WASHINGTON: It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Pakistan ’s military works hard to propagate a historically false and self-serving narrative in the US to continue to play victim and extract maximum monetary and policy benefits It does so through a variety of methods — denying visas to academics who don’t toe the line, by strategically placing regime-friendly officials and researchers in US think tanks by offering to pay their salaries, and finally by pressuring US institutions to deny space to critics of Pakistan. “The Pakistan military tries to influence every choice the Americans make on debate and discussion. They want it within a certain framework. They don’t want questions asked,” according to a well-informed analyst.Pakistan military even tries to coerce US military institutions such as the prestigious National Defense University NDU ) to support this “mendacity” by blacklisting American and Pakistani scholars who drill holes in that narrative. This is one of the many reasons why US policy on Pakistan remains where it is — in a safe status quo zone with minor tinkering.Topping the list of undesirables for Rawalpindi are Christine Fair, associate professor at Georgetown University, and Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, who now heads the South Asia programme at the Hudson Institute, a think tank. Both are strong critics of the Pakistan military and they challenge old school US academics who give the army-ISI generals a pass.Pakistan Embassy’s military attaché has tried to prevent Fair and Haqqani from speaking to visiting Pakistani military delegations and officers doing courses at the NDU. Fair says the alleged NDU “decision to abide by the embassy diktat is doubly offensive since Pakistan intelligence threatened me with physical violence.” The question is: why would the NDU entertain this, even mildly?“First, it is a privilege not a right for these delegations to come to the US, much of which is subsidised by the American taxpayer. The Pakistan Embassy should have NO say as to who the Americans invite,” Fair said in an interview this week.The NDU is America’s premier institution for military officers who are selected by their services to attend graduate courses. Many countries, including India, send officers to its sprawling campus for courses. It is also a desired stop for foreign defence delegations visiting Washington for opportunities to interact with US military experts and serving officers.The NDU lists academic freedom as one of its guiding principles. But that didn’t stop the Pakistani defence attaché from telling the NDU president directly on two occasions that certain speakers couldn’t address Pakistani officers, according to an NDU official. The attaché, generally the rank of brigadier, was speaking to a twostar American general.The Pakistanis have even protested military simulations — imaginary scenarios about potential conflicts and responses — in an extraordinary attempt to control students’ imagination. The Rawalpindi-approved narrative is thrust not just on Pakistanis studying at NDU but often on US military officers who attend those courses.the US used Pakistan against the Soviets but abandoned it, leaving Pakistan to manage the fallout. Then the US blocked the delivery of F-16s in the 1990s even though Pakistan had paid for them. Finally, that Pakistan is a victim of terror and its costs far exceed the American compensation.Fair punches holes in this narrative with historical evidence. “Zulfikar Ali Bhutto started the jihad in 1974 when the Americans had no interest. He did it because doing so was in Pakistan’s core national security interests. Zia-ul-Haq continued it and by the time the Soviets intervened in Afghanistan in 1979, the ISI had already constructed the seven main militant groups that would fight them,” she said.US military aid for the Afghan jihad began to flow only in 1982, a fact that “categorically demonstrates the fiction” of Pakistani claims. The F-16s weren’t delivered because Pakistan chose to develop a nuclear weapon and under US law, sanctions were imposed. “They knew the law and the consequences. They should own it,” says Fair. As for being the victims, Pakistan is being victimised by its own terrorists who have turned against them.As Fair notes, most American officials, who have little knowledge of USPakistan relations and rotate too frequently to develop expertise, tend to believe the “Pakistanis’ tales of woe”.It’s important to have speakers correct the record so that the Pakistanis know not everyone is “an ingénue who can be bullied by their nonsense” and for US officials to understand the “depths of Pakistani mendacity”.According to an email exchange from August 2015 recently made available to this correspondent, it seems Fair and Haqqani were apparently dropped from certain NDU events or disinvited.The exchange, mostly between Fair and Thomas F Lynch, a distinguished research fellow at NDU who coordinates programmes on South Asia, is revealing. Lynch had apparently told Fair in a social setting that Pakistanis did not want Haqqani and Fair at NDU events with their military delegations.Lynch, when confronted by Fair in an email, tried to walk back and provide “context” but Fair and Haqqani remained unconvinced. In his only email intervention, Haqqani told Lynch that “as a Pakistani, my regret is that our military officers go back from the US with their prejudices unchallenged and their worldview intact”.