By AHMED QURAISHI
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—For all those who thought the Pakistani State is a soft punching bag, I have breaking news: No More.
Pakistan has expelled two American citizens trying to incite unrest in the country, and foreign diplomats – especially the American and British ambassadors – have been put on notice: Do not test our patience on how some of you have been taking sides in domestic Pakistani politics.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, an angry U.S. diplomat accused me of spreading anti-Americanism through my television show and columns, but I will come to that in a second. Let me tell you first about how unprecedented American interference in Pakistani politics led to a sharp reaction inside the Pakistani government.
A former Pakistani official has told me that the government of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz “came very close” to taking a decision to expel a U.S. diplomat from Pakistan. The controversy centered on the role of U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson and the American consul general in Lahore Bryant Hunt.
A rowdy federal cabinet meeting in the last few days before the government of Prime Minister Aziz packed up on Nov. 15 saw at least two federal Pakistani ministers strongly protesting the way Ambassador Patterson and Mr. Hunt conducted themselves publicly.
Prime Minister Aziz listened intently as one Pakistani federal minister accused his colleague Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, the Foreign Minister, of “failing to stand up to [U.S. Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice.”
“She has been bypassing [Kasuri] and having her office directly contact the [Pakistani] President’s office,” the angry minister told Mr. Aziz. “Kasuri failed to confront her” about this violation of protocol and diplomatic etiquette.
What provoked the Pakistani ministers was the sight of U.S. ambassador to Pakistan publicly taking sides in domestic Pakistani politics. On Nov. 6, she visited the Election Commission of Pakistan and tried to embarrass the Musharraf administration by standing on the Commission’s doorstep and telling the reporters she wanted to see the election schedule issued “as soon as possible.”
Around the same time, she visited the office of GEO, a private Pakistani television network locked in a dispute with the Pakistani government over a Code of Conduct that is already ratified by more than 35 other broadcasters across the nation.
Ms. Patterson decided to publicly side with the network against the Pakistani government. When some prominent Pakistanis objected to this, the U.S. diplomats ratcheted up the pressure. U.S. consul general in Karachi received orders to visit the office of another television network, ARY, that faced a similar problem [but ratified the code later and restored operation]. And then another U.S. diplomat, Ms. Elizabeth Colton, made a very public visit to an FM radio station that refused to recognize the Code. The U.S. embassy issued a statement that sympathized with the station’s position.
Bryan Hunt, the U.S. consul general in Lahore, picked the gate of the house of a rights activist as a venue for reading out a list of demands from the U.S. government to the Pakistani government. His style, according to many observers, including those who watched the video footage of this event, was “arrogant and condescending.” In fact, it was so outrageous that Dr. Shireen Mazari, the director of Islamabad Institute of Strategic Studies, wrote in the daily The News asking the Pakistani government to declare Mr. Hunt Persona Non Grata, which basically means expulsion from the country. Mr. Ahmed Reza Kasuri, a member of President Musharraf’s legal team, made a similar demand, while S. M. Zafar, widely known for his independent views, publicly said that in his long political career he had never seen this level of foreign interference in Pakistan’s domestic matters.
The message that most Pakistani observers were receiving was loud and clear: Interference in Pakistani politics will continue. Pakistan was beginning to look like Panama, where Washington once intervened to arrest a president and replace him with another.
Prime Minister Aziz deferred taking a decision during the cabinet meeting on how to react to this situation. But something had to be done. The Musharraf administration had detected disturbing signs that some foreign actors were colluding with domestic elements to create conditions in Islamabad for regime-change. Information was pouring in from multiple sources indicating unusual and unprecedented levels of organization and mobilization behind the unrest in Pakistan over the past few months.
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