The Peace and Friendship Bridge
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The Peace and Friendship Bridge is a crossing over a river on the short Pakistan,China frontier, and for John Kiriakou it is a small object lesson in how American alliances are read from the other side.

"When I was serving in Pakistan there were billboards all over the place, in Lahore, in Islamabad, in Peshawar, that were lauding this new bridge called the Peace and Friendship Bridge, that connected northernmost Pakistan with western China. There's this little teeny tiny strip of land that constitutes the Chinese-Pakistan border, it's barely noticeable on a map, and they built a bridge connecting the two countries over a river."

The general's answer

"And I said to this general who was my regular point of contact: you guys sure are making a big deal about this Peace and Friendship Bridge. And very pointedly he said to me, yes. He said: the Chinese are the only friends we have in the world who have never turned on us. And then he looked at me."

Kiriakou supplies the missing half of the rebuke himself: "because God knows we've turned on the Pakistanis over the years."

What he draws from it

The point generalises beyond one country. "It's not just Afghanistan, it's Pakistan, it's India to a certain respect, it's Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. They'll work with us now, but they don't necessarily trust us, and they certainly don't think we'll be there for them over the long term."

See also

- Pakistan Station (2002)
- The Taliban
- China as economic threat
