By Zack Baddorf, Special to the Hawaii Marine

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In all likelihood, you watch the news and associate Pakistan with Iraq and Afghanistan – suicide bombings throughout the country and militants giving the country an image of extremism, terrorism and lawlessness.

From the Pakistani perspective, while foreign troops don’t march through Islamabad as they do in Baghdad and Kabul, Pakistanis by and large feel like the American military is actually occupying their country.

The majority of average Pakistanis I speak with, regardless of age, education or class, shares a commonality: hatred of President Pervez Musharaff and hatred of American foreign policies. (They’ll always say, at the end, they don’t hate Americans.) Pakistanis, especially in the “Wild West” of the nation’s tribal areas, are even quicker to blame American leaders than their own government.

During my visit to Pakistan to report on the country’s elections, I spent a few days in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, commonly referred to as FATA. Prior to passing from the border town of
Peshawar through the Khyber Pass, to blend in I donned my tailor-made, dark blue shalwar kameez, the Pashtuns’ traditional clothing that is basically a loose fitting set of pajamas. On my head, I placed my
chitrali cap, a wool hat with a rolled brim, and took off my glasses, a rarity in these parts. I never once doubted my safety.

On my first night near the Afghan border, I spent the evening drinking a locally-fermented vodka and American whisky sitting cross-legged by candlelight with tribal elders, the real powers of the area. We spent the night talking about politics – everyone in Pakistan is a philosopher – and got nowhere.

Like other Pakistanis, the tribal men spouted conspiracy theories - Jews evacuated the World Trade Center prior to the 9/11 attacks, President Bush wants to kill all Muslims, and more – but we inevitably talked about the West’s foreign policy in Afghanistan. They argued, some in very eloquent English and others in Pashto through their friends’ translation, that American troops – actually, the “Americans” include the British, the French, all of NATO – in Afghanistan are only aggravating the situation across the border and here in the tribal areas. They said too many thousands of Afghans and Pakistani tribal people (mostly Pashtuns) have died.

They blame the Taliban, too. One elderly man gnarled his face and put his hands out like claws as he described the Wahhabi militants – the strict, extremist doctrine of Islam that al-Qaeda and the Taliban adhere to. They’re inhuman, he said, and are practically monsters. But he, like most in the region, wants to face the Taliban alone, not with foreign troops. If the Taliban come, we will fight them and win, the tribal elders assured me.

But would they? Or could they?

One Western military official told me there’s a "tremendous Taliban strength in Quetta [one of Pakistan’s largest cities and a provincial capital] despite denials from Pakistani officials." If the Taliban have penetrated Quetta, could they not take Islamabad? Pakistanis, the official said, need to acknowledge that they can’t handle the problem of al-Qaeda and the Taliban alone. With the weakness of both the Afghan and Pakistani militaries, they won’t be able to “hold back the tide.”

It’s really a non-issue of whether American, i.e. NATO, forces would withdraw from Afghanistan. They won’t. They’re in it for the long haul there. The U.S. has poured $11 billion into
Pakistan in military aid since 2001 but the same Western official says in his opinion the money hasn’t been effectively used.

While the word on the Pakistani street is that Musharaff is doing “the West’s bidding,” this fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan by NATO and in Pakistan by its own military
is not just a fight for the West.

“Honesty,” the military official said, is necessary amongst the Pakistanis. If the West loses so will Pakistan.