Pakistani Students, Meet Middle America

Eleven university students from the tribal areas of Pakistan, the furthest reaches of George Bush’s ‘global war on terror,’ were guests of the local college for seven weeks. I had the chance to listen to and talk with them, within limits, about American policies in the region.

Before they spoke, the audience was told that their “departure and return had to be done in secrecy,” that “no photos were to be published over the net,” and that “some questions couldn’t be answered for the students’ own safety.”

None of these things was said for effect, which made the effect that much greater.

Why were these college students from Pakistan’s tribal areas in the United States? Besides the threat of Taliban reprisals, were there other reasons for the secrecy and non-disclosure of their identities? What is the US government involvement?

There were about 100 people in the audience. One of the young men stood behind a podium and spoke English so fast that it would have been difficult to take in all the information even without his accent. He delivered a flood of facts as he flicked through a series of slides —geography, political structure, tribal identities, literacy and employment rates, languages, and so on.

The real information was between the lines. There was an unmistakable wryness in his tone. For example, after listing a dozen of the tribes in the NWFP (North-West Frontier Province) in a few seconds, he smiled and said, “too many tribes,” before moving on to the next subject.

At the end of the slides, after showing pictures of Taliban leaders, he showed slides of a young men and women in traditional dress. “This is how we must dress at home,” he dryly noted.

Questions from the audience soon started flying. All the Pakistani students spoke English with remarkable facility (it’s the official language of Pakistan I was surprised to learn). The males evinced the look of college students on any American campus. However the three young women, in their dress, demeanor, and responses, gave one the sense of a foreign, faraway place.

In other words, the males appeared, to varying degrees, in their element, while the female students, to varying degrees, seemed like fish out of water. And it wasn’t just because of their dress.

The gulf between West and East-Middle East was exemplified when someone asked a Western-embedded question about the degree of freedom women have in the tribal areas. The query seemed laughably naïve, but two the Pakistani young women (one in a more relaxed Muslim attire, with some of her hair showing and her scarf even falling off her head; the other strictly adorned, with not a hair on her head in sight) took up the question without hesitation, clearly having been asked some version of it many times before.

Women in the tribal areas, one said, have “liberty in the home.” Then, in a subtle but unmistakable dig at Western society, the other woman added that Muslim societies put “family before money.” A short but intriguing discussion ensued about how quickly Pakistani children learn their own and foreign languages, purportedly because they have much more attention from women in the home.

Most of the Pakistani students were in business or resource management, but one, the spokesperson, was an English literature major. He, along with one other young man, was interested in a career in politics, the semi-taboo subject.

A woman sitting next to me asked, with the air of an accountant, what the objectives of the program were, and how success was being measured.

“I’ll defer to the government person,” a local professor said. That deference spoke volumes.

The program is intended as a “bridge between two cultures,” the woman from Washington replied, so that the Pakistani students can return and be “change agents for their own area.”

Oh my. The United States government, in appropriating the “change agent” motif, may get more change than it’s bargaining for. Once you release the change genie, as President Obama is finding out, no one controls her.

The conversation got really interesting when I approached the group after the canned presentation and softball questions were over. “The American government,” I began, “has a long history of purposefully operating in one direction at one level, and the opposite direction at another. Our military policy in the region vs. this visiting students program is a case in point. Where did this program originate?”

One of the Pakistani students passionately said, “This is exactly right.” Then they began to open up. But just as we started to delve into things, they were ushered off. This subject obviously crossed out of the safe “Green Zone.”

What is the American goal in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Under Bush, it appeared to be the destruction of NATO and the installation of Islamic extremists in Islamabad. That certainly would be the unintended consequence of all unintended consequences.

(You know NATO is on its last legs when the hopelessly behind-the-curve Sarkozy strenuously advocates, after 40 galling years, that France rejoin the alliance, because “France must co-direct rather than always submit to things.”)

There could be no better place than this regional quagmire to demonstrate the impossibility of reconciling American national interests with European Union interests (whatever they are) with Afghan and Pakistani interests.

What is the way out of this morass? Pakistani and American students were in agreement that the American government had made a monumental mess of things in the region. The bromide that there is no military solution, only a political one, was passed around, but it proved no more a tonic for those in the lecture room than it is for those in the Situation Room (the White House’s or CNN’s).

Petraeus’s magic isn’t working along the 2500- kilometer long Afghan-Pakistani border, where, as the canny Pakistani student leader said, it’s the same culture on both sides of the border, and 10-30,000 people cross each day.

Almost certainly, the insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan won’t be divided, bought off, or broken as it was in Iraq. The Taliban aren’t just religious extremists; they are the proud inheritors of a long line of successful resistance dating back to Alexander the Great.

Should the ‘insurgency’ (Taliban/al Qaeda), which has been spread by American/NATO militarism in Afghanistan, and given an open field by the feud between Zardari (Musharraf deja vu) and Sharif, seriously threaten to take over nuclear-armed Pakistan, will the United States invade? That would make Iraq look like a Sunday stroll.

The policy for dealing with global jihadists is, ironically, completely fragmented. Sorting out this mess will require genuine change agents on all sides.

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net . The author welcomes comments.

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