Like twins

Americans and Pakistanis are fearfully similar, almost like identical twins. What they possess and is unmatched with the rest of the world include a near-complete absence of a sense of timing, limited understanding of the political reality, and subsequently the inappropriateness of action. If things go wrong, which in many cases do, they have an immense desire to beat the trumpet that there is both an inherent logic and a higher moral value attached to whatever they have done. In most civilised countries, governments try to look after the interests of their populace. They have another policy towards outsiders though and play out a different politics in the international arena.
But the Americans and Pakistani establishments lie to their own people no less than they lie to the rest of the world. They create self-fulfilling prophecies. Their capacity to believe in self-created myths about the world is such that it can only be compared to the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages. They are both self-righteous to the hilt. One recent example is finding the WMDs in Iraq. The world is yet to see one such weapon that they have found after ransacking that country.
Americans elected Bush twice who stayed in power until January 2008 and, you bet, he would have seriously challenged the democratic candidate if a third term were allowed for the president’s office. However, one must reiterate the difference between the two identically twin establishments. Pakistan is intellectually, technologically and economically weak with its ruling elite dependent on the other twin. Both are exposed from time to time but the Americans succeed in getting away with that because they are strong.
What one finds most interesting is not that the Gay Pride Day involving lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans-gendered was celebrated at the US Embassy in Islamabad. Richard Hoagland, the Charge d’Affaires, acknowledged the struggle for LGBT rights and is quoted as saying, “I want to be clear: the US Embassy is here to support you and stand by your side every step of the way”. The news of the event immediately provided the much needed cannon fodder to the starving right-wing forces in Pakistan who took to the streets and rallied support to forcefully reject anything modern, western, American, secular and rational in the same stride. But the most interesting bit was yet to come from the office of the secretary of the state, Hillary Clinton. It concludes that the secretary herself and her department is committed to rights for all without any discrimination and would continue to support such initiatives across the world. I invite Hillary Clinton to hold a similar event in Saudi Arabia, her closest ally, and issue a press release thereafter.
This is not to say that LGBT are not discriminated against in Pakistan or their rights should not be realised. Even the otherwise conservative superior court has ruled out clearly in support of the trans-gendered, the most marginalised and exploited in the country, both socially and economically. Besides, Pakistani gays have to undergo incomparable social and psychological stress in making personal decisions and leading a normal life. But if Americans at the highest diplomatic level start championing their rights, the struggle would be adversely affected. The representatives of the right wing, who are also not immune from the vices projected on others, will get a renewed ideological strength in the hypocritical political order of Pakistan. Americans need to sort out the issue of convergence of interests with their allies in the war on terror first.
The writer is an Islamabad-based poet, author and public policy advisor. Email: harris.khalique@ gmail.com