President Musharraf’s three-day visit to the US beginning on February 12 could either pass as a non-event marked by usual rhetoric and platitudes or serve as an important watershed heralding a new era in US-Pakistan relations. Over the past fifty-four years, Washington and Islamabad have occasionally drawn closer but have mostly drifted apart in a roller-coaster relationship that had its ups and downs. At critical junctures in Pakistan’s history, Washington has looked the other way and has brazenly failed to play its role as a trusted friend and ally. In the post-September 11 era, both the countries have once again emerged as allies. What could turn the new-found friendship into a bond of firmly cemented ties?
First and foremost, Washington should act with alacrity to furnish proof of the age-old maxim ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’ without compromising on principles or calls of fair play. Pakistan is beset with a host of problems which have astronomically compounded after the anti-terrorist war mounted by the US in Afghanistan. The country’s economy has suffered a major setback: exports have drastically fallen, foreign investors have packed up and left, and the aid from friendly nations to offset the effects of the war have proved no more than mere peanuts to rescue the sagging economy. Even Pak exports to the US have become stagnant and almost a million bread earners are threatened with the prospect of losing their means of livelihood. The US is thus morally obliged to reverse this trend - ‘as a friend in deed’.
The opening of subsidiaries of multinational corporations, which could lead to a diffusion of higher technical skills in Pakistan, could be one well-meaning step that could yield wholesome results for the Pakistan economy. The aid packages approximating 1.2 billion dollars or financial allocations running into another few million could hardly alter the regressive course of the sagging Pakistan economy.
Given the laudable role of the Land Grants colleges in the US which transformed the American landscape, the US should be seized of the singularly important role that education can play in Pakistan. Of late, the urge to educate the younger generation has been uppermost in the mind of all segments of the Pakistan population. While the middle class yearns to make it to the glittering Ivy colleges - Yale, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton and others - the less privileged masses regard education as their passport to progress and modernity.
On the political front, the United States should not be a mere bystander as India resorts to brinkmanship and stubbornly spurns attempts to resolve the Kashmir conflict. Praful Bidwai, one of India’s most widely published columnists and a former senior fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, in a recent article poses the question: “Have India and Pakistan moved somewhat closer to fulfilling their mutual nuclear death wish , which they so stridently expressed through the May 1998 blasts?” He goes on to suggest: “In the short run too, India’s moves will prove reckless, provocative and adventurist…Musharraf’s offer to de-nuclearize and sign a no-war pact with India came two days before the Agni test flight. New Delhi rebuffed what it saw as his peace and reconciliation ‘offensive’, which has unfolded especially after January 12. India summarily rejected both proposals with characteristic sanctimoniousness. It reiterated its stand that ‘nuclear weapons should be banished from the entire globe. De-nuclearization of India and Pakistan will have no meaning.’ It also said there is nothing new in Musharraf’s no war proposal.” What perceptive Indian observers feel should also be easily discernable to the more perspicacious US administration and think tanks.
September 11 has certainly provided the US the reason and the impulse to act against genuine terrorists yet the tragedy also served to blur the clear distinction between terrorism and freedom struggles. The Kashmiris’ struggle for freedom cannot be mistaken for wanton acts of terrorism. Now that the initial reaction to the horrendous terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is beginning to ebb, it is time to take stock of the circumstances precipitating unrest in Occupied Kashmir. If the WTC attacks need to be censured so should acts of state-sponsored terrorism.
As leader of a forward looking Muslim country, President Musharraf too has an obligation to fulfill: to impress upon President Bush and Capital Hill the true face and spirit of Islam - a religion of peace and tolerance considered so progressive at the time of its advent that Europe shied away from it. Thanks to its emphasis on the spirit of enquiry, Renaissance found its roots in the creative impulse generated at Baghdad. It was the same spirit of tolerance permeating Muslim Spain that offered unbounded freedom to Christian and Jewish scholars to excel in their pursuits and practice their faith - unhindered and unobstructed. That was the true face of Islam. We need to present it to the non-Muslim world afresh today.