Under the mask

Visit Islamabad and one finds a serene, green city laid out on a grid, to all intents and purposes just another boring capital city.

The truth of the matter while we were growing up there was that everything you can imagine happened - but it happened behind closed doors and was spoken about only in hushed tones.

On my most recent visit there I found the city changed. The flood of earthquake reconstruction money brings with it thousands of foreign aid workers whose primary need after work is for distraction and pleasure. They are the new elite.

Here in the US as a Pakistani-American I barely notice the color of my skin. In Islamabad, I realize that being American is limited to those who are white.

As Pakistan's capital, Islamabad has always been a city with foreigners but they generally stayed in their walled compounds and parties at the UN or American Clubs. Now they sit next to families at local restaurants, pulling out bottles of scotch or wine, puffing on cigarettes, getting red-faced and loud.

The waitstaff is obsequious and nobody tries to stop them, though it is illegal to drink alcohol in public or to smoke in restaurants. The older Pakistani patrons look either uncomfortable or pleased at how 'modern' Pakistan has become. The younger ones are noting carefully the behavior of their betters.

With their salaries and rent subsidies far above that of the local person, Islamabad's rents have skyrocketed. A one-bedroom apartment now goes for $1,500 - in cold hard American dollars only please - in a city where the average income is $270 a month.

A fairly wealthy family who lost their home in the earthquake cannot now afford to buy in the city, so look instead to developments two hours away. What, then, of the average family?

When the post-earthquake aid operations first arrived in late 2005, one team decided to go to a remote area to provide relief. Out there in the midst of utter destruction and destitution, they set up lavish furnished tents, a chef who provided caviar and other rare delicacies for them nightly, and teams whose youngest members (fresh out of undergraduate studies) worked for $4,000 a month right next to far more qualified senior Pakistani field technicians and development workers who were lucky if they got $500 for their pains.

My brother-in-law was told, by a man who claimed to be German intelligence, "Islamabad is one of the biggest party towns in the world - right after Ibiza and Goa, man. We love being posted here."

The tension is palpable in Musharraf's new open society too. Recently, six young Pakistani girls came forward and claimed to have been drugged and raped at a dance party. Today, female students broke into a brothel in the city to close it down. Seeing the photo of the students reminds me that two Pakistans live side by side, growing more wary of each other - the increasingly Westernized elite and the increasingly conservative everyone else.

As an American who has worked in international development, I have to ask: Why is the export of "freedom" all too often limited to excess, consumption of alcohol or drugs and the loss of even positive local traditions?

When we talk about "progressive values" why is the discussion limited to pre- or extra-marital sex, homosexuality or secularism?

What happened to the core progressive ideals of economic fairness, social justice, equal opportunity for all people, and good stewardship of nature? Why aren't we exporting or promoting those values?

I do not blame everything that is bad in Pakistan on foreigners. But I see that, similar to the flood of aid and weapons that came into Pakistan during the Afghan-Soviet conflict, money changes the balance of power and privilege in societies and that is occurring once again in Islamabad: strengthening a dictator's policies and forming a new elite of foreigners and Westernized Pakistanis.

While I believe that development work is vital, it is just as important to tread carefully and respectfully when visiting or trying to help a country. There are UN reports measuring many things, but none, to my knowledge, measure the often crushing impact that foreign aid workers and money have on local cultures, real estate, and economy.

As a Pakistani, I see that we rid ourselves of the colonialists six decades ago never dreaming we'd welcome them back in a new form to take on crippling debt, set up color lines all over again and swallow unquestioningly everything we're given in order to become modern and free - but never quite equal.

A British man gets a pedicure from an Indian servant (BBC).