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US versus Pakistan: Can't live with each other, can't live without

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Kaveree Bamzai
Kaveree BamzaiNov 25, 2014 | 17:46

US versus Pakistan: Can't live with each other, can't live without

Popular culture is often the first barometer of how official positions change.

In India, Hindi cinema moved focus from rural to urban long before the Indian government realised that even if India lives and votes in its villages, it is cities that shape public opinion and provide corporate funding.

More recently, Hindi cinema discovered the NRI community much before Hindutva champions did, realising the diaspora was hungry to hear its own stories, especially if they were glossified.

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So bear with me when I say that the latest season of Homeland marks a distinct shift in the popular perception of America's attitude to Pakistan. India has long argued that Pakistan has allowed militants to use their country to launch attacks on India. The West didn't believe it until 9/11 brought home terror to them.

[Spoiler alert] 

Homeland's latest season, set in Pakistan (played by Cape Town) suggests that Americans are now deeply suspicious of Pakistan's role in the war on terror. The articulation of positions such as that of Sartaj Aziz, that there is good Taliban and bad Taliban, has finally convinced America that the Pakistan state--or what its people like to call the hybrid democracy--has been deeply penetrated by terrorist sympathisers. In Homeland, Haissam Haqqani, a Taliban warlord who escapes a drone strike orders the exchange of five Pakistani terrorists (including one accused of a horrific Karachi bombing), for the former chief of CIA, Saul Berenson (played by Mandy Patinkin). Officially the head of counter insurgency in ISI, Aasar Khan (played by Raza Jaffrey) is shown to be completely oblivious of the real machinations behind the exchange.

His organisation is shown to be penetrated through its core by sympathisers and the Americans, compeletely befuddled by crafty Pakistani machinations. The CIA chief Andrew Lockhart (played by Tracy Letts) and the American Ambassador Martha Boyd (played by Laila Robins) are completely outfoxed. The Taliban are shown to be willing to use their children as pawns, renege on agreements, prey on the weak and treat their prisoners with brutality. The Americans, when they are not befuddled or misdirecting drone strikes which are then used as propaganda tools by the Taliban, are true humanists who don't want war, because then, as Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), the bipolar badass CIA Station Chief in Islamabad says, "'how does it make us better than them?"'

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The Pakistanis are not to be trusted. As Lockhart asks Ambassador Boyd, after a particularly gruelling round of negotiations with the Pakistanis, how do you do this? Eat s***? You learn to suck it up, she says calmly. He loses his cool at one point, and threatens to cut off aid to the Pakistanis, which naturally results in even greater machinations on their part.

It mirrors the actual meetings between Pakistani and American officials, as referred to in a 2013 story in The Washington Post, which accessed secret CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos. According to the story, "'some files describe tense meetings in which senior U.S. officials, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, confront their Pakistani counterparts with U.S. intelligence purporting to show Pakistan’s ties to militant groups involved in attacks on American forces, a charge that Islamabad has consistently denied.'' In one case, Clinton cited “cell phones and written material from dead bodies that point all fingers” at a militant group based in Pakistan, according to a Pakistani diplomatic cable dated September 20, 2011. “The U.S. had intelligence proving ISI was involved with these groups,” she is quoted as saying.

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Without giving too much away (as if I haven't already) it's safe to say that Homeland's season 4 shows Pakistanis as shifty, manipulative, and masters of the game, completely in bed with the Taliban. Hillary Clinton's ominous statement, you can't breed snakes in your backyard and hope they will bite only your neighbours, plays as the beginning credits roll. But it wasn't always this way. The CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos also show in fact how deep the association between the Americans and Pakistanis was in the war on terror including the fact that top officials in Pakistan’s government not only secretly endorsed the programme for years but also routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts. The files describe dozens of drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal region and include maps as well as before-and-after aerial photos of targeted compounds over a four-year stretch from late 2007 to late 2011. The Washington Post story said many of the maps were prepared by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center specifically to be shared with Pakistan’s government.  

The gradual disaffection with a once close ally is small solace for Indians who have long held this view, that the Pakistani state is not to be trusted. Plus, it doesn't hurt that all the Pakistani villains are being played by Indians (especially the luminous but devious ISI double agent Tasneem Qureshi, played by Nimrat Kaur).

The latest episode nine (spoiler alert again) ends with an audacious attack by the Taliban on the US embassy in Islamabad, which may or may not mirror the Benghazi attack. We'll know soon. 

Last updated: November 25, 2014 | 17:46
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