AMID the furore surrounding Raymond Davis — whether the two men he killed were third-tier intelligence agents or thieves; whether the man has diplomatic immunity; whether Pakistan should snap all ties with the US — up pops on the Internet an excerpt from Margaret Bourke-White’s 1949 book Halfway to Freedom: A Report on the New India.
Bourke-White was a correspondent and photographer for Life magazine who visited India and Pakistan during the partition years and soon after. The following are some excerpts from her book based on interviews with the Quaid.
When asked what plans he had for the industrial development of the country, and did he hope to enlist technical or financial assistance from America: “‘America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America,’ was Jinnah’s reply. ‘Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed’ … ‘the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves.’ …‘Russia,’ confided Mr Jinnah, ‘is not so very far away.’
“…In the weeks to come I was to hear the Quaid-i-Azam’s thesis echoed by government officials throughout Pakistan. ‘Surely America will build up our army,’ they would say to me. ‘Surely America will give us loans to keep Russia from walking in.’ But when I asked whether there were any signs of Russian infiltration, they would reply almost sadly, as though sorry not to be able to make more of the argument. ‘No, Russia has shown no signs of being interested in Pakistan.’
So then … when one pointed out the dependence of the Pakistani security state on military aid from the United States (these days such as high-end F-16s which, as far as I am concerned, we need like two shots to our collective head) I was roundly cursed in emails, one gentleman going so far as to wish that my parents burned in hell.What the dear departed souls have to do with what I write only the gentleman can tell us. I only mention this to show how very seriously, nay gravely (pun intended), the Deep State’s operatives take any suggestion that there may be subterfuge and chicanery in what it does. Such as in the seemingly orchestrated above-mentioned furore which, as the reality has gradually dawned due mainly to American veiled threats to curtail defence cooperation you can be sure, is so much quieter now as we note to our great relief.
But where the noise and the dust has not abated and settled is the visa issue in which the elected government and its representative in Washington D.C. Hussain Haqqani are being incessantly pilloried. No amount of clarifications published in the press, off-the-record briefings because of the sensitivity of the issue, have deterred the propagandists of the Deep State, all of them without exception having served and supported the Commando’s government which, mark, started this intimate and deep relationship with the Americans and their agencies such as the CIA. Anybody note the contrariness in this, readers?
Utterly shameless, I would say.
For, according to a most recent report in the press America and China are two countries with which Pakistan has no ceiling (such as it has with India and vice versa) on the number of diplomatic personnel including technical staff, that may be posted in their embassies, and vice versa. In other words, the Americans can post any number of people in their embassy in Islamabad as we can in ours in Washington D.C. Yet, the ‘bright young things’, fake American accents and all, continue to push the same old lies, and more damned lies.
I have said on many occasions that it seems to me that the Deep State for all the money at its command, all the fancy paraphernalia to spy on its own people, all its fancy offices and safe-houses and all, still has not understood the power of the Internet and the SMS.
It has failed to appreciate the speed with which information can be exchanged and the lies shown up as the lies they are. Even the fake WikiLeaks scandal that further tarnished its, and because it is our Deep State, Pakistan’s reputation or what is left of it, has not dampened its penchant to be too-clever-by-half. It carries on, regardless.
Take the stout denial that was made when a newspaper suggested that the two men who were killed by Davis were intelligence operatives. Yet, barely 10 days it was reported on a channel that they were indeed intelligence operatives who were tailing Davis because he had crossed a ‘red-line’.
The immediate questions that beg answers are: if indeed the two were intelligence assets, why were they so inept as to get shot by Davis? And whether that red-line was Davis’s getting to certain ‘good Taliban’ aka assets to our Deep State but who were helping our allies and, in consequence ourselves, lose the war against terror?
For, if America loses we lose. It is mind-blowing to think that once America departs Afghanistan, the Taliban — all of them first cousins to one another — will lay down their weapons, accept the writ of the Pakistani state and go back to driving their Suzuki vans and cargo trucks. Watch out, gentlemen, for the capture of Pakistan is the start of the global Islamic Emirate where there will be no corps commanders, just commanders.
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