'India is no longer enemy no. 1 for Pakistan'

How much should India fear Pakistan, considering a recent BBC 23-nation survey found that Pakistan and Egypt were the only countries to take a relatively positive view of al-Qaida. The poll said that only 19% of Pakistani respondents had a negative view of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network. Should this be reason enough for India to worry about the stability and intentions of its next-door neighbour? Pakistani experts don’t think so.

They say the survey actually shows Pakistanis as desperately keen to oppose the US rather than support al-Qaida. "I don’t think the public makes a distinction between opposing the United States and supporting the al-Qaida," says Ahmad Bilal Mehboob, executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT). "Washington has been backing unpopular regimes in both Egypt and Pakistan, thus giving birth to anti-US feelings, besides imposing the war against terror," he adds.

Kamran Rahmat, Islamabad-based news editor of television channel Dawn News, points to an "overriding anti-America public sentiment" in Pakistan. There is some dispute over whether this anger is directed at the US as a whole or the Bush administration. Surprisingly, India seems to have gained from this turn of events as it is no longer seen as Pakistan’s Enemy Number One. Political analyst Ijaz Shafi Gilani says, "Undoubtedly, India was perceived as enemy number one by the Pakistani people for decades but that has changed over the last couple of years." He says that Pakistan’s rising hostility towards the US has tempered the anti-India feeling. A Gallup poll in Pakistan, conducted in 2007, showed greater support (compared to previous years) for trade with India, followed by support for relaxing bilateral visa arrangements.

There was less support for boosting bilateral cultural exchange. Similarly, a 2006 Gallup survey showed that half of the respondents favoured Pakistani actors working in the Indian entertainment industry, but 49% were against this and 1% said they were undecided or had no opinion. But anti-India feelings do persist. Tariq Rahman, a professor at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University, says many Pakistanis believe that Indian consulates along the Afghan border are stoking low-intensity conflict in Balochistan and indirectly funding the Taliban. However, he insists that this anti-India feeling is greater in the NWFP region and Punjab, not in Sindh or Karachi. Noted columnist Ayaz Amir says there is a feeling in some quarters that General Pervez Musharraf and his successor as president, Asif Zardari, have gone too far in their attempts to please the Indian leadership. He also believes that Islamabad has overstepped the mark in its repeated denunciations of terrorism.