated and cut off communities several times as high. More rains are on the way as I write; rainclouds are sweeping in toward Islamabad across the Margalla Hills as the people downstream in Sind brace for swollen rivers to burst their banks.
Unusually, the United States has been a bit player in this latest deluge of disaster. While some Pakistanis suspect official involvement in the WikiLeaks, nobody much blames the US for the plane crash, or for David Cameron, or for the monsoon. But the longer I stay here, and the more people I meet, the more I understand that the gulf between Pakistani and American perceptions and priorities is deep. For both sides, the alliance is vital, but for both sides the alliance right now isn’t working particularly well. While American pundits and politicians express doubts over Pakistan’s loyalty and its longtime links to radical extremists, Pakistan is on the boil with conspiracy theories about sinister American plots and feelings about the US run the gamut from bewildered disappointment to burning rage.
I came to Pakistan already well versed in some of the standard American complaints about the alliance; being here has been one long crash course in Pakistan’s complaints about the US. They aren’t, in my opinion, all well founded, but they are important and they deserve to be heard. Over my next few posts, I’ll first lay out some of Pakistan’s concerns as I’ve come to understand them, then lay out American concerns about Pakistan — and then make some suggestions about what, given the tension between these two dissatisfied allies, we can do.
For better or for worse, this is a basic part of my method in trying to understand what is going on in the world. In countries like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Cuba in the 1990s, across the Arab and Islamic worlds in the last ten years and here in Pakistan now, I do my best to try to understand what it is that people object to in American foreign policy and, at times, American culture and life. Before I arrive, especially on a first visit, I’ll read up on the history and on contemporary issues and try to get a sense of the economic situation. On the basis of that reading I’ll come up with some working hypotheses about what is going on, or going wrong, in the relationship. Once on the ground, I spend as much time as possible absorbing the local news media, interacting with journalists, officials, students, intellectuals and diplomats to test and refine my hypotheses. I keep at this until I find that more and more of the local people I meet with think that I ‘get it’, and it’s at that point that the conversations get really interesting.
In Islamabad, Pakistan’s purpose-built capital picturesquely sited at the foot of heavily wooded hills, I’ve been meeting with students and academics at Pakistan’s premier national university Quaid-i-Azam, journalists, analysts, and senior military officials — some with links to the ISI, the shadowy Pakistani intelligence agency cited in the WikiLeaks documents and other sources as the contact point between the Pakistani government and various extremist and violent groups. I’ve visited think tanks like the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute (SASSI), had tea with retired cabinet officers, argued with Pakistani journalists and quizzed US diplomats to get their views on the most troubled international partnership in America’s alliance system.
I’ve still got more people to meet and more to learn, but at this point — about halfway through the trip — four big issues stand out among the problems that Pakistanis describe in the relationship. It would take a whole book, and a lot more experience and knowledge than I have, to give a comprehensive picture of what Pakistanis think about the United States, and people have different ideas about how and why the US has done Pakistan wrong, but these four concerns come up over and over again...