by B. MURALIDHAR REDDY
The 9/11 attack was a Jewish conspiracy, the CIA runs the American media, MI-5 runs the BBC: commonplace conspiracy theories on the Internet and, as a U.S. military officer found out while he attended a course at one of Pakistan’s premier military education institutes, common too among senior officers of the Pakistan military.
As the United States tries to “reset” its relationship with Pakistan and especially the country’s powerful military, a May 12, 2008 U.S. Embassy cable from Islamabad about Colonel Michael Schleicher’s experiences at the National Defence University ( 153436: confidential) shows that it is going to be a mostly uphill task.
The cable, a report of Colonel Schleicher’s “perceptions of the course, his classmates and his instructors” as told to the Embassy’s Political Officer, is a primer on the different universes that the U.S. and Pakistan inhabit; it shows that anti-American biases run deep in the military, despite the lavish bankrolling by the U.S.
Sent under the signature of U.S. Ambassador Anne W. Patterson, the cable concludes that the best way to correct this is to increase opportunities for Pakistani military officers to train in the U.S, and to “consider an exchange program of instructors to broaden understanding of the U.S.”
Located in Islamabad, the National Defence University’s stated mission is “to impart higher education policy and strategy formulation at various tiers with emphasis on national security and defence, and act as a national think tank.” Among its students are high-calibre military officers.
Col. Schleicher attended the NDU senior course, for students at the colonel and brigadier ranks; the junior course draws officers of the lieutenant colonel and colonel ranks.
The American officer inferred — on the basis of his professional and personal interactions — that at least two-thirds of his Pakistani batch-mates were either “religiously devout” or “moderately religious.”
According to him, less than a third of his class was “overtly secular,” and only two openly drank alcohol. Consumption of liquor by Muslims is prohibited in Pakistan.
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(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)