ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top leadership must be hoping that the clamour over the large presence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) personnel supporting the earthquake relief effort will divert its critics’ attention away from the fact that the numerical strength of US military personnel in Pakistan is significantly greater than that of Nato.

More notably, the US presence here is not time-bound. While the Nato deployment was planned to last for 90 days, the US presence appears to be open-ended. According to a top Pakistani military commander coordinating operations, US personnel will remain in Pakistan “as long as the requirement persists”. If so, then one hopes that the US and Pakistan will agree on the definition of ‘requirement’.

Cynicism, scepticism, suspicion and caution aside, both Nato and US military personnel have one thing in common. They are providing humanitarian assistance, and the services they have rendered so far may have saved the lives of thousands of earthquake victims. US and Nato helicopters and field hospitals have given both hope and life to countless survivors and injured people.

Currently, nearly a 1,000-member-strong US military relief team is deployed in Pakistan providing aviation, medical and engineering support in the aftermath of the October 8 earthquake compared to the under 900-member Nato relief team supporting the relief effort. This fact was recently confirmed by Pakistan military spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan as well as a US major at the US Disaster Assistance Centre set up at the Chaklala Airbase.

Task Force Eagle and 212th MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) make up a portion of the US contingent, which also includes a large administrative and maintenance team for the engineering and medical units.

According to the US embassy’s information section, approximately 300 US army soldiers and 16 CH-47 Chinook helicopters comprise Task Force Eagle. The US began flying humanitarian aid on October 11, three days after the 7.6 magnitude earthquake devastated parts of Kashmir and the NWFP.

212th MASH is manned by approximately 200 US army soldiers and began seeing patients on October 25. The facility is capable of performing simultaneous surgeries and has a capacity of 24 intensive care unit beds with 60 additional beds for patients needing less in-patient monitoring.

Earlier this week, it was announced by the US Disaster Assistance Centre that the total aid delivered by US helicopters topped 5,000 tons and the US hospital in Muzaffarabad had received its 5,000th patient.

Parliamentary and public concern about the presence of the western military alliance and the duration of its stay was blunted last week when Pakistan announced that it was not seeking an extension in Nato’s 90-day humanitarian mission in the country. Conscious of the growing criticism by the opposition parties, Nato decided to publicly state that it was “not here to stay” by declaring that it had asked the host government to indicate whether its services would be required beyond the initially agreed period. The government’s decision not to seek an extension was most probably prompted because of the large US military contingent already present in the quake- hit areas. Such intelligent media management of public concerns failed, however, to address questions about where APHC leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was going when he sought a Nato role in the proposed demilitarization of Kashmir. Apparently, the Mirwaiz resorted to the usual line of ‘I was quoted out of context’ when the issue was raised by some quarters in Islamabad. The Mirwaiz’s explanation is not convincing since his proposal came in an article and not in an interview.

Lack of transparency in state policy breeds lack of trust, and national security issues tend to be dramatised by state propaganda and the zeal of opinion-makers to make positive assertions on matters not even known to them. The debate over the Nato presence in Pakistan can perhaps serve as the best example of this dilemma of the Pakistani state.

Some critics of Nato’s presence believe it may undermine the security of Pakistan’s strategic assets. Nato, they say, may exploit the ‘window of opportunity’ to spy on Pakistan’s nuclear assets or find a pretext for its continued presence in the region to advance its long-term strategic agenda. Another view is that the underlying objective of Nato’s arrival was to hunt Al Qaeda elements in the north of Pakistan.

Apparently, it was made clear by the government to Nato personnel at the outset that they would not engage themselves in combat. It was stipulated as a condition for allowing entry for Nato personnel that even if such a situation arose somewhere, use of force would be left to the Pakistan Army. It is believed a similar message was sent out to the US military relief mission. But no one cared to make any of this public. And then people also wondered what else was being hidden. After all so much in the past relating to national security was kept under wraps by successive governments.

The onus of ending such speculation and apprehensions lies squarely on the government. Making public the broad elements of the understanding reached with Nato or for that matter with the US military contingent would put to rest all the conspiracy theories floating around. After all, it is a humanitarian undertaking, not a national security issue or a clandestine military operation the specifics of which cannot be divulged.