“How can they be different when they are allowed to determine what they can learn or to what they would be exposed to while here?” he asked. Haqqani also mentioned that a “pre-scheduled talk” by him at the NDU was cancelled early last year and the commandant had called to explain the “context”.Fair, enraged by the wider implications of Pakistan’s pressure tactics, questioned Lynch in her email: “I don’t care that Pakistan military has preferences. I am very disturbed that the NDU, which is paid for with my tax dollars, indulges their preferences to exclude their critics.”“By excluding people like Husain and me — who know the truth and are willing to say it — the NDU enables them to continue exploiting our system,” Fair wrote. “They not only laugh all the way to the bank… they mock our slain men and women who have died at the hands of their proxies, subsidised with our cash,” she added.Many experts would agree with Fair’s assessment of the deadly contradiction in US policy — the Americans essentially fund a regime that supports a vast jihadi network that kills US soldiers in Afghanistan.In his response, Lynch did acknowledge that the NDU gets “push back” and “protests” by foreign governments and militaries but denied that NDU “indulges” Pakistan military attaché’s demands — it largely “weathers” them.In an interview with this correspondent, Lynch said that the Pakistanis indeed try to vigorously exclude some voices. “That is undeniably true. They are persistent and forceful and have done it longer than anyone else.” The NDU “over time has been equally forceful” in asserting its right to invite speakers of its choice, but it sometimes “may honour requests,” he said.Lisa Curtis, a South Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation, stressed the need to question the Pakistani narrative, which fails to acknowledge that their own policies have facilitated “an overall conducive environment for terrorism in the country, not to mention bolstering the ideological foundations for terrorism on a global scale.”US officials “must become more savvy and forthright about this rather than allowing Pakistani military officials to repeatedly play the victim card,” Curtis said. And the US government needs to “value” academics who have deep knowledge of Pakistan, especially its army. “It is not the job of US diplomats to defend Pakistani positions. The reality, however, is that speaking truth to power on Pakistan can often be a career killer in the US government.”That is the crux of the issue — American officials a re gen e r a l ly afraid to challenge Pakistan’s halftruths and lies, many of which they themselves have helped sustain over the years.They would rather favour academics and experts who don’t disturb their comfort zone.The same game is on in Britain where the British bureaucracy remains sympathetic to Pakistan if for no other reason than to stay relevant in South Asia. Pakistan’s generals even tried to place Ahmad Shuja Pasha, a former head of the notorious ISI, at King’s College, London, by offering to pay his salary but were snubbed.Examples of Pakistan’s “chutzpah” are common and even laced with threats. “They hold a lot of cards,” an NDU official admitted. The first line of threat is that Pakistan won’t send its military officers to NDU, which plays into American fears of losing contact with the Pakistani armed forces and thus a chance to influence their thinking.Military ties between Pakistan and the US have developed over decades of policy confluence and institutional closeness. They have spanned the Cold War, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the “global war against terrorism”.The only break came in 1990 to 2001 when US president George HW Bush determined that Pakistan possessed nuclear weapons and did not qualify for the bulk of military and economic aid under the Pressler Amendment.Most of US aid was blocked. After the 1999 coup by General Pervez Musharraf, all US military and economic assistance to Pakistan stopped.But 9/11 changed everything as president George W Bush lifted the sanctions and restored Pakistan as a frontline state in the war against terrorism. The Pentagon, concerned that it had lost almost an entire generation of Pakistani military officers to sanctions, went about restoring old ties, offering them more opportunities to study in the vast network of US military colleges.Good at their game, the Pakistanis used the time to try to re-establish their false narrative while adding a new chapter on victimhood.