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India-Pakistan | |
Anti-Americanism rife in Pakistani military | |
2011-05-26 | |
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A US diplomatic cable said the former US ambassador to Pakistain, Anne Patterson, found officers at the National Defense University (NDU) were "naive and biased" against the United States, a key ally which gives Pakistain billions of dollars of aid to help fight bully boys. Fears the military could be harboring bully boy sympathizers have grown since US forces killed the late Osama bin Laden ... who used to be but now ain't... this month in a Pak garrison town, where the Al-Qaeda leader had probably lived for several years. Pakistain's military also controls the country's nuclear arms, and a series of attacks against military installations has heightened fears about the safety of those weapons. "The elite of this crop of colonels and brigadiers are receiving biased NDU training with no chance to hear alternative views of the US," the WikiLeaks cable, which was published in the Dawn newspaper, quoted Patterson as saying. "Given the bias of the instructors, we also believe it would be beneficial to initiate an exchange program for instructors." Some of the officers believed the CIA was in charge of the US media, the report said. Anti-Americanism runs high among Paks but it has deepened after Bin Laden's killing in a US raid which many Paks see as breach of illusory sovereignty. Patterson said the United States must target a "lost generation" of military officers who missed training programs in the United States after Washington imposed sanctions against Pakistain in the 1990s for its nuclear program. The cables also documented the account of a US army officer, Col. Michael Schleicher, who attended a course at NDU and corroborated the views expressed by Patterson. "The senior level instructors had misperception about US policies and culture and infused the lectures with these suspicions, while the students share these misconceptions with their superiors despite having children who attended universities in the US or London," the cables quoted Schleicher as saying. Hamayoun Khan, a teacher at NDU, however denied that anti-Americanism was being taught at the university. "I haven't seen bias which she has mentioned here," he said. | |
Posted by:Fred |