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AN AMERICAN IN PAKISTAN: In Pindi on March 1

Catherine Mayo

The democracy of the USA means a world between two oceans created entirely by the minds of those who live there. US citizens now live in a world created reactively by a few powerful men after a cataclysmic terrorist event. I like the irony of my feelings of safety here while my fellow Americans on the other side of the world feel anything but safe

I was in Pindi on March 1, but I didn’t know about the important arrest until later. I was concerned about another threat. On the platform of the Pindi Railway Station, waiting for their train, were what seemed to me to be hundreds of soldiers. They were clustered in front of the overhead TVs, watching the Pakistan vs. India World Cup cricket match. Since I was also waiting for a train I watched with them. We were as tense as the Pakistan players but weren’t much help to them. I could have been in great danger, but I was only an American, everyone could tell that I wasn’t from India.

The arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on that day wasn’t just coincidence, it was synchronicity. President George Bush knows that the war against terror needs to be fought with intelligence and special operations. He knows that all-out war against Iraq will do nothing against the threat of terrorism in the world. Pakistan showed him that his horrific military force in the Gulf is irrelevant when it comes to the surprise capture of one man and the information contained in his pockets and in his laptop.

The US soldiers on the aircraft carriers, the families of those who died on September 11, the reservists stationed around “soft targets” in Washington DC and Chicago should all be celebrating this week with fireworks and songs, feasting and prayers of thanks. Al Qaeda is on the run.

The smoking gun has been found. President Bush can now call all his troops home.

Pakistan told the US that it was its ally in the war on terrorism, and it delivered.

Of course, we all know that President Bush’s campaign against Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terrorism. The reasons he gives change daily, and what he says doesn’t matter anymore. What he does is the measure of the man.

On the railway platform TV, India got another wicket. Discouraged, I went up and over to my platform to wait for my train. The concession stands were doing a brisk business. I smelled something good, and thought about tracking it down. A young man, a student of English literature, came over to talk to me. We started using big words to discuss the world situation, sometimes big words are a comfort. I ended up singing him an anti-war song. After he left, I was still humming it to myself. A railway constable came up to me and told me that I would be better off taking the train on the next platform. It was ready to leave. After I settled into my seat, the manager from the first class car saw me and invited me up to his office in Coach 7 for a cup of tea, a cigarette, and another cup of tea with an extra tea bag in it so it would be more like coffee.

If anyone had asked me how I felt at that particular moment, I would have said that I felt well taken care of.

American citizens are on their own now. Not just globally, with “the coalition of the willing” being mostly a mythical concept. Americans are on their own in a world not of their making. This has never happened before. The democracy of the USA means a world between two oceans created entirely by the minds who live there. US citizens now live in a world created reactively by a few powerful men after a cataclysmic terrorist event.

It was one of the interesting coincidences of my life that I was in Pindi on the day of the big arrest. I like the irony of my feelings of safety here while my fellow Americans on the other side of the world feel anything but safe.

They are on their own now. While their government takes them down a road with no ending, each citizen needs to carry democracy in his heart.

Cathy Mayo is an American journalist based in Pakistan

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