Former Pakistani Ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi has ridiculed the recent fears of the Obama administration and the US Congress that the Taliban when they gained control of the Swat Valley -- since recaptured by the Pakistani military -- would get a hold of the country's nuclear arsenal.
Lodhi said it was thanks to the British, who had alleviated the concerns of Washington and the scenarios here that the Taliban -- then 60 miles from Islamabad -- could seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons and perhaps provide them to the Al Qaeda to wreak havoc in the region and the world.
Lodhi was poked fun, although she did not name him, of counter-insurgency expert David J Kilcullen, who had warned that Pakistan was about to implode. "We heard a counter-insurgency expert say -- who I don't wish to name but there are no prizes for getting this one -- that Pakistan will implode in six months. It's been four months and we are counting."
She bemoaned, "The scenarios that we heard from many people in Washington -- some on the Hill, some officials circles themselves -- just two months ago, were not just unhelpful to an ally, but they were plain wrong."
Lodhi disclosed, "I believe my friends in the British government tell me that London played a key role in calming down Washington's panic attacks two months ago. And, I am very happy to hear that such help was sought from the British government -- I guess the British have known all of us much longer, sometimes even than we have known ourselves."
Lodhi castigated such scenarios, saying: "Countries can sometimes slip very quickly into being caricatures and I fear that Pakistan has become something of a caricature. And, if a caricature is repeated time and again -- the same story is repeated over and over again -- it somehow becomes the accepted or conventional wisdom about that country."
"And, this could be very dangerous because if policy is predicated on a caricature it can lead to very, very difficult and dangerous consequences for whomsoever is coming up with this policy," she added.
Lodhi, who will join the Washington, DC-based Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars as a visiting fellow shortly, also pilloried the Obama Administration for the acronym Af-Pak policy, toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"It's a very unfortunate acronym -- it hyphenates two sovereign countries, two great nations. And, it does more than just cause offence to two sovereign nations. It seems to signal a one-size fit both approach to countries that have vastly different histories, different capabilities and different kinds of security challenges. It tends to conflate very difficult and complex issues to suit a policy convenience."
Lodhi, piling it on against the Obama Administration, said: "I thought policies were formulated to fit complex realities -- not the other way around. But this seems to be an attempt to try to fit difficult complex realities, as I said for a policy convenience."
She also slammed the continuing predator drone attacks within Pakistan and asserted that "any tactical gain that maybe is being achieved by those strikes are more than offset by the strategic losses in terms of the long-term."
"It also does another thing," she said, "which is not enough attention is given to, which is, it conceives the threat from Al Qaeda in overly military terms, when we know that the threat is as much ideological -- perhaps more ideological than military."
Lodhi said such action 'takes attention away from having to do anything about creating counter-narratives, trying to win people -- the whole hearts and minds piece'.
"Trying to wean people away from the ideology that continues to still inspire people across the world. This is the reality and we have seen what happened in Indonesia only recently'.