"Pakistan's Mr. America"
By Rais Khan
Fremont, CA
(The article was received before Mr Hussain Haqqani tendered his resignation)
In his latest book titled " Obama's War" published in July 2010, the Watergate fame journalist Bob Woodward refers to a conversation between Ambassador Husain Haqqani and the White House Officials in an informal meeting at a Washington restaurant on pages-344-345 Chapter 29 ibid as under:
"Jones (Gen.(R) James Jones, the former US National Security Advisor who resigned in Oct. 2010 after publication of this book) had several get-togethers and meals with Pakistani ambassador Haqqani, hoping to work out a deal.
' We are a nation of rug merchants,' Haqqani said, trying to explain his country without disparaging it. "That's our origin historically. So have you ever tried buying a carpet in Iran or Pakistan?"
Over the year , Jones had bought many rugs during his trips abroad.
'The guy starts at 10,000 and you settle for 1200,' Haqqani went on. "You guys have no idea of the proportionality, you know? So be reasonable, but never let the guy walk out of the shop without a sale. Do a sale. So our side now, we've asked for the moon, but we'll get something. We' re getting our stuff. We'll get our helicopters, which the army needs to go into North Waziristan."
At another meeting with Donilon (the incumbent national security advisor) and Lute present, Jones asked, "What would it take to get you guys to focus on our concerns without you guys totally giving up whatever your obsessions and concerns are?"
Economic aid and more military capability, the ambassador said. "Give us a little bit of respect. Don't humiliate us publicly."
Jones made it clear that the United States wanted real support on counterterrorism - more CIA, more Special Operations inside Pakistan. How could the US really get that?
"A man who is trying to woo a woman ," Haqqani said, was the best analogy. "We all know what he wants from her. Right?" The man wants one thing: he wants to make love. "But she has other ideas. She wants to be taken to the theater. She wants that nice new bottle of perfume. If you get down on one knee and give the ring, that's the big prize. And boy, you know, it works."
Turning to Donilon and Lute, Jones said, "We have to figure out a way of giving these guys the ring."
"The ring is, by the way," Haqqani said, "recognition of Pakistan's nuclear program as legitimate. That is going to be the ring."
But Pakistan already had nuclear weapons and acknowledgment by the US was not going to get them to change their behavior."
To begin with one is flabbergasted to find Ambassador Haqqani with a wrong perception of the background of a nation he has undertaken to represent at the highest diplomatic level in the most important country of the world. Needless to prove that the Muslims of the sub-continent, over the past millennium, have been either farmers or rulers of that vast expanse, either at the top levels or serving in their armed forces. Merchantry or merchandising was a far pavilion to them, an occupation falling in the exclusive domain of their Hindu compatriots. Where did Mr. Haqqani pick up this flawed notion as even his new in-laws were also tea-merchants or some in the soap business - a field distinct from rugs and the likes.
Pondering deep over his similitude one is led to believe that Mr. Haqqani passed the reference allegorically having his own past in the mind. Having served three Prime Ministers hailing from entirely different political and ideological backgrounds, Mr. Haqqani had learnt and used well to his advantage the art of a rug merchant in enhancing and lowering his price. If the slot of special assistant or advisor was not available to him, he comfortably slid down to accept a spokesman position. God Bless the King-Long Live the King has always been his passion.
Like a Pharos's Queen, he never lost his status, smoothly switching over from one professed belief system to its antithetical values system. The faux pas idea, probably, still lives with him as he was quick to introduce the arithmetical parable in his expose'. More than Ambassador Haqqani, Gen.(r) Jones, a Marine veteran of 40 years and a graduate from a Foreign Affairs School of Georgetown University, probably knew the true background of the Pakistani nation.
Whereas in the first meeting Mr. Haqqani went out of proportions in describing the past of a nation, in the second he used somewhat poppycock language as if out of his senses. Far from the decency, suavity and decorum of a senior diplomat, he behaved and talked like a Poppycock Prince or at best like a godfather of the underworld negotiating a business deal with his counterpart. Why was he analogizing Pakistani nation to a woman; that too with demands and fantasies like a harlot or a hooker? Was he upbeat only to endorse a US official purported statement that Pakistanis would sell their mothers for a dollar?
The foreign educated, presumably, polished diplomat was matching words with rough commando style self-serving usurper who told Washington Post that in Pakistan all one needed was to get oneself raped to obtain the Canadian visa and become millionaire. Gen. Jones and his team must have been amused over the pejorative analogy the Ambassador was bringing forth about his people and more so on his inapt demand for the sale of his nation’s prestige and honor. Ambassador Haqqani's perception about the Pakistani nation is as obscure as his interpretation of Islamic injunctions and Pakistan history that he provided to late Mohtarma Bhutto in writing her book - The Reconciliation, as per her reference ibid.
Ambassador Haqqani, who according to Bob Woodward calls himself "Pakistan's Mr. America", hails from a deeply religious conservative family of a Karachi suburb Malir and must be aware of the values and sensitivities relished by Pakistani nation even in his newly acquired image. Living for a long time in the USA, Mr. Haqqani should have known that the likes of Bob Woodward and Ron Suskind maintain strong contacts in official corridors and somehow the whispers beyond the four walls reach them surreptitiously for onward communication to the public.
His interlocutors certainly took his loose verbosity seriously and as such described it in details to Mr. Woodward who in turn found it of great import to report it in his non-fiction chronology of important events. Will the Pakistanis also take it seriously due to the stigma of its ridicule rather than any of its strategic ramifications? Will they ask for Mr. Haqqani's apology to the nation for his inappropriate remarks?
