Pakistan officers taught anti-US courses: Wikileaks

Islamabad, May 26: A leaked US diplomatic cable says that senior Pakistani military officers are taught anti-American courses at a prestigious defence university in the heart of the capital.

The cable, published in Dawn newspaper on Wednesday, May 25 and obtained by WikiLeaks, is likely to fan concerns about loyalties within the military after Osama bin Laden was found living in a garrison city, possibly for years.

Then US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson, wrote the cable in late 2008 in reference to the National Defence University in Islamabad.

Pakistan officially allied with the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks in its war on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but has long been accused of playing a double game in supporting Islamist militant networks.

"Lecturers often ''teach'' their students information that is heavily biased against the United States," she wrote.

Instructors, she said, "often had misperceptions about US policies and culture and infused their lectures with these suspicions".

She said some students shared those "misconceptions" despite sending their children to study in Britain and the United States.

In contrast, "students and instructors were adamant in their approval of all things Chinese," she wrote.

Cash-strapped Pakistan has relied on USD 18 billion from the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks, when Pakistan officially ended support for Afghanistan's Taliban and agreed to work with Washington.

Patterson was left recommending increased opportunities for colonels and brigadiers "receiving biased NDU training" to hear alternative views of the United States and for an exchange programme for instructors.

Pakistan's military leaders were humiliated by the discovery that the head of Al-Qaeda, the world's most-wanted man had been living, possibly for years, near the country's top military academy two hours' drive from Islamabad.

AFP