2
“MY admiration and respect for you are going up at the same rate as your progress towards a decision to grant military aid to Pakistan,” Saadat Hasan Manto wrote in one of his Letters to Uncle Sam (as translated by Khalid Hasan). A military pact is essential, he adds, “since our mullah is the best antidote to Russian communism”.
“Once military aid starts flowing you should arm these mullahs. They would also need American-made … prayer beads …” Manto’s satirical epistles serve as a reminder that a cosy relationship with the US was high on the political agenda even during Pakistan’s infancy as a state. The rewarding efforts this year to regain favour with the White House have occasioned considerable jubilation. The possible ramifications, meanwhile, are glossed over even as Pakistan continues to struggle with the consequences of previous dalliances with American power.
As a newly minted state liberated from the overlordship of an imperial power, Pakistan’s leaders were on the lookout for a new patron. The Cold War had barely been launched in 1947, yet the country offered itself as a regional bulwark against communism in return for a down payment of $2 billion. One of the more embarrassing efforts in this crusade is a “confidential memorandum” penned by Feroze Khan Noon as an emissary of the first governor-general, informing the US that unlike the “Hindus” (India), the “Mussalmans” had not established diplomatic relations with Moscow, so: “If USA help Pakistan to become a strong and independent country … then the people of Pakistan will fight to last man against Communism to keep their freedom and preserve their way of life.”
This wasn’t intended as satire. Manto put it more eloquently later: “If … mullahs [are] armed in the American style, the Soviet Union that hawks communism and socialism in our country will have to shut shop.”
The US initially showed little interest, but a military pact was on the horizon by the time of Manto’s 1954 letter, and Pakistan was an eager participant in both Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian military alliances. It’s reluctance to back Egypt during the 1956 Suez war stirred some popular unrest, but the US ties only deepened as it lapsed into military dictatorship, and its first field marshal was hailed as an Asian de Gaulle by Western benefactors. Neither Charles de Gaulle nor Ayub Khan quite recovered from the 1968 uprisings in France and Pakistan (among other countries).
The country remains devoted to its ‘first love’.
Pakistan’s second martial law was accompanied by the promise of its first general elections, which did take place. The aftermath doesn’t require repetition. Suffice it to say that the military ‘crackdown’ in East Pakistan enjoyed enthusiastic backing from the Nixon-Kissinger White House, and surreptitious efforts were made to bolster Pakistan’s depleted military resources as it went to war with India. It didn’t help, and Pakistan’s political leadership after the second partition failed to impress America. The country’s first elected prime minister was not only too independent-minded, he also saw his Western interlocutors as equals rather than superiors. After the tragic conclusion of that phase, the third military dictator shamelessly offered his services as a satrap to the Carter and Reagan administrations in the context of America’s dirty war in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. That’s when Uncle Sam took Manto’s advice and armed the mullahs.
The mujahideen alliance proved incapable of governance after capturing Kabul, while heroin and kalashnikovs proliferated in Pakistan. America lost interest once the Red Army beat a retreat, but we remained on the case and engendered the Taliban. Not long afterwards, our fourth military dictator felt obliged to back the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, even as escaping Taliban and allies such as Al Qaeda found sanctuary on Pakistani territory. It was hardly surprising that this mess spawned the Pakistani Taliban, who almost 20 years later remain a growing menace in KP.
Military clashes with the second Taliban regime in Afghanistan can hardly solve what is largely an internal issue. The mineral riches promised to Donald Trump can, if they exist, only be extracted from troubled regions in KP and Balochistan. The prospect of oil is just pie in the sky.
Words come cheap, though, and the current leadership has perfected the art of flattery. As the Punjabi poet Ustad Daman put it ages ago, “Har marz da teeka/ Zindabad Amreeka” (The only panacea/ Long live America) still rings true in a country whose leaders appears to have learnt nothing from the repercussions of previous trysts with Uncle Sam, and have leapt into another courtship on the global stage while all but ignoring domestic tribulations on the socioeconomic, environmental, political and national security fronts. Can any good possibly come of this Trumpian lovefest?
Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2025
