A lesser people?
ON Friday, the city of Chicago, will host the Nato summit. When the leaders invited to the summit arrive in the city, both maritime and airspace restrictions will already be in place.
Lakeshore Drive, one of Chicago’s main thoroughfares in the city will be closed completely. The electronic Metra train that transports hundreds of thousands of busy commuters everyday will close several stations affecting millions of passengers over the course of the three-day restrictions.
Those who will be able to get on the trains will not be able to take with them backpacks or food or drink; the only bags permitted will be a single briefcase-sized bag, no larger than 15 by 15 inches.
Pakistanis would have felt sorry for the commuters of Chicago, all the other people on the opposite side of the globe just trying to get through their day lugging groceries home for dinner or getting to school or work, if their own humdrum lives had not been held hostage to Nato’s whims and wishes not for a week or a month but for years.
Now, with the unpredictability of a second-grader arranging a nursery school party, Nato has been shifting Pakistan from the ‘invited’ to the ‘uninvited’ column for the past fortnight.
Earlier, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen indicated that Pakistan would not be invited to attend the Nato summit because of its refusal to open the Nato supply routes through the country.
Then on May 15, 2012, with Pakistan hinting at opening the routes, the golden invitation was instantly deposited at its door.As far as the commuters of Chicago are concerned, perhaps the temporary constraints of their blocked-up and traffic-jammed city can lead them to consider the impositions Nato demands of other countries.
When standing in line for crowded buses, or spending hours in traffic jams near cordoned-off roads, they could consider, for example, the condition of commuters in Karachi who have faced far worse as one political party and then another held protest after protest against opening the supply route.
They would be doing so exactly a year to the day when one such protest held by the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf brought traffic to a complete standstill. The temperature in Karachi that day was recorded at 45 degrees Celsius.If the extreme heat and regularity of Nato-related political tumult fails to garner any sympathy, perhaps some Chicago dwellers can consider the other consequences borne by those who have the misfortune of living in the path of Nato convoys.
What supplies a war becomes part of the war, and in the years in which the convoys have been permitted to pass through Pakistan ambushes, riots and hijackings have accompanied them.
In December last year, a gang of armed gunmen attacked one Nato convoy in Balochistan and set it ablaze killing the driver and terrifying the residents of Quetta. In another attack a year earlier in June, seven people were killed as convoys were attacked by armed militants as they made their way to the Chaman border.Those are just the direct consequences of attacks on the convoys.
In the first week of May, police officers combating militants in the violence that wracked the Lyari area of Karachi, reported that many of the weapons used against them was procured from hijacked Nato convoys.
According to news reports published in a local newspaper, police officers involved in the grisly firefights which killed over 30 people and lasted for a week, said that the rocket launchers and other arms could be traced to the arms shipments meant for Nato troops in Afghanistan.
Another report from McClatchy newspapers asserted that the P226, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol used by Nato troops in Afghanistan, was also being used by members of the terrorist group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi in gun battles against security forces in Balochistan.
In reality it is unlikely that any of these things will be considered by Americans in Chicago or anywhere else in a country happily insulated from the wars it wages in other people’s backyards.
Just as the Nato secretary-general insisted on saying that the supply route is “blocked” bossily implying the existence of some pre-existing right possessed by his organisation to pass through any country, few in the US have paused to assess the supply issue as one imposing a security cost on Pakistan.
If they did they would note that few or no Americans would permit their neighbourhood roads to be used to transport dangerous criminals or drugs or weapons from one place to another. The danger would be that escaped criminals or those wishing to procure drugs or guns would resort to violence when they became aware of the route, endangering everyone who lived or worked or went to school nearby.
According to Nato, that right it seems belongs only to the citizens of wealthy countries that make up the organisation; it is only they who can object, disallow, ban and forbid the use of their own territory when it involves inviting danger into their immediate environment. For lesser people, Pakistanis and Afghans, such reservations invite accusations of intractability, of collusion with the terrorists themselves.
It is time that the issue of the Nato supply route began to be evaluated not simply in terms of how crucial the supplies are for US forces battling the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the danger it creates for ordinary Pakistanis forced to facilitate its passage through their war-ridden backyards.
Perhaps as they sit and decide the future of the region, Nato officials can take a moment to consider that the ‘supply route’ is not a road suspended in air and one prong of their elaborate war-mongering strategies but a path through a country populated by real, living people who weep when they are hurt and bleed when they are killed.
The writer is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law.
comparing oranges and apples is a way of thinking and sorting. On their highways, they have express lanes to and out of the loop for rush hour traffic control and flow. A special traffic management contingent, that helps to stop the jams, Chicago has a lot of events in downtown during summer months and ICE sculpture in winter. People plan and move on, life is not what your article depicts, education, people temperament, discipline and proper training and control and the respect of the law make it all convenient nothing to lament. YOu have to be there to observe it or believe some one who knows about it. Guessing always does not work. The agitators have already planned and got permits to protest, nothing new life goes on but not so tragically as in our homeland. Watch the news and then believe yourself.
