Daily Times

If bashing America in Pakistan wouldn’t get you public patronage, what else could be? Come what may, it will work wonders, especially if you’re riding around the political big dipper. From holding them accountable for the plundering, pillaging, and marauding of your country’s tangible resources via IMF’s vicious jaws to accusing them of your deprivations in technology and research, the US, “the depredator” serves all your purposes through one window operation. Recently when political corridors of Pakistan were subjected to skirmishes during the regime change, political point-scoring resorted to “Plus America” and “No America” tirades yet again, while cranking up the polarized narratives to newly known thresholds.

If I dare to speak a bit about the US’s recent interventions in Pakistan, they are mostly tied in with philanthropy, educational excellence and women’s empowerment. The ones where Pakistan chose to scratch their back into Asian ventures were Pakistan’s picks, and not America’s surprising plots. On history cards, if I may not be sounding like another nutter on the fringe, the US only managed to dabble around Asia when it got life support from its foolish allies, who threw them in fire and blood for the sake of appeasing the intruder. If this wouldn’t happen, the latter would teeter on the brink, reeling!

However, the problem here is a bit off-key. It’s as eccentric a problem as it may go with us, every time! Pakistan is so done with the conspiracy theories that the US churns out in its backyard, and which hurt the public sentiments—fragile and tenuous, always prone to get cracked away. When the ploys instigated by the US brim up, Pakistanis can’t take them anymore and this is where the rebuttal sets in. The processions are set up and the anti-America rallies are stirred up. This hurts the US in return and the country that exists some 12,346 km “at stone’s throw away” from Pakistan through the shortest airline route, gets the lesson!

Leafing through the history volumes takes us to the unusual events incepted at the start of the second decade since the formation of Pakistan, where American “conspiracies” had started off roping in.

In the recent political upheaval, following the same lines of action, the unsolicited implication of the US into Pakistan’s internal politics has had an unprecedented “lion’s share”. The then government party, Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf (PTI), accused the United States of sending in a foreign conspiracy letter, stating that the foreign conspiracy was afoot to remove Imran Khan from power, touting the Opposition’s no-confidence motion against the then Prime Minister as a testimony of “foreign-funded” move to topple the latter’s government. In response, the US denied the allegations forthwith. Just before these allegations, the then Prime Minister Imran Khan clearly identified nation as a free group without any liability to obey any dictations sent by the US. With this happening on one side, the newly incumbent Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif chose to step on the gas and rather went too overboard saying ‘beggars are not Choosers’. He pressed indirectly that the country would face consequences if it gets dismembered from the financial favours bestowed upon by Americans.

O Conspiracy! Let’s dive into history to know you!

Leafing through the history volumes takes us to the unusual events incepted at the start of the second decade since the formation of Pakistan, where American “conspiracies” had started off roping in. Field Marshal Ayub Khan seized the presidency from Iskander Mirza in a coup. He has been President of Pakistan since 1965 and its ruler under martial law since the revolution of 1958. His tenure tumbled in 1969 when East Pakistan’s protests and labour strikes took a toll on his ruling status whereupon his forced resignation came about. During his reign, from alpha to omega, he did everything that a serving army man was not supposed to do, and which is why a cornerstone of an otherwise infamous precedent had been laid down since, that continued to hang over the heads of democracy, if there exists any, like the sword of Damocles.

He somehow felt the need to come clean hand to the public and decided to write a book named ‘Friends Not Masters” some 60 years ago. This literally got people taken aback with a shock and it was a rather blowing out of the water sort of situation. Swallowing a military dictator as a penman was the last thing they wanted after having suffered the atrocities of the last coup. A so-called political biography, it accounted for a plethora of concocted memoirs than any factual history sheet; Mr Khan was seen justifying his domestic and diplomatic policies left right centre and essentially setting up a moral trap where his “scrupulous anecdotes” had to be fed to readers. One of the critical blogs rightly termed M. Khan’s ‘academic adventure’ as an opportunity of knowing one species of “Third World” leadership from an earnest–and canny–horse’s mouth.

‘Friends Not Masters’ explicated everything but the logical and moral grounds for the reprehensible subversive activity that the writer initiated being an assailant. It biasedly elucidated the relationship between a superpower and Pakistan with the former’s status being euphemize as a synonym for a conspirer. This political biography entails Mr Khan’s journey of rising to power and the tribulations of an inchoate, newly independent nation, and implicated the readers into knowing his reconciliation efforts for the demands of justice, modernization, and stability—-yes you read it absolutely right, ‘Stability’. With prevalent red herrings, the book sort of leads the audiences astray, essentially toward a false conclusion. For example, the mentioning of turmoil combated by the Commander in Chief lacked the due explanation of the politics behind the 1951 conspiracy he helped suppress. Consequently, with fuddling equations, and ambiguous whirlwinds of events, the books slowly died out on shelves and so were on the minds of avid readers who yearned for factual lines than any delusive profusion. A late-night jest those days implied: “if fallacious political satire had a face, this book would’ve been an epitome of it.”

However, “Friends Not Masters,” if not impressed with its cognitive content, certainly set a precedent: It taught the following political leaderships to be aware of the power of anti-American sentiment selling, a win-win and a repertoire to be acquired. From ‘Friends Not Masters’ to ‘Absolutely Not’, the power of saying “No” to global heavyweights has remained in fashion, no matter if we really mean it!

Ten years ago, when a renowned global Research Center, Pew, held research regarding the views held by Pakistanis of the US, Roughly three-in-four Pakistanis (74 per cent) consider the U.S. an enemy, up from 69% in the year 2011 and 64 per cent In 2009. As of 2014, 59 per cent of Pakistanis consider the United States to be an enemy, reduced from 74 per cent in 2012. According to Pew’s stats, the Pakistanis had the least favourable views of the US compared with 39 countries in the world surveyed!

Well, having said that, wouldn’t it be better for Pakistanis to stop offloading the brunt of their miseries on someone else shoulder. Their downtrodden economy, falsified research excellence on their fake educational hubs, working ethics full of moral corruption, and unscrupulous lines of action have nothing to do with any international conspiracy. Stephen A Douglas, a former member of the United States Senate, quoted: “There are only two sides to this question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots and traitors.” It makes sense to us and so to them, but here is a question pops out: “Doesn’t everyman must be for Pakistan or against it?” Do they know what it takes to coin such daring statements? Do they have choice?

The writer is based in Islamabad. He can be reached at mbilal.isbpk@gmail.com, FB/mbilal.16