\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s a common outrage, a common response wherever you look,\u201d said Carl Levin, chairman of the US Senate\u2019s Armed Services Committee. Wherever you look. He clearly wasn\u2019t looking far enough.<\/p>\n
The good Senator was responding to the news that Pakistan has jailed the doctor who ran a fake vaccination campaign to provide information for US intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. Dr Shakil Afridi had pretended he was carrying out hepatitis B prevention and took blood samples from children living in a compound in Abbottabad which, when tested by the CIA, matched the DNA of the world\u2019s most wanted man. US special forces swooped on the hide-out and executed the al-Qa\u2019ida leader.<\/p>\n
Dr Afridi\u2019s role in finding bin Laden \u2013 which his nation\u2019s secret services had so conspicuously failed to do \u2013 constituted \u201ctreason\u201d, the Pakistan authorities have decided. A tribal court convicted him of conspiring \u201cto wage war against Pakistan has decided and jailed him for 33 years. Washington reacted with fury to the \u201cAlice in Wonderland\u201d sentence. It was \u201cbeyond ludicrous\u201d. Pakistan was \u201ca schizophrenic ally\u201d. If this is co-operation, said another senior Senator, \u201cI\u2019d hate like hell to see opposition.\u201d Another Senate committee slashed $33m from US aid to Pakistan\u2013\u00a0 $1m for each year of Afridi\u2019s sentence.<\/p>\n
But go to Pakistan and you will find outrage of a different kind. Pakistan\u2019s Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, called Shakil Afridi a \u201ctraitor\u201d. The president\u2019s son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, opined that \u201cit is against the law in any country to cooperate with foreign intelligence\u201d. Some in Pakistan\u2019s newspapers want to see Afridi hanged; others suggest hanging as too good for him.<\/p>\n
What do we learn from these diametrically opposed views?<\/p>\n
It is two years since David Cameron sparked a diplomatic row by truthfully, but tactlessly, accusing Pakistan of \u201clooking both ways\u201d on terrorism. Everyone knew he was right but Pakistan\u2019s main funder, the United States, had deliberately refrained from such plain speaking because Pakistan\u2019s ambivalence towards tackling terrorism was seen as preferable to outright hostility. And the reality on the ground is that Pakistan has lost more civilians than any other nation to Islamist terror attacks \u2013 some 30,000 Pakistani civilians and 3,000 soldiers have died at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban \u2013 while at the same time the country also has growing levels of support for extremists in its population, religious leaders and intelligence services, the ISI.<\/p>\n
Understandably Washington did not take Islamabad into its confidence when the bin Laden raid was launched. But it is a false polarity to insist, as many have, that the ISI are either closet Islamists or incompetent \u2013 those being seen as the only alternatives to explain how bin Laden had hidden for five years a mere 800 yards from Pakistan\u2019s equivalent of Sandhurst.<\/p>\n
The answer to the puzzle is not to be found there but much further north \u2013 in the lawless Khyber tribal region which was carved out of Afghan territory by colonial Britainas a buffer to protect the Raj. A century on, it is still a frontier belt where Pakistani and Afghan Talibans freely mingle.\u00a0 It was here that Dr Afridi was found guilty under the Federally Administered Tribal Areas laws dating back to 19th century British rule. An assistant political commissioner acted as prosecutor, judge and jury. Afridi had no lawyer. He was unable to cross-examine witnesses or put his own side of the story, though he did not at least under the Frontier Crimes Regulations get the death penalty as he might have elsewhere in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
Yet here can be found the explanation for the double game Pakistan plays on Islamic extremism. The region is the stronghold for a network of militants known as the Haqqani, a largely independent Taliban faction with bases in North Waziristan, just across the border from Afghanistan, who are one of Nato\u2019s deadliest foes. Pakistani intelligence links to the network date back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the Haqqani were also supported by Washington. The Pakistan army has consistently refused US requests to clean up North Waziristan, one of the key areas in which US drone target terrorist suspects, to the anger of the local population because innocent civilians are hit in the process.<\/p>\n
The ISI see the Haqqani as a vital bulwark against Pakistan\u2019s greatest enemy, India. They are terrified that the nation against whom Pakistanhas fought three wars since 1947 will increase its influence in Afghanistan when US troops pull out in 2014. The disputed state of Kashmiris not far away. The terrorism of the Haqqani is seen by some in the ISI as a useful way of undermining Indian interests without the need for a conventional war. They even have a jargon name for it: \u2018defence in depth\u2019. The ISI is divided as to whether Islamic extremism or US imperialism is the bigger enemy. But India is always in the back of the mind of everyone in the Pakistani secret service.<\/p>\n
To add to that is a widespread feeling that Pakistanis routinely humiliated by the United States. The bin Laden raid is but one example. Last year a CIA operative shot dead two men in the street in Lahore and then claimed diplomatic immunity. Next Nato helicopters crossed from Afghanistan and killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at Salala and refused to apologise. Then there are the US drone attacks in North Waziristan which often kill civilians and Islamabad condemns as \u201cillegal, counterproductive and totally unacceptable\u201d. Drones killed another 12 people last week.<\/p>\n
All these, Pakistanis insist, are violations of its sovereignty. In response it has closed supply routes to Afghanistan, forcing Nato to open a longer northern route which is twice as expensive. Negotiations to reopen them have foundered, causing Barack Obama to snub President Asif Ali Zardari at last week\u2019s NATO summit in Chicago. Elections are imminent in both countries, raising the stakes on both sides.<\/p>\n
It is in this context that the jailing of the hapless Dr Shakil Afridi must be seen. A $33m cut in aid sounds big. But it is small change in the $2bn a year America gives to the Pakistani Army and a \u00a37bn wider civilian aid package which the US hopes will help turn this military-dominated Islamicist nuclear power into a more stable and democratic ally.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re either with us or against us in the fight against terror,\u201d George Bush famously said after 9\/11. The reality has proved a lot less simple. America and Pakistan are not so much bitter enemies as bitter allies, locked together in a danse macabre<\/em>. It is individuals like Dr Shakil Afridi who pay the price. He will not be the last.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s a common outrage, a common response wherever you look,\u201d said Carl Levin, chairman of the US Senate\u2019s Armed Services Committee. Wherever you look. He clearly wasn\u2019t looking far enough. The good Senator was responding to the news that Pakistan has jailed the doctor who ran a fake vaccination campaign to provide information for US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,190,27,28,37,41],"tags":[177,450,449,303,304,451,129],"class_list":["post-5544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aid-development","category-coalition-britain","category-islam","category-middle-east","category-politics","category-religion","tag-afghanistan","tag-al-qaida","tag-cia","tag-osama-bin-laden","tag-pakistan","tag-taliban","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5544"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7260,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions\/7260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}