Pak-US ties: a glance into history
The author works as comparison editor with a Pashto-language Mashaal Radio. The views voiced here are his possess
At a time when Pakistan-US family are presumably during a lowest lessen for a series of reasons, few people remember or even know of a rise days when a US initial lady visited Pakistan and extensively trafficked opposite a nation to a rousing acquire by thousands of men, women and children 55 years ago.
From Karachi to Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar, people were seen backing a roads and streets, waving, entertaining and cherishing their country’s loyalty with a United States.
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy, a rarely well-bred and well-educated mother of a charismatic John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a 35th US president, was a final initial lady visiting this nation that was on a arena of expansion and wealth in a initial 20 years of a presentation on a world’s map.
Jacqueline Kennedy’s fairy-tale Pakistan revisit from Mar 21-26, 1962 was reciprocal to a outing of a United States by President Muhammad Ayub Khan in Jul 1961 where, President Kennedy, as a uncover of warmth, greeted his Pakistani guest during a airfield instead of a White House.
Soon after holding assign of a White House, one of President Kennedy’s several hurdles was to win over a support of and keep divided a dual freshly-independent South Asian states — India and Pakistan — divided from a expanding shadows of communism in a region. And no one could have achieved a pursuit improved than Jacqueline Kennedy, who had already turn a face of US open diplomacy.
Her scarcely week-long trip, during that she trafficked from Karachi to Peshawar and adult to Torkham around a chronological Khyber Pass, is singular from several aspects in context of US-Pakistan relations, as good as a Pakistan of currently and that of yore.
Imagine how many Pakistanis will trust a personal loyalty between a Pakistani camel transport motorist and a US vice-president. When Mrs Kennedy was visiting Karachi, she was scheduled to accommodate Bashir Sarban and his family to broach him a minute from Vice-President Lyndon B Johnson.
Johnson befriended Bashir during his revisit to Karachi a year progressing and invited him to a United States. Besides galloping horses with Johnson during his personal plantation during Texas, Bashir was also taken to Kansas City to accommodate ex-president Harry S Truman, who reportedly referred to him as ‘your excellency’.
Upon lapse to Pakistan, Bashir perceived a telegram that a US supervision had organised for him to revisit Saudi Arabia for Umrah and he reciprocated with ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great).
In his book, Mrs Kennedy and Me, Clint Hill, who was obliged for Jacqueline Kennedy’s confidence during her Pakistan trip, writes that on one occasion, President Ayub took off his black Karakul and playfully placed it on Mrs Kennedy’s conduct when she praised a cap. Later, Mrs Kennedy was seen wearing a top during her revisit to Peshawar and Torkham.
Although countless Pakistani governments and heads of governments have grown tighten ties with a United States and a care in a days that followed, Jackie’s revisit was rare in terms of a interest to a people of Pakistan and a energy of open tact where pro-American sentiments in a afterwards West Pakistan were touching a peak.
In a 1960s Pakistan was giveaway of xenophobia, intolerance, eremite extremism, groups on a basement of sects and sub-sects and a slight clarification of inhabitant interests. Women enjoyed a earnest standing as an rising territory of society. Now call it religiosity of currently or liberalism of a past that no one sees any lady or lady wearing a head-to-toe deceive amid a throng backing a roads in Karachi, Lahore or Rawalpindi to hail a US initial lady. And no one lifted any conflict to her attire, blending adult with group or travelling from Karachi to Khyber.
Writing behind to a White House about Mrs Kennedy’s attainment and Ayub Khan’s accepting in Lahore, one declassified memo states that a “enthusiastic appearance of surprising numbers of women, generally immature women, was quite noteworthy. Governor ascribes this to realization by Pakistani women that this important approval of one of their possess sex is pitch of a rising standing of women here in Pakistan.”
Although not many women incited adult when her motorcade was flitting by a Qissa Khwani Bazaar or a severe turf of a Afridis and Shinwaris to Torkham, still many women and girls went to a airfield to see a glance of Mrs Kennedy.
Mrs Rashida Shahid Jan, now in her mid-1970s, was a college tyro during St Xavier’s College in Peshawar in 1962. She rushed to a airfield along with her sisters to locate a glance of Mrs Kennedy. “There was an atmosphere of frolic and fanfare. we saw Mrs Kennedy during tighten operation who smiled and waved behind during a entertaining crowd,” removed Mrs Jan in telephonic review with me.
Although Pakistan and a United States have undergone several stages of ties from confidence and troops to mercantile and hardcore diplomacy, a usually ties carrying durability impact are determined by open tact and not by outrageous sums of income in troops assistance or state gratification projects.
Published in The Express Tribune, Mar 25th, 2017.
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Article source: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1364881/pak-us-ties-glimpse-history/