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Community Corner

Refugee Reflects on U.S.-Pakistan Relations

After the discovery of Osama bin Laden north of Pakistan's capital city, Islamabad, Pakistani refugee and Rowland Heights resident Aziz Amiri reflects on the country's relationship with the U.S.

When Aziz Amiri first left his native Pakistan, he said the country was in economic chaos.

"Now it is in political chaos," Amiri said. "This is much more complicated and dangerous."

In the wake of a covert U.S. Navy SEALs mission to kill al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden just north of Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters during a press conference in Rome Thursday that the relationship between the two nations has had its rough spots.

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"It is not always an easy relationship," Clinton said, but she insisted there would be continued cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan.

Amiri, a former President of the Diamond Bar Chamber of Commerce, said the United States will need to concentrate on understanding and communicating effectively with Pakistan, keeping in mind linguistic, religious, and cultural differences.

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"Not all words (or concepts) translate well," Amiri said. "For example, when we speak of encouraging secular government, 'secular' translates to ‘Godless’."

The U.S. has managed these terms well in the past, Amiri said. Amiri said the attempt to encourage Afghanistan to take up arms against a 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union became more convincing when portrayed as a fight against a "Godless" Russia rather than a fight between Communism and free-market economics.

Amiri, who is a practicing Muslim, said he hopes that the United States will be able to seek out pro-Western leadership in Pakistan carefully, without seeming to challenge the religious faith of the country.

"Faith remains the same," Amiri said. "People are hijacked in a vacuum of leadership."

To fill the void, Amiri said that Pakistan needs another pacifist civic leader like Adbul Ghaffar Khan — a close friend of Mohandas Gandhi, referred to as the "Frontier Gandhi" — who died in 1988.

"Someone such as this would resonate with the people and serve the needs of the west and Pakistani regions," Amiri said.

At the time Amiri left, in 1971, Pakistan was in state of turmoil as a civil war erupted that separated the eastern portion of the country, becoming the independent Bangladesh.

Some of Amiri's family left the newly formed Bangladesh to head west for Pakistan and 38 of Amiri's family members made the 3,000 mile journey in a cargo ship to come to the United States.

“The economic picture in our homeland was bleak,” Amiri said.

The journey was long and arduous then, but Amiri's family left alongside 1,500 other refugees and were confident in the choice.

"My parents had no concerns," Amiri said.

His family fled civil war in Pakistan and turbulence caused by the Cold War and the Vietnam War throughout Southeast Asia.

Amiri ultimately settled near Diamond Bar in Rowland Heights, where he served as the president of the former Diamond Bar Chamber of Commerce and was the general manager of the Diamond Bar Holiday Inn.

And Amiri was not alone among his high-school peers who would have come to the U.S. during the same period of time.

"Half of my class lives in the United States," Amiri said.

Editor's note: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Amiri was a former Diamond Bar resident.

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