Counter-Terrorism: Frenemies Unmasked

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June 11, 2011: Recently released Wikileaks documents show how the U.S. has known for years that anti-American attitudes are not only rampant in the Pakistani military, and were taught, and taken for granted, in the senior military schools (like the War College, which was within sight of where Osama bin Laden had been hiding for six years) Actually, this hatred and paranoia was never a secret, but the United States officially played it down. But many Pakistani officers (and most Pakistanis) believe some strange (to Westerners)  things. For example, many Pakistanis are certain  that the September 11, 2001 attacks were either an inside job, or an Israeli plot (or both) and that the war on terror is a cover for a war on Islam. Many other anti-American and anti-West conspiracies are popular in Pakistan, and the government there does nothing about it (even though many senior Pakistani civilian and military leaders know that this is all self-defeating fantasy that, they believe, is too dangerous to go up against.) Pakistan is what you could call a frenemy (an enemy that you must, for one reason or another, be friendly with.)

 

 

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