US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, is escorted by Pakistani Rangers at the Iqbal Memorial in Lahore, 29 Oct 2009 |
Clinton has attempted to challenge anti-Americanism during her three-day visit [AFP] |
Hillary Clinton in Lahore. Manmohan Singh's signal that India is prepared to restart Pakistan talks was timed to coincide with her visit
Clinton has tough sell in Pakistan
- Hillary Clinton, with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, greets the press today at the Moghul-era Badshahi mosque in Lahore, Pakistan. | Photo by Laura Rozen
LAHORE, Pakistan — Hillary Clinton would have been hard-pressed to find a more potentially receptive audience anywhere in Pakistan than the leafy campus of the co-ed Government College University, where she held a town hall for students on Thursday.
But while the university students seemed appreciative and excited to be in the presence of the U.S. secretary of state, and formed a long line to ask her questions, there were few signs that Clinton's message — that the U.S. seeks to support and not dictate Pakistani efforts to strengthen democracy, improve the economy and fight radicalism and terror — was getting through.
"Why should we believe that Americans are sincere and that they will not betray us like they did in the past?" one young female student, Shanze' Sarfraz Cheema, asked Clinton.
Clinton acknowledged American failures of the past, including largely abandoning Pakistan after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the Bush-era support for Pakistan's former military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. She said this time would be different, in part because the Obama administration supported Pakistan's civil society and democratic institutions rather than individual rulers or personalities.
Now, she said, the U.S. is listening to Pakistanis, and Pakistan increasingly shares America's perception of the threat posed to it by the radical jihadi groups it is now fighting in a full-scale war in South Waziristan. That should be the focus, she said, not the past.
"It's difficult to look forward if you are always looking in the rearview mirror," Clinton said. "We have a lot more in common than divides us."
But despite reiterating her core message to countless Pakistani audiences — official and civic and made up of businessmen, students and women — over the past two days, there are few signs that U.S. efforts are chipping away at a basic Pakistani mistrust of U.S. intentions or constancy.
Cheema, for example, said she wasn't satisfied with Clinton's diplomatic answers, and neither were many of her friends.
Clinton "is well-spoken and did not say anything bad, but as she was giving diplomatic answers, it did not satisfy my curiosity, and many of the students I talked to felt the same way," Cheema said in an e-mail.
"Most of the Pakistanis like the American [people], but they do not like the American government; and they don't trust them because [of] the past," she said. "Winning the trust back is next to impossible. The only way any Pakistani could trust the Americans being sincere this time is if we get a written agreement that this is going to be a long-term deal, where we won't just be giving aid but would be helped to improve our economy, [and] especially be given a chance to do trade."
With an exhausting itinerary of more than two dozen appearances and meetings in some 50 hours on the ground in Pakistan this week, Clinton has been a disciplined, patient and mostly tireless frontwoman for the Obama administration's efforts to try to shift Pakistanis' perceptions of the U.S. in their region. But the trip has tested even Clinton's truly impressive stamina and has offered many sobering examples of just how long and hard a slog such an effort will be.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28914.html
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