WASHINGTON -- When Pakistani-American leaders converged on Capitol Hill Wednesday, the event was billed as a warning against racial profiling.
Nasim Ashraf, the president of Americans for Peace and Justice in South Asia, recounted reports of recent insults and actions against persons who appeared to be from the Middle East.
"We also ask Americans to be understanding toward our community and work with us to defeat our common enemy," Ashraf said. Other speakers said some Muslim mothers have been afraid to send their girls to public schools wearing scarves.
But just a few minutes after the press conference began, the talk turned away from civil liberties to capitalism: The groups asked for debt relief, an end to U.S. economic sanctions against Pakistan and humanitarian aid to deal with Afghan refugees.
House Minority Whip David Bonior (D-Michigan), who pledged his support for the groups, said the U.S. should help "in the campaign against terrorism and help Pakistan provide humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Afghanistan."
Continued economic sanctions against Pakistan may seem like a strange idea when the Bush administration is seeking assistance with -- or at least no open hostility against -- a military strike aimed at Osama bin Laden and other suspected terrorists.
But that's what the U.S. government imposed in response to India's and Pakistan's tests of nuclear weapons in May 1998. The Arms Control Export Act permits the president to impose sanctions, which were reinforced after the democratic government of Pakistan was overthrown in a military coup in October 1999.
President Bush has lifted some sanctions already, but Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) said Congress needed to act to change the law and make the act complete.
"Pakistan was a major ally of the U.S. during the Cold War, helping to counter-balance the socialist government of India, Red China, hostile Arab states, and perhaps most significantly, the Soviet presence in Afghanistan," Brownback said.
(Left unsaid was that Pakistan provided the military assistance that allowed the Taliban to conquer most of Afghanistan in the 1990s.)
Complicating the situation are Pakistan's military leaders, who warned on Tuesday that the U.S. must not ally itself with anti-Taliban rebels in Afghanistan. Those militia groups are linked with India, Pakistan's archrival.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has pledged his support for the U.S. campaign against terrorists, sparking protests in the streets of Pakistan and talk of hard-line religious forces rising against what appears to be his increasingly uncertain hold on power.
"We applaud the courageous decision of Musharraf to cooperate with coalition forces to take a bold stand against world terror," said Ashraf, head of one of the Pakistani-American groups.
President Clinton's sanctions against Pakistan included restrictions on economic growth programs, a ban on military financing, and limits on loan extensions. Similar restrictions were levied against India.
