The deluge of secret U.S. diplomatic cables revealed this week by WikiLeaks has severely tarnished Pakistan's political and military leadership, strained relations with key Western partners in the fight against terrorism and inflamed anti-Americanism in the country.
The dispatches portray Pakistan's government and opposition as fawningly pro-American and duplicitous, discrediting almost the entire political class, with details of them agreeing to policies in private meetings with U.S. diplomats that they would passionately disavow in public. The image of Pakistan's powerful military chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, emerges particularly badly damaged from the cables, which reveal that he would confide highly sensitive information to the U.S. ambassador and use her to carry messages to his own political leadership.
Despite the close alliance between Islamabad and Washington, Pakistani public opinion is vehemently anti-American and highly sensitive about encroachments on the nation's sovereignty. The exposé of the intimate relationship between U.S. and Pakistani officials is therefore likely to be highly damaging. At the very least, the disclosures will make co-operation between Islamabad and Washington more difficult. It is widely believed in Pakistan that the country is run by the United States and the cables appear to provide voluminous evidence for this belief.
"I am worried about my own leadership because it has behaved as clients, not pursuers of Pakistani interests," said Khurshid Ahmad, vice-president of Jamaat-i-Islami, a religious political party. "Disenchantment [and]anti-Americanism will increase among the people."
The WikiLeaks documents include a 2009 cable in which officials discussed removing fissile material from a Pakistani nuclear reactor, an incendiary issue among Pakistanis, many of whom think the United States is out to strip their country of its nuclear capability.
The Pakistani media has studiously ignored the other side of the story that emerges from the leaked communications - of deep American frustration at Pakistan's lack of co-operation. In one cable, from September, 2009, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson laments that there is "no chance" Pakistan will stop funding certain Islamic extremist groups, no matter how much U.S. aid is doled out.
Perhaps the most harmful impact of the leaks is that Pakistanis - and people in other developing countries allied with the United States - will take them as justification for blaming Washington for their problems, said Mosharraf Zaidi, an independent analyst based in Islamabad.
"It's very damaging for Pakistanis to continue to use this narrative that the Americans are running us and that they're the ones destroying everything," Mr. Zaidi said. "Any country that gets in this position is because of choices that the country makes."
The belief that the United States is the ultimate power in Pakistan appears to be shared by Pakistan's politicians themselves, however. One ambitious contender, Fazl-ur-Rehman, leader of a hard-line religious party that is ostensibly hostile to the United States, held a banquet for Ms. Patterson in 2007 to seek her help in becoming the next prime minister.
In a potentially damaging disclosure for the Pakistani leadership, the cables reveal the clandestine operation of small numbers of U.S. special forces alongside Pakistani troops close to the Afghan border, something the politicians and generals have repeatedly pledged they would never allow.
The WikiLeaks documents also lay bare the Pakistani leadership's acquiescence in the use of U.S. drone aircraft to target suspected militants in the country's tribal area, with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani telling the American ambassador: "We'll protest in the National Assembly [parliament]and then ignore it." Pakistan's leaders, including Mr. Gilani, have repeatedly condemned drone strikes in public, claiming they were pressing Washington to stop them.
In an apparent pre-emptive briefing, the Pakistani military called in leading journalists on Sunday, telling them that Pakistan is Washington's "most bullied" ally, according to one account. President Asif Ali Zardari spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday, telling her that "the so called leaks will not be allowed to cast a shadow on the strategic partnership between the two countries," according to a statement from his office.
Special to The Globe and Mail