Pakistani Embassy juggles war, terror and U.S.

Embassy officials handle the fallout from Sept. 11, a crisis in their homeland and their routine duties.

By PAUL DE LA GARZA, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 12, 2002

WASHINGTON -- It's winter in the nation's capital and the lobby of the Pakistani Embassy is cold. A receptionist with a sweet smile and a bulky telephone on her desk keeps warm with a space heater.

Security is surprisingly lax. A metal detector stands idle in the lobby and only occasionally do embassy officers look through people's bags.

You would never guess from the lobby scene the extraordinary web of crisis encircling Pakistan. Go upstairs, however, and the tensions come into sharp focus.

You might find press attache Asad Hayauddin, phone in hand, eyes trained on CNN, assuring a Chinese journalist that "any action taken positively or negatively by India will be reciprocated."

Or Zamir Akram, deputy chief of mission, poring over American press clippings, cursing over a column on "the Islam bomb" and switching to Urdu to instruct an aide how to respond.

The goal is to shape world opinion, and the stakes could not be much higher. The chance of war between Pakistan and India, nuclear powers both, is considered greater than it has been in 30 years. And the Bush administration is relying on Pakistan's cooperation to help bring the Afghanistan war to a close.

In the meantime, the embassy must deal with routine chores as well, and with the backlash of Sept. 11.

Staffers process visa requests, take angry complaints about racial profiling and illegal detentions, and work to allay economic fears back home. American importers, wary of the million-troop buildup along the India-Pakistan border, have canceled textile orders worth tens of millions of dollars.

With Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, scheduled for a White House visit Wednesday, the pace at the embassy has only picked up. One press aide says the Musharraf visit will be a blur.

"It's like, you know, you have so many balls up in the air," says Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, "and you're just struggling to ensure that you don't drop any of them, because there are that many and it's uncharted."

Flying the flag

Akram and a political officer hover in Lodhi's office on a recent day. The ambassador is on the telephone in a room that reeks of cigarettes.

She apologizes to a visitor for keeping him waiting, but she has a pressing matter. Authorities in Washington have recovered the body of a homeless Pakistani man, and Lodhi is huddling with aides to try to locate family.

"You've got to give this the same attention that you give to issues of war and peace because these issues are just as important in the life of one individual and one family," she says. "And we're here, we fly the flag, and, therefore, anybody of Pakistani origin looks to us as people who will respond to their hopes and aspirations, as well as their tragedies."

Lodhi, formerly a journalist, has just returned from Islamabad, where tensions with India weigh heavily on people's minds.

Words like standoff, says Lodhi, don't begin to capture the anxiety in Pakistan. At one point she calls the situation a "thing" and then catches herself -- "Thing? I don't even know how to describe it. Crisis?"

"Impasse," suggests Hayauddin.

"But these are words that if you go to the region, they sound like such a huge understatement. You know, impasse?" says the ambassador, as she drags on a cigarette, Cartier Lights. "I mean, there's a huge military buildup."

Ask Lodhi what it all means to her, and her voice drops to a whisper.

"This is fundamental," she says. "This is about my country. This is about another country, which has massed troops on my country's borders and is poised to attack and talks about war.

"Its army chief. Its navy chief. There's actual war talk," she says, sounding a bit incredulous. "It's as fundamental as it can get."

'The unthinkable'

Since gaining independence from the British Empire in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars. The major difference now is that they both have nuclear weapons.

That worries the world.

In testimony last week before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, CIA director George Tenet noted that the chance of war between the two "is higher than at any point since 1971."

"Both India and Pakistan are publicly downplaying the risks of nuclear conflict in the current crisis," Tenet said in his annual worldwide threat assessment. "We are deeply concerned, however, that a conventional war, once begun, could escalate into a nuclear confrontation."

It is true that both sides shrug off fears that the latest flareup, a result of a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December, could lead to what Lodhi calls "the unthinkable." They say that, like the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, they rely on nuclear weapons for deterrence, not first-strike capability.

