Failing to Make Direct Contact With the People, The US is Further Alienating Pakistan

The current mess that the Americans are facing with regards to policy making on Pakistan, amidst other factors, is a direct outcome of the respective failures of the Bush and Obama administrations in harnessing direct contact with the people of that country.

These contacts could have been harnessed over a period of time, using a variety of social, educational, political and diplomatic channels, which could have eventually led to the establishment of a mutually-beneficial broad based relationship between Pakistan and the US.

However, nothing of this sort could have ever happened under George W. Bush because of his hawkish mindset.

What is ironic here, is that even President Obama, who has emphasized on greater contact with the Pakistani people in his recent public addresses, has generally failed to undertake any significant and decent steps that could enable his administration and the wider US civil society to create better educational, social and cultural bridges with the Pakistani people.

The current policies which the new US administration is following in Pakistan have clearly not been well debated in the American public policy forums, such as the Congress, the media and major universities.

This lack of academic, theoretical, journalistic and scholarly debate as to what course shall America now take in Afghanistan and Pakistan is leading towards the formulation of policies which could have catastrophic socio-economic and political consequences not only for South Asia, but for America as well.

Millions of Pakistanis who are critical of US intentions in their country often question that when their country is considered to be the front-line state in the War on Terror, why is it most often left out and considered unnecessary by lawmakers in the US?

Quite clearly, the general American attitude towards Pakistan is totally different than the policy that the US is now pursuing in the Middle East. When American officials visit Pakistan, holding meetings with government officials, the political opposition, the Army high-command and doing media conferences is all what is part of their general routine. But, when Mr Obama tours Germany during his presidential campaign, he seeks to interact with the German people by delivering a speech to a crowd of 200,000 plus, at the place where once the Berlin Wall stood.

As President, Mr Obama goes to Egypt and delivers a key note address at one of the country’s leading universities, seeking to establish a new relationship with Arab societies.

What the US lawmakers have been consistently ignoring is a fact raised many times by many of Pakistan’s previous leaders that issues can only be resolved when mutual understanding and meaningful people to people is nurtured by both sides.

Former Pakistani leaders Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, Pervez Musharraf and the current President, Asif Ali Zardari have all delivered keynote lectures and addresses at various international forums, trying to put forward Pakistan’s viewpoints regarding a host of political issues, ranging from nuclear proliferation to the Kashmir dispute with India.

Why has it never dawned upon Western diplomats like Mr Holbrooke, Condoleezza Rice or Hillary Clinton to ever try and address a crowd of educated, observant, politically aware and English speaking members of the Pakistani civil society at prestigious educational institutions like the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) or the Aga khan University?

The consistent failure of the Americans to make endeavours to establish direct relationships with the people of Pakistan, through assistance in education, health care and social welfare, has cost the American interests in South Asia very much.

The fact that the Americans have traditionally supported dictatorial regimes, like those of Generals Zia and Musharraf, over genuinely democratic governments, like that of the Quaid-E-Awam (leader of the people), former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, has never augured well with the people.

General support of dictatorial regimes, at critical times during the Cold War and even after meant that American interest in establishing a broad based relationship with the Pakistani people has remained very limited. Short lived security relationships between the US and the Pakistani establishment have also gone on to give the impression that the US shall only remain engaged with Pakistan till it considers its tactical and strategic interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia as being achieved. Other than that, the Americans have generally never been interested in supporting Pakistan’s social and economic progress.

So far, nothing seems to be changing since Barack Obama assumed the Presidency in January.

Instead of repealing and reversing George W. Bush’s failed policies on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Mr Obama is clandestinely seeking to follow those same policies of troop surges and increase in cross border drone attacks which have led to more civilian casualties.

Actually, it is now, more than ever before that the severe lack of contact with the Pakistani people is actually leading towards the formulation of policies which may end up causing fundamental long term damage to American foreign policy interests.

Ongoing tensions between the US lawmakers and the Pakistan could also force the latter to look for alternative ways to fulfill its economic and security needs, therefore depriving the US of a genuine regional ally.

