Ethan Casey suggests that tourism in Pakistan might do wonders to its image.

The May 8 edition of the International Herald Tribune included an article by the Pakistani journalist Shuja Nawaz, who is working on a book about the Pakistan Army. It was headlined, "Letter from a frontline state: Behind the clichés, a modern Pakistan". Here's how it begins:

"For a returning native, Pakistan offers a kaleidoscope of images that defy the West's stereotypes. American audiences are used to seeing Pakistan as poised on the brink of nuclear conflict with India, hosting Taliban 'jihadist' militia, with a military-dominated government that has a tenuous hold on its fractious component provinces. Violent riots and screaming bearded crowds shouting anti-US and anti-Western slogans make their way into evening news broadcasts."

It's a good and well-informed article, based as it is on interviews with President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and the Vice Chief of Army Staff and many other generals, including most surviving heads of the ISI.

It's a useful article and yet, despite its justifiably upbeat argument and tone, I found it rather saddening to read. What's sad is that a Pakistani writer interpreting his country to a Western readership feels compelled to begin with caveats and apologies, by explicitly insisting that, despite what you may think, Pakistan isn't really so bad. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get beyond not only the clichés and misconceptions, but also this need for self-justification? Instead of perpetually explaining ourselves, why not start instead by getting to know one another?

The reason communication between Pakistanis and Americans too often begins with caveats and apologies, and so much time is wasted tediously and repetitively getting past the misconceptions and clichés, is that there is too little direct, human contact between our countries.

There are a number of reasons for this, but one in particular that gets too little attention is Pakistan's very regrettable failure ever to have developed a tourism industry worth the name. Related to this --although not excusing it -- is the awkward fact that, since 1947, India is still called India but Pakistan is not. As a result, India has enjoyed what Emma Duncan aptly calls "a monopoly on imperial nostalgia".

Duncan's 1989 book Breaking the Curfew is a valuable account of the transition from the grim, US-sponsored dictatorship of General Ziaul-Haq to the civilian government of Benazir Bhutto. In it, she writes: "Although India has acquired a monopoly on imperial nostalgia, at the time it was the area that is now Pakistan which stirred the British imagination and won their respect." The point is vividly brought home in John Keay's two marvellously entertaining books about the European explorers who tramped through the Punjab and the passes and glaciers of the western Himalaya around the time of the British Empire's zenith – When Men and Mountains Meet and The Gilgit Game.

Pakistan could have earned a lot of goodwill, not to mention hard currency, by trading on that heritage. It's probably unfair to wish it had, since by the time Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was running the country in the 1970s, Pakistan was only just beginning to recover from the wrenching trauma and immense bloodshed of Partition, not to mention three wars with India and the loss of its eastern wing, which became Bangladesh in 1971. Still, Bhutto might have opted not to cave in to the religious lobby by outlawing alcohol. Not only did his cravenness on this point render many members of Pakistan's elite class dissembling hypocrites in one fell swoop; it did little good for the country's image in the West or for tourism.

Bhutto had more urgent worries, of course, like his own survival. But as anyone who understands human nature might have guessed, his appeasement of the extremists did not save him: his overthrow in 1977 and his notorious hanging in 1979 ushered in the 11-year nightmare of the Zia regime, and by then -- in the context of the Cold War and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan -- tourism in Pakistan was the last thing on anyone's mind.

Why is tourism so important? One might argue that developing countries from Thailand to Nepal to Jamaica have been ravaged by tourism, and that Pakistan should count its blessings for having been spared its depredations. But in Pakistan's case a bit of Disneyfication might have been a small price to pay, in lieu of the isolation and stigma its people have suffered.

Here's an illustration of the price Pakistanis have paid: "Before, I used to have at least ten groups a year," former trekking agent Awais Ahmed Chaudhry told me in Islamabad in December 2003. "Some years I used to have twenty groups. They used to come from Germany, from Italy. … I had just one American -- just one person. His name is Mr Jay Sieger, from Alaska. He used to come every year, but this year he didn't come, because he's afraid. He told me, especially after Daniel Pearl, that he's afraid."

Ethan Casey’s blog is at www.ethancasey.com. This column is excerpted and adapted from a talk given at Bellevue Library, Bellevue, Washington, USA, on May 14, 2006 and was also published in The News.

Related Links
Cartoon of the Prophet, Caricature of Expression
Don’t Block the Blog
Alive and Well in Pakistan
Who is Afraid of Religious Fundamentalism?