Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 May 2010 19.00 BST

The well-worn maxim that all publicity is good publicity does not immediately spring to mind in Pakistan. But given the country’s frontline position in the fight against global terrorism, the involvement of yet another Pakistani in a plot to bomb a major international city will be a boon for everyone in favour of continued war in the “AfPak” region. For the rest of us, the alleged attempt by Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad to bomb New York’s Times Square has been a disaster.

Whatever goodwill Pakistan had accrued in the bruising conflict against Islamist militancy evaporated when a young man decided to bomb New York. Like the rest of the world, Pakistanis are exasperated by the revelation that one of their own attempted such a foolhardy crime. Remember, for a moment, that Shahzad is not a poor man from the slums but the privileged son of a former senior military officer with a wife and two young children. What did he ever hope to achieve? Did he seriously consider how his actions would affect his young family and future life? Such are the deranged fantasies of the would-be Islamist revolutionary in this case and in numerous others that we may never know about.

The blunt calculation is not so uncertain. People globally will not remember the thousands of Pakistanis who have lost their lives in acts of terrorism or counterterrorism – assuming they knew in the first place – or the thousands more who have died defending our country and, by extension, the rest of the world. All it takes to reduce Pakistan back to the old “terror central” stereotype is a poorly executed bombing attempt by a misguided young man.

That message rings clear and loud for all of us who are of Pakistani origin. Shahzad fits a remarkably consistent profile of educated, middle-class young men who have decided to commit acts of terrorism in the west. Thanks to a statistically small fraction of the young male population, the vast majority of us can expect even greater scrutiny at airports and prominent public spaces around the world. American neocon Joe Lieberman has even called for terrorism suspects to be stripped of citizenship – a suggestion that will be celebrated by conservatives and Islamists alike.

Such chauvinism aside, however, there is no clear formula for preventing others like Shahzad. No matter how many profiles are generated at our airports, there is simply no way to predict who will decide to commit an act of terrorism and where, except in the most general terms.

It is a measure of how troubled we are in Pakistan that our worst tendencies and most misguided citizens are also our international emblems. Who would immediately associate Pakistan with judicial activism, a rich history of poetry and song, or a good curry? Perhaps many people do, but the spectre of terrorism has a way of overshadowing all that.

In the wake of Shahzad’s arrest, there will be a tendency in Pakistan to apportion blame to others. Some will even claim he had nothing to do with us, that he was a product of America’s ills or even that the CIA was behind it all. But such excuses ring increasingly hollow for most of us now. We are frustrated with this violent distraction from the endless power shortages and cronyism that stifle daily life.

In a feeble attempt to remain relevant, the increasingly isolated Pakistan Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing. US investigators believe Shahzad received training in the Waziristan tribal area that is the insurgency’s home. But whatever training Shahzad received could not have been very good judging by his poorly constructed bomb and how easily he was identified by the authorities. As with all other foiled bombings we have civilian investigators to thank rather than the multibillion dollar arsenals that have rained death and destruction on Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan over the last decade.

Paradoxically, the US and its Nato allies will, nevertheless, use this latest bomb plot as a justification for more wars that will claim more lives. As gruesome as it is to contemplate, the fact is that Shahzad’s botched attack is as much a boon for military planners at the Pentagon and in Rawalpindi as it is for fatalistic Islamists who see no other option but to bomb and terrorise their way to the negotiating table.

For us ordinary people there is another option. Pakistani Americans have been deeply embarrassed by the Shahzad fiasco. And as with other attempts, a Muslim was instrumental in foiling the Shahzad bombing. In Pakistan, investigators have been quick to interrogate Shahzad’s family and several others possibly involved.

The lesson from all of this is clear. There must be zero tolerance for the jihadi myth-makers who prey on the impressionable like Shahzad. We owe that much to our rich culture and heritage, not to mention our compatriots who have made and will continue to make the difficult journey to the west in search of a better life.

[This article was first published at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/06/terrorists-overshadow-real-pakistan]