"Pakistan's Elite Show Anti-Americanism in Elections

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(Notice how popular myths about imperialist conspiracies are used to
discredit popular knowledge about such things as the real level of civilian
casualties in Afghanistan.  Of course, it is the imperialists' systematic
lying that lends credibility to conspiracy theories of all kinds.
Fred Feldman.)

Pakistan's Elite Show Anti-Americanism in Elections
By DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 12 - Seated on the front lawn of his father's
palatial house in a leafy enclave here, Ehsan Ijaz, a 20-year-old junior at
Georgia Tech, explained this afternoon why other members of the Pakistani
elite have turned against the United States.

While anti-Americanism has long had deep roots here, Western diplomats and
Pakistani analysts all insisted that there was no great cause for concern
because Pakistan's wealthy elite and urban middle class would never support
the country's Islamic religious parties.

That changed on Thursday, when residents of Islamabad, with the richest and
most well-educated population in Pakistan, backed the local candidate of a
coalition of religious parties bent on expelling American forces from
Pakistan, ending corruption and imposing Taliban-style Islamic law.

Mr. Ijaz, an affable computer science major who was dressed in flip-flops,
shorts and a Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets T-shirt, said he was not surprised,
because in Islamabad, the image of the United States is "terrible."

Mr. Ijaz himself felt some sympathy for the religious parties. He cited
popular frustration with the corruption of the country's two main parties,
and the hope the religious parties would reform the derelict education
system and curb poverty.

But mainly he finds himself defending the United States these days, in
increasingly heated conversations with other members of the country's elite.

The talk of an American attack on Iraq has caused many here to declare the
American campaign against terrorism a war against Islam. That follows anger
over the United States military campaign in Afghanistan, a perception of
one-sided American support for Israel and resentment that while President
Bush speaks of democratic values, he backs the military dictatorship of Gen.
Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. Much of the anti-Americanism is also based on
notions about the attack on the World Trade Center that Americans would
consider ludicrous.

The hardening of attitudes is playing out in politics. On Thursday, the
local religious party candidate, Mian Aslam, received 40,000 votes in the
Islamabad area, twice the number of his nearest rival, the candidate of one
of the country's two mainstream political parties. Mr. Aslam, a wealthy
businessman, said, "The people of Pakistan want an Islamic system."

The religious parties did well not only in the religiously conservative
provinces bordering Afghanistan. They also beat leading mainstream
candidates in the country's cities for the first time, picking up one seat
here in the capital, two in Lahore and two in Karachi.

Based on the final returns today, the religious parties will control two of
the country's four provincial governments and will be the third-largest
party in the National Assembly, holding a record 45 seats. Their best
previous showing was 9 seats in 1993. That will give the party considerable
standing in the assembly, where the party backed by General Musharraf won 77
seats and that of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto won 62. (A fourth
group, the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, took 15 seats.)

Mr. Ijaz has personally been caught in the tensions between the Muslim world
and the United States, because he is missing classes waiting for his visa to
be renewed. He criticizes the new security checks for Muslim males from 20
countries that have prevented him getting a visa to continue his studies.

But he fights with his growing number of Pakistani friends who deride
America as a bullying, arrogant, anti-Islamic country. Mr. Ijaz has been
told by people here that the jets that struck the World Trade Center were
flown by remote control or were part of an American or Israeli conspiracy to
defame Islam. It is commonly believed here that thousands of civilians died
in indiscriminate American bombing in Afghanistan. Estimates by journalists
put the figure at 400 to 1,500.

"People here don't understand why they attacked Afghanistan," Mr. Ijaz said,
referring to the United States. "They fear that if they attack Afghanistan
today they can attack Pakistan tomorrow.
Conversations with Pakistanis over the last two months matched Mr. Ijaz's
description. In Karachi, a wealthy young businessman who had studied in
Britain asked why the Western news media had failed to report that the
United States dropped nuclear weapons in Afghanistan.

A young Pakistani man who had lived in New Jersey for several years
announced at a party given by American marines that he admired the strength
of the Jewish conspiracy that controls the Western news media, the United
States Congress and the world economy.
In an interview before the elections, Rasul Bakhsh Rais, director of an
American studies center at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, said
anti-Americanism was simmering among the urban middle class and elite. But
at the time, he said the sentiment would not produce increased support for
the religious parties.

"I'm surprised," he said in an interview a day after the election. "I did
not expect this."

Full
article:http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/international/asia/13STAN.html?pag
ewanted=1




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