Salman Masood recently wrote a very interesting blog post for the New York Times At War blog. The U.S. has passed along 3 F-16 fighter planes to the Pakistani Air Force; the transfer has caused much strutting fan fare and has germinated a crashing wave crop of billowing, swollen chests.
Citing reportage in Dawn, the popular english daily and The News, he writes:
“…the aircraft will be used for precision strikes against militant hide-outs in the country’s tribal regions straddling the border with Afghanistan.”
“Ironically, those who oppose American policies towards the country, including drone strikes, also welcomed the induction of American-manufactured fighter aircraft.”
Consider that the import of the transfer is two-fold. In the first instance, it signals a detente and a signal of a fulsome rapprochement between the U.S. and Pakistan. In the mid-90’s the U.S. had terminated the sale of fighter aircraft to Pakistan due to Pakistan’s moves on nuclear armament and proliferation. Now, notes Mr. Masood, the sitting U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, has blessed the exchange as public recognition of the silken bonds that have drawn the two nations together.
In the second case, this news more than any other, suggests that it is not lives taken in Pakistan that matter to Pakistanis. It is rather that the lives taken and lost in the battles and skirmishes in FATA and other unmapped and unknown places, sting because they are so taken, snatched by foreign entities.
It is all a matter of sovereignty. I can kill my people as I see fit, including selecting out broad swathes of my citizenry, relegating them to enemy status. You stand on no such ground. Your moves on my patch of ground do not merit that accounting trick.
This is my home but you are a stranger in my home.