Experts, however, point out that the current impasse is far more dangerous than the Cold War because India and Pakistan, with a combined population of more than 1-billion, are engaged in a hot war over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Almost every day, people on both sides die in border skirmishes.

Pakistan's deputy chief of mission

Akram points out that President Bush spoke more often with Musharraf after the Parliament attack than after Sept. 11. Both Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have traveled to the region in an effort to rein in the sides.

"We don't want war," says Akram, himself smoking a cigarette. "On the other hand, there is a point beyond which we are not going to be pushed."

In the woods

The current confrontation began Dec. 13, when five Muslim militants attacked the Indian Parliament. Fourteen people died in the attack, including the gunmen. India pointed the finger at Pakistan, saying Islamabad was targeting the entire Indian leadership. Pakistan denied the allegations.

To appreciate India's outrage, listen to the words of Lalit Mansingh, the Indian ambassador to the United States.

"December 13th has been for India what September 11th was for the United States," Mansingh said in an embassy interview over tea. "If you ask me, it's a little worse. You didn't have attacks on the White House or on Congress."

To end the impasse, India wants an end to cross-border terrorism and custody of 20 terrorist suspects it says live in Pakistan.

Pakistan, which at Musharraf's direction has begun a crackdown of Muslim extremists, says it's reviewing the custody request.

And still, no break in the tension.

Last week, Musharraf responded angrily to India's refusal to withdraw troops from the border in response to his reconciliation efforts.

"If war is imposed on Pakistan, we will defend every inch of our soil with all the means at our disposal and every last drop of our blood," he said. "Let there be no confusion."

Lodhi says Powell's recent visit to the region helped, but it did not resolve the crisis. That is why Pakistan welcomes a third party to mediate, to make sure "there is no escalation which in any way goes to the nuclear level."

Reluctant to put Pakistan, the weaker country, on equal footing, India historically has rejected a mediator.

"There are some people who have said there has been some dissipation of war clouds over South Asia," Lodhi says. "Our answer to that would be, "Well, maybe dissipation but not elimination or disappearance.' "

And then, the woman who has struggled for the right phrase to describe whatever may be happening between India and Pakistan at the moment, reaches for an Americanism to describe the tension. Says Lodhi: "We're not out of the woods yet."

'Hearts and minds'

Lodhi remembers Sept. 11 because of the obvious. For Pakistan, it was also the day a shocked Uncle Sam came asking for help.

"Our work didn't just double or quadruple," she says. "I can't even imagine."

On the morning of the attacks, in fact, Lodhi, Akram, the embassy defense attache, and Pakistan's intelligence chief were in "the vault," the top secret meeting room of the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla. The subject was Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

Later that day, Tenet summoned the Pakistani intelligence chief to Langley. Tenet told him flat out that he wanted secrets about al-Qaida and Afghanistan, and fast.

To fight the war in Afghanistan, the White House figured it needed Pakistan. So it decided to look the other way when it came to Pakistan's nuclear weapons and its support of the Taliban.

For Lodhi, it was quite a change from the administration's early days, when she kept busy "just trying to make myself heard."

Today, Lodhi talks almost every day with Christina Rocca, the U.S. official who oversees South Asia at the State Department.

On more important business, she meets directly with Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, sometimes even with Powell.

"Most importantly," says Akram, "we keep the U.S. in the loop."

To cope with the new world, the first thing the embassy did was establish a media center.

Staffed 24 hours, the idea is to monitor the news and get Pakistan's side out. Lodhi and Akram make regular appearances on CNN and MSNBC. "It's about hearts and minds," Lodhi explains.

The media center also caters to the Pakistani community in the United States, an estimated 700,000 expatriates.

After Sept. 11, the embassy got reports about harassment and unfair apprehension, racial profiling and assaults on Pakistanis.

In many cases, Lodhi says, there wasn't a thing they could do, except hold people's hands.

"The one thing that you learn on this job is that the urgent always takes over the important," she says. "You start off on Monday and say, "Here are the important things we need to do.' And then you find that the urgent is intervening all the time. And you're saying, "Okay, but here's my important list. What do I do with this?' "

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