ISLAMABAD – I was in my guest house here on Thursday morning when I read in the New York Times that Farooque Ahmed, a Pakistani-American, has been charged with trying to help plot a terrorist attack on the Washington, D.C.-area Metro and it reminded me of what the stakes are in U.S.-Pakistan relations and in their cooperative military efforts.
It is impossible to say at this point what will become of the charges against Ahmed — or of Ahmed himself — but it is clear that a handful of Pakistani-Americans are becoming more radical in their views. Faisal Shahzad, for instance, had received training in explosives in Waziristan before trying to blow up his car in Times Square in the Spring.
Here, Pakistani government officials are also concerned about radicalization: The government’s public-relations campaign in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistani military, is blunt: “Love Pakistan,” said a government sign posted on the road to the media offices of the Pakistani military, as I saw when I visited earlier this week. Last year, the Taliban set of an explosion not far from the military offices that I visited. Thirty people were killed in the attack, according to an article in the Guardian. The “Love Pakistan” road sign would seem to suggest “don’t blow it up.”
I spoke with the Pakistani military officials about U.S. Special Operations and U.S.-Pakistani relations and in that conversation — just as in every conversation I’ve had in Pakistan this week — the specter of terrorism came up. No one really knows how to tamp down radicalization, either in Pakistan or in the U.S., but a Norwegian-Pakistani scholar, Laila Bokhari, has studied the issue for years. Her new book, Holy Wrath: My Journey Through Pakistan, is based on years of research and interviews with about 60 people, including a significant number who have either left a radical group or have a family member who has been part of an extremist group in Pakistan.
“They talk about the attraction of being part of something,” she told me during an interview in Islamabad. “They talk about getting their pride — their honor back.”
