M A I N   N E W S

Special to the tribune
Treated as possible terrorists, Pak officers fume
Shyam Bhatia in London

Pakistanis have reacted with fury to how US officials treated members of a high powered military delegation after they were mistaken for terrorists and ejected from a domestic flight between Washington and Tampa.

“Why not eye for eye and tooth for tooth” ? asks a retired Pakistani colonel whose outraged comments have been circulated among overseas Pakistanis in the UK and US. “Invite a similar high ranking U.S. army delegation to Pakistan and serve them with the same sour soup. Only then the coward Yanks would know their true worth.”

Another enraged Pakistani, whose views have likewise been widely circulated, commented,” By the way, if somebody interested to serve Americans in the same manner, he should at least kicked those black water's agent out of this soil who were invited and planted in this country during an army dictator Gen Mush's government and for whom ISI continuosly bashing present civil government through its cronies and agents in media.

“Agar hamari fauj mein itni ghairat hoti to kami kis cheez ki thi.”

The eight Pakistani officers, led by a rear admiral, were in Washington earlier this week at the invitation of the US government and were on their way to Tampa in Florida to attend a meeting of the US Central Command (Centcom) when they were off loaded from a United Airlines flight.

Panic started after one weary member of the delegation was reportedly overheard saying, “I hope this is the final plane to the delegation”, a comment that was misconstrued as a terrorist threat.

The officers’ subsequent handling and interrogation, short of being handcuffed, has been compared to the way Al Qa’eda suspects are handled by US security experts. A Pakistani army spokesman said the officers were cleared after security inspections, but, “as a result of these checks, military authorities in Pakistan decided to cancel the visit and called the delegation back.”

The treatment of the delegation and the inevitable cancellation of the rest of their trip is the latest in a series of foreign policy disasters for Islamabad that started six weeks ago when British Prime Minister David Cameron accused the Pakistani authorities of working hand in glove with terrorists.

“We can not tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world”, Cameron told a Bangalore audience at the end of July.

The British Prime Minister’s views have been echoed by the US general commanding Nato forces in Afghanistan who endorsed concerns by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his national security adviser, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, that the Pakistani military is helping militants who operate in Afghanistan.

“Given the very clear linkage between attacks on Afghan soil by individuals who have come from Pakistan and are commanded and controlled from Pakistan, I think President Karzai and Dr Spanta have very legitimate concerns,” General David Petraeus said this week.

These stinging rebukes of how the Pakistani army provides underhand, clandestine backing for all manner of terrorist groups operating in India and Afghanistan come on the back of widespread international criticism of Islamabad’s cackhanded response to the floods that have devastated the country.

Much of the criticism has been directed at elected politicians who were slow off the ground in responding to the humanitarian needs of their deperate countrymen cut off from food, clean water and medical supplies.

Among the targets of such criticism has been President Asif Zardari who was touring Europe when Pakistan was being torn apart by the floods. Zardari chose to visit a multi million dollar family owned chateau in France at just the time when his fellow Pakistanis were in the grip of the worst natural disaster in the country’s living memory.

Zardari is one of Pakistan’s richest men - his personal fortune is estimated at US$ 2 billion - but his initial contribution to helping flood victims was just US$ one million, less than one per cent of his total worth. This was later upped to US$ 5 million after advisers are said to have told him that he should at least match the contributions made by Hollywood personalities like Angelina Jolie.

The foreign policy setbacks and current humanitarian disatser have now been compounded by the cricketing scandal in London.

Pakistani fixer Mazhar Majeed was secretly recorded by a team of British invesigative reporters as saying, “I have been doing it with them, the Pakistani team, for about 2½ years. And we’ve made masses and masses of money.”