Pakistanerne har problemer med å samle seg mot Taliban, av en rekke forskjellige grunner. Den politiske kulturen er svak og korrupt. Man leter i utlandet for å finne syndebukker for tingenes tilstand. - Mistilliten til Vesten er større enn frykten for Taliban, skriver professor Anatol Lieven etter et besøk.
Denne mistilliten finner sitt uttrykk i en overbevisning om at det ikke var muslimer, men USA som sto bak 9/11:
In a way, however, you really have to know only one fact to understand what is happening: and that, to judge by my meetings with hundreds of Pakistanis from all walks of life over the past nine months, is that the vast majority of people believe that the 9/11 attacks were not an act of terrorism by al-Qaeda, but a plot by the Bush Administration or Israel to provide an excuse to invade Afghanistan and dominate the Muslim world.
It goes without saying that this belief is a piece of malignant cretinism, based on a farrago of invented “evidence” and hopelessly warped reasoning, but that is not the point. The point is that most of the Pakistani population genuinely believe it, even here in Sindh where I have been travelling for the past week; and the people who believe it include the communities from which the army’s soldiers, NCOs and junior officers are drawn. Understand this, and much else falls into place.
After all, if British soldiers strongly believed that the war in Afghanistan was the product of a monstrous American lie, involving the deliberate slaughter of thousands of America’s own citizens, would they be willing for one moment to risk their lives fighting the Taleban?
I Storbritannia er det mange som har meninger og kunnskap om Pakistan. En skriver:
That is their particular tragedy then. To believe the US was behind 9/11 will make them complicit in their own road to Talibanisation - a supreme irony if you look at it for what it means. But hatred and suspicioun blinds.
En lærer i London sier at mistilliten ikke bare gjelder USA og 9/11:
It goes a little deeper than 9/11. I teach a number of students from the ‘Muslim’ community and many firmly express the view the Americans did not land on the moon and that I am the work of the devil for suggesting that Evolution has a rational basis.
Educational reform in depth is urgent.
Mistrust of the West is stronger in Pakistan than fear of the Taleban
In Karachi and Islamabad they really believe the US was behind 9/11. That is why opposition to the jihadists is so lukewarm
