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There is no gainsaying the fact that the graph of negative feeling about United States has been rising in Pakistan and the efforts made by Washington to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people have yielded very little tangible results. According to national and global public opinion surveys overwhelming majority of Pakistanis views Unites States as an unfriendly country. According to the data compiled by Pew Global Attitude Project since 2002, the annual average of those Pakistanis who hold a positive image of the United States is less than 20%. This public disaffection toward the United States stands in marked contrast to the decades of the 1960s and 1970s when Pakistanis turned out in large numbers to welcome visiting American leaders. The first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, for example, was greeted by thousands of cheering Pakistanis, when her motorcade passed through the narrow streets of Rawalpindi in 1962. Standing next to President Ayub Khan in a convertible vehicle, she constantly waved at people who had lined the streets to catch a glimpse of her.
What explains this turn around in public sentiments toward the United States? The reasons for this Pakistani disenchantment with Washington are varied and complex. The overarching reason is the transactional nature of ties between Islamabad and Washington. Rather than valuing Pakistan as an ally in its own right, Washington has taken an instrumental view of Pakistan. In the early 1950s, strategic links were forged with Pakistan with the sole aim of using the country as a bulwark against the threat of communist expansion in Asia. Pakistani concerns relating to Kashmir and the threat from India were never accorded a strategic priority by Washington. Pakistanis felt “let down” and “betrayed” after the United States suspended aid during the 1965 India-Pakistan war. Pakistani efforts to cultivate China as a strategic ally in the mid-1960s were also disapproved by Washington due to strained Sino-American ties. The United States used Islamabad as an intermediary for its historic opening to China but failed to prevent the disintegration of Pakistan following the 1971 India-Pakistan war.
The strident American opposition to the launching of Pakistan’s nuclear program following the trauma of 1971 and Indian nuclear test in May 1974 only reinforced the Pakistani belief that Washington was insensitive to Pakistan’s legitimate security needs. The imposition of military and economic sanctions on Pakistan under the American anti-proliferation laws further inflamed the rising public resentment toward Washington. The temporary lifting of these sanctions during the Soviet-Afghan war during which Pakistan became the “frontline” state and their re-imposition in 1990 after the larger American goal of defeating the Soviet evil empire had been served, provided ample proof of American unreliability and punitive approach toward Pakistan.
The end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union led to Pakistan’s strategic denigration by Washington. This was clearly demonstrated by President Bill Clinton’s visit to South Asia in March 2000 during which he lectured the Pakistani people and the government on virtues of democracy and praised India as the new rising power and preferred strategic partner of United States. The fact that President Clinton spent less than six hours in Pakistan and four full days in India was not lost on Pakistani public.
Following 9/11 terrorist attacks, Washington exerted enormous coercive pressure on Pakistan to distance itself from the Taliban regime in Kabul which had refused to disavow its links with al-Qaeda. Willy-nilly, Islamabad joined the U.S.-led global coalition against terrorism and to its chagrin watched the demise of the Taliban controlled Afghanistan. The American failure to physically interdict the fleeing al-Qaeda and their Taliban supporters including Mullah Omar who made their way into the tribal areas of Pakistan, forced the Pakistan military to deploy troops along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and to initiate military campaigns against al-Qaeda sanctuaries. The massive use of force by the Pakistan military generated a strong reaction among the local population and spawned armed resistance led by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
TTP’s violent campaign including suicide attacks on military and civilian targets in major Pakistani cities claimed 30, 000 lives including 2,000 Pakistani soldiers. These heavy losses received little appreciation from Washington and the American officials continued with their refrain that Islamabad ought to do more to bring the threat of armed militancy under control. Dissatisfied with the Pakistani military response and suspicious of ISI’s double dealings with some of the Afghan resistance networks operating out of the tribal belt, Washington intensified its campaign of drone attacks in the FATA region. Between 2004 and 2010, there were 199 drone strikes in which 1934 people were killed. In 2010 alone there were more than 100 drone attacks in which 800 people lost their lives. These drone attacks were condemned by the Pakistani people including the Parliament as acts that caused civilian deaths (for each al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by U.S. drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die), violated international law and undermined the authority of the Pakistani government. Disregarding these strong anti-drone public sentiments, the Obama administration continues to employ them as the most efficient tool to degrade the terrorist threat emanating from Waziristan which Secretary Defense Robert Gates has characterized as the “epicenter of global terrorism.” Apart from the transactional character of Pak-U.S. bilateral ties in which Pakistani national security interests were either marginalized or totally ignored by Washington, another important factor that has inflamed anti-American sentiment in Pakistan is the mounting evidence of American blatant interference in the domestic affairs of Pakistan. As highlighted by the leaked U.S. Embassy cables sent from Islamabad, Washington has been deeply involved in not only managing civil-military relations but also using its clout to keep things hidden from the public eye. The deployment of elements of American special forces in FATA was not only flatly denied by the U.S. government but it was also kept as a secret from the Pakistani people. Washington’s secret dealings with the Pakistani establishment only reinforce the widely held Pakistani perception that American policies toward Pakistan either serve Washington or they are so narrowly focused that they fail to promote the larger and collective interest of the Pakistani people. Given this pervasive public suspicion of the American motives, it becomes exceedingly difficult for Washington to pursue those policies which actually promote collective good. Every American move to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the Pakistani public is seen as a form of deception which is devoid of any intrinsic value. Overcoming this unfortunate legacy of public distrust is the single most important challenge facing Washington in its future dealings with Pakistan. 
Dr. Syed Rifaat Hussain is Professor of Defense and Strategic Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. He regularly teaches classes on regional and international security issues.
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