Not surprisingly, Pakistan’s political opposition and the feverishly anti-American press and public sentiment in the country are now calling on the government and the military to come up with a new plan of alliance with the US over Afghanistan and the fighting terrorism. The framework should ensure Pakistan’s own integrity and national security are kept by the government at the very forefront of its diplomacy with the US.

It is ironic to see that even now, there is very limited understanding in the US that by establishing direct contact with Pakistan’s people and business community is in the very interests of the average Americans as well.

The US and even Europe have been denying Pakistani products any extra market share in their consumer markets for reasons that seem flawed. The Americans do not understand that Pakistani people, do not want aid, they want trade. Even by giving Pakistani products an extra two or three per cent of the market share for the country’s premium export products like sports goods, cotton textiles and other items like dairy products, rice and alcohol, could well mean creating tens of thousands of jobs in that country and an increase in the nation’s foreign exchange reserves and government’s tax revenues.

By increasing bilateral trade with Pakistan, the US can more easily achieve its goals and objectives of creating long-term investment opportunities in that country’s education, health care and social welfare, in ways much better than as proposed in the recently passed controversial Kerry-Lugar bill, which has infuriated millions of ordinary Pakistanis and their military establishment.

However, as against this, in recent times, it has been seen that Pakistan’s share in trade with Europe and the US has fallen. One of the reasons for this has been increasing tariff barriers erected by these two regions during the ongoing financial crisis.

As a result of this, export orders from Pakistan have been decreasing. This has led a spike in inflation and unemployment across the country’s manufacturing sector.


For the US, increased people to people contact could mean more foreign investments in Pakistan, with yet greater financial returns. Joint collaborations between US firms and Pakistan’s merchant class could mean that the two countries could jointly work for the reconstruction and development of Pakistan’s northern areas. Such joint collaboration could also ensure that overtime; Pakistanis begin considering Americans their friends, rather than those who just turn to Pakistan when it suits their regional security interests.

On the educational side, increasing student-to-student contact could open up new initiatives for collaboration between Pakistan and America in a variety of different fields. Despite the ongoing political standoffs between the two countries and high overall anti-American sentiments, there are many Pakistani students who are interested in attaining an American education. Increasing cross-cultural interactions between Pakistani and American students could ensure a steady supply of overseas students and hefty funding to American universities.

If American students are encouraged to visit Pakistan and learn about the country’s vastly unique cultural diversity, food, languages and music, among other things, this new knowledge would help them to formulate viable policies and decisions based on rationality and a common interest in connecting with the Pakistani people, once they assume corporate and political leadership.

For Pakistanis, such cultural exchange would be a blessing, enabling them to easily market their cultural diversity, arts, food, language, music and most importantly, ideas and perspectives on important global issues to a vastly fragmented but concerned and interested international audience. This could also subsequently lead to expanding trade and business opportunities which could jointly benefit the corporate sectors in Pakistan and America.

Quite evidently, the Obama administration understands all these things and has been working in certain areas like the US Full-Bright scholarships. This however does not mean that it is going on the right track altogether. Two costly foreign policy blunders have already been made in the name of the Kerry-Lugar bill, which Pakistanis consider as a bill weakening Pakistan’s national security, and the Af-Pak policy that was formulated and finalized in May this year.

This policy looks at Pakistan and Afghanistan as one spectrum in the entire war theatre of the War on Terror. It is a fundamentally flawed policy which was prepared without the consultation of Pakistan’s military establishment and the political representatives of the people.

The flawed Kerry-Lugar Bill and the insane ‘Af-Pak’ policy which failed to recognize that Pakistan’s needs and requirements are much different than those of Afghanistan, where everything needs to be reconstructed from the basics, can be considered the direct results of US high-handedness where American lawmakers give this impression that Pakistan should be willing to accept whatever peanuts Americans shower at the Islamabad-Rawalpindi establishment.

Diplomacy does not work like that. The need for Americans to better understand Pakistan and vice versa has never been any greater than it is now, for failure to understand on both sides, more on the American side, could only empower those conservative religious fundamentalists on both sides who do not want the nurturing of relationships based on trade, business and mutual understanding between the two countries.