It seems the Pakistani media has learned a couple of new chic and trendy phrases like ‘charm offensive’ and ‘trust deficit’ from the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to the highly skeptical and very paranoid Republic of Pakistan. The trip seemed to have been inspired by a long overdue initiative to ease tensions with the Pakistani masses that have been having second and third thoughts about their 'use and abuse partnership' with the US since its inception in 2001.

Unprecedented by the likes of such high-ranking US officials in the past, Clinton's trip attempts to bring the highly controversial, and largely misunderstood ‘AfPak’ policies of the confused US government to the Pakistani masses in Barack Obama's signature style of addressing town halls and public gatherings in informal question and answer sessions. While the inclusion of the public at large in the discourse on US foreign policy seems like a revolutionary step away from more clandestine approaches to manipulate political will through figureheads, for now we will only have to wait and see if this approach is fruitful in changing Pakistani public opinion about the United States.

Though clearly designed to open up dialogue on a range of issues, most of Clinton's public and televised meetings were haunted by the $7.5 billion elephant in the room formally known as the Kerry-Lugar act. A communication disconnect was evident when the roomful of television anchors bombarded the Secretary of State with complaints on the language of the bill, prompting her to respond that the language in the bill was in fact written for a quick sell in the US Congress and wasn't designed for endless debate on news talk shows.

The gap in communication became even more apparent when the Urdu news channel anchors attempted to use their well honed skills of conjuring highly emotional diatribes to try and melt a very pragmatic US Secretary of State into ceding all conditions. They did, however, succeed in prompting Clinton to declare that far from being dispatched, the money had only been set aside, and if the Pakistani people didn't want the money they didn't have to take it. The open-ended question reduced a cackling room to pin-drop silence, almost embarrassing the anchors for pursuing that line of questioning in the first place. It seems none of the haughty anchors were ready to make the billion-dollar blunder by ticking off the Secretary of State and losing all that aid money.

As much as Clinton would have liked to close the chapter on the Kerry-Lugar act, it continued to pop up in almost every subsequent discussion revealing an even deeper layer of social and cultural misunderstanding. While Clinton herself admitted that Washington was perturbed when they heard the huge public outcry over the tripling of US aid to our war-torn country, the message that the Pakistani masses were attempting to send to the Obama administration was apparently lost in cultural translation. The nuance I equate this whole media-catalysed row over the aid is more akin to the interaction between a shop-keeper and a customer, where the customer has inadvertently said something to dishonour the shop-keeper, causing the annoyed shop-keeper to tell the customer to take his money and leave as he doesn't want to have anything to do with him or his money.

Likewise, it seems we, as a nation, are just sick and tired of the war we agreed to fight in 2001, and now we want America to keep their money, pack up, and just leave us in peace, as if that would immediately revert things back to their happy-go-lucky pre-2001 state of affairs. To add to an already perturbed American's confusions, the issue isn't as simple, because as soon as there is talk in Washington about cutting and running, Pakistan seems to let out a bellow filled with agony at being betrayed by those godless Americans again.

The national outcry over the US wanting to steal our much cherished sovereignty through a crafty piece of legislation must have befuddled many in Washington as well. If the idea of one country conning another out of its sovereignty through legal jargon isn't absurd in itself, the idea of feeling more comfortable and territorially sovereign with non-state actors squatting in our front- and backyards must be mind-boggling for people in the US State Department.

In fact, the idea of a legal document taking away Pakistan's sovereignty should strike a Pakistani Muslim as even more preposterous. Anyone who has even pursued the constitution of Pakistan should know that it is clearly stated in the Objectives Resolution that ‘Soveriegnty belongs to Allah alone but He has delegated it to the State of Pakistan through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him as a sacred trust.’ How can any bill, regardless of whether it was drafted in Washington or New Dehli, even dream of stealing something which belongs to Allah?

Legal metaphysics aside, it is a fact in political science that most pieces of international legislation, including trade deals, and membership in international organisations such as the United Nations, impinge on the idea of absolute national sovereignty. The case is similar to an individual giving up certain rights and liberties to live in a civilised society. As rational actors we should readily accept any form of monetary incentives to root out destabilising entities while gaining a foot-hold in the development queue.

In between frequent bombardments of questions relating to a range of controversial topics from drone attacks to Blackwater/Xe Securities, whenever Hillary got a chance for a breather she must have felt like a local pir or fakir as people decided to dump a wheelbarrow full of Pakistan's numerous problems on her as if she had the magic cure for everything from Kashmir to women's empowerment. While she must have really felt like she was in the ‘you've broken it, now you've bought it’ situation, she handled most of the questions and concerns with a calm and a poise people would have never expected from her predecessor Condaleeza Rice, who would have been more comfortable carrying out the offensive without the charm.

While a gaping US-Pakistan communication disconnect does exist, most of it seems to be caused by the deceptive practices of our own popularly elected government representatives. The confrontation of Clinton and the public at large, and given the issues that have revolved around this interaction just goes to show how much the Pakistani government dissimulates before its own people, saying one thing to US law makers, and saying something completely different to the public on issues such as drone attacks, foreign aid, private security, the power crisis, among numerous others.

Given the circumstances, this attempt by a US official at bridging the gap between Pakistani opinions and US policy is commendable. So far this Obama-style tour de force has only gone as far as to open the floodgates. It will be interesting to note in the coming months whether the US actually acts on the many suggestions Clinton has received from Pakistanis from all walks of life.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily represent the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.