When The Donald tweeted “lies & deceit” it left Pakistanis foaming at the mouth and millions of Indians happy like hippies. But the happiness was short-lived. It did not take long for Pakistan to talk as if it had secret evidence to prove it doesn’t owe a single dollar to the United States of America.
Pakistan told Trump that it would gladly pay any audit firm the US hired to check where the $33 billion given to Pakistan to “fight America’s war” went, for what and to whom? Pakistan’s foreign minister Khawaja Asif said “let the world know who is lying & deceiving.”
Asif’s children are settled in the United States. So are the children of hundreds of Pakistani generals, politicians and diplomats. Khawaja spoke after the National Security Committee (NSC) of Pakistan met and declared that it need not take Trump’s tweet seriously.
Does Pakistan live in a bubble? Year 2018 started toxic for Pakistan. Almost all the elite in Pakistan got a dose of the Trump Derangement Syndrome. A full 36 hours later, they seemed to have come to terms with the “lies & deceit” tweet.
Beijing drove down the China Pakistan Economic Corridor to calm and compose them. The Chinese sold the yaun to the dollar-hit Pakistanis. They consoled their all-weather friend and promised to stand by Pakistan no matter what its crimes.
China – buoyed by Pakistan linking its currency to the yaun – reminded the world of the tremendous record of Pakistan in combating terror. Very soon Pakistanis would have pockets and wallets stuffed with the Chinese Renmimbi. The Pakistani rupee wouldn’t stand a chance.
Does the shift from dollar to yaun mean schism, split – war? Unlikely, the US cannot force the dollar down any country’s throat if that country does not want to. And with the $60 billion loan for CPEC, Pakistan was already under a heap of Chinese yaun.
Pakistan would still need the dollar to trade with the rest of the world, with India. But it appeared like nothing mattered to the Pakistanis, who were getting out of their tweet-stupor, with many demanding that Pakistan bar the US from taking the Pakistani road to Afghanistan, and disallow them from flying overhead.
This as the NSC met and the Pakistani establishment reached the consensus that “Pakistan cannot act in haste” and should not stop playing a “constructive role” towards an “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned” peace process.
The Dawn newspaper said in an editorial on Wednesday morning that Pakistan’s response was “measured”.
“Perhaps as other countries are discovering, the Pakistani leadership has recognised a Trump tweet for what it could be: an outburst that may not eventually figure in the US policy process. It’s more a testament of the trouble the US is in that a presidential tweet can be regarded as incoherent ramblings,” the edit said.
Pakistanis were still having fun at the expense of Trump while Republicans in the US were warning Democrats to “underestimate Trump at your own peril” because “America’s rate of growth was up” and even the New York Times was acknowledging it.
And Tuesday the Trump tweet became “policy” when the United States announced that Pakistan would not get the $255 million it was hoping to get before Trump tweeted early New Year morning.
This when at least one Pakistani solved the riddle on why Trump tweeted Pakistan “of all countries” first thing on the first morning of 2018. His discovery: Nawaz Sharif, who was in Riyadh, spoke to Crown Prince Salman and Crown Prince Salman called up Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who told Trump it was time to stiff Pakistan!
Such salacious talk has become part of the vocabulary in Pakistan post-Trump tweet even as talk veered to India’s “involvement”. Pakistan was acting like it had suddenly discovered moral conscience. A lot of talk on Trump was about his “impending impeachment”, a desire far more fervent in Pakistanis than in Americans.
Indians were called “cunning banias” and China and Pakistan were behaving like they had Afghanistan bottled up because it wouldn’t take long to barrel out the US from Kabul. China asked India to join the Belt & Road if it didn’t want to be isolated in the region. Somebody smart suggested it was time Pakistan allowed the Taliban their embassy in Islamabad.
From being pretty jumpy to being pretty cocky did not take long for the Pakistanis. But the Pakistani general and the Pakistani politician like their London and their New York and their dollar too much for them not to Yaun!
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