Leaked U.S. cables a stain on Pakistani leadership

By: Saeed Shah (MCT)
Posted In: News

ISLAMABAD – A deluge of U.S. diplomatic cables has tarnished the reputation of Pakistan’s political and military leadership with the country’s public, adding to anti-American sentiments in Pakistan, analysts and politicians said Thursday.

The dispatches, released by the WikiLeaks website, show military and civilian leaders agreeing to policies in private meetings with U.S. diplomats that they would passionately disavow in public.

Among those damaged by the cables is Pakistan’s powerful military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kay-ani, who, according to the cables, would confide highly sensitive information to U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson and use her to carry messages to his own political leadership.

As they pored over the leaked cables for the past four days, the Pakistani news media studiously ignored the other side of the story that emerges from the leaked communications: deep American frustration at Pakistan’s lack of cooperation.

In one missive, from September 2009, Patterson lamented that there’s “no chance” that Paki-stan will stop funding certain Islamic extremist groups, no matter how much U.S. aid is doled out. Earlier that year, she had concluded: “The relationship is one of co-dependency we grudg-ingly admit – Pakistan knows the U.S. cannot afford to walk away; the U.S. knows Pakistan cannot survive without our support.”

Pakistanis see the cables in a distinctly different light, portraying both the government and opposition as fawningly pro-American and duplicitous.

Despite the alliance between Islamabad and Washington in fighting terrorist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, public opinion is highly sensitive about encroachments on the nation’s sovereignty, and the cables provide evidence for those who hold to the conspiracy theory that the United States runs this country.

The Pakistani media are portraying U.S. diplomats as hyperactive meddlers, constantly intrigu-ing with Pakistan’s rulers to push Washington’s agenda.

“I am worried about my own leadership because it has behaved as clients, not pursuers of Pakistani interests,” said Khurshid Ahmad, the vice president of Jamaat-i-Islami, a religious political party. “Disenchantment, anti-Americanism, will increase among the people. The people will be further alienated from U.S. policies and will be dissatisfied with their own leaders.

“It seems that diplomats were used as spies. They were manipulating, interfering, using politi-cians against politicians, army against civilians, civilians against army,” he said.

The WikiLeaks documents included a 2009 cable that discussed removing fissile material from a Pakistani nuclear reactor, an incendiary issue in a country where many think the U.S. aims to strip it of its nuclear capability.

Another cable from 2009 has Patterson suggesting that Washington downplay allegations of extrajudicial killings by the Pakistani military to foster “good will within the Pakistan military and civilian establishment that can easily erode if too much public criticism from USG (U.S. government) officials over these incidents is forthcoming.”

Ignoring the crimes could be a breach of U.S. law, which prohibits funding foreign militaries that are guilty of gross human rights violations. The Pakistan military receives about $2 billion in U.S. aid annually.

One damaging impact of the WikiLeaks release is that Pakistanis more easily can blame the United States for their problems, as victims of superpower manipulation, rather than looking inward, said Mosharraf Zaidi, an independent analyst based in Islamabad.

“It’s very damaging for Pakistanis to continue to use this narrative that the Americans are running us and that they’re the ones destroying everything,” Zaidi said. “Any country that gets in this position is because of choices that the country makes, because of choices that Gen. Kayani makes, choices that the minister of finance makes. Those choices are not because an American came and put a gun to somebody’s head.”

Pakistan’s leading politicians appear to share the belief that America is the ultimate power in their country. One ambitious contender, Fazl-ur-Rehman, the leader of a hard-line religious party that is ostensibly anti-American, held a banquet for Patterson in 2007 to seek her help in becom-ing the next prime minister.

Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who is publicly critical of the U.S., repeatedly assured U.S. diplomats behind closed doors of his pro-American feelings and thanked Patterson for the appointment of Kayani as Pakistani army chief.

Patterson, who left Islamabad last month, was rarely out of the media spotlight in Pakistan, particularly in moments of domestic political tension, when she would be seen ferrying among all the major players.

She was the confidante and sometimes adviser to Pakistan’s leadership. Kayani divulged to her in March 2009 that he might oust President Asif Ali Zardari, while Zardari told her whom he wanted to succeed him if he were assassinated (his sister).

Kayani used Patterson to convey his concern to Zardari during the political crisis of March 2009; she met the army chief at least four times in one week. Zardari once told U.S. Vice Presi-dent Joe Biden that he feared the military “might take me out.”

The cables also disclose the clandestine operation of small numbers of U.S. special forces alongside Pakistani troops close to the Afghan border, described in an October 2009 cable as a “sea change in Pakistani thinking.” The Pakistani military and political leadership had pledged repeatedly that they’d never allow it.

The WikiLeaks documents also lay bare the Pakistani leadership’s acquiescence to the use of U.S. drone aircraft to target suspected militants in its tribal area, with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani telling the American ambassador: “We’ll protest in the National Assembly (parliament) and then ignore it.” Pakistani leaders, including Gilani, claim they’re pressing Washington to stop them.

The prime minister described the leaks as “mischief,” while Zardari spoke to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday. He told her that “the so-called leaks will not be allowed to cast a shadow on the strategic partnership between the two countries,” according to a statement from his office.