Its interesting that the author suggests that NATO ferrying supplies is what is causing all the violence in Pakistan- as if NATO was not there, Pakistan would be a rose bed of peace and tranquility. There are no NATO convoys these days, as the route is "blocked"- but has Pakistan been any peaceful?
Sure,war is ugly and talk about it is never ending debate.who is right who is wrong.who is the victim.you can argue on either side of the isle.the writer did not mentioned the jobs this created and the cash flow it has provided for a group of people in Pakistan.just go outside Peshawar.go to karhano market.you will find dozens of stores they are called container stores. and the one who does sell here makes millions.what do you call this.?for some its a bonanaza,some get to purchase some quality shaving cream or shampoo in a country where everything is #2.right from medicines to shampoos.lets hope this nation will one day come in to its senses,stop the blame game,stand up on their own feet like other advance nations.
wonderful piece by the writers…. we must make the west realize about the turmoil they have breed for us..!
100% agreed with the writer.
Quite right ..But perhaps uncle Zia and his cronies should' ve thought twice before breeding terrorists to fight the Indian Infidel,
Post Script.
Anyone who has ever been to Chicago knows there is a traffic jam on the Kennedy Expressway every morning and evening. Business people say, "Chicago has only two seasons Winter and Construction." Ask any Pakistani cab driver how bad the Kennedy is. It's fast at 3 AM.
When Miami suffered Hurricane Andrew over one hundred M-16 assault rifles were taken away from Florida National Guard soldiers at gun point in Homestead, Florida by Black gang members. The Guardsmen were given no ammunition.
For Americans everything you mention is just routine. We deal with it. We have a few million men in prison because we lock up our criminals. We don't let them run around loose and roam at will.
Eventually we find them. You just have to keep trying.
"No Americans would permit their neighborhood roads to be used to transport dangerous criminals or drugs or weapons from one place to another."
That is funny. It happens every day in Chicago neighborhoods. That is why Pakistanis and Indians live in the suburbs. Most Muslims in the city live in or near Jews so they can shop the Jewish butcher shops for kosher meats.
I lived for 20 years in one of the most dangerous gang neighborhoods in Chicago. Drugs were sold on the street. Gangsters were shot dead in the streets. Police vans were taking criminals off in vans every day. Most of the drugs and criminals are gone now because they can't afford the rent. There are two African American families on our block with nice new homes. The trouble makers have moved on – as young White people from other states replaced them and property values went up. There are still drugs transported on Chicago streets, just not on my street. Not anymore.
Armed gunmen won't be attacking the Pakistan contingent in Chicago. Chicago is used to large snow storms and traffic jams. Just ask the Pakistanis who live here. The city will not be disrupted, nor will the people be inconvenienced because Chicago is always the perfect host, always touted by visiting TV people as a great and beautiful city.
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A few train stops closing is nothing. Happens on a 100 year old train system anyway. There will be shuttle buses to pick commuters up, or they can drive in. The major problem will be that Occupy Chicago is coming in from the suburbs. Even so, the Illinois National Guard can jail any number of protestors. Occupy Chicago will block off Michigan Avenue in any case. If Lake Shore drive is shutdown (as it is for bicycle and marathon races) visitors from the airports won't get to see 21 miles of beautiful lake front. No problem for us. We see it everyday.
While you are in Chicago don't miss the (real) shruken human heads in the South American exhibit of the Field Museum of Natural History. It's right downtown on the Lake. You will like them. Two of the heads are Europeans.
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I recently met an Italian businessman I remembered having seen in China two years earlier. He calls Chicago "the Meat Capital of the World". Lots of good beef steak, corned beef, but no water buffalo unless they serve it in Chinatown. Chicago Chinatown has been here for 100 years. So have the Polish, Greeks and Italians. The Germans and Irish arrived earlier. African Americans arrived from the southern states in the 1940s.
Chicago is the second largest Polish city in the world after Warsaw.
Another example of an article that indicates self pity mindset of pakistan. The above questions are valid. But that is asking the wrong question? Did u ever ask the question "why did we get there in the first place" ? Lot of countries are poor and helpless, but why only pakistan? have you ever asked? pakistan is not the only border with Afganistan! for that matter, afganistan is not the only place that US has set foot. As pakistanis we take decisions without sight and vision and based on short termed, short sighted, cunning/flimsy reasons the logical result of which is where we are, and complain/blame external agencies like the way this article does.!! what sad lives we lead!!!