Chickens Love Their Roost
One of the most obvious consequences of supporting an unpopular dictator prone to coups and jailing Supreme Court justices is that when he is out of power, the new leaders are not going to be very receptive to the United States. This is a particularly unfortunate dynamic in Pakistan, where it turns out that we have rather compelling interests and don’t want a cold shoulder from the government. But according to the Times, that’s just what we are getting.
Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari have both said that in order to stop the spate of suicide bombings in recent months, they intend to negotiate with the militants who are battling the Pakistan Army. Reports of American concerns over such overtures, as well as the Bush administration’s continued backing of Mr. Musharraf, despite the overwhelming rejection of his party by voters, have fueled a new level of Pakistani frustration with the United States.
The News, one of the country’s leading daily newspapers, published an editorial on Tuesday titled “Hands off please, Uncle Sam,” urging American leaders to “realize the need to give the democratic government in Pakistan time and space” to put in place a “thoughtful plan of action,” free of “any effort to intervene in their working or curtailing their right to independently decide what is best for Pakistan and its people.”
Now, Sharif and Zardari may be very well correct that our current anti-terror strategy in Pakistan isn’t working all that well for the Pakistani people, and so a relationship with this new government could still be productive. But it’s worrying that all the bad stuff Musharraf did, with or without the encouragement or explicit sanction of the US, is now associated with us.
