And now, Shamsi

Shamsi in Balochistan may or may not be housing US military personnel and CIA drones, and Islamabad may or may not have asked the Americans to pack up from the air base. If Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani knew irony, Shamsi-gate might have kept him away from Independence Day celebrations at the US Embassy. But not only did he show up, he gave his government a hearty pat on the back for Pakistan’s “flourishing democracy.”
Ordinary folks are painfully familiar with Pakistani-style democracy with its timeworn traditions of intellectual and financial dishonesty, hubris, and cash-for-kowtow culture. There is no mystery about the exact nature of our cooperation with the US, and yet both Islamabad and Rawalpindi continue to issue transparently false claims and ultimatums to flag their deep concern for the country. They need to can the canards.
In May, the Pakistan Air Force chief disclosed that it is the UAE which has control of Shamsi. It was apparently the Arabs who gave the US permission to run drones from there. Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar chimed in the following month. “We have told them to leave the Shamsi air base,” he said, referring to the Americans. Unnamed US officials shot back saying nothing of the sort would be possible. Then, speaking in Lahore, the information minister jumped in and disowned her loquacious colleague Mukhtar’s statement. The Washington Post now says that the US stopped drone flights from Shamsi months ago, but still has a non-military presence there. The report says drones are now operating out of Afghanistan.
The civilian administration is not alone in relentlessly subjecting Pakistanis to productions of the politically absurd. The US wanted more drones, as did the Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, according to a State Department cable from January 2008. (The Army denies this.) In November 2008, the then PAF chief said that Pakistan could shoot down drones, but needed the government’s consent to do so. Because of all its clever by half buck-passing, the Army comes out almost as badly as the government. Even though the first drone strikes happened on his watch, former president Pervez Musharraf maintains that his military government only allowed the US limited air corridors and only for surveillance flights. Curiously, Gilani supports Musharraf’s version of events.
Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders know that we need the US for economic survival and defence needs. But their egos, laziness and deceit prevent them from making this case to the public. They choose instead to play to the galleries, stoking fears of the US, raising self-emasculating alarm. At the think tank Pakistan Institute of National Affairs’ seminar in Lahore in May, former foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri hit a familiar note. America, said Kasuri echoing the consensus there, should take its aid and stuff it. The Army echoed this wishful, rejectionist sentiment the following month.
Anti-Americanism is strewn in everyone’s statements. The military will have us believe that Pakistan is a reluctant recipient of US aid, hardware and training and that this largesse comes with no strings attached. The government tells us that we sort of need the aid, but that it’s only a fraction of what the US claims it is providing. Opposition parties like PML-N insist that economic and military assistance is an unnecessary embarrassment we can do without, thank you very much. And each one of these players has and will carry on using the sovereignty-violation card against the others whether it’s drones, Kerry-Lugar, Raymond Davis, Abbottabad, or Shamsi. Anti-Americanism, valid or not, plays well and requires little work. Why bother about the long-term consequences of this charade?
The pathological hoodwinking of the people by Pakistanis in power has also thrown up the reluctant realisation that Pakistanis will only get the (self-serving) truth from Washington, not Islamabad. After all, it was an American lawmaker who let slip that drones were stationed inside Pakistan. It was a CIA chief who lauded the campaign as the “only game in town” to target Pakistan-based militants. And it was a US senator who set things straight by stating that the drone strikes would continue, Pakistan’s pantomime notwithstanding.
The determination of our politicians and generals to continue lying to us is impressive. In most instances, like with the Abbottabad raid, they seem to be genuinely unaware of matters it is their job to be aware of. In all other matters, they prefer deception over debate. Why bother with an honest day’s work when the US can always be counted on to bail out Pakistan? Our leaders are well aware we don’t like Pakistan being a client state, but behind the scenes they really don’t seem to mind. –Newsweek