If there's a
cross on which Pakistan has found itself frequently crucified, it is the one
carrying the legend 'strategic'. What follies have we not committed in the pursuit of strategic goals? Even our present preoccupation with terrorism is a product of our strategic labours in times past (hopefully, never to return).
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We have been here before, travelled down this route many times, our obsessive insecurity driving us time and again into American arms, each time to be
left high and dry when the initial enthusiasm, or necessity, had passed. But we never seem to learn and each time begin our quest for the holy grail -- of permanence in our American connection -- as if there were never any heartbreaks before.
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The 'strategic dialogue' is thus not pegged to any abstract love for Pakistan. It arises from the grim necessity of the war in Afghanistan. We should be under no illusions about the window of opportunity that this dialogue offers. This window will remain open and serviceable
only up to the moment when the Americans begin withdrawing from Afghanistan. To assume otherwise, and give way to
misplaced euphoria -- something at which we are rather good -- is to court the ways of folly and set ourselves up for another 'betrayal' at American hands.
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But what is this we are hearing about the shopping list prepared under his aegis?
Which world are we living in? Which planet does GHQ still inhabit?
We have
just a year and a half, not eternity, to get what we want from the US. It behoves us ill to ask the US to help restart our composite dialogue with India. If India is playing hard-to-get on this count, we should be able to keep our cool and wait for India's attitude to change. Even if the composite dialogue doesn't get going for the next two years, the glaciers will not melt and the Himalayas will not march down to the seas.
We should be mature enough to understand a few things clearly. America is not going to ask India to talk Kashmir with us. It is not going to solve our water problems with India. It is not going to give us the kind of nuclear deal it has concluded with India.
To go by the hype generated in official quarters, it almost appeared as if
we were expecting a string of nuclear power plants from the US. And what happens? Hillary Clinton announces a gift of
125 million dollars to set up thermal power plants.
A colder splash of water on the fires of our misplaced ardour could not have been poured. What Burke said of England in the context of America's war of independence: "Light lie the dust on the ashes of English pride" -- we can use to define our predicament: light lie the dust on the embers of our strategic relationship.
Sooner or later we will have to discover the reasons for this talent for
selling ourselves cheap. We have always behaved thus in our dealings with the US, assuming obligations unthinkingly, never asking for the right price and then moaning about betrayal and the like when the Americans, taking us at our word, leave us with very little.
Mobarak got Egypt's American debt
(7 billion dollars, and this was in 1991) written off when he joined America's first Gulf war. The Turks asked for
25 billion dollars to allow American troops territorial passage prior to the Iraq war in 2003. That the US refused is beside the point. The Turks did not allow themselves to be taken for granted. We settle for
peanuts and call it a 'strategic relationship'.
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We should have been gunning for something tangible. We are a debtor nation, strapped for cash.
It is money we should have been asking for. In concrete terms, a writing off of
all our debt. A
one-point agenda, clearly stated and firmly put, without all the mumbo-jumbo of a 'strategic relationship'.
Water, energy, India and Afghanistan were best left out of our wish list, more
an exercise in fantasy than anything to do with the real world.
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But for all its slickness under Kayani, GHQ, alas, remains trapped in the
morass of its old conceits and prejudices.
So the old questions remain: how to emerge from the darkness into the light? How to manage Pakistan's affairs better? Most important of all: whence will come the liberation of the Pakistani mind? One thing is for sure:
not from GHQ.
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Email:
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"I think it is time that the image of the United States in the eyes of the people of Pakistan improve and it can only do so through direct intervention," Saddique said. "And I don't think the people have any qualms on looking towards American help and American support in rebuilding their lives ...."
and non-proliferation; law enforcement and counter-terrorism; science and technology; education; agriculture; water; health; and communications and public diplomacy. Sectoral meetings will be held in Islamabad soon. 
